UFO Moviez, one of India’s largest in-cinema advertising platform, with the power to impact almost 2.1 billion viewers annually through 3,558 screens under the PRIME and POPULAR channels across 1,201 cities & towns, today, announced its financial results for the quarter and year ended March 31, 2021.

Financial Highlights:

Theatrical and Advertisement Revenues were severely impacted on account of temporary shutdown of cinemas due to COVID-19 Pandemic. However, continued focus on optimizing costs and conserving cash has helped the Company sustain in this period.

Quarter ended March 31, 2021

Consolidated revenue stood at ₹327 million (Q4FY20 – ₹1,094) million. EBITDA stood at minus (-)₹159 million (Q4FY20 – ₹275) million. PBT stood at minus (-)₹303 million (Q4FY20 – ₹94) million and PAT stood at minus (-)₹255 million (Q4FY20 – ₹68) million.

Year ended March 31, 2021

Consolidated revenue stood at ₹907 million (FY20 – ₹5,039) million. EBITDA stood at minus (-)₹837 million (FY20 – ₹1,194) million. PBT stood at minus (-)₹1,510 million (FY20 – ₹522) million and PAT stood at minus (-)₹1,176 million (FY20 – ₹388) million.

Recent Highlights 

The resurgence of COVID-19 cases towards the end of March 2021, led to various state governments taking restrictive measures to prevent the spread of virus and have once again ordered for temporary closure of cinemas.

Kapil Agarwal, Joint Managing Director, said, “FY21 was a challenging year for the economy as well as for UFO Moviez. COVID-19 led shutdowns, beginning March 2020, impacted Cinema exhibition business in an unprecedented way. Cinemas were allowed to re-open gradually in a staggered manner with 50% seating capacity from mid-October 2020.

“Southern Markets witnessed signs of recovery on account of further easing of restrictions from Q4FY21 supported by release of blockbusters like Master and Vakeel Saab.

“Non-South markets were also gearing up to witness similar recovery as restriction were being lifted from February 2021 and content owners were lining up their release dates. However, the second wave of COVID-19 in March 2021 once again led to lockdown like restrictions throughout India,”

“Though we are under immense pressure, we feel that our cash position and the cost optimization measures will help us tide over this challenging phase. We are confident that Cinemas will remain the preferred media of social entertainment. During the year, we also ventured into fee-based Film Distribution Business as a natural backward integration by leveraging our existing infrastructure.

“It seems that the second wave has already peaked and with the vaccination drive expected to gain momentum, we hope the situation will improve quickly and normalcy is restored in the Cinema business,” Agarwal said.