Mobile device boom no threat to movie theatre growth: Imax CEO

June 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Mobile device boom no threat to movie theatre growth: Imax CEO

8:39am EDT

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – People will always want to watch movies in theatres despite the growing trend of watching videos at home and on mobile devices, the head of giant movie system maker Imax said. “People are social animals and I don’t think they want to be chained to their couches, mobile devices and tablets. They want to go out,” Richard Gelfond, chief executive of Canada-based Imax, told the annual President’s Conference in Israel on Thursday.

“They recognize the fact that (filmmakers) Steven Spielberg and James Cameron may be better at telling a story than a 16 year old over the Internet. I think they can exist side by side.”

Special effects-driven movies, in particular, “cannot be adequately captured” on a mobile device, Gelfond said.

“You need to go to a theatre to appreciate them. If you are going to leave home you want a dramatically different experience than in the home.”

Imax also designs and manufactures theatre systems and then sells or leases them under revenue-sharing arrangements. It has more than 738 theatres in 53 countries.

Its fourth-quarter 2012 profit soared as gross box office revenue from its digital media remastering business rose 56 percent to $152 million, and its theatre network grew. Remastering adapts a movie shot for normal theaters for giant Imax screens.

Imax signed contracts for 142 new theaters in 2012.

The entertainment industry, Gelfond said, was becoming more globalised, with the United States now accounting only for a third of global box office sales.

He said the digital era is lowering the cost of making movies while special effects can be created on a home computer.

“There is an opportunity for almost anyone to make a movie but those movies are likely to be shown on tablets,” Gelfond said.

In Israel, there are just two Imax theatres, and Gelfond said he would like to see about 20.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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