Team,
Today, IMAX announced earnings for the Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2021 — setting the tone for an exciting, transformative year and sending a clear message that IMAX 3.0 has arrived.
As we enter a new era for IMAX, we do it from a place of strength: we blew Wall Street’s estimates out of the water, delivering higher operating income and gross profit than the fourth quarter of our record-breaking 2019, a strong return to positive earnings per share of $0.31 cents, adjusted EBITDA of $44.3 million, and $108.6 million in revenue.
For the full-year 2021, we delivered $68.6 million in adjusted EBITDA — a positive swing of more than $80 million dollars from our 2020, and a strong indicator of our ability to drive profitability even as much of the movie business is in recovery.
You can read more here.
On our earnings call today, we’ll detail our IMAX 3.0 strategy, and it’s no coincidence we’re doing that coming off such an outstanding quarter.
IMAX is a premier, global technology platform for entertainment and events, and our results, strength, and momentum give us the power to reinvent. You heard me say it during our Global Town Hall last week – we are expanding beyond blockbusters and establishing IMAX as a destination for fandom of all kinds.
Kanye West, Drake, Halsey, Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Apple, Disney, Amazon Music – the world’s top creative powerhouses and platforms worked with us last year because no one else can unlock fandom like IMAX. The year’s biggest blockbusters, from “Dune” to the world’s highest grossing local-language film, “The Battle of Lake Changjin”, were filmed with our cameras because our end-to-end technology delivers experience like nothing else can.
2022 gives us the perfect runway. The blockbuster slate has more titles with IMAX DNA than ever before including “Doctor Strange,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” and “Lightyear,” several new Marvel follow ups to “Thor” and “Black Panther,” and DC titles like “Aquaman” and “Black Adam,” as well as “Jurassic World: Dominion” and “Avatar 2.”
We’ll continue to build on our local language strategy, with investments around the world to get our cameras into the hands of a broader and more diverse group of filmmakers. We’ll build on our existing relationships with musical artists, filmmakers, streamers, and others, establish new and exciting partnerships, and plug a growing array of content and other creative visions into the IMAX network. IMAX Enhanced will continue to grow and we’ll leverage our proven success on Disney+ as a springboard. We’ll be making significant investments in our brand, our projection technology, our film cameras, our direct-to-consumer strategy – with every step building toward the most dynamic end-to-end technology platform in entertainment.
It’s been great getting to spend time with many of you recently. I know that with your proven talent and determination, we will create incredible success together and write a new chapter in the storied history of IMAX.
Thank you for everything you do.
Best,
Rich
