Cinema software company Vista makes loss, but says 2025 promises box office success

Friday, 28 February 2025

2025 promises to be the year of the sequel in cinemas, a bit like last year, Vista Group's investor presentation shows. Next year is much the same.

Cinema technology company Vista Group earned record revenue of $150 million in 2024, but that didn’t stop the company posting a loss of $600,000.

The NZX sharemarket-listed company provides software to the global film industry to help cinema operators, film studios and distributors manage their business, and has customers in the United States, Canada, Mexico, UK, India, China, Australia as well as New Zealand.

After weaker global box office sales in 2024 than 2023, Vista is hopeful 2025 will be a bumper year for cinema-going.

Susan Peterson, Vista’s chairperson, said the group remained focused on lifting operational efficiency, margins and increasing recurring revenue.

“The execution of our cloud strategy is now making Vista Group’s outlook more predictable. This growing confidence has been reflected in a share price appreciation of 88% in the 2024 calendar year, the third highest for NZX50 companies,” she said.

In the past two years, shareholders have seen the value of their shares rise from $1.36 to $3.35.

Christchurch cinema Lumiere has been voted the best in New Zealand.

Despite that, the company was riven with board room ructions last year when its new Australian cornerstone shareholder Potentia called for a special shareholders’ meeting to remove Peterson as Vista’s chairperson and another member from the board.

The battle appeared to conclude in November when Potentia withdrew its requisition notice.

Chief executive Stuart Dickinson said in the second half of its financial year, which ended on December 31, Vista had become cash flow positive, and during 2024, it had signed up 17 new clients.

“This year, we focused on returning Vista Group to the growth orientation that marked our business when we first listed on the stock exchanges in 2014,” he said.

The $600,000 loss was a significant improvement on the $13.6m loss in 2023.

The cinema industry recovered in 2024 after a rocky previous year caused by the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes with new box office records for Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Wicked and Moana 2.

“A key difference between 2023 and 2024 was the resurgence of franchises over original feature film content,” Vista said.

Despite that, the 2024 global box office was US$30 billion, 7% behind 2023.

Vista launched on the NZX in 2014 with Kirk Senior (left) as chairperson at the time, and chief executive Murray Holdaway (centre) who is now an executive director on the board (file photo).

In its annual report, Vista said the 2025 calendar year looked “almost certain” to follow 2024’s franchise trend with a full slate of Marvel movies, as well as sequels, reboots, or extensions to Mission: Impossible, Jurassic World, Avatar, Wicked, Superman, How to Train Your Dragon, Zootopia and John Wick.

Vista Group's 2024 revenue of $150m was up 5% on 2023, with recurring revenue of $134.6m up 9%.

Dickinson said: “We have achieved our positive free cash flow ambition, not just for the fourth quarter, but the entire second half of 2024, overall profitability before tax, and continued growth in annualised recurring revenue, while delivering strong share price performance for our shareholders

Despite the after-tax loss, Peterson said: “While we will always seek investment opportunities that exceed the cost of capital, our plan is to return excess cash to investors via dividends in the short to medium term.”