Q4 Box Office Sales Tracking Down 5%

Wedbush Securities said the fourth-quarter box office figures appear to be tracking down 5.2 percent year-over-year through December 26 given tough comparisons.

Analyst Michael Pachter noted that October collections fell 8.1 percent to $657 million as the month faced a difficult comparison from "The Martian" and "Hotel Transylvania" last year. November ended up 7.6 percent to $959 million, with "Doctor Strange," "Fantastic Beasts" and "Trolls" leading the box office.

For the month of December, notwithstanding the potential for "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" to outperform expectations, the analyst added that the overall comparison to last year remains a significantly high hurdle.

Pachter pointed out that "The Force Awakens" earned $652 million in December last year, while HSX.com expects "Rogue One" to earn a total of $438 million and has earned $318 million as of this writing.

"We continue to expect box office for the quarter to end slightly down due to difficult comparisons to last year’s lineup, but the strong performance of recent releases make us confident that full-year box office will end slightly up year-over-year. Next year’s lineup suggest that solid year-over-year growth is likely,” Pachter wrote in a note.

A Few Relevant Stocks

• AMC Networks Inc AMCX: down 3.2 percent over the last month and down over 31 percent year-to-date.
• Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (USA) LGF was up ~15 percent over the last month (November 10–December 8) and down 20.6 percent over the last 12 months.
• Time Warner Inc TWX: up 3.5 percent over the last 30 days and down 50 percent year-over-year.
• Twenty-First Century Fox Inc FOXA: up 0.8 percent over last month and up 4.2 percent year-over-year.
• Viacom, Inc. VIAB: down 5.4 percent over the last month, down over 13 percent year-over-year.
• Walt Disney Co DIS: up over 6 percent for the last month and down 0.4 percent year-over-year.