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DXB Entertainments (DXBE) announced in a statement to the exchange on Wednesday it “attracted over 1.96 million visits during the first nine months of 2018, an increase of 33 percent compared to the same period last year.”
Issam Kassabieh, senior financial analyst at Menacorp Financial Services, told Zawya by email: “Increasing the number of visitors is positive for the company, but we still need to wait and see what would the average ticket price be (total admission revenues/total visitors). The trend for average ticket prices is lower, and, unless the trend reverses, we cannot talk about a turnaround for the company.”
“Dynamic Pricing is definitely tricky in this kind of business and has been challenging in terms of optimization,” he said, adding that “the several changes in management could have also contributed to the changes in strategy (and pricing)”.
The news failed to be a catalyst for DXBE’s stock price, which dropped 0.55 percent on Wednesday and is now down 43.31 percent since the start of the year 2018, underperforming Dubai’s stock market index which is down 16.6 percent in 2018.
For the year 2017, the company had reported a 1.12 billion dirham ($305 million) loss.
The DXBE statement said the nine month growth in visitors’ numbers “follows sustained growth in visits for the past three quarters,” with the number of visitors in the thir quarter of 2018 increasing to over 501 thousand visits, compared to 479 thousand in the same period last year.
“Was expecting better growth numbers than the 5 percent YoY growth in park footfall achieved for the third quarter of 2018, especially given the lower ticket prices,” Ayub Ansari, senior analyst at SICO told Zawya by email.
“Based on our estimates the company needs to generate park annual footfall of close to 5 million just to EBITDA break-even – in the 9 month period of 2018, they have managed just 2 million,” Ansari added.
The company’s stock was last trading at 0.36 dirhams on Wednesday.
According to data from Eikon, one analyst gave a ‘strong buy’ rating on the company’s stock, two analysts gave a ‘hold’ rating and one analyst has rated it the stock as ‘strong sell’.
“We noticed foreigners are buyers at the same time, which might pick up the stock to 0.40 levels,” Amer Saqfelhait, AVP trading manager at Al Mal Capital, told Zawya.
Dubai’s index closed 1.18 percent higher on Wednesday, Abu Dhabi’s index dropped 0.12 percent, Kuwait’s index edged down 0.3 percent, Bahrain’s index dropped 0.26 percent and Oman’s index edged 0.19 percent lower.
At 3:12 GST, Saudi Arabia’s index was down 0.63 percent, Egypt’s index was mainly flat.
(Reporting by Gerard Aoun; Editing by Shane McGinley)
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© ZAWYA 2018
