PVR shares were on the up on Thursday after the multiplex chain earmarked ₹800-850 crore for adding new movie screens and retrofitting the existing ones.

What Happened? Having completed the merger with Inox Leisure back in February, PVR aims to generate annual cost and revenue synergies of ₹225 crore over the next 12-24 months, per managing director Ajay Bijli.

In the next two years, the merged entity plans to add as many as 200 screens per year with the company’s MD confident of hitting double-digit growth in terms of the top-line of the merged entity in FY24, per a PTI report.

While the company is initially focusing on HR, technology, and operational integrations, Bijli also sees huge headroom for growth in terms of F&B and ad revenues for the merged entity.

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“In terms of economies of scale, we are looking at deriving a lot of synergies in the coming days regarding revenue and costs. We are also looking to derive capex synergies and expect the cost per screen to come down by 10-15%," he added.

The balance sheets of both companies were completely battered during the 18 months of the covid shutdown, Bijli said.

"The biggest rationale behind the merger was to make sure that the financial health of the two companies gets better. There was a crisis and within that, we found an opportunity to survive and make something positive out of it.”

So far in this fiscal, the merged entity has opened 143 screens across 26 properties in 21 cities.

Price Action: PVR shares were trading 0.9% higher at ₹1,548 on Thursday shortly after markets opened for trading.

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