You should read several of the articles in the newspapers about Village and then you would know that regardless of how much a movie "makes", the shareholders in Village will not get to see any of it. Especially the pfd shareholders.
(PS: Now that the dividends have been cut the $25 million plus salary and bonuses of the BOD and executives of Village are safe.)
Over the past year it seems Village has sunk every penny they have got into movie production including:
The sale of the Korean assets that were supposed to result in a "transparent use of the proceeds that benefit all shareholders", Yeah right. Where did the money go? What happened to the gain on the sale? Shouldn't that have offset most of the other write downs just announced?
The dividends from Austereo - I think that they own over 60% of the shares now and only collect less than $15 million on an asset that is worth over $330 million. Wouldn't it have been better to dump Austrereo than its bread and butter movie theaters?
(PS AEO was once trading as high as $2.40 a share (now $1.40) - another example of what happens when the Kirbys get involved in a company - it ends up trading at .6 to .7 of its NTA, a 50% discount to the average PE for its sector, and a has a huge dividend yield compared to others in its industry)
The "extra" leftover from the sale of the UK assets.
As history of the movie business has shown, there are very few really successful movie production companies in the world. Even those that are still around have great fluctuations in profits.
So as far as I am concerned the long run future of Village is bleak. Any person (or should I say fool) that puts his or her money with the "Village People" will end up losing in the long run.
VRL Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
