Cinedigm Digital Cinema Corp. (NASDAQ: CIDM) today announced it has installed 1,427 screens in the company’s fiscal 2012 2nd quarter, marking the biggest quarter in the company’s history for digital cinema installations. The next highest quarter was the preceding Fiscal 2012 1st quarter with 642 screens.
In total, the company has signed 9,667 digital screens for deployment and has installed nearly 8,000 total digital screens with 154 exhibitors nationwide. Close to 100 Cinema Buying Group members are included in these numbers, with nearly half of the companies that Cinedigm has signed deals with being exhibitors that have 10 or fewer screens.
The market leader in digital cinema deployments, Cinedigm is responsible for the conversion of the vast majority of exhibitors that are converting to digital and many vendor partners contributed to this accomplishment, especially NEC and Ballantyne Strong that combined to install over 600 systems for Marcus Theatres in the quarter.
“With just under 12 months remaining before the end of our rollout, we are seeing an extraordinary increase in the number of exhibitors coming to us to sign deployment agreements,” said Chuck Goldwater, President, Media Services Group. “As we have done with so many exhibitors already, both large and small in size, Cinedigm will continue to do everything we can to help everyone we can with signing agreements, getting financing, ordering equipment and lining up installation and service resources. Together with our invaluable equipment vendor partners and our many local dealer and service partners across the country, we will continue to give as many exhibitors as possible the opportunity to be included in the digital future of our industry.”
"Theatres across the nation are fully realizing the benefits of digital cinema, and Cinedigm is the trusted partner of NATO's Cinema Buying Group,” said John Fithian, President of National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). “These momentous milestones reinforce to our members that the time to go digital is now.”
Cinedigm's Digital Cinema division is the industry-leading deployment program for Digital Cinema. It facilitates the funding, installation and operations support and ongoing VPF administration for the company's Digital Cinema rollout plans throughout the United States and Canada. Cinedigm, which has signed long-term VPF agreements with all the major studios and interim agreements with dozens of independent distributors, is also the digital cinema integrator partner for the CBG, a buying program of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) for independent theatre operators in the United States and Canada.
In the combined Phase One and Phase Two digital cinema deployment program, Cinedigm has:
- Signed 9,667 screens overall
- Installed just over 8,000 digital screens
- Signed deals with 154 exhibitor partners