Very welcome to the presentation of the year results, and those following on stream, very welcome as well. So this is what we have prepared for you today. So I will first go through the business review for 2024. Pieter-Jan will then go for the financial review and key conclusions. I will be back for an Outlook 2025, and then we will be available for Q&A. So first, business review. Let me start here maybe. So we had a first half year that was rather weak in terms of content offer. You will remember that despite almost 2.9 million visitors less, we had a strong performance and great cost control. The second half of the year, and that started with Inside Out 2, so it's not a coincidence that we took that picture.
We were ready for a record-breaking season and half year, and the comparable was quite challenging with Barbie and Oppenheimer last year, but we made with almost the same number of visitors, more revenue, more EBITDA. And so let's say that all lights are on green and all the KPIs are on green, but more about that in the presentation. We think that the first half is essentially impacted by the strikes that Hollywood witnessed in 2023, and so we think that from now on, we will be facing a maybe slower than expected a couple of years ago, but a steady recovery, and we will make more visitors again with more revenue because we clearly see with our movies that if we have movies, that with each individual movie, we make as many visitors as pre-pandemic.
The strategy to focus on premiumization is continue to perform and to improve our revenue per visitor in each of the markets we are active in. Essentially, because new markets for us were the U.S., and Canada, and it's only after the pandemic that we started to invest as well in the American market. There we have a huge success, in fact, of our premium concepts. It really distinguishes from the competition, and it even leads there to higher market shares, where in Europe we essentially see that we are able to seduce the existing customer to go for the extra experience. We continue to see a higher price quality satisfaction and perception for the premium products. More about that later on in the presentation. We are working on rolling out more of the concepts in different markets and essentially working on new concepts as well.
All the non-visitor-related activities, I'm talking about screen advertising, business to business, and real estate revenue, perform strong, are above last year and above 2019 levels. Although they are still to a certain extent driven by content, for instance, events that we organize in the B2B department within our theaters, or screen advertising is always even more supported with strong blockbuster content. So there as well, we think that there is more for the future. The group as such is back to its pre-pandemic financial performance. If you look at our balance sheet, solvency we are stronger than before. The debt level is lower than before. So essentially today, and that's what I told one of the colleagues before coming in, we make, compared with 2019 results, we make on average 25%-30% more revenue per visitor, but we are still missing one third of our visitors.
That makes that we make the same revenue that we make more EBITDA than before. And I would say the future looks very exciting to me with all of this, but we'll come back on that later on in the presentation. Here are the key results. 7.9% less visitors. Despite 7.9% less visitors, only 4.5% less revenue already, an illustration of our yearly 5% exercise. Looking at adjusted EBITDA after leases, what we are focusing on in the company, we see that we didn't compensate the loss of the first half. It was an important loss, more than EUR 27 million in EBITDA, but we recovered with more than EUR 7 million. So we have EUR 132.7 million that we make compared to EUR 152.7 million last year. The highest result we had here pre-pandemic was EUR 141 million.
So if we would be a winery, I would say not a grand year but not a bad year at all. And if you look at the free cash flow generation, despite the fact that we invested again a lot in maintenance of our theaters, we have the strongest free cash flow performance ever for the group. Net financial debt is at EUR 390 million, resulting in 2.25% or 2.25, sorry, financial leverage, which is as well, I think, a conservative level. Here we try to demonstrate what the impact of the different half years and seasons has been. You see on the left-hand side and with the orange line clearly recovery of Hollywood content interrupted in H1 2024 because of the strikes.
On the right-hand side, you see that we made, and again on the left-hand side maybe, you see that we made more revenue with the same visitor numbers and that we made as well more EBITDA in the second half thanks to that. So yeah, with another first half, the result of the year would have looked very different. Top five movies. Here you see as well, yeah, essentially four of the five top five movies that altogether performed less than the top five of last year, but four of the five were in the second half of the year. It was better spread in 2023. And as well, we had there almost three movies that made more than 2 million visitors.
Avatar was partially in December 2022, so made as well more than 2 million visitors, while last year only Inside Out 2 made more than 2 million visitors but outperformed the top five of 2023. You see as well that the weight of the top five is going down bit by bit to pre-pandemic levels, which is an indicator that the movie offer that we have underneath those top five movies is becoming stronger and stronger again as well. The visitor dynamics. So here you see that each of those markets performed differently as to do with, of course, the year before. If you have, for instance, in Belgium, a Zillion that made in the market 700,000 tickets and you're missing that kind of local movie the year after, that impacts, of course, your comparable with the year before.
France, on the other hand, was very strong with three local movies, Un p'tit truc en plus, L'Amour ouf, and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. And essentially in Europe, you need to have a good month, a good season, you need strong Hollywood content, and on top of that, strong local content, while in the U.S., and Canada, Hollywood content is as well the local content. And so those markets are performing proportionally better. And you see as well that with the 7.9% less visitors, only 4.5% less revenue. And there as well, you see a difference in performance, picking out the United States with 2.3% less visitors, 3.8% more revenue. And that essentially thanks to the successful implementation of our premium concepts that we are rolling out. And in the meantime, more about that later on.
The team there is working as well on their own premium concepts that probably already this year, some of them will copy in Europe. The three-pillar strategy is something we continue to work on, and it's for the 18th time that we have in the presentation, or on slide four or on slide five, we have here the three-pillar strategy. I must say, and I will elaborate a little bit more in terms of the cinema operator, because I remember that after a couple of years when we started up, the board was asking me, "That's an ending story." My impression today is that we are even accelerating, and that's one of the things I will tell you in the Outlook.
We succeeded again to build a Profit Plan based on 5% less tickets and to compensate the gap on an EBITDA level, which is a strong performance, and it's thanks to the creativity and the evolvement of the teams that we have in the group. There's more, but two slides, and I will tell you more about that. Marketing, we continue to perform better and better in gaining market share in blockbuster movies, but as well, we are focusing more on alternative content, world content, and that becomes as well more and more successful. We are there, depending on the season, 3%-4% of Box Office with that world content. In terms of Real Estate, we are preparing with a couple of projects already to, let's say, to demonstrate the underlying Real Estate value of the pieces of land and the theaters we have.
The launch of SingCity fits as well into that best real estate manager approach because we do have everywhere square meters that we could use or reuse in this kind of activities. We started up in Ghent with 10 boxes, SingCity. The second one is planned for Madrid. We are learning, but so far, after two months, we are at the break-even level already, so it looks rather promising. Essentially Ghent, it is a market where there are already two other karaoke centers. It looks rather promising but fits into that real estate, best real estate manager strategy. ESG. We try to go for what I would call smart ESG.
We try to work on a strategy and on KPIs and initiatives within our ESG strategy that will help to even better support the execution of our corporate strategy, our three-pillar strategy as such, so that there is no opposite interest, and the team has done a tremendous job to be ready today already to report on each of the KPIs we selected, and that's in the meantime validated by the auditors, so yeah, if what they tell us is compared to many other companies, great job, thanks to the team as well, and so yeah, we are on track here, so last year, many asked us, "Isn't it an opportunity for you guys to go for external expansion?" The moment has come now, given the performance already at that moment in time of the company.
But we felt at that moment in time that what was available in the market was not what we were looking for, on the one hand. On the other hand, internal expansion that is not dependent on visitor recovery as such, but it's just a trend in the market that consumers and our customers want more and more experience, and that's a trend that we already saw pre-pandemic with the upswing from broadband. Essentially, we saw it going hand in hand, that customers have the ability to watch in very decent circumstances content at home. So we saw more demand for more premium and more experience coming to the movies, and we saw that really getting a boost after the pandemic.
As we explained before, we were already rolling out in Canada, but we have interrupted this during the pandemic because we wanted to keep our cash as a safety cushion, of course, to survive. But since the end of the pandemic, we are rolling out at a much higher pace in Canada and the U.S. And I can tell you these concepts work very, very well, essentially as well now in the U.S. So when they're even, as I said before, making that we are gaining market share. A couple of examples. We introduced and we really rushed to be ready for Dune in October 2022, but Dune was postponed to March 2023. So we had six extra IMAX theaters, and we will soon announce that we will further roll out IMAX theaters in the group.
We will have this year, and that's maybe an example of what we could expect. We had last year four IMAX movies. We have this year 14 IMAX movies. And I would say that the content is better spread over the year, but where we had big blockbusters, it's more mid-size blockbusters that we will have, but more and better spread over the year. 22 new ScreenX theaters, 10 new Laser Ultra theaters, and ongoing rollout of our premium seating concepts. So yeah, based and inspired by the Cozy Seats in Europe, we developed Premiere Seats and VIP Seats, which is the cozy version of a recliner seat in Canada and the U.S. Very high occupancy, very high return on investment. So talking about 25%-30% return, no-brainers.
Introduction of loungers in the U.S., where the first row is closer to the screen, and so it's more difficult to sell. But the local team did put a kind of bets into it, and now it sells. And we are trying this as we speak, but under the name of Cozy Loungers in a couple of European theaters as well, and it works. We added a couple of, but only two or three rows of recliners in Madrid. And as far as we observe now, it coexists with Cozy Seats. Both have the same occupancy. We will need to investigate a bit further because we are surrounded by a couple of theaters that have only recliner seats, and so yeah, maybe they're struggling with under capacity because of that, because you reduce going to recliners your capacity with almost 55%.
But there again, we see, let's say, inspiration for more and new concepts to come. And then, of course, we renovated completely. We have a couple of pictures of those new acquired cinemas in France, something available for Béziers, and we are preparing now for the renovation of the theater we recently acquired in Almería. Something else that I'm particularly proud about is we had first last year, and we already spoke about that with the H1 update, but we organized the first Innovation Lab Summit. It's a summit where we bring all our European and a delegation of the North American managers together. The first edition was in Antwerp, and each country comes with an idea, but completely elaborated and in a kind of elevator pitches.
We try to pick out the most promising idea, the most creative idea, and there is as well an award that is given by the public, by the 126 managers we had, and 13 exciting ideas came out of that. Some of those ideas were already in test in some of those countries, and we are following them up because we have a second edition of the Innovation Lab Summit and just inspired on the Eurovision contest in the winning country, so it will be in France in Lomme this time in June. And so there we will have an extra award for the most impactful ideas, so all of those 13 ideas are in execution, and essentially we are creating initiatives, concepts that will feed what we call internally our 5% exercise for 2026 and 2027 and so on.
Not a lot in external expansion to cinemas, extra, one in Almería and one in Landmark in Windsor in Ontario. These would categorize under free M&A. It's essentially a renegotiation with the landlord and reopening of an existing theater where the landlord was not paid or not happy with the maintenance and the investments made by the tenant. Both are successful, and Landmark is a theater where we are testing a couple of new concepts. One of the concepts, and there are initiatives coming from the Canadian team because it's boring to copy all the time what your European colleagues are doing, so you want to come as well with something new. And so they came with a Lux, 18-plus Lux theater. That's nothing to do with the content we show, but we don't want kids into the most luxury seat concepts we have.
We have in that theater everything that's the best of what we can offer in sound, projection, and seat comfort. We'll have some footage about that. It works very well, and we are rolling out a second one and will probably test that in other markets. They developed as well what they call Kiosk, inspired on what McDonald's has as a concept where you order your menu on a big screen. People take more time to make their choices than when you are at the counter looking at what the different menu options are and with an impatient waiter, yeah, waiting you to make a decision. We tested that in Windsor and in another theater in Canada, and we have easily 20% higher take-up. We will test that again in other markets.
Yeah, all of this is what we call internal expansion and very promising ideas. As I already said, ESG is on track, including our CSRD reporting for the full year 2024. That's the ScreenX theater. It works very well in Michigan as well. We had a couple of customers who have been driving more than two hours to watch Twisters in ScreenX. Here we have a movie about the Lux. It's an image of the Innovation Lab Summit and colleagues presenting, and in the middle, you see the three awards that they could obtain. Yeah, I was particularly proud about what I witnessed there and the passion of our teams for what they're doing and how happy they were with the recognition they got. That's what we need. Picture of Belfort that is completely remodeled to Kinepolis standards.
That's the one in Béziers in the shopping center Polygon. It's an outdoor shopping mall with a freestanding cinema into it. The façade of the Landmark Windsor, the new one with the kiosks and with the Lux theater into it. So at a glance today in Europe, our footprint is about the same of what we had pre-pandemic with one extra theater that we opened in Almería and one more in Canada, USA, in Ontario, in Sarnia. The dividend that we are proposing is the same amount per share as 2025. The company is completely back to and even outperforming the, in terms of balance sheet strength and in terms of revenue, the pre-pandemic levels. But in a background that the result is lower than last year, we think it's appropriate to pay a dividend that is the same as the year before.
And so if you apply this to 26.7 million outstanding shares, it represents a total amount of EUR 14.7 million. I'm going to hand over now to Pieter-Jan, who will take you more into depth into the financial results of the company.
Good afternoon from my side also. Diving into the 2024 financials. Let me stress again this graph because this is an important one, and actually it's a very good example of our operational leverage, what you see happening certainly in the second half of 2024. We all know that the first half was confronted with a low visitor level driven by the lower content. Despite that, all our KPIs during the first half were on green. So that means average ticket price, spend per head, the take-up rate.
You see that when content is available, you see visitors are coming, and you see immediately the effect on our performance, which drives the best second half year ever of Kinepolis in terms of revenue, but also in terms of EBITDA performance. For the full year there, as Adi explained already, you see the drop in visitors and the drop also in revenue with around 4.5%. Still better than 2022, where we also improved visitor-wise. Looking a bit more in depth in the dynamic of our revenue, you see that still our cinema business, of course, is almost 85% of our revenue with a nice split between ITS and box office. So 50% box office and 31% in theater sales. The drop in those activities is around EUR 26 million. Just to give you an idea, the drop in visitors represents around EUR 43 million.
And we managed to compensate part of this by, on the one hand, increasing our prices to compensate for inflation, and on the other hand, also focus on that luxury experience so that premiumization strategy, which we countered the drop in revenue with around EUR 60 million. On top of that, we had a bit of expansion also. That's mainly Béziers, Belfort, a little bit of Windsor for EUR 3.4 million. And of course, a small FX. That's something we don't control. That's USD and CAD. If we translate it to EUR on average, over 2024, we lost around 2.1.
Coming back to that cinema and cinema revenue in ITS and box office, also on the right-hand side, you see here that we managed to increase those prices again to compensate for that inflation on box office and also on the ITS, where you have on food a little bit higher inflation. So we managed to compensate that, which also shows then in the increased revenue in 2024 compared to the drop in visitors. Some other smaller activities, B2B, quite some focus on that also. So you see small increase will also be a focus point in 2025 to even get more out of our B2B offering. Brightfish, there you see a drop.
Of course, there is also a link with the lower visitors, but also you see quite a strong competition for everything that has to do with advertising space, where also screen advertising has to find his place. So they are fighting for that space also. And then the last two, film distribution. Yeah, quite a big drop. And that's nothing to do with that we had less releases. It's just that the releases were less successful in 2024 compared to 2023, where we had, of course, an extraordinary release with Zillion, Will, and Achtbergen. And then, of course, real estate. We also increased their indexing or our rent and also making sure that we don't have too much vacant concessions in our theaters. Brings us to EBITDA, profitability. So there you see the drop of 20 million EUR. So quite a drop, but in the end, we were able to compensate.
Just to give you an idea, our premiumization strategy enabled us to at least increase our EBITDA with around roughly EUR 2.5-3 million, showing also that we have chosen the right strategy to compensate if visitors drop a bit. So there we managed to compensate that. This brings us to a net result adjusted of around EUR 42 million. So EUR 60 million lower than last year, which was, of course, a very strong year. But nevertheless, 42 is not bad for 2024. The rest of the P&L, let me just see final financial result. It is a little bit better. That's, of course, has to do with a better financial position, which enables us to pay less interest. And then, of course, if we have a little bit lower result, we also pay a little bit less taxes.
And also the return on capital employed has a small drop from 15% to 12.1%, which, of course, follows the drop in EBITDA. But still a decent number, 12%. We're happy with that, but can, of course, if you can increase it, we'll do that. CapEx, as Adi mentioned, again, going to pre-COVID level, EUR 42.6 million, of which EUR 80.5 million on maintenance CapEx So that's the overall upkeep, HVAC, so on. So that's something where Kinepolis spends quite some focus on to keep their theaters up to date. But on the other hand, the other half is in expansion, and that's also where we want to create value. That's in premiumization, ScreenX, Cozy Seats, Laser Ultra. And also in the new cinemas, of course, which also take quite some investments in Windsor, Béziers, Belfort. Maybe an important element for, maybe the most important element for 2024 is our cash flow.
Despite the 7.9% lower visitors, we managed to have a bigger cash flow than last year. If you see, our free cash flow is around EUR 98 million, higher than last year. But also if you offset it against our EBITDA, meaning if you have the EBITDA, what remains after our investments, we have around 75% of cash conversion, which is actually strong. It also shows our ability to deleverage, but also the agility that we have as Kinepolis to keep that strong cash flow at level, even if visitors drop. It leads to a drop, of course, in our net financial debt going from EUR 378 million to EUR 319 million, fueled, of course, by our EBITDA, a bit lower income tax since we were able to release some capital from working capital.
And then we have CapEx, the dividend payout over 2023, more or less in line, and a bit around EUR 3 million less interest that we paid, gives us EUR 319 million. Which brings us to our leverage, which further drops below the level of 2019. So there we move forward, and we have today 2.25 as a leverage, an improvement of around 0.1 versus last year. Bringing us to our debt profile. So as you know, probably know, so our debt profile has quite a short maturity, 1.72 years, with an average cost that is very acceptable today, so 2.8% roughly, and quite a healthy liquidity headroom, EUR 190 million, of which around EUR 85 million cash. So we repaid end of January, the private placement we had of around EUR 35 million. For the end of the year, we still have also a private placement of around EUR 60 million that is maturing.
That's also we have enough liquidity headroom there also to fulfill debt. But of course, it's important to also look at that maturity, and there we are in current discussions with our banking partners also to see how we can have our refinancing discussions going on. Brings me to the end for 2024. So conclusions, H1, a drop in visitors. Nevertheless, we managed to keep our KPIs green, have a performance that was very acceptable. And that, of course, shows us in H2 that when visitors come back, content is there, we do have a nice financial performance, even the best since ever for Kinepolis. The strong free cash flow, I think that's an important element, managing to get that cash flow even when visitors drop a bit at a high level. And of course, then also reducing the leverage and strengthening our balance sheet.
So all in all, very ready for 2025 and looking out for that. So Adi, I leave the outlook to you. Can you hear me?
Yeah. So thank you, Pieter-Jan. So in terms of Outlook 2025, what are the elements and what can we tell you about this? First of all, and that's the guidance that we give every year, and that's an important one. The Profit Plan 2025 is again based on the approach of 5% less tickets, same EBITDA. And it's every year a challenge. It's the 16th consecutive year that we do that. And again, the teams succeeded to come with ideas that will contribute to customer satisfaction, people satisfaction, revenue, operating in a smarter way. And so, of course, again, it's not the goal that we do 5% less tickets.
It's an investment in doing more EBITDA with the same number or a growing number of visitors. Lineup development, we see a further recovery, albeit slower than anticipated. You will remember that after the pandemic, and based on what Hollywood told us, that everyone expected that in 2025 we were going to be on the same number of white releases. White releases is something that we utilize in the industry. There are movies that are released on 30,000 plus screens worldwide. Those movies that have the potential to become big blockbuster movies and to make the difference. And there we see more and more content coming. 2026 announces us again a step up after 2025. But it remains for us, and it's not different from the pre-pandemic situation, very unpredictable, which movies will be very successful, which will be not so successful.
We expected much more from Joker last year. It was foreseen to be a movie that was going to make 500,000 tickets. It made less than 200,000 tickets. The good thing is that we have, of course, always positive exceptions and positive surprises as well. So in terms of further growth opportunities, internal expansion, and that's what I tried to explain to you in the first part of the presentation. I have the impression that we are accelerating and that a couple of initiatives we have been talking before, but that required more than anticipated ICT development and talking about the in-theater dining will be tested now from next month on in Belgium in some of the theaters, and all the other ideas I've been talking about, which is for us almost guaranteed extra revenue per visitor. Then, of course, the potential of a further organic growth.
What I mean by that is we see today that more movies is more customers, is more visitors. So yeah, that's for us an obvious one in terms of growth. And while we see that for many colleagues with the visitor numbers they make today are still struggling with profitability and some of them even are in a cash drain situation, we are back on the performance of pre-pandemic. So for us, every incremental visitor is at least EUR 8 incremental EBITDA. And bit by bit, external expansion, the fact that, let's say, Hollywood is recovering maybe slower than anticipated and hoped for is something, of course, that is observed by other players in the market. And often family-held companies are not waiting any longer. That's the impression we have. And we are more and more approached again on, okay, could you be interested in acquiring our group?
I'm not announcing anything, but if you don't talk to a potential seller, you won't buy and we start talking again. And this is in a background that our company is, from a financial point of view, completely back to pre-pandemic performance levels, even doing better. A word about Hollywood. Hollywood, essentially, you see that those companies that invested a lot in streaming are showing weakened balance sheets. Some are recovering very fast, like Walt Disney. Sony never went into streaming, but is a smaller player that is on the same, let's say, release calendar and level than pre-pandemic. Warner is doing less still. Paramount is in a process of being sold to Skydance, who essentially wants to bring more capital into the studio. And streamers are doing well, but there's not so much evolution.
We expect rather further consolidation there, essentially in the North American market, where there are a lot of players and where the market remains very fragmented and where it's difficult for a consumer to pinpoint out which movie he can watch on which platform. I talked about regional differences in content. And so, yeah, I would take care if I would focus on one market to conclude from that market what the other markets, for instance, in Europe, are doing. The local movie offer remains very important. It's up to 30%-35% potentially in markets like France. But in other markets, it can make go up to 15% of your visitors as well. And given the high operational leverage that we have, this is impacting, of course, in an important way, the bottom line result of the company potentially. Here is the lineup.
So you will see much more titles than two years ago. Second quarter looks already much better. First quarter is in line with first quarter last year, probably a bit better. But the issue we had in the first half last year was essentially in the second quarter. That's where we lost 2 million visitors compared to what we had planned for. You see as well the originals, and then maybe that's my age, but I'm waiting for Mission: Impossible, of course, in the second quarter. We will have as well an original Formula 1 in the second quarter. And then here you see a well-filled third and fourth quarter with Avatar 3, where we see already today on social media and in our database more questions from our visitors about when Avatar will come.
So yeah, we think that it's today. I would say that's the most promising movie we have for this year. Another original is Michael Jackson, where they are re-recording part of the movie because of an issue with one of the stakeholders. And so yeah, let's hope that he makes it for the fourth quarter because it was already for that reason postponed from April to the end of the year. We do have some footage immediately of the upcoming movies for this year, and then we are available for your questions as well here in the theater as through streaming.
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He's KBC Securities. I have three questions, but a few are linked. First question is on the content. Is it fair to say that the first quarter will be a little bit difficult with a strong second quarter? Is that also what you expect? And the second question is on Canada. If I compare your numbers with your main competitor over there, then it seems that you have taken some market share. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? The reasons why.
And then on free M&A, you said a little bit less free M&A. Is that because there was less supply or are you a little bit more prudent? And is that related to show off a little bit with nice free cash flow with the upcoming debt refinancing? And in the debt refinancing, what's your preference? Is that one big shot or is it a few smaller refinancings? Thank you.
So first question is on Q1, Q2. Q1 looks more in line with last year, probably a bit better. I'm going to switch off this one. Yeah. Q2, as we demonstrated, we have much more content than the very poor Q2 of last year.
It's always very unpredictable for us as well, how many visitors precisely we will do, but we have more content than so we expect, and we are planned to have a better first half, of course, where within that first half, a Q1 that will be closer to last year. But again, we lost essentially most of the visitors in Q2 last year, 2 million. That's what we really believe that we will do much better this year. Your second question was on Canada and comparing to the main competitor. Yes, we have been winning market share. We have been winning even more proportionally in box office market share and in revenue. We're pretty excited about that acquisition. We told you before that we have the capacity to double the EBITDA of a company.
We are above doubling the EBITDA of that company with making around 74% of the visitors like for like in that market. So I think a very good performance as such. In terms of free M&A, it's more, yeah, I would say opportunity-driven. And free M&A is essentially a landlord who approaches you to find another tenant. And I would say that we think that other opportunities will come there, but we had proportionally more opportunities immediately after the pandemic because some didn't pay the rent any longer or hadn't paid at all the rent for a long period. So with the recovery of visitors, we think that because, of course, that results in more result for all the players in the market, that this kind of opportunities will come again more exceptional. But of course, for us, free M&A is always a nice one.
We invest in refitting everything in that theater and bringing in our new concepts. Those have a rather short payback time. So for us, that's a no-brainer. But not all the opportunities that are presented to us are real opportunities. Some are problems as well in very weak markets and where often there is a combination of an overscreen situation with a tenant in financial difficulties. That's not the kind of things that we want to acquire. And so yeah, I don't think that we'll be in this with this approach, it's welcome. It's a nice add-on, but yeah, I think that we want to bring our M&A strategy more up to speed with, of course, more important acquisitions than a couple of small add-ons. The refinancing, we are, as we speak, talking to our different bankers. A lot of goodwill.
No surprises for them neither in the results of the company. A starting point, a company that is rather deleveraged in the meantime. And of course, it's more a coincidence that we have, let's say, a bond and the RCF coming to maturity the same moment. We will probably not wait until the last moment to get this refinanced. So we will start, and based on what's available in the market, we will probably go in several steps in anticipation of the end of next year. I don't know, Pieter-Jan, if you want to add something to that.
Well, I think more or less that covers the answer. I think we want to look for financing and getting money from the market.
So in that side, and also from a maturity profile, it's our ambition at least to have a more balanced maturity profile in the long term. So avoiding a maturity wall. But we're working on that. So you will get more information later on 25 on this.
Thanks. David Vagman from ING. Three questions also from my side. First, on the geographical mix, is it fair to say that the recovery we saw in 2024 was to some extent unfavorable if we compare to 2023? What I mean by that is, and it's good news, but the U.S.and Canada recovered well. You could say they did even better than some markets like Belgium, the Netherlands, which are typically higher, which have higher EBITDA per visitor. So to which extent was it, let's say, a headwind in 2024?
And looking ahead in 2025, could this be a tailwind, or are you looking at the recovery at the mix, geographically speaking? Could this be a positive or again the same, or are you looking at it? It's also, if I listen to your comments on the market, it has also to do with the local content. So I realize that. So that's the first question. Second, on M&A, yeah, could you give us your view on, let's say, the, what can I say, the all have sellers matured on the normalization of attendance versus normalization of supply? You have the impression that they're becoming closer to their minds. They're more ready to sell. Could you comment also in terms of multiples? What is your thinking, basically? I'm really talking about mid-size M&A. And then last question, also related to M&A.
Should we make any link between the refinancing and then mid to large M&A? So could you be tempted to slow down on mid-size M&A to give you time to do a proper, clean refinancing before?
So the geographical mix, in fact, there's only one exception almost in the marginal contribution of visitors. What I mean by that, and that's France. What I mean by that is, as we explained before, and that's since decades like that, in France, you have a higher visitor frequency on average, but average ticket price is lower. Consumption in the shops is lower. That's much more in line in the other markets. And it is true that if you look back to, let's say, a market where you lease your theaters, your contribution is lower, but not for the incremental visitor because you have paid already your lease.
So the incremental visitor that you make comes with a contribution that is almost as high in all different markets we are active in. And yes, local content is important, and movies do perform different in different markets. A Captain America, for instance, is much more successful in the U.S., Canada, than, for instance, in Spain. But I would say nothing new under the sun. And so again, watch out if you deduct visitor numbers for markets based on the performance for other markets. But okay, I know everyone is trying to take as much information from what is available, of course, so that's completely understandable, but it's not always representative. In terms of M&A, we told you before that we see many mid-sized theater chains, family held, often people without or owners without succession or successors.
And many of them do have their real estate on board, and so they are not really, let's say, in a need to sell for financial reasons. And so they were waiting until the market is recovering more. And there the observation, and that's what I try to explain as well in the outlook, is that we are not the only ones to observe that, yeah, the recovery of Hollywood because of their financial capacity is going a little bit slower than expected. And some of those owners, for them, the moment they come to sell, they're not waiting any longer. And so we are more and more approached again, where a year ago that was barely the case. And so in that sense, it's different. And we are not announcing anything, but if you don't talk to a potential seller, you won't buy. And we are talking.
That's all we can say. And in terms of refinancing, we are combining both in the discussions we have. And of course, going back to what we told you a year ago, where some investors asked us, "At the moment, it's come for you guys to do something big now. You have in the market big players in financial need. Maybe that's an opportunity." First of all, you are often confronted with companies with a very high financial leverage, with a very important backlog of maintenance. And on top of that, there is a limitation to what we can integrate. We acquire based on a strategy of improving potential. That's what we are doing, and that's what fits into the risk profile of the company. And so that makes that, yeah, you need financial capital and human capital.
My feeling is that based on the discussions we are having with our banks right now, that funding and acquisition might be not too much of an issue.
Very clear. Thanks.
We have some questions from the people watching the live stream. Some questions from Matthias Manhart from Kepler Chevreux. Your EBITDA is down 21 million EUR on 8% less visitors. Given that you budget with a 5% rule, that should allow you to compensate on EBITDA for the loss of 5% of visitors or 1.7 million visitors. This seems like a high amount as it implies a 20 million EUR EBITDA loss for the remaining 1.1 million visitors. What could explain this? Were there any unforeseen headwinds or maybe investments that eroded part of the benefits?
Of course, it's country mix that is playing a role on the one hand.
On the other hand, we invested more in the overhead structure again of the company in anticipation of growing the business again in the near future. And inflation played there a role as such as well. But that's essentially what has impacted. And there's another element. The most, let's say, successful movies were essentially family movies. And so the proportion of kids' tickets that paid less was rather high compared to our profit plan and the year before.
Okay. And can you elaborate on the dividend policy and the reasons to keep the dividend flat despite the lower profitability?
Well, there are two elements at play. We always had pre-pandemic a 50% payout ratio for the dividend. We announced that we were going to a 25% payout ratio in anticipation of a full financial recovery. We are at that point in time. But the result is lower than last year.
So that's the reason why we proposed the same amount, which is a somewhere in between approach.
Next question. Can you elaborate on the prospects for the B2B activity, please? Do you have visibility into 2025? Can we expect much higher growth in 2025?
We have each year the ambition because there is no 5% exercise. It's just selling more. And so far, we have been selling between 5%-10% more on a yearly basis. And that's an activity that's essentially elaborated in the European markets. It has to do with the infrastructure you have in your theaters. And that's what we have again in our profit plan, but we are only mid-February. We started very well, but will we make the year? That's why we have an H1 and a full year update, but that's for next year.
And last question from Matthias.
How important is the cost of renovation of the French cinemas and internal expansion CapEx, and what have you already seen in terms of return on investment? Do you anticipate to double EBITDA of these acquisitions post-renovation, and what will be the main drivers?
For the French ones, we acquired in 2022. We are almost there. The CapEx looking at Pieter-Jan for the renovation is in expansion CapEx. So internal expansion is really linked to existing theaters, so not the new ones we acquired, where we improve, let's say, the seat concepts and, yeah, the screenings and everything we explained and demonstrated, but so that is within the external expansion CapEx for 2024. Thank you, and then some questions from Chase Scotland from Van Lanschot Kempen. The Netherlands continue to significantly underperform other regions in terms of visitor recovery.
Can you speak on why you believe this is and what you are doing to solve this? Is this related to local film lineup or other factors? It is related to three elements. It's a little bit the market with recovering, not as well as the other ones. It has to do with local content. In the case of Kinepolis, so our case, it has to do as well with the fact that in 2023, new theaters, two new theaters from the competition opened in catchment areas. Ypenburg opened in the catchment area of Leidschendam, and in the catchment area of Enschede, Vue opened a cinema. So, and that's, let's say, an on-top impact that we are witnessing.
Okay. We also had some questions on M&A. I think those have been answered. Perhaps are there specific regions or sizes of targets you are focusing on in M&A?
It depends a little bit. Size is more what are we able to finance, what are we able to manage. But I would say targets like MJR, but from a financial perspective, there was not more the value of Landmark without real estate was about the same amount of MJR. But that's the kind of targets we would be interested in. Again, markets that we understand, that we know that are from a macroeconomic point of view stable. And the fact that our concepts work well in Canada and the US is, of course, a plus. But it will be opportunity-driven. So if in other markets someone comes to see us and we have an interesting target, we will have a look at it.
A question for Pieter-Jan. You had a strong operating free cash flow in 2024, largely driven by working capital inflow.
Can you discuss in more detail these movements and if we should expect a reversion in 2025?
Yeah, indeed, we did have some tailwind on the working capital side, which is for a part driven by some timing effect and seasonality as we had end 2024. Let's say more holidays in 2024 than we had in 2023, where you had a bit of more split between the two years, 2022 and 2023. Nevertheless, the underlying cash flow is strong, so I don't expect a full reversal, far from. So we see that also in January, that there is quite a nice cash generation. So that underlying cash flow is there.
A question from Kris Kippers from Degroof Petercam. Have you analyzed the launches of blockbusters in 2023, 2024, and looked at the number of visitors they reached versus expectations? Sometimes we tend to see some erratic performances.
Is this because we continue to miss certain age groups, or has behavior or behavior changes meanwhile? Any insights on this?
So in our predictions, we are always rather prudent, and it's not mathematical science to predict what a movie is going to do. But on average, they perform better than what we projected, that we expected. On the one hand, if we compare it to, let's say, pre-pandemic, the success of an individual movie is at least as high. And you can follow in the press that often new blockbusters break new box office records after opening weekend. And that's something you see. The life cycle is a little bit different. So you have stronger opening weekends and the first two weeks with a drop, but then a longer leg. The movies remain longer into our theaters. And so there's apparently a population who says, "No stress.
We will go in two or three weeks to watch that movie." That's something we see, and so you see a linear relationship between visitor recovery or the number of visitors we make compared to pre-pandemic levels and the number of wide releases we have for the time being, which is rather promising, of course, for the future in anticipation of more movies to come,
and lastly, as far as questions from the live stream are concerned, two questions from Paul Manigaud from Amiral Gestion. Amiral Gestion. Could you quantify the number of blockbusters expected in 2025, 2026 versus 2024? That's the first question. I will let you answer first.
So it's a definition of wide releases, and you need to consider separately local successful movies. We see what it can do in some markets like France, and they're, of course, not under these numbers.
But we had 68 in 2023. We had 63 in 2024. Beginning of the year, we have 70 for this year, knowing that some movies will be announced during CinemaCo for the end of the year. And in the industry, everyone talks about 2026 because there we will go further to probably 80, 85. Some companies like Disney say that they will do probably a little bit less, but better, more performing. And that's what we have seen so far. So the movies that Disney released one by one performed very strongly. Where it will end, that's for us as well rather unpredictable. That's something that we undergo more than we can manage it. But one thing is certain. We are not at a saturation point, so we continue to have more content.
The second question, with short debt maturity and a very low cost of debt, should we expect an increase in financial costs as you will refinance debt at a higher rate?
I'll take that one. Yeah, I think it's an open door to say that the way we are financed today at 2.8%-2.85% on average will be very difficult to match that. Indeed, if we will refinance, it will be potentially at a higher cost or almost with a very high certainty. To say what will be the impact, that's a bit too soon. It will depend a bit on, okay, when will we refinance and when and how. It's a bit too soon, but it will be highly likely that it will be at a higher cost.
And if I may add, you need to see that as well in a dynamic of a very fast deleveraging of the group. So essentially, new debt will have to do with M&A, and there will be probably a compensation effect in lower multiples that we will probably be able to pay in a market that today is a little bit more a buyer's market.
Thank you. Are there any more questions from the audience?
Yes, very quickly. One on CapEx. If you could just give us, let's say, a bit of the usual CapEx guidance or soft guidance for 2025 and the split, if you're okay with that.
I can take that also. I think if you look at our CapEx level that we had in 2024, I think roughly that will be kind of a good guidance for 2025 also.
Of course, taking not into account any external expansion, but that's also a question mark.
Maintenance and internal expansion will be in that line. External expansion is depending on what will happen.
Okay. Just to be clear on external expansion, you're done with the renovation of these three M&As that are happening? Almería. Almería is still. Okay. So maybe we need to just all things being equal, we need to top up a bit with a bit of external expansion.
We had more than one. We had Béziers. We had Alpha. Windsor.
Yeah. Okay. So excluding for external M&A, sorry, expansion last year, what I meant by top up, it's on top of internal and maintenance. Correct. Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. Hi, Trion Reid from Berenberg here. Hi, just one question on the real estate.
So you talked in the past about trying to either highlight more the value of the real estate because it feels like it's undervalued inside the current share price, and/or to use your underutilized real estate a bit more. Maybe you can give us an update on what progress you've made there. Yeah. One of the objectives for this year to find out for ourselves what the potential is. We will work on, let's say, more demonstrating what the underlying value can be. Probably we are considering if we could adjust our segment reporting in real estate and operations, but that's something we are evaluating as we speak. And yeah, expect a couple of projects maybe to come that we are working on that, yeah, will add some value to the existing real estate portfolio.
But each theater is in another case, in another market, in another zone with other building permits, with other urbanization requirements, and so on. But yes, working on that.
Just following up on that, is there any chance that you're thinking at all about having the real estate in a separate entity that could even be listed or we could see a more transparent value?
Too soon to give an answer to that, but that's something that we keep in mind and that we are working on if that would be, let's say, if that would add value.
Good. Thank you.
If you don't have any other questions, thank you for coming. Thank you for those in the live stream for following up. For those who are a little bit ill, all the best. Take care, and hopefully we will meet very soon again. Thank you very much.