Good morning. My name is Natalia and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Cinemark's Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2018 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I will now turn the call over to your host Chanda Brashears, VP of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thanks, Natalia, and good morning, everyone. At this time, I would like to welcome you to Cinemark Holdings, Inc's fourth quarter and full-year 2018 earnings release conference call, hosted by Mark Zoradi, Chief Executive Officer; and Sean Gamble, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. In accordance with the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 certain matters that are discussed by members of management during this call may constitute forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Cinemark's actual performance to be materially different from the performance indicated or implied by such statements. Such risk factors are set forth in the Company's SEC filings. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. Today's call and webcast may include non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in today’s press release within the Company's annual filing on Form 10-K, once filed and on the Company's website investors.cinemark.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Mark Zoradi.

Thank you, Chanda, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us to discuss our 2018 fourth quarter and full-year results. I will focus on the full-year highlights and Sean will address our quarterly results in his prepared remarks. Before diving into the details, I'd like to kick things off by announcing an $0.08 increase to our annual dividend. This marks the fourth consecutive increase and brings our dividend to $1.36 per share with a 3.7% yield as of yesterday's trading price. Based on the continued optimism and the stability of the industry, enthusiasm for upcoming film content in the light of Cinemark sustained financial strength. Our Board of Directors determined this was an appropriate opportunity to return additional capital to our shareholders. The strength of our balance sheet enabled us dividend increase, while continuing to invest in strategic initiatives to secure Cinemark's long-term success and maintain our prudent and disciplined approach. Inclusive in this increase we now have grown Cinemark's dividend by 36% over the past five years and distributed more than $640 million in cash dividends during that period. Moving on to our 2018 results. Following our record-breaking performance in 2015, '16 and '17, we're very pleased to report Cinemark's fourth consecutive year of all time highs, including records in all of our revenue category that collectively delivered total revenue of more than $3.2 billion and exceeded $3 billion for the first time in our company's history, a record adjusted EBITDA of $782 million as well as adjusted EBITDA margin of 24.3%. Hats off to the entire Cinemark team for their disciplined execution of our strategic initiatives that combined with outstanding studio content enabled these record results. When we enter 2018, many industry observers held expectation that the North America box office would struggle to grow versus 2017.…

Thank you, Mark and good morning, everyone. Before digging into the details of our fourth quarter results, I’d like to remind you that beginning January 1 of this year, we adopted accounting pronouncement ASC 606, which affects revenue recognition for certain items. Additional information about this transition is available in the footnotes of our 10-Qs and 10K. While the effects of ASC 606 will be ongoing, this is the last quarter that will experience a year-over-year comparison differential as we fully lap its implementation in the first quarter of 2019. Shifting now to our fourth quarter results, in addition to the records Mark already described for full-year 2018, we also set new fourth quarter records across all revenue line items and adjusted EBITDA. Total worldwide revenues grew 6.52% to $798.6 million and consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 5.6% to $198.1 million. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 24.8% and included a 30 basis point drag caused by the ASC 606 accounting changes. Excluding the impact of these caused by the ASC 606 accounting changes, excluding the impact of these changes it also would have established a new fourth quarter record at 25.1%. Domestically admissions revenues increased 4.6% to $369.7 million and exceeded North American industry growth by 290 basis points marking 35 out of the past 40 quarters of outperformance. This quarter's outperformance was largely driven by attendance growth that outpaced the industry and increased 4.7% to $46.4 million patrons. Our average ticket price of $7.97 was relatively in line with 2017 as core year-over-year ticket price growth was offset by the impact of ASC 606 as well as lower 3D mix related to film content. Domestic concessions per patron achieved an all time record of $4.98 and increased 6.2% versus 4Q '17. This growth was largely driven by volume benefits from…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is from the line of Alexia Quadrani with JP Morgan.

Thank you very much. Just a few questions, if I may. First, you continue to outperform the industry. What do you think the drivers of this are? Any way you can sort of quantify or give us any color if you think that Movie Club might have had a positive impact on this? And I’ve a couple more.

Alexia, I will take that. Thanks for the question. I think that there's a number of things. I think, it comes down to our overall emphasis on the guest experience. And so, yes, Movie Club is clearly a significant part of that, but I think also the initiatives that we've done within our theaters to recline as many theaters as we've done, to redo our lobbies, to add to our food and beverage, all the training that we've done on our staff, so I think it's really a combination of all of these things as opposed to trying to pin it just to Movie Club. Movie Club is one of a number of initiatives that I think we’ve laid out in the past.

Alexia, I would also just -- I fully agree with everything Mark said, and I would add for the fourth quarter specifically too, we also faced a comp that was a little bit more challenged last year with Star Wars, which worked very well for our circuit. But sci-fi tends to slightly under indexed for us in U.S relative to this year where the content really play to our strengths.

That’s helpful. And then when you look at the slate this year, when you look at the films that are coming out, how do you think they will play in Latin America? I think you had a few films this year that didn’t play quite as well. And I guess looking at the upcoming slate, how do you feel?

Alexia, I dealt on that a little bit in my comments. Let me add a little more color. We're very bullish on the lineup for Latin America. We can see that there is a significantly more family product which over performs in Latin America as well as we mentioned thing some of the other titles, some of the action-adventure titles, specifically, the Spinoff and Fast and Furious, specifically some of the horror product, but probably more than anything else is this -- there's such a strong lineup of family product. Obviously, Disney is leading the charge there. So we think the translation this year will be very significant, very positive.

Perfect. And then just lastly, anything you can say on the impairment charge for the quarter? What was it for? If this was for Latin America just to reflect at all any changes in your view of that kind of region sort of longer term?

Sure. The split was about 50-50 U.S versus international. Really what we do each quarter is we just take a look at the -- all of our theaters estimates of future cash flows base largely on current performance levels, which those tend to lead to more impairments in a weaker content cycle. And we do that to just determine if those cash flows are sufficient to cover the theaters asset book value. If they aren't, we take some write-down. So what we saw in the fourth quarter, in particular, is slightly elevated number of situations where we’ve theaters that were impacted by competition or adverse market factors and we felt that it was prudent to take a write-down of those assets really based on a conservative projection of cash flows. It's pretty standard practice. It will fluctuate year-to-year based on market conditions, short-term film content strength and really just the unique characteristics of the theater. So, I don't think it portends anything regarding just the future prospects for international or domestic for that reason. It's just kind of a non-cash byproduct of varied marketplace circumstances.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Alexia.

Your next question is from the line of Eric Handler with MKM Partners.

Good morning and thanks for the question. A couple of things for you. First, I'm curious now that we're starting to see a little bit of recovery in the Brazil economy. What you guys are hearing in terms of any mall development, is anything changing along those lines?

Eric, we appreciate it. We feel the same way. We think that Brazil has -- is coming to a point where we’re really going to be turning the corner there. There is a more pro-business government there. They're looking to do some reforms. I think that what that's going to do is improve the overall economy. We are starting to see some opportunities come forward into the future. So the answer is a qualified positive, yes. I mean, we're not through all the forest, but we can see light at the end of tunnel relative to Brazil. And so we are -- we think that there's going to be some additional opportunities there for both malls and new theaters.

Great. And then, for Sean, just curious as CapEx comes down and this is great and obviously you still have some cash flow generating projects that you're working on. Where do you feel is your normalized, if there is such a thing, CapEx spending level? And when do you think you get there? And then, secondly, you gave us the gross number of theaters that you expected to open this year. I’m just curious of what the net number would be after closings?

Thanks for the questions, Eric. As we kind of look across our overall CapEx spend, we generally felt that a more normalized level would be somewhere in the 250 to 280 range. And as you kind of noted yourself that, that would be a normalized level, but that will be impacted by incremental investment opportunities that are growth generating and have to reach our ROI thresholds. And then as far as our gross -- excuse me, our net screen openings for 2019 -- hold on I’m just digging up that information on expected closures. We expect, in the year, we will probably have about one theater with 15 screens that may close, which would offset those new screens that I was referencing.

Thank you very much.

Thanks. I appreciate it.

Your next question is from the line of David Miller with Imperial Capital.

Yes. Hey, guys. Congratulations on the stellar results. Mark, you spoke about your expectations for Latin America for the year. It sounds like the slate is a lot friendlier with regard to audience taste down there. Are there any Brazilian-based films or any Brazilian or Latin American produced movies or even Portuguese films or films produced in Portugal that will hit the area, that you think will make a difference in any one quarter? And I’ve a follow-up. Thanks.

David, as you know, we don't have quite the transparency to that. But there's a movie of note that’s likely to come out in the third quarter. It's the sequel to Nada. And so, if in fact, that hits the third quarter that would be a good thing.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you very much.

Thanks, David.

Your next question is from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to continue to focus on Latin America. So in 2018 your constant currency ATP and CPP appear to be kind of in line maybe even below GDP. And you’ve kind of noted in the fourth quarter that this was mitigated by lower 3D. is there anything else that’s going on with the ability to raise pricing with inflation or with GDP as you have in the past and as we think about '19 and '20? Should we assume that that kind of improves back to levels we’ve seen in prior years? Thanks.

I will take the question, Chad. Yes, I think both for the fourth quarter -- total year had a similar dynamic to the fourth quarter. Part of the drag like we saw in the fourth quarter was also from 3D mix. 3D was down almost 500 basis points as a percentage of total box office for the year in LATAM relative to 2017 just as a byproduct to the mix of content. That said, we are also seeing certain competitive situations in certain countries like Chile, Colombia, and Peru that that are limiting our ticket pricing growth to a certain degree in those countries. So that has been a bit of a challenge and it has been a piece of the cause of why we've kind of trailed inflation a bit. All that being said, it is a big focal point we have as we look to this year and beyond of what are the things we can do to offset that and try to get back up to inflationary level, which is generally our target -- the target to basically match inflation.

Perfect. Thanks, Sean. And then switching gears to your comment about reaching beyond theaters and improve kind of social and digitization to get out to your consumers. Have you considered partnering with other consumer brands outside of the industry that are big consumer facing companies to drive awareness? I know some of your competitors in other markets have done that. Just wondering if that’s the strategy that that would make sense from a low CapEx kind of JV partnership standpoint. Thank you.

Look, Chad, from a overall partnership standpoint, we have done a number of significant promotions and partnerships with some key clients, including AT&T, including Coca-Cola, including Amazon, including Costco. Now those were more promotional in base, but we've established relationships there. And so as we look to '19, we're going to continue and hope to grow those relationships into things that could go from one-off promotions into multiple promotions or into some strategic partnerships as well.

Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Chad.

Your next question is from the line of Robert Fishman with MoffettNathanson.

Good morning. I have one for Mark and one for Sean. Mark, given Amazon's recent comments on becoming seemingly more flexible with their theatrical windowing strategy, maybe making decisions on a film-by-film basis, can you discuss either specifically, regarding Amazon or more broadly the existing and yet to be launched streaming services? Do you plan to keep to a strict policy of not playing any movies that don’t adhere to the full exclusive theatrical run, or do you think there are areas of compromise that you can explore going forward?

Robert, thanks for the question. Let we start with the Amazon part of it. Amazon has been a great partner for Cinemark and exhibition in general since they came out with their prime video offerings, and they continue to be. Whether they would choose to have a movie or two that they would have a different distribution pattern on. Clearly, they could choose to do that and that would be obviously within their rights to do so. But we -- the indications we have is that the vast majority of their titles they have fully appreciated the theatrical exhibition as really setting up the value of that particular movie to be more valuable in downstream markets and to have more value to their prime members, because it did get a theatrical release. One thing that we're seeing in research is that consumers who see more movies actually watch more streaming at home and vice versa. I mean, this is a third-party research that we didn't initiate, but it's clearly come out that way. As it relates to Windows, we don't have any thoughts right at this point of changing anything relative to what we’re doing. I mean, our major studio partners beginning with Disney and right on down the line continue to adhere by which is basically a 74 day to EST and an 88 or 90 day to DVD and VOD. And that's what we anticipate continuing in the future with.

Okay. Thank you. And for Sean, so playing up on the international theme a little bit more, there's understandably a lot of focus on Brazil and Argentina when discussing your LATAM assets. But given the continued expansion that we saw this year in Colombia and other countries, can you share for us where you think the greatest growth is going to come from in the whole region over the next 3 to 5 years?

Well, if you kind of look over time, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. I think that’s one of the benefits of having a diversified portfolio across the region. Its typically -- it ebbs and flow, so yes, we’ve had kind of Colombia recently, Central America was kind of a big piece of new theaters opening both last year as well as this year. We’ve got a lot of prospects in Peru where we think there could be opportunity there that could kind of come. And then like Mark mentioned earlier, I think at some point Brazil has been somewhat on hold as market conditions continue to improve there. We think we’re going to start to see an uptick there as well as perhaps Argentina. So our two biggest kind of countries have been a little bit idling for a while. So over the next 3 to 5 years, I like to think that they're going to kind of tick back up again and we'll see a shift back to those countries over indexing relative to the rest of the region.

Okay. Thank you, both.

Thanks, Robert.

Thank you.

Your next question is from the line of Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Wanted to come back to a couple of topics. One on streaming. I think last year and certainly the fourth quarter were probably the biggest film output quarters for Netflix. And as you guys have pointed out, it was very strong box office year and quarter for the industry and particularly Cinemark. What do you take away from that in terms of the sort of popular narrative that streaming films directly to the home, day in day or first window is a competitive threat to going to the theaters, because we’ve seen at least not to extrapolate one data point, but '18 suggests they can coexist quite nicely. And then I had a follow-up on Movie Club.

Ben, I think you make the point right there. I’ve said it just a little bit beforehand too. Consumers who stream more actually go to the movies more. And consumers who go to the movies more, actually stream more. There are high -- there's a high consumption of movie product. So we don't think streaming and the theatrical business can't mutually succeed together in very significant ways. And we saw it certainly in '18, and I think we’re going to continue to see it in '19 when the meat of the 2019 lineup really starts to hit at the end of this quarter and into the second and third quarter. So that's the research that we're seen as we look at industry research, it's out there and it's also what we see consumers doing. The theatrical experience is one that people have been doing for a 100 years and going back to whether it was DVD or even back to VHS or cable and now streaming, we’ve continued to see a strength in box office and continue to see 1.2 to 1.3 and maybe even slightly more billion people continuing to want to get out of their house and have a social experience at a movie theater. And I really think it's a combination of the great product that the studios have been putting forward and the way that exhibition, and in particular, Cinemark has been revitalizing the guest experience with all the amenities that we’ve aforementioned.

Got it. That makes sense. And just on the Movie Club, another area of focus over the years has been the millennial behavior around movie going. I’m wondering what the Movie Club member looks like from an age perspective, if you have that data versus the broader audience. If that’s bringing in a younger audience, I would assume, yes, I would love to hear any color you have. And then, it's not hard to see this becoming maybe as much as 20% plus of your box by the end of -- by this time next year. Just going back to your financials, you mentioned a drag on consumer -- on concession spending per patron. What about average ticket price and film rentals. But is there anything else we should be -- just to be aware of as we move through the year and Movie Club, it's growing in proportion where -- whether it should show up in the reported financials?

Well, Ben, I’m glad you brought that up because, no, we have not seen any drag on our concessions still. In fact, the opposite is true. We had in 2018 the largest increase in concessions, a $102 million that we had ever seen and this was the year that Movie Club really grew dramatically. So our concession business has actually increased during 2018. And as we look at Movie Club, basically it's the same basket size for a Movie Club member or non-Movie Club member even taking into account the 20% discount they get. And then Movie Club members are reporting to us that they're actually going to the concession stand more often. So it's been very, very positive to us on the food and beverage side. As it relates to demographics for Movie Club, it's actually very broad. I mean, the only limiting factor is you need to have a credit card. So it tends to be young 20s, all the way up through 49, 50 years old. It's broad across men and women. Interestingly, its slightly stronger among women than men, but not dramatically and crosses all demographics, and also is geographically very diverse across the various 41 states that we're in. It's not just concentrated in California, for example, that goes across the country.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ben.

Your next question is from the line of Jim Goss with Barrington Research.

Thanks. Got a couple of small questions first. One regarding leasehold accounting change. Is it fair to presume that the credit rating agencies always factored in capitalization of leases, so this was already brought into whatever rating they were assigning. So this is no impact in ratings?

Yes, Jim. Our understanding of kind of the -- based on our discussions with the rating agencies and our understanding of their calculations, they already had their own methodology for adjusting for operating versus capital leases and really they were looking at the overall cash flow. So short answer is, it shouldn't have any effect on their ratings. That’s our understanding from speaking with them.

Okay. All right. And you talked about ...

One other -- Jim, sorry, one other comment I will make is our debt too. Our covenants and everything within our debt is all -- it's all based on GAAP that was in place at the time that we did those instruments. So it shouldn’t have any effect on our -- the specific elements of our debt instruments as well.

Okay. Thanks. And in terms of you always talk about translation of foreign results not generally involving operations. I’m just wondering though with Argentina, I mean, many countries have swings in their translation. None are quite so breathtaking as Argentina over time. And I’m wondering if that starts to have some impact on the anything within the country not just how you translated outside the country.

Well, what we've done not just in Argentina, but elsewhere too, while the effect in our financials are largely translation. What we have been doing in many circumstances is actually converting local currency into U.S dollars. So we've been moving, for instance in Argentina now that you can -- cash can kind of move slowly in and out of the country, we’ve been moving it into U.S dollar accounts just to preserve the balance, the value from a dollar basis and then pushing it back as we needed, converting it back as we needed. Another thing we’ve been doing too is, to a certain degree more the flip side, is the inflation side with the high inflation in the country often times we will -- where it makes sense by things in advance in anticipation that if we wait costs will go up. So we will kind of do that as well. So those are some of the actions we’ve just taken to kind of preserve the value. Beyond that, in terms of how it impacts the country, I mean, I’m not sure it does. We haven't seen it necessarily impact the country locally in terms of consumer behavior or practices or anything of that sense. It just becomes more of an accounting representation in our books.

Okay. Yes, I was thinking of consumer behavior, but thank you for that. So then my other question is, on a more broad basis, corporate strategic priorities you touched on them at the very beginning of the call, but as you near a slowdown in recliner conversions just percentage wise, does the pace of ticket price adjustments aside from premium mix slow or increase? And do you look for more -- for M&A more aggressively at this certain stage, or do you look at acceleration of return of capital? And then aside from that, what are the next act options for Cinemark and the industry as a whole?

That’s a long one. That’s a long one, Jim, but I will try and not to be too wordy. Relative to ticket prices, we tend to be relatively conservative on ticket prices. We don't think that we want to be the market leader in terms of ticket price, because we think we can drive attendance and overall box office more effectively by having them remain slightly more affordable. So I don't think you’re going to see any dramatic changes in our -- in how we approach ticket prices. Relative to M&A, I don't think you’re going to see any dramatic change there. We are very open and we look at every potential deal that is out there. And we just happened to be very disciplined buyers. And so when a deal comes our way, whether it's a small one or a large one, we did a couple of modest ones in Latin America last year. We did not do one in the United States. We did like a single theater. But when we can buy a theater chain, either small or midsize at a multiple that is accretive to us, then we will be aggressive in pursuing that. But if the price is at or multiple or above, then we're going to be a little bit more hesitant. So I don't think it changes our approach to M&A. And from a -- from just a strategic standpoint, we think there is still great opportunity in the food and beverage area and we are going to continue to look at that both with enhanced food and then we are also going to look at merchandising in our theaters and we're going to look at virtual reality in our theaters. And we’re going to continue to recline auditoriums as noted, just not at the same pace. And we’re going to continue to do new builds. And so, I think we've got some very good uses for our capital. Anytime we're spending that capital, we're looking, as you know, at a 20% hurdle rate for it and where possible we will do -- what we did this year, we increased the dividend and continue to return a significant amount of our resources back to shareholders.

Okay. Well, thanks very much. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Jim. Nice questions.

Thank you.

Your next question is from the line of Eric Wold with B. Riley.

Thanks, guys. Good morning. Two questions on kind of follow-up topics that have been kind of addressed. I guess, one, on Movie Club, obviously, everything kind of working well in terms of membership demand, increased visitation in concession baskets. Anything that you founded is not working as you project or things that you may want to kind of tweak? How much flexibility you want to have in terms of tweaking the model, in terms of the model etcetera, or do you think everything is fine as it is?

Eric, that’s an interesting question because we ask ourselves that each and every month, and we survey our members on a regular basis. The satisfaction rate has been so high that we haven't wanted to change any of the basics because people are very satisfied with, however, we have looked at putting forward a gifting option because members were asking about that. So we just initiated that. We think it's a great initiative for whatever the holiday might be. Whether it's Valentine's Day or when Christmas comes or birthdays, and with the initial entry on it has been very successful with people giving memberships as long as 6 months and 12 months. So we’re going to continue to push that as we go forward. And then as we look forward, we will obviously look at pricing of Movie Club. And at some point, we will say when does it make sense to raise the price for it. That’s under evaluation now.

Just on that price point, obviously it's a fixed price for the consumer, but the level of ticket they can use it for can vary based on location, day of the week, etcetera. Have you seen any kind of trend as to where -- when its being used? Is it tend to be used at a point that’s advantageous for a consumer, or has it been people kind of use it whenever they want you to remain not be as advantageous to use it?

We find that customers use their Movie Club credit each month, and then sometimes they have to buy an extra ticket because they’ve used them so much. So -- and if a member who has got two or three credits, we find them coming with a basket -- I mean, with two or three friends and using a Movie Club credits there. And so the amazing part is to us is how -- what a high percentage of the credits are being used on a consistent basis, which means people are using it a lot. And then also there -- because they’ve got that 20% discount on concessions, they tend to go to the concession stand more often than when they didn't have that 20%. And that's why net-net, this is a positive on both the ticket side and driving admissions and box office and it's also positive on the food and beverage side.

Perfect. And just final question. Shifting to Latin America, assuming we start seeing some positive momentum in Brazil and maybe Argentina coming after election later this year. But, I guess, one, any sense of kind of what’s in the queue around construction that could essentially restart if builders feel more confident? And then coming out of -- any potential political kind of changes in the region, would you expect any shifts in kind of the typical prototype of the mall down there or maybe kind of the typical part of them becoming theaters you look to build in the region in terms of number of screens, seat, VIP mix, etcetera?

I will take that one. I think, I guess, the short answer on the second part is, no, I don’t necessarily see a change in the profile of the malls that are being built. We don’t really have any indicators of that, other than mall developers just continue to look for ways to make them better, like they would anywhere else with the types of stuff that they’re packing into that. And in terms of the pipeline, I mean, I think it kind of gets back to kind of what we've talked about earlier. I think we see a sustainable pipeline of about 5% or so screen growth a year, roughly 50 plus screens a year. So -- and that's going to be vary in the near-term. It's going to come from Central America -- in places like Central America and Peru. We think, over time that’s going to shift back more to Brazil and Argentina as mentioned earlier. So I think, hopefully that kind of addresses what you're asking.

It does. Thanks, guys.

All right. Thanks, Eric. I appreciate it.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from the line of Drew Borst with Goldman Sachs.

Hi. Thanks. Wanted to ask about the competitive environment in the U.S. And I don’t know if you have this number, but I'm wondering what percentage of your screen footprint in the U.S overlaps with AMC and Regal, even if it's just sort of a general sort of sense? But do you have that figure?

Drew, I don't have that exact figure from the tip of my tongue. But, yes, -- that we were in various markets, we compete with them significantly. I will just give you a couple of examples. In Dallas, the two main exhibitors in Dallas are Cinemark and AMC. And if you go into the Bay Area, which is our largest market, we compete with both circuits, AMC and Regal. You go over to Sacramento and we compete more with Regal there than AMC. You go over to Los Angeles and we compete again with AMC and Regal. So in nearly all of our major markets, we're competing with one or both of them, and if not one of them, then certainly with a -- an important local exhibitor.

Thank you. Do you think that that had a meaningful impact on the 4Q results? I mean, you guys appear to have taken share, at least based on a national basis in the quarter. While we haven't seen AMCs numbers yet, if their quarter is any indication, they too have also been taking share on the benefit of stubs. On the other hand, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Regal, they don't have any subscription plan in place at this point and they maybe even holding back as they do more renovations under new ownership. Do you think that that dynamic to the extent you agree with it, on the margin was helpful to your numbers and contributed to why you gained a little bit of share, because maybe you compete more with Regal and a little less so with AMC.

You know, I -- that’s really -- that would be really hard to say that because we compete with both of them in a number of markets. And you know both of them are honestly very, very good competitors. So it's difficult for me to say that because we have Movie Club that we've taken a share. I think what we’ve tried to do with Movie Club is to increase overall attendance as well as solidify loyalty to Cinemark. But it's I don't have any data in front of me, which would lead to support what you were indicating there.

Okay.

Yes, the only other thing I would say to that is, what we’ve looked at kind of quarter-to-quarter, there's -- there tend to be fluctuations quarter-to-quarter just based on the profile mix of the content and the demographics of our different markets. So like I mentioned earlier, one of the things that helped us in the fourth quarter, in addition to everything we're doing just to create great experience was the fact that the profile, the content lended itself more to our audiences where, again, fourth quarter of last year was so heavily driven by Star Wars, which works well for us, but sci-fi films tend to under index. So we had a slightly easier comp. but when we looked over the past quarters over the course of this year, we’ve seen scenarios where Regal's growth has kind of over indexed us in certain markets and vice versa. So it's hard to draw parallels to any one particular thing, be that Movie Club or something else, because it does fluctuate a bit quarter-to-quarter from what we’ve seen in market-to-market.

That’s great. That’s helpful and thanks for sharing that. And I know that question may be a little annoying, but thank you.

No, I appreciate it.

It's not annoying.

Your final question is from the line of Alan Gould with Loop Capital.

Thank you for taking the question. I’ve got one for Mark and one for Sean. Sean, just curious, why do you choose to keep so much cash on the balance sheet, $400 million to $500 million, given the positive float of your industry? And for Mark, I was wondering if you have any estimate of the impact that MoviePass had on Cinemark in 2018?

Go ahead, Sean.

Well, first welcome, Alan. I appreciate to having you on the call …

Thank you.

… and being with us. I’d say we have historically looked at the strength of our balance sheet as an asset for us, which we continue to do. I mean, I think we’ve been pretty active in making investments into the company to set ourselves up for future growth and at the same time dispersing capital to shareholders. But what we like about the strength of our balance sheet is: number one, it affords us the ability to be very opportunistic when opportunities come our way, such as we did with recliners last year, where we really hit the gas seeing the potential opportunity. And we didn't have capital as a limitation to do that. And then, secondly, in down periods it gives us an opportunity to be on defense. It helps us to kind of navigate through any challenge period. So we just like having that dry powder on the balance sheet to be very flexible. And again, we don't think -- we think this balanced approach of prioritizing investments in growth, while distributing capital to shareholders in a meaningful way, which we're doing through our dividends and maintaining a strong balance sheet is a good profile to have and is a good way to operate. Mark?

Yes. Alan, welcome to the call. I think your questions regarding MoviePass and its effect on our business during 2018, correct?

Yes, that’s it. Thank you.

Okay. We saw MoviePass' importance to our box office significantly decline each and every quarter. I mean, it was in the low single digits in the first quarter and in the fourth quarter it was less than 1%. So it's significantly reduced. I don't know how many members they have left, but relative to the amount of effect that they’re having in our business it's very minimal.

Okay. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Thanks again, Alan.

So, thank you all very much for joining us this morning. We look forward to speaking with you again following our first quarter. Thanks again.

This conclude today's earnings call. You may now disconnect.