Good day and welcome to the IMAX First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Brett Harriss. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Emma. Good morning, everybody and thank you for joining us on today’s first quarter earnings conference call. On the call today to review the financial results are Rich Gelfond, Chief Executive Officer; and Patrick McClymont, Chief Financial Officer. Megan Colligan, President, IMAX Entertainment; and Rob Lister, Chief Legal Officer, are also joining us today. Today’s conference call is being webcast in its entirety on our website. A replay of the webcast will be made available shortly after this call. In addition, the full text of our first quarter earnings press release and the slide presentation have been posted on the Investor Relations section of our website. At the conclusion of this call, our historical Excel model will be posted on the website as well. I would like to remind you of the following information regarding forward-looking statements. Our comments and answers to your questions on this call, as well as the accompanying slide deck, may include statements that are forward-looking and that they pertain to future results or outcomes. Actual future results or occurrences may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of some of the factors that could affect our future results and outcomes. During today’s call, references may be made to certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined by Regulation G of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Discussion of management’s use of these measures and the definition of these measures, as well as reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted net income, adjusted EPS and adjusted EBITDA, as defined by our credit facility, are contained in this morning’s press release. With that, let me now turn the call over to Mr. Rich Gelfond. Rich?

Thanks, Brett. These are extraordinary times as our world, the entertainment industry and IMAX Corporation confront an unprecedented challenge of COVID-19. As much as we look forward to theaters reopening, we fully support local officials and our exhibition partners around the world in closing theaters as necessary. We'll also be extremely cautious in markets like China that are beginning to reopen schools, restaurants and other public spaces. I hope all of you joining us are staying healthy and safe. Today I'd like to discuss the continued financial strength of IMAX, the health of our brand and our ongoing efforts to enhance the IMAX Experience for our audiences, the condition of our China business, IMAX's contributors in contrasting a formidable upcoming film slate and finally our relationship and efforts to support our exhibition partners. Looking at the first quarter of 2020, clearly our results were impacted by COVID-19. We reported revenues of $35 million and adjusted EBITDA loss of $4.4 million and adjusted net income loss to common shareholders of $29 million or $0.48 per share. This includes a $0.10 credit provision that Patrick will discuss in greater detail. We installed 12 IMAX systems in the first quarter and our commercial theater network now stands at 1,526 theaters, up 7.5% versus Q1 of last year. I want to underscore that IMAX is in a strong financial position to weather this crisis. We entered the year with more than $90 million in net cash on our balance sheet. At the end of March, we drew the balance of our $300 million revolving credit facility to maintain maximum flexibility throughout the duration of theater closures. As a result of this strong cash position and a commitment to controlling costs, we're confident in our ability to operate through an extended shutdown in a zero-revenue…

Thanks, Rich and good morning, everyone. I hope you and your families are staying safe through this challenging time. The size and scope of the global pandemic are unprecedented in both magnitude of impact and speed of onset. Because of our large presence in China, we started dealing with these issues earlier than most companies. Thanks to prudent disciplined and conservative financial management during the last several years, we remain in a strong position to meet the current set of challenges. Our balance sheet is sound providing stability to our business and the organization. We are planning for a resumption of our -- while we are planning for business resumption this summer, we remain confident in our ability to operate through an extended business shutdown in a zero-revenue environment. We ended the first quarter with $352 million of cash on our balance sheet, which includes cash from our revolving credit facility, which we drew down in its entirety in March. We are in close contact with our banking group, which remains supportive of our business, financial strength and transparency. While the duration of theater closures remains uncertain, we expect our network to reopen well before we exhaust our current liquidity. Based on our current cost structure, we estimate monthly spend of approximately $10 million for operating expenditures. These costs primarily represent our full-time employees, facility costs and fully reflect cost actions executed throughout the first four months of the year that will continue to phase in through the second quarter. One of the many challenges of the COVID pandemic is uncertainty, while we cannot control when the theaters ultimately will reopen we can control our operational costs and capital allocation. In late January, almost two months ahead of the U.S. outbreak theaters in China closed. In response, we took immediate…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll go to our first question today from Eric Wold from B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning guys. Just a couple of questions but just one on the backlog and installation plans. I know it's kind of a little bit cloudy in terms of when that you will start reinstalling IMAX and start kind of opening once again. Can you give a little color on the back...?

Eric could you talk a little closer to the phone and louder? Hard to hear you sorry.

Sorry, I'll take it off the speaker probably. I know there's still uncertainty in terms of when your theater installs will resume this year especially in China, but maybe give a little more color on the backlog in terms of how many theaters had been scheduled to install this year prior to the shutdown maybe security of that backlog in terms of any ability of theaters either cancel or push out? And then if there is kind of a restart or kind of accelerated restart of the issue in China what is the ability to kind of really accelerate into year-end and how the holidays and Chinese New Year can make up for lost time so to speak?

So, in terms of the backlog, Eric, everything in the backlog is legally binding. So there's no unilateral ability of anyone to get out of the backlog. In terms of -- we hadn't yet given installed giants for this year, when the pandemic started because when we're supposed to give it already happened, in China on our year-end call. So we didn't give -- we didn't do -- we decided not to give guidance. Even though it's legally binding, I think, there is a possibility that we unilaterally agree with our partners to allow more time for them to install, because obviously if our partner is busy reopening theaters and rehiring, doing things like that. The nature of our relationship isn't one, where we're going to say there's an install date of November 15, you have to do that or we're going to sue you. So I think the way to think -- I think there'll be a number of installs this year. As you know, there was a fair number in the first quarter. As you saw there were even signings in the first quarter. But we're not in a position to give guidance now. And I think you should expect that, it will be less than usual because of the closure time. I also -- I think, it's just a fact that it's going to take some time to reopen. And I don't think people are going to want to manage reopening it to networks at same time as they want to manage a rapid bill. So I hope that's somewhat helpful, Eric.

That does help, Rich. I guess the last question, is you talked about obviously the Chinese market probably opens up with library titles kind of delayed Hollywood and the Chinese New Year titles. As you get past that and get into the back half of the year which looks to be the week in the U.S. a fairly healthy and crowded kind of blockbuster film slate. How do you think, the Chinese government will handle that over there given the need still to kind of approve a lot of titles for the back half of the year how do you think they'll slot them to not let them overlap? And what are your thoughts on how that will be handled over in China?

So, China is always a country where things are weighed against each other. And you're alluding to the fact that, they have a stated objective of playing as much Chinese content as they can. But in this instance, I think, the balance is going to swing towards getting the economy going again. And I think, as we saw late last year they tended to be more aggressive in letting Hollywood films in and more generous in giving different dates. And given that in China of the 70,000 screens a lot of them are in high-profile malls. My bet would be that they're going to allow in a lot of those films in order to encourage the consumer to go back into those malls and spend. And also I think, because production has been closed in China as it has been in the rest of the world but longer in China after they run through the New Year's movies and some other movies. I don't think there's going to be a lot of original content. But I think both factors will lean, towards more Hollywood.

Great, thank you, Rich.

Thank you. We'll go to our next question now from Eric Handler from MKM Partners. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning. Thanks for the question. Rich, I'm just curious when theaters start reopening and IMAX screens are part of that obviously, are you going to be giving any best practices to your exhibitor partners, on how they should be managing the screens in terms of sales or how to disinfect the equipment and everything? Is there something that you're saying you'll be telling the partners when that -- when those reopening happen? Or is everybody going to be operating on their own and every -- but there's no one size fits all for these reopening?

Yeah. So we're in a lot of contact with our exhibition partners as well as our studio partners on a worldwide basis I would say pretty much daily. Someone is talking to someone all of these places. So, it's ultimately the exhibitors’ decision on when to reopen subject to government regulation and how to reopen. But there is very much, Eric an ongoing dialogue going on. So we have an internal team that we've put together to assess what's the safest way that we can open our theaters. And I'm sure we wouldn't open them, if we don't consider it to be safe. But the exhibitors are taking slightly different approaches or at least in discussion phases, so one exhibitor is talking about every other seat at the beginning or every other row. Another exhibitor is talking about a new software program which allows families to stay together in every other seat. There is some international -- Hong Kong, I think is allowing the theaters to open next week. I think they're talking about a different kind of protocol. So we have input into those protocols and we're highly focused on it internally. But -- so I don't think it's they or us deciding. I think there will be a lot of consultation and there won't be one size fits all.

So will you be providing maybe some best practices to the western theaters based on what's going on in Asia as they reopen?

As I said Eric, it's not like we're mandating these or we're giving people a list. But I think we're in the middle of a broad communication going on. We're kind of -- if you think of a wheel, we're kind of in the center, because of a lot of the relationships we have. So we're communicating that on a very regular basis. And I would expect if we say hey this is working in Thailand and this isn't working in Korea, you guys should look at this. I mean we're partners. I think we're going to figure it out together although ultimately it's their responsibility.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question now comes from Chad Beynon from Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, Rich, Patrick. Hope you are well. Wanted to, I guess, continue the discussion on that last question maybe asking it a different way. Can you I guess help us think about maybe seat occupancies or screen occupancies on the weekends or during big releases? We're just trying to figure out how to think about indexing in the social distant I guess near-term opening world? And kind of how this could look. Obviously, you've put up some pretty incredible indexing. And if Tenent is the first movie, I don't think we should assume it should be as strong as the Dunkirk or some of your historically successful film. So could you just kind of help us think about where occupancies are? And if you can adjust screen times and some of those things?

Sure. Well, first of all, no one at IMAX has seen it yet, but I've heard the movie is incredible and furthers the crystal and legend of doing really cutting-edge phenomenal storytelling. So I really look forward to that. And I know Chris really would like to be come out with the film that for theaters, but that's up to a lot of things including government regulations and the virus and all sorts of things. So we've started to study the capacity issues. And as you probably know a successful cinema chain over a long period of time the occupancy rates are in the 15% to 20% range. So one way to think about it is that they have a big multiplex and they have a lot of screens in it depending how much product they have, they can do pretty well with capacity constraints. IMAX since it's a single-screen theater has a different issue, because let's say, arbitrarily at the beginning capacity is going to be set at 50%. And by the way I should stop there and say, there are no real rules on that, where that comes from is what was talked about in China, but no one has said that that's what's going to happen. But I think if that happens that will be for a period of time. And then after that period of time elapses there will be adjustments made to that. But if you look at the IMAX numbers and we've done some work on it if a film opens in the U.S. to around $150 million a year like if you look back at Captain Marvel last year, the IMAX capacity utilization on the opening weekend is around 50%. So that would mean that we wouldn't lose much. We wouldn't lose anything if the movie was $150 million or less. If there are bigger openings like Endgame, even that movie by the second weekend that was down to about 50% capacity utilization in IMAX. So the place where it really would affect us will be opening weekend for a big movie on select days Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. And part of the goal of our marketing would be to figure out how we can move people from Saturday night by way of example to Tuesday night or Tuesday afternoon. And I think given the brand association between someone like Chris Nolan and IMAX, I actually think that that's likely to happen and we'll design marketing tools around that.

That's great. Thanks Rich. And then lastly just regarding the financial situations with your exhibition partners. Are there other things that you're considering to help them get through this period, whether it's sale leasebacks on their equipment I'm guessing most of them are in JV or hybrids or delaying receivables? And then also on that and it's a different time, but when many of the exhibitors went through the bankruptcy process I guess that was 20 years ago did they close or change any of the arrangements with you guys? Or was that just too long ago to really have a data point on that? Thanks.

Oh, I remember that time very well. And no, they didn't really -- the amount of theaters that were changed or canceled was de minimis. It was next to nothing. I think there were a couple. So, no, but we -- our arrangements with the exhibitors I mean they're our partners. The really good news for them and for us is that I think the capital markets in the last several weeks have been quite amenable to financing exhibitors through this crisis. And I'm sure you saw Cinemark raise $250 million, AMC recently raised $500 million. So I think there are pretty good financial footing now where I don't really see a bankruptcy as a significant risk to a number of chains right now. I think there have been some smaller regional operators. But as far as we can tell right now we don't think that's going to be a significant problem. With that said, we've been in business with a lot of these people for a long time. And before some of these financings were completed, we said to some of our partners that we're going to work with you. So if you need to slow down installation, we understand that; if you need to slow down your payables, we understand that. And now that they've returned to financial health, I think we want a more normalized business relationship with those that aren't I think we're going to work with them. We're not in the business for one quarter over one quarter. We've been in business for over 50 years and one reason is we know how to work with our partners. And I think we'll continue to have that philosophy.

Thank you. Best of luck.

Thank you. We'll now go to our next question now from Mike Hickey from Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Hey, Rich. I hope you guys are good. Thanks for taking my questions. Just two. First, thinking about maybe more of the economic stream that the world is going to deal with here. The recessionary environment that we're clearly in, can you just remind us how movie goers behave in a recessionary environment? And how they choose between the premium ticket and maybe a cheaper ticket? And I have a follow-up.

The movie business in general tends to perform quite well in recessions. In fact, I think people see it as an affordable luxury. They might cut out a trip or a restaurant if they're open or vacation or things like that. But movies are still relatively low-priced way to escape and get away. And historically cinemas have done well in downtimes. In fact, we looked at our own data from the post 9/11 period and the 2009 financial crisis and our box office was either flat or up during that period of time. So I don't really see that as a significant headwind.

Thanks, Rich. It’s helpful. The second question, I guess this is not your first pandemic, obviously, this one is at a scale. I don't think we all -- anyone has ever experienced before, but just curious what you've learned from prior pandemics and movie goers willingness to bounce back?

So the only real reference point we have was the SARS situation in Hong Kong and to some extent in Canada. So what I remember from Hong Kong was that they opened a little bit slow and were down year-over-year for the first few months, but the back end of the year when they reopened they were significantly up from the prior year. Again I'm not sure it's a great analogy, because as you say it was a lot smaller and a lot more isolated but that's really the only data point we have.

All right. Thanks guys. Best of luck.

Thank you. We will now go to our next question from Alexia Quadrani from JPMorgan.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Two questions. First is do you see the studios perhaps reluctant to release films initially post reopening given lower luxury capacity suggesting the slate could be pushed out further? And then my second question Rich is, do you see windows changing I guess following this current style Universal and more companies potentially considering at the hybrid PLF versus theatrical? And I guess along those lines, does the tighter -- does the potentially tighter window really impact your NOI?

I'll start there and say, no, the window doesn't impact us that much because the typical IMAX movie plays for two weeks or less. If it’s a Chris Nolan movie, it's an outlier. But wherever the windows end up -- the -- it won't have a great impact on IMAX. I'll get back to the studio one, but on stability -- on the windows question. But on the studios being reluctant, it's a complicated answer Alexia that's because there are a lot of factors. On one hand, yes the studio wants to make sure the theaters are back to capacity. They want to make sure as many people see their movies as they can. On the other hand, a lot of these movies have a lot of capital tied up the big carrying costs and their ancillary windows that flow off of the theatrical window and they have their own reporting issues and their own accounting issues. And they want to get on that stream rolling. So that's an incentive to go quicker. As I mentioned before, certain filmmakers are very anxious to have their movies release. So I don't know anyone in America who's pushing harder than Chris Nolan to get the theaters open and to get his movie released in July when it's scheduled for. So it's really a balance. And I think it's -- I've frankly never seen closer cooperation of the studios and the exhibitors than now. There's just almost a daily dialogue going on for everybody's trying to assess when are the likely opening dates and what is the optimal time. And I think people are really working together to make it happen. And I'll say before I transition to your next question about windows that I think one of the things that people aren't…

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now go to our next question today from Aravinda Galappatthige from Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Two for me. First of all for Rich, on the -- when you consider the financial challenges that are faced by the exhibition partners, especially when it comes to the joint revenue-sharing agreements, is there a possibility that you might have to make sort of bigger concessions to them? I mean, potentially, if there are sort of footprint changes how much flexibility would they have in terms of perhaps reducing the count -- the existing count? And what options did you have in such a situation? And with respect to the economy, the economics of the joint revenue-sharing agreements, is there a prospect of potentially having to offer them some sort of flexibility either on permanent basis or on a temporary basis? And my second question is around receivables. Patrick, I was wondering if you can provide us with sort of the flow in terms of receivables during the month of April? Obviously, during May, it's about a $65 million balance there. I suspect the vast majority is with the exhibition partners. Can you talk to sort of the duration and sort of the floor you've seen since the end of the quarter? Thanks.

I'll answer your first question which is as I said to you before the exhibitors are in pretty good shape right now, thanks to the capital markets and the prudent moves that they've made. We carefully negotiate all of our agreements including our joint venture agreements on a worldwide basis and they're binding contracts. So no I don't think there'll be changes to those agreements. I think both of us put up a lot of capital in the JVs and we have model returns and we expect those returns. With that said, when you talk about temporary, I mean there are things like I mentioned earlier that they want to delay of rolling out some joint ventures to preserve their own capital and that makes sense for them. So, certainly we would consider delaying it. There were other kinds of things that provided them temporary relief through a tight period of time. We're in business with them for a very long period in time and intend to be, but fundamentally changing our business deal is not something that we would entertain. Patrick, do you want to answer the other question?

Sure, happy to. The way we look at the receivables now, I mean short term we focus on our build and our accrued accounts receivable it's about two-third of that is on the exhibitor side and about one-third is on the studio side. And as you'd expect, we haven't seen really any change on the studio side. We do expect on the exhibitor side, we'll start to see some changes as the exhibition -- the theaters are closed right now. We're in discussions with all of our exhibitor partners and so have clear line of sight on this. And as Rich said more broadly these are our partners and we're going to figure out ways to be helpful. As we talked about on the call, we did take a reserve against certain receivables. A lot of that was related to the launch of CECL the new accounting provision which obviously was implemented during a particularly interesting quarter with everything that was going on. So, we think we're well protected in that event. And then in terms of concentration it's what you'd expect. It's our big partners. And of that build and accrued AR, about 20% of it is across our top three to five partners. So there's not a whole lot of concentration. So we think we're in a reasonably good spot and we're monitoring it very closely.

Thanks very much.

We will now go to a question from Vasily Karasyov from Cannonball Research.

Good morning. Rich, I wanted to follow-up on what you've said about blockbusters being rescheduled and so on. So, if we look three, six, nine months after the movie theaters reopen. So, there will be -- one could say that there would probably be a glut of blockbusters and IMAX kind of titles because you have a backlog that will be released and then the new productions will be coming up and there are only so many opening frames in a year. So one way to look at it would be say, it would be good for IMAX because the share of IMAX movies of the box office would increase because bigger titles would push out, smaller sort of Lionsgate kind of films? Or another way would be to see to say that that could lead to cannibalization in -- revenue cannibalization for you. So I was wondering if you could help us think through that dynamic. Am I thinking about that wrong?

I wouldn't say wrong, Vasily. But I think that most IMAX movies only play for one or two weeks. So I -- and there are a lot of movies that we have to program in the interim that are kind of fillers. So, I think if that problem you're describing came to be if there was adequate spacing in the movies. And hopefully we'd work with the studios to ensure that there was it would be a good period of time for us. I would add though that part of this pandemic has shut down production for a few months and we don't know-how and when it's going to open. So, even though it looks good right now for 2021, I think these things like water that rises to its level, I think that this extreme glut you're expecting rather than coming all at the beginning of the year will probably spread itself up as production comes back online. So I don't think that's really going to be a significant issue.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. As we have no further questions, I would now like to turn the conference back over to Rich Gelfond for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you all so much for joining us. Needless to say, it's been a very trying period for us at IMAX. And obviously we're a tiny part of the world and especially the health care workers and sick people on the front lines. We've been using this period to try and innovate, prepare, move forward and come back with a bang. It's hard to believe that it's only a few months ago that we had a record year and terrific earnings, which we released in February. And by any measure, if those return, I think we're in really -- when the theaters open if -- when they open on a rolling global basis, I think we'll be in a really good spot to flourish once again. And we're grateful for all of you being with us today and I want to especially thank our employees through this whole situation and thanks for joining.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.