Main Event breaks COVID streak
Published:Friday | March 19, 2021 | 12:17 AM
Recurring sales from entertainment company Main Event’s digital signage business helped to pull the company back from three consecutive quarters in the red, but just barely.
Profit for the quarter ending January totalled $8.07 million, well shy of the $70 million made by Main Event Entertainment Group Limited, MEEG, in the comparative 2020 period, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began destroying lives and the economy.
Main Event recorded quarterly losses thereafter, which accumulated right up to the end of its financial year at October 2020, to $18 million overall, net of the first-quarter gains. The biggest hit, a $45-million loss, occurred in the May-July quarter.
Entertainment and hospitality companies have taken the biggest tumbles during the pandemic, especially the latter, due to the kibosh on travel, events and other gatherings to contain the virus.
But with January showing the company back in the black, Main Event is more hopeful of normality returning to some areas of the business, even as the core operation, events management and promotions, continue to suffer from restrictions around public gatherings and nightly curfews – for example, the M-Style unit that targets the wedding market and the new western Jamaica operations, together, saw a reduction in revenue from $100 million to $22 million.
Within the January quarter, the total revenue flows were better than the previous two quarters, at $176 million, but was three times less than the $598 million that the company got paid for its services in the comparative 2020 period. Profit was just about one-ninth the levels achieved in the prior year.
Revenue fell by 71 per cent, and profit even further, by 88 per cent, but for the company, the $8 million in earnings “shows promise” and was the reward of concerted efforts by the team to keep the business humming.
“During this quarter, the team continued to work closely with key customers to create opportunities in the ongoing challenging circumstances,” said Main Event directors, Acting Chairman Ian Blair and CEO Solomon Sharpe, in a statement to shareholders appended to the financial results. “We will continue to strive for improvements in each quarter’s results despite ongoing business disruption from the pandemic,” it said.
Main Event lost its chairman, Harriat Maragh, who passed away suddenly in February, and was replaced in the interim by Blair.
Despite the fall-off in operational performance, and an overall decline in total assets since the pandemic, Main Event has added to its cash holdings, which rose 62 per cent over the past year, from $101 million to $162 million.
Assets slid from $1.05 billion to $860 million at the end of the quarter.
“We have been deliberate about building these cash reserves which will be critical in sustaining our operations through uncertain times, as COVID-19 cases rise in Jamaica,” the company said.