The boss of luxury cinema Everyman Media Group has stepped down weeks after warning over sales and profits following poor box office trading.
Shareholders were informed on Monday morning that Alex Scrimgeour was stepping down as chief executive with immediate effect, with current non-executive director Farah Golant to take over on an interim basis until a permanent replacement is found.
Scrimgeour led the London-listed group for nearly five years after joining in 2021, having previously held a leadership role overseeing the French restaurant chain Côte Brasserie.
His sudden departure follows a profit alert earlier in December as shares plunged to record lows.
The chain, which operates 49 cinemas across the UK, said in a trading update earlier this month that box office performance in the fourth quarter had been weaker than expected.
As a result, the board now expects group sales of at least £114.5m for the year to 1 January and underlying earnings of at least £16.8m, down from previous guidance for £121.6m and £20m, respectively.
Scrimgeour took over during the Pandemic
Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, stated, “The share price fell by 76 per cent during his tenure, and time had run out.”
“Scrimgeour started in January 2021 with the immediate task of nursing the cinema chain back to health post-pandemic. He then had to contend with the impact of a cost-of-living crisis causing people to shut their wallets. All the while, Everyman was fighting a structural shift in the market with people increasingly waiting for films to come onto streaming rather than watching them on the big screen”, he explained.
However, Coatsworth pointed out, Everyman has not just lost its boss, but also its finance director, Will Worsdell, who resigned on 15 December.
He warned, “Everyman’s board now needs to find a new leading actor and reboot the company.”
Over the last month, Everyman’s share price has dropped by over 26 per cent, trading at 27p per share at its most recent close.
Coatsworth added that all eyes are now on private equity shareholder Blue Coast, which owns 29.2 per cent of Everyman, to see if it makes a takeover bid. “It will be interesting to see if Blue Coast tries to take the company out on the cheap, opting to remove it from the public spotlight to enact a turnaround programme.”
The group thanked Scrimgeour for his work over his tenure, with Philip Jacobson, non-executive chairman, adding, “[Scrimgeour] played a pivotal role in the team that successfully led the business through its recovery from COVID, more than doubling revenue and delivering significant EBITDA growth.”