Vista Group signs deal with Odeon Cinemas Group

Vista is one of the world's biggest suppliers of cinema management, film distribution and customer analytics software products. Photo / 123RF

Cinema software company Vista Group International says it has signed a deal with Odeon Cinemas Group covering its 123 cinemas in Britain and Ireland.

Odeon is Europe's largest cinema operator and was founded in Britain in 1928.

Chief financial officer Rodney Hyde said Vista is selling Odeon everything from point-of-sale, ticketing and loyalty programme software to customer analytic software needed for targeted marketing campaigns as well as forecasting and movie information systems.

Odeon's website said it has more than 360 cinemas Europe-wide. It is owned by the largest cinema operator in the United States, New York-listed AMC Entertainment Holdings.

"Obviously, it's a pretty exciting deal for us," Hyde said, adding that it was more than a year in the making.

Vista is the only truly global operator in the cinema software market but it competes with strong regional players – for example, AMC currently uses its own software in the US and the Odeon cinemas in Britain and Ireland have been using Compasso software until now.

Hyde agreed that the current deal opens the door to selling Vista's software to other parts of the AMC group. While there are no guarantees, "we would have aspirations" that Vista can build on the current deal.

"It isn't going to hurt our prospects," he said.

Vista already counts the second-largest cinema operator in the US, Regal Cinemas as its largest customer currently.

Regal was bought by Cineworld, the world's second-largest cinema chain and another of Vista's customers, for US$3.6 billion ($5.3b) earlier this year.

Vista said Odeon will be using its managed service and cloud-ready products "to deliver a fully integrated guest experience" and deployment of its software at Odeon cinemas in Britain and Ireland is scheduled to be complete during 2020.

Vista's shares last traded at $3.75 and have risen 30 per cent year-to-date, giving it a $620.8 million market capitalisation.