Everyman Media Group PLC (LON:EMAN) have seen their shares jump today, following an impressive update from the entertainment group.

The firm reported that it has achieved record group sales of £65 million in the annual period which ended on January 2.

This was one of many stand out figures from this mornings update, as the £65 million figure showed a 25% rise from £51.9 million reported in 2019.

The firm noted that it had looked to improve customer service and quality of product, which led to a rise in average ticket price from £11.26 to £11.37 whilst spend per head rose to £7.13 from the 2018 figure of £6.30.

Notably, the firm also expanded its share in the market to 3.1% having held a 2.5% stake in 2018 amid competition from firms such as Odeon.

Everyman also added that pre-IFRS 16 EBITDA is expected to be approximately £12.0 million, an increase of 30% year on year.

The cinema chain now operates at 33 different venues, as five new sites were opened n the final quarter of the financial year (Cardiff, Clitheroe, London Broadgate, Manchester and Wokingham).

The total number of screens now operated by the Group is 110, which again shows a rise from 84 in 2018.

With Horsham and Newcastle which were opened in the first half of the year, this brings the total number of venues opened in 2019 to seven, a record number of openings for the Group in a single year.

Since the publishing of interim results in September, the firm has agreed lease deals for three more venues (Aberdeen, Exeter and London Kings Road).

With these in place, the firm has commitments in place to open a further 12 venues by 2022, with 4 openings confirmed for 2020, consisting of Dublin, Lincoln, London Kings Road, and Plymouth.

Crispin Lilly, Chief Executive of Everyman said: “This is a solid result for the year. After record admissions in 2018, UK box-office fell by 1.9% in 2019; despite this we grew each of our key performance metrics and also increased our overall market share of the UK box-office. We remain positive on the outlook for the cinema industry, the Everyman brand and for the Company in 2020. Our teams continue to deliver great results across all areas of the business and we are well placed to deliver to expectations in 2020.”

Successful year for Everyman

In March, the firm saw its profits up on the backs of new store openings, and this seems to have translated into the impressive update we have seen today.

Revenue for the year was up 27.7% to £51.9 million, compared to £40.6 million back in 2017.

Meanwhile, adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 38.2% to £9.2 million, an improvement from the £6.6 million reported a year ago.

During the period, Everyman Media Group said it opened five new venues, including locations in York, Glasgow and Liverpool, taking its estate to 26 sites and 84 screens as of March 12.

September Success

As mentioned previously, Everyman once again saw their profits rise when they updated the market in September.

Revenue for the six months grew 16% to £28.9 million and operating profit increased 14% to £1.6 million.

Everyman Media Group said that these were supported by increasing admissions and the amount spent on food and beverages.

Admissions were up by 9.4% to 1.5 million across the period and the cinema company experienced continued growth in average food and beverage spend, up by 13.2% to £6.95.

Adjusted EBITDA increased by 61% to £6.6 million, up from the £4.1 million figure recorded the year prior.

The Cinema Market

Rival in the cinema market Cineworld (LON:CINE) have seen a similar period of trading, however it seems that Everyman have taken the market by storm.

Just before Christmas, Cineworld announced that they would be buying Cineplex Inc (TSE:CGX), the largest cinema operator in Canada, for CAD2.8 billion.

Cineworld, said that it will pay ay CAD34 in cash for each Cineplex share. Cineplex shares closed in Toronto on December 16 at CAD24.01, giving it a market capitalization of CAD1.52 billion.

Cineworld believes the deal represents an “exciting” opportunity to enter the “stable and attractive” Canadian market. The transaction will add 165 cinemas and 1,695 screens to Cineworld, it said.

Certainly the update from Everyman will impress shareholders, as they hit the new year up and running there should be a strong sense that the group can capture more of the market with better customer service and stronger performances, like the one seen today.

Shares in Everyman Media Group PLC trade at 219p (+2.57%). 15/1/20 9:40BST.

Moody’s (NYSE: MCO) have slashed the outlook for Marks & Spencer Group PLC (LON:MKS) and Aston Martin (LON:AML) as both firms have seen a tough few weeks of trading.

Aston Martin

Moody’s reiterated its negative outlook on Aston Martin, downgraded the company’s corporate family rating to Caa1 from B3 and probability of default rating to Caa1-PD from B3-PD.

Moody’s also downgraded the instrument ratings of Aston Martin Capital Holdings Ltd’s senior secured notes to Caa1 from B3.

“The downgrade reflects the weak profitability and low wholesale volumes in 2019 and particularly towards the end of the year,” said Tobias Wagner, a senior analyst at Moody’s.

“Cash flow for the second half of 2019 was also significantly below Moody’s expectations resulting in a lower starting point for liquidity as the company prepares for the critical DBX production ramp up and another year of significant investment spending,” Wagner added.

The negative outlook reflects the continued challenging overall market, uncertainty regarding the company’s performance in 2020, negative free cash flow and potentially further funding needs, Moody’s said.

A stabilization of the outlook would likely require a visibly improved liquidity and progress towards a more sustainable free cash flow profile, the ratings agency concluded.

Half year loss

The slowdown in performance really started with the firm’s half year results.

At the end of July, the firm made a pre-tax loss of £78.8 million, swinging to red from the £20.8 million pre-tax profit it had made during the same period the year prior.

The warning highlighted the challenging global macro-economic environment that was impacting the business.

“As described in our trading statement on 24 July, both our retail and wholesale volumes have increased year-on-year,” Dr Andy Palmer, Aston Martin Lagonda President and Group CEO, said in a company statement.

Q3 Loss

Aston also reported a third quarter loss a few months back, which alerted shareholders about the performance of the firm.

Aston Martin said that, for the three months to 30 September, loss before tax amounted to £13.5 million, compared to the £3.1 million profit generated during the same period a year prior.

“Tough trading conditions, particularly in the UK and Europe, persist and whilst retail sales have grown 13% year-to-date, wholesale volumes remain under pressure,” Dr Andy Palmer, Aston Martin Lagonda President and Group CEO, commented on the results.

“We remain pleased with the performance of DB11 and DBS Superleggera, however, the segment of the market in which Vantage competes is declining, and notwithstanding a growing market-share, Vantage demand remains weaker than our original plans,” Dr Andy Palmer continued.

January profit warning

At the start of this month, Aston Martin delivered a profit warning to shareholders which led to shares crashing.

The firm alluded to challenging trading conditions and as the firm continues to review its funding options.

The challenging trading conditions disclosed in November continued through the peak delivery period of December, Aston Martin said, resulting in lower sales, higher selling costs and lower margins.

The firm has said that 2019 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation to come in at a range between £130 million and £140 million.

This would lead to a margin between 12.5% and 13.5%, where as in 2018 adjust EBITDA totaled £247 million.

The firm said that wholesales declined 7% from a year ago, and this figure was 5,809 units.

Marks and Spencer

The ratings agency revised M&S’s outlook to negative, from stable but affirmed the company’s Baa3 senior unsecured ratings, which was something to hold onto.

David Beadle, Moody’s senior credit officer and lead analyst for M&S, said: “The negative outlook reflects the risk that the company’s profitability may continue to decline, notwithstanding the strategic efforts to reposition the business for sustainable growth.”

“The latest results highlight the challenges in Clothing & Home even though it is positive to note signs of progress in Food, cost control, and the decision last year to reduce dividends,” Beadle continued.

The company has cut its first half dividend, for the six months to September 28.

Marks cut their dividend by a massive 40% to 3.9p per share, something which has troubled shareholders.

Moody’s added: “There are however several areas where there are signs of progress. For example, Food like-for-likes remain positive, in contrast to some competitors, while the company’s confirmation that full year cost savings should be towards the higher end of its previous guidance range is credit positive. Moreover, Clothing & Home’s 1.7% like-for-like decline in the third quarter represents an improvement compared to recent quarters.”

A return to a stable outlook could occur if M&S is able to post “sustained positive like-for-likes” across both units, Moody’s said.

Festive trading slips

Last week, Marks saw their shares sink over 8% following a slump in UK sales.

The FTSE 250 listed firm said that performance has seen improvements on a like for like basis, however total sales declined in its Clothing and Home sector.

Notably, the period mentioned includes the festive holidays however British supermarkets seemed to have lost ground.

In the 13 weeks period which ended December 28 the firm said that its total UK sales dipped 0.6% year on year to £2.77 billion, however on a like for like basis this was a 0.2% rise.

Total sales were 0.7% lower at £3.02 billion, and this includes its international unit which saw a 2.3% fall in sales to £251 million.

The British supermarket mainly attributed its growth in UK trading to food unit, where sales climbed 1.5% year on year to £1.7 billion. Notably in the food unit, the firm saw a 1.4% rise on a like for like time scale.

The clothes unit, which contributed heavily to a slump back in November saw sales fall again by 3.7% to £1.06 billion and on a like for like basis sales fell 1.7%.

Notably, Marks fell victim to a retail slump which was experienced by both Tesco (LON:TSCO) and Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY).

Profits plunge in November

In November, the firm reported a plunge in their profits which sent shares crashing.

Chief Executive Steve Rowe alluded to several factors which had caused the slump including blamed the 5.5% decline in like-for-like clothing sales in the first six months of its financial year on supply chain problems and buying errors that meant popular sizes quickly sold out in store and online.

M&S reported a 17% decline in pre-tax profits of £176.5 million on sales of £4.9 billion.

M&S said the store closures would reduce clothing sales by 2% rather than the 3% previously thought but warned that its profit margins would come under pressure in the second half.

After recovery was made by striking this deal with Ocado, the senior board at Marks and Spencer have other issues to attend to outside of poor business performance.

Additionally, the slump in clothing sales contributed to the poor performance in the online shopping sector where sales barely grew – an outcome it admitted was “less than planned”.

Store closures in May

In May, Marks and Spencer announced that they would be closing stores following a slip in performance in its full year results.

The retailer said that group revenue fell 3% to £10,377.3 million, compared to £10,698.2 million the year before.

Pre-tax profits fell 9.9% to £523.2 million, down from £580.9 million a year before. Meanwhile, like-for-like sales were also down 2.9%.

The company said that profits were impacted by £438.6 million in exceptional costs, including £222.1 million relating to its transformation plan.

UK Food revenue, one of the retailer’s biggest revenue drivers, fell 0.6%, with like-for-like revenue down 2.3%

Home and Clothing revenue, which has been struggling for several quarters, was down a further 2.9% largely as a result of store closures.

Looking at the performance over the last few months of both Marks and Spencer and Aston Martin, it is clear to see why Moody’s have slashed their outlook. Shareholders from both firms will be hoping that performance can be turned around in what seems to be a cut throat period of UK trading in a retail slump.

Endeavour Mining have told the market on Tuesday afternoon that they have ended merger talks with Centamin (LON:CEY). Endeavour said Centamin has not sought an extension to the offer deadline of Tuesday. Given the lack of information received, Endeavour said, it has now decided against bidding for Centamin. “We remain convinced about the strategic rationale of combining Endeavour and Centamin to create a diversified gold producer with a high-quality portfolio of assets,” said Endeavour Chief Executive Sebastien de Montessus. “The quality of information received during the accelerated due diligence process has been insufficient to allow us to be confident that proceeding with a firm offer would have been in the best interests of Endeavour shareholders.” The two parties have been locked in a battle of wills, having criticized each other’s behavior publicly with regards to talks discussing details of the merger deal. However, it seems that the initial reluctance from Centamin to give into Endeavour Mining has now paid off as the deal has reached a stalemate. In another update, posted by Centamin the firm said that it was “highly confident” in its strategy, and boosted its dividend, as Endeavour Mining Corp dropped its interest in the gold miner. Centamin also gave shareholders an operational update and declared a 6 cent final dividend for 2019. Shareholders can be impressed with this, as Centamin paid a 4 cent dividend for the first half, giving a total of 10 cent for the year. The dividend pay out shows progress for Centamin, as the firm paid a 5.5 cent payout in 2018. Centamin said the higher dividend comes after improved performance from the Sukari mine in Egypt, which has been experiencing operational problems. “Centamin has taken significant steps to reshape its leadership team to improve operational performance. Our robust operating performance in fourth-quarter 2019 and the work this new team has undertaken in a short period of time gives us great confidence in our direction, underlined by an increased final dividend for 2019,” said deputy Non-Executive Chair Jim Rutherford, who was appointed in December. “After a period of constructive engagement, Centamin and Endeavour have not reached agreement on value and have therefore terminated discussions. We are highly confident in our growth strategy, which includes but is not limited to value-accretive diversification. The company continues to assess opportunities and we look forward to continued proactive engagement with our stakeholders,” he added.

Centamin see a positive few weeks

Last week, the firm updated the market alluding to strong performance from its Sukari mine, however it was set to miss its annual guidance. The firm said that Sukari, which is the company’s online producing mine totaled output of 148,387 ounces of gold in the fourth quarter in 2019. The figure that was highlighted by Centamin showed a 51% rise compared to the previous quarter, which was due to improved grades, recoveries, and a year-end drawdown of gold-in-circuit. Centamin reported today that gold production for 2019 was 480,529 ounces, which showed a 2% growth year on year but still falling short. Centamin have reassured shareholders that they can make progress in 2020 as they issued a guidance of 510,000 and 540,000 ounces of gold. The firm has seen difficulties at the Sukari Mine across 2019, which led to a decline in third quarter production by 17%. Additionally, in the middle of December, the firm announced a new interim CEO. The firm announced the appointment of both an interim chief executive and a new deputy chair. Chief Financial Officer Ross Jerrard has been made interim CEO, following the departure of Andrew Pardey. Pardey announced his departure as CEO at the start of October, though he has committed to stay with Centamin as an advisor for another year. Centamin also announced the appointment of Jim Rutherford as a non executive director. He will then become deputy non-executive chair after 2020’s annual general meeting, when incumbent Gordon Edward Haslam departs. Rutherford has over 25 years of industry experience and specialized in the global mining and metals sector, having worked at Anglo American (LON:AAL). The last few weeks having certainly been hectic for Centamin, however there seems to be a consensus that not merging with Endeavour was the right option. Going forward, Centamin will hope that they can push the Sukari mine to full operational capacity and meet guidance figures. Shares in Centamin trade at 120p (-5.11%). 14/1/20 14:20BST.

Boku Inc (LON:BOKU) have told shareholders on Tuesday that they expect a rise in annual revenue and earnings. The firm said that it had largely seen an increase in payments and strong progress made by its identity fraud prevention solution, called Boku Identity. Boku outlined to shareholders that it expects revenues for 2019 to be in the range of $50.0 million to $50.5 million, up around 42% from $35.3 million reported for 2018. Group earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation is expected to be in the range of $10.0 million to $10.5 million, up 59% from $6.3 million in 2018. The total processed value was $5 billion, which showed a steady climb from the $3.6 billion figure reported one year ago. Interestingly for shareholders, the firm reported a higher number of active users of the Boku platform in December increasing to 17.8 million 4.4 million higher than 2018. With regards to their Identity division, billable transactions rose 45% to 253 million. Revenue increased 26% to $6.7 million from $5.3 million in 2018, and losses decreased to $5.0 million versus 2018’s $6.4 million as Boku continued to expand the service outside of the US and the UK to over 60 countries worldwide.

Boku impressed with recent trading

Jon Prideaux, Boku’s CEO, commented: “Our merchants hire us to help them acquire new paying users: during 2019 nearly 19 million end-users made their first transaction through Boku, helping our customers to drive their growth. Collectively our merchants generated more than $5.0bn of TPV through the Boku platform. “Platform businesses have wonderful gearing. It took us a decade and more than $100m to build the Boku payments platform which now connects more than 190 carriers worldwide and most of the world’s largest digital merchants. We continue to make new connections — this year we concentrated our efforts on plugging in the new carriers demanded by lower margin, higher volume, transaction model merchants; in 2020 and beyond these connections will be reused for other, higher margin settlement model merchants. A revenue increase of 42% has translated into a more than doubling of payments EBITDA: a fabulous result. “We are excited at the potential of e-wallets. In Asia, the leading m-commerce region, e-wallets are the dominant payment mechanism, eclipsing card-based payments. On the supply side we have made significant progress: further to the announcements about our partnerships with the GrabPay and GoPay wallets, we now have signed agreements with ten wallets with more than 1.4 billion customers in nine countries. By the end of 2020 we expect to have all the major wallets connected. Demand from our existing merchants is strong. As a competitively priced payment mechanism, wallets have the potential to materially expand our Total Addressable Market at modest cost, with extra margin generated flowing through to EBITDA. The early signs from GrabPay on small merchants are encouraging. The exact timing and quantum of these revenues is difficult to quantify and so have not been built into any forecasts. Nevertheless, we are confident that we will see a material revenue impact from e-wallets over the medium term. “We made steady progress in 2019 with Boku Identity, with revenues increasing 26% and losses reducing. This US based revenue increase was achieved despite some headwinds from restructuring of the Identity management team and some supply side issues in the US. Demand from global companies for a secure and simple worldwide way of verifying users on mobile is plentiful, with six potentially transformative deals in the pipeline. Realising this potential needs global supply from non-US carriers on which we are expecting to make further progress in 2020. “We look forward to reporting on progress with both divisions, along with our audited results, at the end of March 2020.”

Boku grow impressively

The firm reported reported growth in revenues alongside spikes in payment volumes and active usership in July. The Group stated that their Total Payment Volume was up 49% on a year-on-year basis for H1, up from $1.5 billion to $2.3 billion. Further, Monthly Active Users of the Boku platform in June 2019 were 48% higher than in June 2018, at 15.3 million compared to 10.3 million. Regarding Boku Identity, monitoring activity increased more than sixfold during the quarter, with 74 million numberrs monitored in June 2019, compared to 12 million monitored in June 2018. Processed transactions were also doubled on-year on a proforma basis, up from 70.6 million in H1 2018, to 140.9 during H1 2019. As a result, Group Revenue for H1 was expected to finish at between $22.5 million and $23 million, up by over 33% from $16.9 million for H1 2018.

Wirecard and Yeepay enter international payments partnership

In the same market, fintech company Wirecard AG (ETR:WDI) announced that it had secured a partnership with Chinese e-payment service provider Yeepay, to provide payment processing services to clients outside of China in November. Wirecard said it will assist all Yeepay customers in the airline industry to ‘internationalise’ their businesses and transactions. The two companies will leverage their payment tech and licences to provide Yeepay customers with a ‘convenient and regulatory’ checkout process. Wirecard claims that travel agencies, airlines and consumers outside of China will all benefit from their new offering.

Santander invests into Ebury

At the start of November, banking titan Santander (LON:BNC) reported that it had invested into Ebury. The bank said that they had invested £350 million into the start up. Ebury currently operate within 19 countries, handling over 140 currencies. The firm has seen annual consistent revenue gains of 40% in the last three years. UK-based Ebury operates on a worldwide distribution platform underpinned by a data driven business model and offers best-in-class customer experience and product capabilities. The partnership will be a huge boost for Ebury, allowing them to improve their value proposition, supported by a big market player. Additionally, this will give much exposure to Ebury and the access into new markets for for currency trading. Under the terms of the transaction, Santander will acquire 50.1% of Ebury for £350m, of which £70m will be new primary equity to support Ebury’s plans to enter new markets in Latin America and Asia. Shareholders of Boku can be pleased with todays, update however the share price has dropped. Shares in Boku trade at 80p, falling 16.67% on Tuesday. 14/1/20 13:03BST.