MoviePass Parent Hits An All-Time Low

Shares of Helios and Matheson hit an all-time low this week but the company’s CEO doesn’t seem to worried about the company’s future.

The parent of MoviePass’s CEO, Ted Farnsworth spoke to TheStreet last week and said the company would go from burning money to generating $600 million by the end of 2018.

Shares have been sliding since last October as Wall Street learned the company is burning through roughly $21 million each month to support its movie subscription service MoviePass that it acquired last August.

Farnsworth told TheStreet, “The money issue on my side has never been an issue. I don’t mean that to be cocky or arrogant, but people see what it is. When you go to a movie theater, half of the people there have MoviePass.”

“The investors on Wall Street understand that and they understand that model, so for us to sustain that and go forward is not a problem,” Farnsworth continued.

The CEO has a plan to make the company profitable in the next several months by leveraging MoviePass’ 3 million subscribers to provide marketing and analytics to film studios to increase its revenue by $6 to $8 per subscriber. This is in addition to producing its own films.

According to Farnsworth, it will take 5 million customers for the company to get profitable.
“I think there’s a concerted effort out there from AMC and other players trying to put us out of business, with the whole scare tactic of ‘can they survive,’ ‘are they sustainable,’ ‘can they make it,’ ‘they’re burning cash,'” Farnsworth explained.

“Of course, we’re burning cash, but so does Amazon. And then there’s Netflix, doing original content and losing $4 billion this year.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. (NASDAQ: HMNY) and have not been compensated for this article.