Guy Hands sells Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group to AMC for £920m

Guy Hands has sold Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group to the US company AMC Entertainment in a deal valued at about £920m.

Adding Odeon & UCI’s 242 sites to AMC’s existing business will make it the biggest cinema owner in the world, with 627 theatres and more than 7,600 screens in eight countries.

AMC, which is majority-owned by the Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group, said it would assume £407m of net debt as part of the deal to buy the No 1 theatre operator in Europe from Hands’ private equity firm Terra Firma.

Odeon & UCI, which Hands has been seeking to sell for several years, will continue to be based in London and will operate as a subsidiary of AMC.

Terra Firma bought the UCI and Odeon chains as two separate businesses in late 2004 and merged them to create Europe’s biggest cinema chain.

In the first three months of 2016 the group reported a 10% rise in revenue to £209m, and ebitda of £30.7m, with hits including Deadpool and The Revenant boosting box office takings. It also announced plans to open 20 new cinemas across Europe by 2020, including eight in the UK.

AMC said it was committed to closing its $1.1bn (£830m) acquisition of Carmike Cinemas in the US. The deal was thrown into doubt after the smaller chain adjourned a shareholder vote on it last month.

The company said it would continue to work with Carmike this week to see if the deal could be saved, but said the transaction was at a “considerable risk”.