Cinemark IPO raises $532 million

An initial public offering from movie theater operator Cinemark Holdings Inc. raised $532 million Monday, at the top of the range the company expected.

That might set a good tone for Cinemark’s rival, AMC Entertainment Inc., which hopes to raise $800 million in a stock sale next month.

The stock offerings come ahead of what’s expected to be a strong summer film schedule, thanks to such releases as Sony Corp.’s “Spider-Man 3” and Walt Disney Co.’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”

Box-office sales have risen 6.4% to $2.47 billion this year and attendance is up 4%, according to box-office tracker Media by Numbers.

“This is going to be a great summer for theater owners,” said David Bank, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

Cinemark and AMC were taken private in separate deals in 2004 amid a box-office slump. Their investors are betting that Wall Street’s appetite for the industry has improved.

Cinemark’s offering of 28 million shares was priced at $19 each, compared with a forecast range of $17 to $19. The stock will begin trading today on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “CNK.”

The Plano, Texas-based company plans to use net proceeds from the offering, a stake of about 26%, to repay debt.

The company, which was acquired in 2004 by an affiliate of private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners, sold about 14.1 million shares; existing stockholders offered 13.9 million.

Cinemark, the third-largest movie theater chain in the U.S., operates 4,488 screens in almost 400 theaters in the U.S. and Latin America.

AMC, based in Kansas City, Mo., is owned by private equity investors J.P. Morgan Partners and Apollo Management.