Dhurandhar's Blockbuster Box Office Becomes Secret Santa For Multiplex Stock: BUY PVR-INOX?

The month of December has seen some notable releases at the big screens. Some of the eye-catching new releases are Akhanda 2 and Dhurundhar, while fans await the epic sci-fi trilogy Avatar: Ash & Fire ahead. Meanwhile, the box office collection of the nostalgic Kantara chapter 1 carried so far in December. But among them, Ranveer Singh and Akshaye Khanna's underworld and bone-chilling Dhurundar has surprised the critics and audiences. In less than 15 days since release, Dhurundhar has bagged massive love from fans, which scored a position in the top 20 best movies list in India nett collection.

Dhurundhar's box office collection becomes a Secret Santa moment for multiplex stock.

Dhurundhar Box Office Collection:

As per Sacnilk data, Dhurandhar performed well on its first 12 days at the box office and earned an estimated Rs 411.75 crore in India nett. On its thirteenth day, the movie bagged Rs 21.29 crore India nett collection in all languages.

This takes overall box office collection of Dhurandhar to Rs 433.04 crore as of December 17. These are early estimates. Overall, on December 17, the movie had an occupance of 31.99% in Hindi, which is steady.

Why Dhurundhar is Trump Card For PVR-Inox?

As per Jinesh Joshi, Research Analyst, PL Capital, while there are 15 days for the quarter to end, industry wide NBOC's are already at Rs25.7bn for 3QFY26E. With "Dhurandhar" turning out to be sleeper hit (NBOC's of Rs3.8 billion so far) and Avatar: Fire & Ash set to release on 19th Dec, there is a strong possibility of industry-wide collections breaching Rs30 billion mark in 3QFY26E. To put things in perspective, post COVID, there have been only 3 instances where industry wide BO collections have breached Rs30 billion mark.

Data revealed that the industry recorded more than Rs 30 billion box office collections during Q2FY24, Q3FY25, and Q2FY26. The Q3FY26 could see similar situation.

The analyst highlighted that in every quarter when the figure surpassed Rs 30 billion mark, PVR-INOX reported healthy EBITDA margin in terms of pre-IND accounting standard. The Q3FY25 period was exception because of Pushpa-2's blockbuster performance, however, PVR-Inox's box office collection market share was low during that period because Allu Arjun's movie was regional.

But the analyst believes 3QFY26E will be unlike 3QFY25 and more like 2QFY26 or 2QFY24 as:-

- Share of Hindi language in collections of Kantara - A Legend Chapter-1 (highest netting movie of the quarter) is higher than Kannada at ~36%. In regional languages, PVR-INOX's BO market share is typically lower and thus strong contribution from Hindi alleviates concerns of a Pushpa-2 like scenario repeating again.

- PVR-INOX's BO share in Hollywood genre is in the band of ~55-70% (Avatar: Fire & Ash is set to release on 19th Dec and the last movie in this franchise netted Rs3.9 billion).

Notably, Dhurandhar has turned tables for PVR-Inox. Think it this way!

"The movie has collected Rs3.8 billion so far and could well be on track to achieve life-time collections of Rs4-5 billion. Now, it is not as if movies haven't netted Rs4-5 billion in past. However, few expected the movie to do so well and that is where the delta lies. For instance, if we eliminate performance of "Dhurandhar" from industry-wide collections of Rs25.7 billion, the "Secret Santa" element for the quarter goes missing! Let us now try to analyze the earnings impact of "Dhurandhar" for FY26E," said Joshi.

Accordingly, on a conservative basis, the analyst predicts industry wide BO collections to settle at Rs30 billion and with PVR-INOX's market share at 30%, it can be expected that the NBOC figure of Rs billion for 3QFY26E. NBOC typically forms ~50% of PVR-INOX's topline implying revenue can be ~Rs18 billion in 3QFY26E.

Should You Buy Or Hold PVR-Inox?

As per the analyst, investors can hold PVR-INOX share price for a target price of Rs 1,211 per share.

After market hours of December 17, PVR-Inox share price stood at Rs 1065.75 apiece, down by 1.2% on BSE with market cap of Rs 10,465.66 crore. YTD, PVR-Inox shares are down by over 18% on BSE and NSE.

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