Helios and Matheson Analytics, the parent company of movie subscription service MoviePass, have announced plans to spin the company off as new subsidiary that would become a separate publically-traded company.
The New MoviePass Entertainment Holdings will consist of the subscription service and other film related assets held by Helios and Matheson. It will also have its own stock, separate from its parent company.
In a statement, Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth said –
For many years, [Helios and Matheson] has been focused on data analytics, and in that capacity we own assets like Zone Technologies which provides a safety and navigation app for iOS and Android users and a global security concierge service. Since we acquired control of MoviePass in December 2017, [Helios and Matheson] largely has become synonymous with MoviePass in the public’s eye, leading us to believe that our shareholders and the market perception of [Helios and Matheson] might benefit from separating our movie-related assets from the rest of our company.
To translate, since Helios and Matheson bought MoviePass back in December 2017, their stock has dropped precipitously to just pennies per share, so separating the two should goose their own stock price back up to where it used to be. Or so they hope.
Helios and Matheson originally acquired MoviePass with an eye towards monetizing data generated by users’ movie-going habits. However, they have not been able to make that pivot towards profitability. The last several months have seen MoviePass going up to the brink of bankruptcy and then back. Changes to its services made in an effort to stem the bleeding cash flow has had the end result of some subscribers cancelling.
