So we see all that as very positive. And I would say, likewise, the work we’re doing with our strategic initiatives to make sure that we drive the best results on that consumer enthusiasm and attendance ultimately should translate into positive ongoing margin results.
Melissa Thomas: Yes. And just to follow on to that, to give a little bit of more context on our second quarter adjusted EBITDA margins, what you saw was our team’s ability to really capitalize on the strength of the box office and a film slate that as we stated, resonated particularly well with our circuit, and that led to especially strong market share, concession per cap as well as average ticket prices in the quarter. As we think about our long-term margin potential, we certainly have many initiatives that we’re pursuing, both on the revenue side as well as the cost side to try to get back to those pre-pandemic margins over the long term. But there are, as you know, going to be a number of factors that, that’s dependent upon not only attendance and box office recovery, which is the largest driver of our margins.
But beyond that, our market share gains, elevated concession per caps and average ticket prices, the extent to which those persist as well as our ability to offset further inflationary pressures that may materialize and then the pull-through that we get on the strategic initiatives that we’re executing on. But we’re certainly pleased with our ability to deliver strong margins in the quarter and the momentum that we’ve seen.
Robert Fishman: Okay, great. And just a question about the competitive landscape if I can. You’ve highlighted how Cinemark has had the sustainable market share. You just mentioned it. Can you talk about where that has come from and maybe the opportunity to grow market share further? And how Cineworld’s emerging out of bankruptcy could impact any of that, if at all?
Sean Gamble: Sure. I think we mentioned in the past, I mean, we obviously got a bump in share as we were exiting — or I should say as we’re reopening during the course of the Pemcby [ph] being one of the first circuits to open. What we’ve seen is that exposed a lot of audiences perhaps to our circuit who may not have been coming as frequently and they got a taste for the type of experience we’re providing and they’ve stayed. A large part of it is not really one single thing, but we had spent a large amount of time strengthening our marketing capabilities, which we think are industry-leading right now in terms of the type of awareness we build and reach we have to try to encourage consumers to come to more films and come to Cinemark when they see them.
We’ve been working quite a bit on more sophisticated practices for planning showtimes and operating hours, which we think play into that. And then, of course, there’s just the overall experience that guests have when they come to us. So we spent a lot of time — this even predates me joining the company. I’d say it’s in the DNA of Cinemark really delivering a fantastic guest service to our customers when they’re here. As we look forward, our aim, obviously, is to continue to sustain that. We felt that 100 basis points of improvement versus our prepandemic level is a reasonable assumption now that most of the theaters are and screens are operating again. That will — just to point out that will fluctuate quarter-to-quarter somewhat based on the type of content mix that’s in the marketplace and how different films resonate with different demographics.
For instance, what we saw in the second quarter was the film content played particularly well in our markets with the level of family and her and the style of action, particularly with Hispanic markets. Even on the flip side in July, even though July was our biggest month of admissions revenue ever, the nature of the title skewed a bit lower for our audiences compared to other markets around the company. So we expect we might see third quarter tick down a little bit for us overall. So it will ebb and flow a bit, but our focus certainly is on continuing to drive those initiatives to sustain our advances. It’s hard to comment. Your other question on CineWorld and Regal; we certainly suspect them having a stronger financial position. We’ll put them in a better position to be competitive going forward.
We certainly hope for — we always believe that delivering consumers widely across the industry, a really positive experience lifts all boats and is a positive thing for all of us. So, our hope coming out of that is that they will continue to deliver a heightened experience and a positive experience, and that will be a good thing for everybody.
Operator: Our next questions come from the line of Eric Handler with Rob at GM.
Eric Handler: Sean, granted, I know Cinemark has a long history of being conservative with the balance sheet, but you’re at the point now, you’re at 3.4x net leverage. You’ve got a pretty good work chest of cash available to here. I mean do you — how are you thinking about maybe loosening the purchase a little bit and increasing CapEx for some additional ROI projects, maybe buying back some debt in the open market for — get some nice accretion off of that? And just your thoughts there.
