Marathon Adds Cinemark to Portfolio

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What happened

On November 17, 2025, Marathon Asset Management LP filed with the SEC a quiet addition to its portfolio: 300,000 shares of Cinemark (CNK), valued at $8.41 million. This stake, modest in the grand theater of capital, now occupies a corner of the fund’s $75.12 million in U.S. equity assets, like a forgotten prop in a half-forgotten play.

What else to know

The position accounts for 11.19% of the fund’s 13F assets, a proportion that suggests neither triumph nor despair, but a measured curiosity. Among its top holdings:

  • GrafTech International: $27.1 million (36.1% of AUM)
  • Cinemark: $8.4 million (11.2% of AUM)
  • UnitedHealth Group: $4.3 million (5.8% of AUM)
  • John Hancock High Yield ETF: $3.3 million (4.4% of AUM)
  • Advanced Micro Devices: $3.2 million (4.3% of AUM)

A portfolio so small it might fit in a satchel, yet the weight of its choices is felt in the silence between numbers.

Company overview

Metric Value
Price (as of market close Nov. 17, 2025) $29.59
Market capitalization $3.43 billion
Revenue (TTM) $3.15 billion
Net income (TTM) $154.8 million

Company snapshot

  • Cinemark operates multiplexes across continents, drawing in crowds with tickets, concessions, and ads. A business as old as the reel itself, yet perpetually on the edge of obsolescence.
  • Its screens number 5,868, a statistic that glows faintly in the dark, like a flickering bulb in a theater emptying for the night.
  • The company caters to a public that clings to the ritual of cinema, even as streaming services whisper promises of convenience. A paradox as enduring as the popcorn kernels that litter the floor.

Foolish take

Marathon’s portfolio is a modest affair, fewer than 20 positions, yet this 10% stake in Cinemark is no idle gesture. It is a wager on the persistence of a habit: the human need to gather in darkness, to surrender to stories projected on a screen. The fund’s choice is not of a visionary, but of a man who has seen too many endings and still believes in the curtain rising again.

Cinemark’s recent results-a $107 million net income in nine months, a $300 million repurchase program, and a dividend hike-suggest a company in careful repair. Yet the specter of rising costs looms, a shadow that grows longer with each quarter. Marathon, perhaps, has caught a glimpse of light in that shadow. Or perhaps it is merely the afterglow of a film’s final scene.

The market, as ever, remains indifferent. It does not judge the quiet hope of investors, nor the stubborn resilience of a company that sells both tickets and nostalgia. It simply moves forward, as if nothing were written in the margins of its ledger but the names of those who dared to dream.

Glossary

13F reportable assets: A list of securities that institutional managers must file with the SEC, a bureaucratic curtain call for their choices.

Assets under management (AUM): The total value of investments held, a measure of trust and uncertainty.

Initiated position: The first step into a new holding, often taken with a hand in the pocket and a glance over the shoulder.

Stake: Ownership in a company, a claim to a fraction of its fate.

Holding: A security within a portfolio, a word that implies both possession and loss.

Multiplex: A building of many screens, a monument to the modern appetite for simultaneity and solitude.

Motion picture exhibition: The art of making light and shadow profitable, a business that thrives on the illusion of control.

Box office ticket sales: Revenue that hums like a heartbeat, steady when the crowd is young, faltering when it is not.

Concessions: The snacks that keep the show running, a reminder that hunger outlasts even the most compelling plot.

Market capitalization: A number that flutters like a moth around the flame of investor sentiment.

TTM: Twelve months trailing, a phrase that lingers like a bad smell, a reminder of what has already been.

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2025-11-19 16:13