- AMC Entertainment reported a net loss of $11.4 million, or 2 cents per share, on revenue of $1.59 billion, compared to a loss of 3 cents per share on revenue of $1.45 billion expected by Wall Street analysts.
- AMC’s domestic revenues grew 13% year over year, with the company welcoming 52.2 million patrons in the U.S.
- AMC’s CEO Adam Aron said the company would continue to focus on keeping costs under control and defended the decision to raise equity over the last six years
Shares of AMC Entertainment surged 14% during Monday’s trading session after second-quarter revenue surged 14% to $1.59 billion, driven by a box office rebound this year on the backs of “Michael,” “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Obsession” and “Backrooms.”
The figure marked the movie theater chain operator’s highest quarterly revenue in its 106-year history. It also posted record adjusted EBITDA of $359.7 million, an increase of 172.9%. However, AMC also reported a widened net loss of $11.4 million, compared to a loss of $4.7 million a year ago.
During the second-quarter, the industry-wide domestic box office reached approximately $2.99 billion, a 10.7% year over year increase — the biggest box office quarter in seven years and fifth biggest quarter ever.
In comparison, AMC’s domestic revenues grew 13% year over year, with the company welcoming 52.2 million patrons in the U.S., up 12% year over year. Over half of AMC’s total U.S. guest count during the quarter were Stubs members, with more than 40 million households participating in the loyalty program.
“This weekend’s powerful debut of Universal Pictures and Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ with an encouraging media reported $124 million domestic opening, is the latest reminder of the strength of today’s theatrical marketplace. It follows a second quarter in which six different films delivered impressive domestic opening weekend grosses exceeding 75 million,” AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron said in a statement. “That outstanding debut of ‘The Odyssey’ will be followed a mere two weeks from now by Sony’s highly anticipated ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ for which advance bookings suggest yet another box office triumph is at hand.”
Looking ahead, Aron predicted that movie theaters will enjoy their strongest post-pandemic year at the global and domestic box office in 2026 when factoring in “Dune: Part 3” and “Avengers Doomsday.” AMC will continue to add premium large format and XLF screens, with the goal of increasing those total counts by 100 and 250 more auditoriums over the next two to four years.
“We can grow our revenue per patron without necessarily increasing price,” AMC’s Chief Financial Officer Sean Goodman told analysts during the company’s second-quarter earnings call. “It’s providing new opportunities for audiences to get a premium format, providing new movie themed content, movie theme merchandise, etc. to excite the movie going experiences, etc. That provides the revenue for the patron as well.”
Aron also promised that the company would “do everything in our power to maximize and drive revenue growth and keep costs under control” and defended the company’s decisions to raise equity and shore up cash over the last six years.
“We’ve raised a lot of equity over the past six years, and that’s why when other movie theater chains went into bankruptcy or liquidation, AMC did not. But even we know that the issuance of stock is a precious commodity,” Aron said. “We don’t issue it lightly. We think very hard about how much we should offer and when. There’s always a good reason for it.”
In the second quarter alone, AMC refinanced $400 million in debt to extend their maturity by four years, raised $285 million of gross proceeds through equity offerings and eliminated or initiated eliminations of approximately $282 million in debt. Together, these actions reduced its principal debt balances by approximately $1.7 billion, with no expected debt maturities until 2029.
“While the decisions we made were not always popular with our shareholder base, we knew that they were absolutely essential for our survival, and gave us the runway we needed to get to the promised land,” Aron continued. “We’re not quite at the promised land yet, because while we were free cash flow positive in Q2. We’ve got a little way to go to be free cash flow by them for a full 12-month year, but we’re ever so close.”
AMC ended the second quarter with $778.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and generated $190.1 million in free cash flow. The company’s stock is trading at $2.20 apiece as of Monday morning, down 36% in the past year but up 36% year to date.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.thewrap.com ’
