AMC Entertainment’s onetime owner, China’s Dalian Wanda Group, has pretty much cashed out completely from the theater chain, revealing in an SEC filing Friday that it has pared its stake to a barely there 0.002%. Wanda first acquired AMC’s super-voting Class B stock – with three votes a share – in 2012, making it the
AMC Entertainment
AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron was nearly giddy Thursday, quoting Winston Churchill, trying to top him, talking up a box office recovery, the chain’s expanded market share, cash position and hiring plans and millions of new retail investors who have replaced China’s Wanda Group as its core shareholder base. Like an Oscar acceptance speech, he
AMC Entertainment offered a preview of its quarterly earnings Tuesday, anticipating revenue for the three months ended in March of $148 million, way down from $941.5 million the year before as the box office struggled to revive amid the global pandemic. AMC expects to announce a net loss of between $572 million and $567 million.
While the No. 1 exhibitor AMC has traditionally been flexible about theatrical windows despite their pubic uproar against Universal last year, the chain’s CEO Adam Aron speculated today what the landscape would look like when we come out of this pandemic. “What we learned from the Universal agreement, is that every studio seems to have
Dalian Wanda, which acquired AMC Entertainment in 2012, surrendered control of the struggling exhibitor as it issued and sold tranches of new stock to raise cash — diluting the stake of the Chinese conglomerate. CEO Adam Aron confirmed the Wanda era was over although the company continues to be AMC largest single largest shareholder. Wanda
AMC Entertainment revenue fell last quarter plunged to $162 million from close to $1.5 billion the year as the global pandemic squeezed exhibition. That beat expectations, coming about $20 million above Wall Street’s consensus estimates. The stock is up in late trading. Net losses widened to $946 million, including a hefty one-time impairment charge, from
NYC Mayor candidate Andrew Yang hit the AMC Empire in Times Square early Friday, buying evening tickets for Eddie Huang’s Boogie and talking to a small group of press as cinemas around the city opened for the first time since last March. “It’s a film set in New York and the filmmaker is Asian American
New York City, the nation’s leading movie market along with still-shuttered Los Angeles, springs back to life Friday after being flattened by Covid-19 for nearly a year. A pulse was detected in advance ticket sales with a handful of shows selling out at AMC Entertainment’s flagship Empire 25 theater in Times Square including a 4:30
AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron earned $20.9 million in total compensation last year, double $9.6 million the year before due to a big bonus and stock awards. According to the company’s SEC filing Friday, Aron’s package in 2002 included a base salary of $1.1 million, a bonus of $5 million and stock award of $14.8
Showbiz shares sparkled Monday starting off March with a major market rally around reopening, another vaccine rollout, a stimulus bill and a combo of upbeat earnings and streaming forecasts. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, the nation’s third, will ship this week and the possibility of $1.9 trillion flowing into the U.S. economy looks increasingly likely after
AMC Entertainment, the nation’s largest theater chain, said Friday it’s awarding CEO Adam Aron and other executives “supplemental special incentive cash bonuses” to recognize the challenge they faced steering the embattled company on a financial rollercoaster over the past pandemic year. Corporate associates and theatre management will also get special bonuses, with all payouts coming
Shares of the happiest of exhibitors AMC Entertainment continued an upward trajectory Monday fueled by retail traders on Reddit chat rooms, even as a leading Wall Street analyst downgraded the stock to ‘sell’ and valued it at $1. “In our view, the recent volatility and spike in the company’s stock, thanks to the Reddit/WallStreetBets crowd,
AMC Entertainment said Silver Lake Group is converting $600 million worth of the theater chain’s debt that it holds into stock at a conversion price of $13.51 a share, a surprise all around considering the exhibitor’s shares were languishing below two bucks earlier this month. The giant investment firm partnered with AMC back in 2018
Struggling AMC Entertainment said early Monday it has raised or signed commitments for $917 million including additional financing since December, calling it “enough cash to “make it through this dark, coronavirus-impacted winter.” “This means that any talk of an imminent bankruptcy for AMC is completely off the table,” said CEO Adam Aron in a statement.
Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Entertainment, said the nation’s largest cinema chain has raised $204 million of the at least $750 million needs to get to the other side of a global pandemic that has crippled moviegoing. AMC raised cash from stock and bonds sales in rounds in April, June, October and most recently in
Financially hurting cinema advertising network National CineMedia has inked a deal to run ads with Coinstar, a big operator of supermarket coin-counting kiosks. With the exhibition business on the Covid-19 skids, the agreement helps expand National CineMedia’s digital-out-of-home footprint by extending its movie-centric entertainment content, trivia, and advertising beyond movie theaters to complementary venues. It
AMC Entertainment filed to sell up to 50 million more shares in an ongoing quest to stay solvent as it outruns the pandemic. The nation’s largest theater chain registered the shares in an SEC filing this morning, adding to the 200 million it previously registered. It said it’s raised $104 million as of December 28
AMC Entertainment Monday unveiled plans to change its board structure in an agreement with majority shareholder Wanda America Entertainment, a division of Dalian Wanda Group of China. Wanda holds nearly 60% of the voting power of financially strapped AMC through ownership of all the company’s super-voting Class B shares. The nation’s largest theater chain said
Struggling AMC Entertainment said it risks running out funds in January. In its latest warning cry, it said it needs $750 million “to remain viable” through 2021. Even if it raises that, it still risks bankruptcy next year if moviegoing doesn’t pick up — and Warner Bros. may have made that harder to accomplish. In
Movie theater stocks were mixed Friday as the industry absorbed shock waves from Warner Bros.’ window-smashing announcement the day before when the cinema group collectively plunged by double digits. The smaller publicly-traded U.S. chains have lower debt and are in better financial shape. Third and fourth ranked circuits Cinemark and Marcus both rose by more
It should come as no surprise to hear that Cinemark and Universal have hammered out their own truncated theatrical window and PVOD share deal in the wake of the one which AMC inked with the Hollywood major studio at the end of July. Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi, a former President at the Walt Disney Motion
The nation’s fourth-biggest cinema chain Marcus Theatres saw revenue plunge and swung to the red last quarter, beating Wall Street forecasts, however and emphasizing solid financials underpinned by the fact that it owns most of its theatres. Family-owned Marcus, based in Milwaukee, owns or operates 1,110 screens at 91 locations in 17 states under the
AMC Entertainment said revenue for the September quarter plunged 91% to $119 million. Losses widened to $905 million from $54 million as the financially strapped exhibitor struggles with the impact of the global pandemic. The financially struggling chain’s COVID trials have been high profile and heavy hitting because of its size — the biggest chain
AMC CEO Adam Aron channeled Winston Churchill Monday, comparing the exhibition industry’s last stand against COVID-19 (and Chapter 11) to the U.K.’s fight for survival during World War II. Wall Street analysts on a conference call were too polite to bring up the word bankruptcy directly, nor did Aron. He said again that the chain
Studio Movie Grill, the in-theater dining chain with seven California locations has filed for bankruptcy, one of the first leading exhibitors to officially buckle under pandemic-related financial stress. The Dallas-based company filed for Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas. It will continue to operate but reorganize with the protections
AMC Entertainment will resume operations at a dozen theaters in New York State October 23 in accordance with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recent, welcome reopening announcement over the weekend that, however, still excluded New York City and a handful of other counties. NY is “vital to the theatrical exhibition industry,” the world’s largest chain said Monday.
The association of theater owners, NATO, called on Congress Tuesday to get an aid package approved, saying exhibitors are desperate for help. It’s begged for help before. Now Senators Schumer, Cardin and Shaheen have included relief for movie theaters as part of the Save Our Stages initiative, which is included in the COVID relief bill
AMC Entertainment expects revenues for the three months ended September 30 of $119 million versus nearly $1.32 billion for the year earlier quarter and the struggling theater anticipates material write-downs of assets, according to an SEC filing Tuesday morning with preliminary financial results. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $417.9 million. The company also said
Exhibitors in New York State are speed dialing former staffers and bookers after a surprise weekend announcement by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that long-shuttered cinemas can reopen Friday under guidelines expected early this week. Joseph Masher, president of NATO New York and CEO of family-owned Bowtie Cinemas, anticipates the long-awaited state playbook will pretty much echo
Things are going from bad to worse in exhibition as AMC Entertainment said Tuesday its cash will be gone by late this year or early next and it’s exploring potential sources of additional liquidity, including asset sales, joint ventures or minority investments. The nation’s largest movie chain, like others in the industry, has been struggling