Thursday's Market Minute: Lights, Camera, Action: AMC's 2Q Earnings

It’s now time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show that will be AMC’s earnings after-the-close today. As always, there’s a lot of focus on AMC at the moment. Not only because of the earnings, but largely due to the strong community of AMC enthusiasts who have helped drive the shares up 74% since touching a bottom in May. CEO Adam Aron leads the charge, embracing AMC’s meme-stock community and rising to near-celebrity status as he routinely travels across the country to meet these retail investors. Plus, Aron has never stopped advocating for AMC’s comeback – investing $28M for a 22% stake in Hycroft Mining to drive operating profits.

And amid the country returning to post-pandemic habits, theater-going trends have also started to normalize. Starting with the latest “Top Gun” release, several blockbuster films are premiering weeks longer than usual in theaters before then moving to streaming channels. Spider-Man premiered for 11 weeks, Dr. Strange totaled nine weeks, and Jurassic Park lasted seven weeks. Plus, ticket sales for most of the recent blockbuster films have far surpassed expectations – perhaps fueling investor optimism alongside the loyal Ape community.

For the most recent quarter, here’s what we already know: as of 1Q, revenues at AMC were $3.2B over the last 12 months. Now the current top 10 movies have brought in $6.1B in the last eight weeks alone. Industry revenues are projected to total $14B, up 48% year-over-year, compared to a decline of over 6% for the last five years.

The Street is forecasting a narrowing deficit of -$0.19 for earnings on about $1.19B in revenue, which would mark a 160% jump quarter-over-quarter. Currently AMC has roughly 513M fully diluted shares with short interest of 110M, totaling about 20% of its float. Following its meme-stock-fueled rally in 2021, management has raised a whopping $1.8B in cash. As of Wednesday’s close, shares have spiked 25% this week.

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