Shares in AMC Entertainment are up more than 3% in post-market trading after it reported stronger-than-expected first-quarter revenues following its acquisitions of Carmike Cinemas and the UK’s Odeon Cinemas Group.
The world’s largest exhibition chain — controlled by China’s Wanda Group — generated $8.4 million in net income, down 70.3% vs the period last year, on revenues of $1.28 billion, up 67.6%. If you take out M&A expenses, $26.2 million in Q1, then earnings would have been up 7.5%.
The top line beat the $1.25 billion that analysts anticipated. Earnings at 7 cents a share met expectations.
CEO Adam Aron said the numbers show that “the earnings power of this new incarnation of a larger and more influential AMC is enormous compared to other operators and even to our own recent past.”
He adds that theaters AMC owned before its recent acquisitions “grew revenues at a meaningfully faster pace than the industry at large,” which he attributes in part to the chain’s ambitious effort to install recliner seats.
The integration of Carmike and Odeon has been “very smooth,” he adds. As a result, he’s “optimistic about the opportunity to continue to deliver meaningful value to our shareholders both in the balance of 2017 and in the years ahead.”
Global attendance, with the additional theaters, improved 82.2% to 93.4 million. The U.S. part of that was up 30.8% to 66.8 million.
The average customer outlay per ticket in the U.S. dropped 1.6% to $9.27.
But average payment for concessions in the U.S. theaters was up 2.3% to $4.88 per patron.
Must Read Stories
Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.