Giant theater chain AMC Entertainment said it expects revenue for the three months ended in December jumped to $1.17 billion from $162.5 million the year before in preliminary numbers released Tuesday morning.
The numbers aren’t the company’s official fourth-quarter report which is still to be released TBA. The shares are up 12% on the numbers.
Net losses narrowed to between $194 million and $114.8 million, including an estimated one-time cash impairment charge of $50-$125 million. That compared with a loss of $941 million in the year-earlier 2020 period, which included write-downs of $466 million.
“AMC’s 2021 results improved significantly as the year progressed, and we finished the year with the strongest quarter in two years,” said CEO Adam Aron. He called the quarter “a meaningful milestone.”
Other numbers:
Adjusted EBITDA – between $146.8 million to $151.8 million for the three months compares to an EBITDA loss of $327.5
Operating cash (burn) generated during the three months — about $216.5 million
Available liquidity — $1.8 billion
Cash and cash equivalents — $1.59 billion.
The nation’s largest exhibitor was slammed by pandemic closures and a slowly recovering theatrical that picked up last year with a couple of blockbuster releases led by Spider Man: No Way Home. AMC, which had teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, also saw a massive turnover in its shareholders base with millions of individual investors calling the shots of the new meme stock, knocking it higher and helping to support its financial recovery.
Analyst Eric Wold of B Riley Securities said the numbers beat his estimates, especially operating cash flow, which is a key metric as AMC looks to refinance its debt.
“We believe that AMC management successfully took advantage of the upward
move in the share price in early- to mid-2021 and has now built a cash balance that not only
took imminent bankruptcy out of the conversation, but provides for multiple opportunities
to improve the company’s outlook—both in the core exhibition operations and through the
expansion into new arenas,” he wrote in a note today.
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