Top movie theater circuit AMC Entertainment offered investors a preview of its first-quarter financial results late Friday, with key metrics coming in ahead of Wall Street expectations.
The company plans to report its final quarterly numbers on May 8. Occasionally, public companies release preliminary numbers, especially those under scrutiny as AMC is during its recovery from the dual strikes of 2023. Like its peers in exhibition, the company has been hurt by a slowdown in the overall production pipeline, with total box office slumping this year on top of the painful crawl out of the long shutdowns of the pandemic.
Revenue in the quarter ended March 31 came in at $951.4 million, a shade less than the $954.4 million in the same period of 2023. Diluted losses per share were 62 cents, compared with a loss of $1.71 per share in the year-ago quarter. Wall Street analysts’ consensus calls for revenue of $861.1 million and a loss per share of 79 cents.
“While we anticipate that the second quarter box office will continue to be affected by the 2023 Hollywood strikes, we are ebullient about the upcoming film slate, and we expect to see an increasingly strong box office as the year progresses,” CEO Adam Aron said in the earnings preview release.
AMC also said it had raised $41.8 million as of Thursday from the sale of up to $250 million of Class A shares, an initiative it began in March.
In a separate development, Bloomberg reported Thursday that a group of lenders to AMC pitched a proposal to push back its near-term debt maturities, a stated goal for company management.
AMC Entertainment owes about $4.5 billion in long-term debt, including more than $2.8 billion of maturities in 2026, according to regulatory filings.