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. It’s earnings season now but the theater chain hasn’t yet set a date for its quarterly financials.
It revealed the numbers in an SEC filing where it also announced plans to sell up to 43 million share in a so-called “at the market” offering. That would be instead of previous plans to authorize the sale of up to 500 new shares. It withdrew that proposal, which would have resulted in a major stock overhang, “upon review and careful consideration with further discussions with management and its advisors.” Shareholders were meant to vote on the offer at the company’s annual meeting May 4.
CEO Adam Aron noted that the company has “previously pointed out that the sale of up to 43 million AMC shares, the currently available amount for possible issuance under a previous shareholder authorization, should more than satisfy AMC’s liquidity needs for 2021. This assumes an expected recovery in the patronage of movie theatres in the second half of this year. In asking AMC shareholders to vote on approving another 500 million authorized shares, we noted that our goal was to increase longer term optionality and flexibility for AMC, but that we had no intention of actually issuing any of those 500 million shares in the immediate term.”
AMC estimated its cash and cash equivalents at March 31 were $813 million and in addition, as about $212 million was available for drawing under its revolving credit facility.
Over the past year, the company has struggled and succeeded in raising enough cash to see it through what it hopes has been the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s shares have benefited as it became a “meme” stock earlier this year, buoyed by retail traders on Reddit along with GameStop and others.
As of end March, AMC said had it resumed operations at 585 of its 590 U.S. theatres, with limited seating capacities of between 15% and 60%. And it had resumed operations at 97 of its 354 leased and partnership international theatres. Seating capacity at the reopened international theatres remains limited to between 25% and 50% of capacity.