Despite a big boost in business from late summer titles like “Deadpool & Wolverine,” AMC Theatres couldn’t get into the black in Q3 of 2024, reporting a $20.7 million net loss in Wednesday’s earnings report.
Here are some of the topline figures:
Revenue: Thanks to films like “Deadpool 3,” Universal’s “Despicable Me 4” and “Twisters,” and Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” revenue for AMC reached a strong $1.33 billion. Still, that was approximately 5% down from last year, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” combined to set box office records.
EPS: Despite another quarterly loss, Q3 2024 is the closest AMC has been to getting in the black, reporting an adjusted loss per share of 6 cents that’s just above 7-cent projections from Zacks Investment Research. That’s also slightly above the loss of 9 cents from the prior year’s Q3 and up from last quarter’s 43-cent loss.
Concessions record: Despite these topline slips, CEO Adam Aron proudly touted progress in other areas of the chain’s finances as signs that AMC is on its way back after navigating years of pandemic and strike delays. This includes per patron concessions spending reaching a company record $8.49 in the U.S., with an overall total of $490 million worldwide.
The company also reported an adjusted EBITDA of $161 million, the second highest ever recorded by AMC in Q3 behind only last year’s $199.9 million.
“What’s more, in this third quarter, AMC’s Total Revenues were 31% stronger than our revenues of Q2 2024, our Net Loss was narrowed by 37% compared to the loss in the second quarter of 2024 and our Adjusted EBITDA was four
times stronger than that of Q2 2024. This is a direct result of the greatly improving industry-wide box office throughout the third quarter, which we expect will continue going forward,” Aron said.
Movie theatres should expect the last seven weeks of 2024 to have plenty of robust business starting with the one-two punch of Universal’s “Wicked” and Paramount’s “Gladiator II,” followed by the Thanksgiving release of Disney’s “Moana 2.” Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” Disney’s “Mufasa” and Searchlight’s “A Complete Unknown” highlight the December schedule.
But it is 2025, which will feature a film slate unaffected by widespread production delays for the first time since 2019, that has exhibitors feeling optimistic, with Aron being no exception.
“Admittedly, some of our third quarter metrics of 2024 were behind those of last year. However, we believe of much greater importance is our bullishness about the impressive movie slate that is coming to our theatres in November and December of 2024, and continuing in 2025 and again in 2026,” he said. “Based on what we know now, we expect that the industry-wide box office should markedly rise at year-end and rise yet again for the next two years.”
Three years after becoming a meme stock and using the company’s skyrocketing price to reduce some of its debt load, AMC has seen its stock fall back down below $5/share while reducing its debt by $349 million and extending $2.4 billion of that debt’s maturity from 2026 to 2029 and 2030. At time of writing, AMC’s stock price fell about 22 cents in after hours trading to $4.32/share.
