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What Industry Slump? AMC Announces Strong Q2 Earnings And Attendance

This article is more than 4 years old.

In a quarter when revenue in the movie industry was down 3.7% year-over-year and down 2.5% in attendance, AMC Theatres today reported second quarter revenues which were up 4.4%, net earnings up 122.5% for the same period, and an all-time attendance record with 97 million tickets sold during the quarter. The Kansas City-based circuit showed revenues during the quarter of $1.506 billion and net earnings of $49.4 million. AMC Theatres owns, operates, or has interest in 639 movie theaters in the U.S. and 365 theaters internationally.

Discussing the results, AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron said, “AMC delivered strong results for the second quarter of 2019, achieving 4.4% year-over-year total revenue growth to $1.506 billion, driven by record attendance in both our U.S. and international markets. Importantly, total Adjusted EBITDA grew 7.3% year-over-year after adjusting 2018 for the non-cash accounting impact of ASC 842” He also noted that despite revenue and attendance in the industry being down year-over-year the quarter generated the second largest domestic industry box office in the past 100 years.

A company who has been one of the leaders in the cinema dine-in concept, AMC generated record U.S. food and beverage per patron of $5.58 and total food and beverage per patron of $5.08, representing growth of 5.5% and 3.9%, respectively. Aron stated, “We continue to drive this performance by leveraging the power of the AMC platform, from experiential initiatives and enhancements at our theatres to a frictionless use of technology to communicate, engage and sell to our guests. We are seeing meaningful recovery in Europe, and our efforts in the United States have been greatly aided by the soaring popularity of our AMC Stubs loyalty program, which recently crossed 21 million member households, (and) our AMC Stubs A-List subscription program now with more than 900,000 subscribers."

Indeed, the circuit's A-List program has been a financial win for the company and was announced at a time when its previous main competitor, MoviePass, was reeling from a plethora of issues that resulted in subscriber loss and their other national competitor, Sinemia, ending its subscription program altogether. MovePass announced at the beginning of July it would shut the service down "for several weeks" but has yet to come back on board. In addition, the company had the distinct advantage of its A-List program debuting while one of its main competitors, Regal Cinemas, sat without a subscription service. Regal's subscription program was just announced last month, giving AMC a significant head start. One of the benefits of a robust subscription service is moviegoers' propensity to spend more at theater concession stands if they feel that their tickets were, in effect, free with the A-List service and that was undoubtedly one of the several factors that went into the circuit's F&B per capita increase.

The company's stock was up 5% one hour into trading.

AMC also reported that the average ticket price declined by 4.8%, which reflected the implementation of the company's A-List program and other promotional pricing initiatives, along with the decline in revenue from multi-dimensional in-theater experiences such as IMAX, 3D and 4D. The success of family-oriented films during the quarter was partly responsible for the ticket price decrease as well.

During the quarter the company added premium recliner seating to 15 of their locations, nine in the U.S. and six internationally, and eight new Dolby screens, one new IMAX location, and one addition AMC Dolby Prime screen. Pursuing a commitment to reserved seating, the company converted 878 of their screens to reserved seating and currently have 97% of its branded screens and 98% of its dine-in locations available for reserved seating ticketing.


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