AMC Theatres saw its third-quarter loss widen to $298 million even as its revenue of $1.3 billion fell slightly but still topped Wall Street expectations despite a soft box office stretch.
The theater chain attributed the majority of its loss to a debt refinancing it completed in July, which it said would allow the company to “fully redeem all of its 2026 debt maturities.”
That equates to a per-share loss of 58 cents, compared to a loss of just 6 cents per share a year ago. Excluding these one-time items, the company posted an adjusted per-share earnings of 21 cents, a penny narrower than what analysts had projected.
Revenue, meanwhile, fell 3.6% to $1.3 billion. Such a drop was to be expected as domestic box office grosses for the third quarter fell to $2.36 billion, an 11% drop from 2023 and 2024 when films like “Barbie” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” carried the market with $600 million-plus theatrical runs. By contrast, the highest grossing film of this past quarter was Warner Bros./DC’s “Superman” with $354 million.
That drop in grosses led to a similar drop in AMC’s adjusted EBITDA to $122.8 million compared to $161 million in Q3 2024.
But AMC was able to mitigate the drop in revenue that came with the softer box office, reporting an all-time company record in admissions revenue per patron of $12.25 along with the second best ever result for concessions revenue per patron of $7.74.
All of this was in spite of a 10% year-over-year drop in attendance to 58.3 million for the quarter compared to 65 million a year ago.
AMC CEO Adam Aron, who has expressed continued optimism in the chain’s future in the face of multiple headwinds, pointed to what is expected to be a strong finish to 2025 with Disney/20th Century’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” — expected to cross the $600 million domestic mark this winter — and Universal’s “Wicked: For Good” and Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” which are both expected to pass $400 million.
“The third quarter industrywide softness should not be a cause for alarm nor a harbinger of some negative trend about which to worry,” Aron said. “To the contrary, we expect the fourth quarter industrywide box office will turn out to be the highest grossing fourth quarter in six years. We also continue to believe that the size of the 2026 box office will be dramatically larger than that achieved in 2025.”
