AMC Entertainment Beats Q2 Earnings Estimates, Reports Record Quarterly Attendance

Theater chain said it sold a record 97 million tickets during the quarter

amc theatres
AMC Theatres

AMC Entertainment shares rose as much as 6% in premarket trading early on Thursday after the company reported a new quarterly high for attendance, as well as earnings for the second quarter that were better than Wall Street expected.

The theater chain that it had 97 million tickets sold in the second quarter, which was a new all time quarterly high. Admissions revenue for the quarter, however, was down slightly to $895.5 million compared with $896.3 million during the same quarter a year ago.

AMC reported net earnings of $49.4 million during the second quarter, or per-share earnings of 17 cents, which compared to 17 cents per-share earnings during the same period last year. Analysts covering the stock via Yahoo Finance had expected the company to report earnings per share of 16 cents.

Overall revenue for the quarter hit $1.51 billion, up from last year’s $1.44 billion, and above the $1.46 billion analysts forecast.

“In a quarter that generated the second largest domestic industry box office for any quarter in the past 100 years, we are especially gratified that AMC outperformed the rest of the U.S. industry in attendance per screen by 800 basis points and in admissions revenue per screen by 400 basis points,” AMC CEO Adam Aron said in a statement. “We continue to drive this performance by leveraging the power of the AMC platform: from experiential initiatives and enhancements at our theaters 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, our AMC Stubs A-List subscription program now with more than 900,000 subscribers, and our AMCTheatres.com web site and smartphone apps now being visited at a pace of more than 1 billion times annually,” Aron continued.

Also during the quarter AMC said that it saw a record high in the amount of food and beverage bought per moviegoer. In total, the exhibitor generated $492.5 million in food and beverage revenue, selling an average of $5.58 worth of food and beverage per moviegoer in the U.S.

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