AMC CEO Says He’s Hopeful Despite ‘Distressing’ All-Time Low Share Price: ‘We Will Continue to Innovate’
AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron addressed the theater chain’s struggling stock price — $1.61 at time of publishing — in a statement to shareholders Friday, acknowledging the “distressing” decline. The stock hit a new all-time low of $1.55 in Wednesday afternoon trading.
Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. closed down 3.73% at the same level. According to data from Benzinga Pro, the decline came even as more than 5.5 million people visited AMC Theaters worldwide from Christmas through the following Sunday and Disney’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” set the box office ablaze with a $90 million four-day weekend.
“As AMC’s largest individual shareholder, and not having sold even one AMC share on the NYSE since January of 2022 about four years ago, I personally and profoundly have felt the pain of AMC’s falling share price,” Aron wrote in a post on X. “And from reading your many comments on X/Twitter, I know it is ever so distressing to so many of you as well.”
Aron said he has been advised not to comment on the share price due to his role, but noted that AMC has been taking action to improve its business.
“You should take comfort in hearing that at AMC, we have not been sitting by idly doing nothing,” Aron said. “To the contrary, we aggressively have been taking action after action after action to please our guests, to improve the appeal of our theatres, to increase our market share, to drive more revenues and to cut more costs. Indeed, on a per patron basis, AMC is far, far, far more efficient and far, far, far more productive than we were versus only a few years ago.”
Aron also addressed box office declines. “In the last half of the year just completed, to the surprise of many, the industry-wide movie box office fizzled and was a real disappointment,” he wrote. “For the third year in a row, the ‘domestic industry box’ (all movies, all theatre chains, in the U.S. and Canada) wound up hovering flat as a pancake between $8.7 billion and $9.0 billion.”
Despite the challenges, Aron expressed optimism about 2026.
“In surveying all the great movie titles coming out in 2026, it is our belief that the industry-wide box office will finally start to materially rise in this new year,” he continued.
And Aron concluded by remaining bullish on the company’s future: “Still, as painful as the past few years have been, and as wild a roller coaster ride as it has been to be steering the AMC ship, I finally find myself looking at what might transpire in the future and thinking this: Let the Good Times Roll.”
AMC most recently expanded event programming by partnering with Netflix to screen the “Stranger Things” series finale in more than 620 theaters with over 1.1 million seats reserved.
The final episode of the smash-hit Netflix series pulled in over $25 million at the box office over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, according to early industry estimates, marking a massive win from a collaboration between the streamer and movie theaters.
New Year’s Day box office also hit a post-Covid record of $48.1 million, up 12% from the previous year’s $42.9 million.
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