AMC

Hello, welcome everyone joining today's AMC Entertainment Holdings first quarter 2026 results call. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to John Merriwether, Vice President, Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Leo. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to AMC's first quarter 2026 earnings webcast. With me this afternoon is Adam Aron, our Chairman and CEO, and Sean Goodman, our Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the webcast over to Adam, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the comments made by management during this webcast may contain forward-looking statements that are based on management's current expectations. Numerous risks, uncertainties, and other factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those that might be expressed today. Many of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent public filings, including our most recently filed 10-K and 10-Q. Several of those factors that will determine the company's future results are beyond the ability of the company to control or predict.

In light of the uncertainties inherent in any forward-looking statements, listeners are cautioned against relying on these statements. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future events. On this webcast, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures such as Adjusted EBITDA, constant currency, among others. For a full reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to GAAP results, please see our earnings release posted in the investor relations section of our website earlier this afternoon. After our prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. This afternoon's webcast is being recorded, and a replay will be available in the investor relations section of our website later today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam.

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. I am so very pleased to report that AMC achieved our best Adjusted EBITDA first quarter result since 2019 pre-pandemic. An Adjusted EBITDA improvement of some $96 million year-over-year during the quarter. It was driven not only by strong domestic performance, but also by vastly improved international results across our European footprint. These results are a clear testament to our disciplined operating execution in maximizing AMC's revenue growth while simultaneously containing our costs, combined with having an unwavering commitment to elevating the moviegoing experience. Let me reiterate our Q1 result for all to hear clearly. The best first quarter Adjusted EBITDA in seven years for AMC, up a whopping $96 million year-over-year and far, far, far superior to consensus estimates.

Our much improved results clearly demonstrate the operating leverage that is inherent in our business, AMC's ability to generate markedly improving results at a time when revenues are rising. Significantly rising revenues indeed are our continued expectation for full year 2026. Finally, after repeated flat years, primarily due to the crippling industry strikes of 2023, the box office is back and in a big and powerful way. In the first quarter of 2026, the North American box office surged an impressive 22% compared to the prior year. The first quarter box office, the strongest since the pandemic closed theaters back in the first quarter of 2020, ended on a high note in late March with Amazon Studios' Project Hail Mary rocketing to become the top-grossing movie of the year to that point and Amazon Studios' highest-grossing film ever. That was just the beginning.

The Project Hail Mary box office result was a 2026 record for all of only 12 days because the industry momentum grew even further as the second quarter had started off with three more blockbuster hits in a row with Illumination's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Lionsgate and Universal's Michael, and Disney's The Devil Wears Prada 2. There are so many more superb movie titles being released throughout 2026. Rather than regale you with a long list of impressive movies that will be coming out in the remainder of this year, let me just say this. At AMC, we've actually seen footage from the remarkable movies that are set to release. We believe that Disney has hits coming, Universal has hits coming, Warner Bros has hits coming, Sony has hits coming, Paramount has hits coming, Lionsgate has hits coming, Amazon has hits coming.

Do A24 and Neon and Bleecker Street and Angel Studios. This is a year where in our theaters, movie after movie after movie after movie after movie after movie will delight both our guests and our shareholders. They are both franchise movies and new IP. They are big movie titles in our immediate future, but also medium and smaller titles that also look to have real consumer appeal. We could not be more optimistic about the entire 2026 film slate, especially in the second half of 2026, which we believe will see more continued robust growth adding up to a record post-pandemic box office for full year 2026. The domestic industry box office so far in 2026 is already up about $300 million year-over-year.

As we look ahead, we think it's easy to forecast that the full year number for 2026 could be somewhere between $500 million and $1.2 billion bigger than that of 2025. If that's not enough, foreign language films in Europe are also doing particularly well, and AMC's improving international performance in Europe so far in 2026 is particularly encouraging. Crucial about all this industry growth is the operating leverage inherent in AMC. Combining the commercial appeal and outsized performance of so many AMC Theatres across the U.S. and Odeon Cinemas in Europe, our commanding industry lead in offering premium screens with almost a maniacal focus on reining in our costs. We have repeatedly demonstrated in prior quarters that where there has been significant industry growth with industry revenues rising, then AMC's Adjusted EBITDA correspondingly can soar.

Turning from our income statement to our balance sheet, ever so importantly, AMC has been actively working to strengthen our balance sheet by enhancing liquidity and improving financial flexibility. As you know, we recently refinanced $400 million of debt that was due in 2027, now extending that maturity by four full years to 2031, while simultaneously reducing our annual cash interest expense in the process. We are also currently converting some $155 million of our debt into equity as we speak. To bolster cash reserves, we raised approximately $72 million of gross proceeds in the first quarter through our at-the-market equity program. Also during the first quarter, we also opportunistically sold a portion of our holdings in Hycroft Mining at an average price of $42.40 per share, realizing approximately $30 million in cash proceeds.

When combined with our prior sale of Hycroft shares and warrants in the fourth quarter of 2025, AMC has now generated approximately $54 million of cash from the sale of Hycroft shares and warrants, well north of our initial total of $27.9 million invested in Hycroft. AMC continues to retain approximately 129,500 Hycroft shares to participate in potential future upside at Hycroft. Taking all these actions together from balance sheet item after balance sheet item after balance sheet item, AMC obviously has been vigorous in addressing the need to further right our balance sheet. I'll turn the call over to Sean Goodman, our CFO, who will walk you through our financial results in Q1 in more detail. I'll return afterwards to provide some additional, and I might add, very important updates. Sean?

Thank you, Adam, good afternoon, everyone. The first quarter box office was indeed the strongest start to year in seven years as we welcomed 47.6 million guests to our theaters across the globe. This represented a 13.6% increase over last year. The operating leverage in our business when coupled with growth in our per-patron performance metrics and operating efficiency resulted in first quarter Adjusted EBITDA growth of $96 million and the achievement of a post-pandemic first quarter Adjusted EBITDA record of $38.3 million. In Q1, we set per-patron records in admissions revenue, food and beverage revenue, and total revenue in both our domestic and international businesses. We exceeded $1 billion in consolidated Q1 revenue for the first time since 2019.

Our consolidated contribution margin per patron, which is representative of the profit generated per incremental guest, grew 6% over last year to a record of $15.19. This measure is now 57% higher than the first quarter of pre-pandemic 2019, underscoring the meaningful improvements in the business over the last few years. This is why the box office does not need to fully recover to pre-pandemic levels for us to be able to achieve pre-pandemic levels of Adjusted EBITDA. Domestic total revenue per patron is now up 53% versus Q1 of pre-pandemic 2019, and domestic contribution margin per patron is up 67% compared to Q1 of pre-pandemic 2019. When reviewing our international operations, you should note that Q1 2026 results were impacted by a year-over-year increase in foreign currency exchange rates of approximately 10.8%.

International revenue per patron is now up 34.5% or 31.4% in constant currency versus Q1 of pre-pandemic 2019. International contribution margin per patron is up 38.6% or 35.4% in constant currency compared to Q1 of pre-pandemic 2019. Our results for the quarter reflect the box office growth combined with the impact of strong performance from our innovative loyalty programs, success with our pricing strategies, leadership in premium large formats, continued enhancements to our food and beverage offerings, disciplined operating efficiency, and ongoing optimization of our theater portfolio. We continue to actively reshape our theater footprint by investing in facility upgrades, proactively securing improved lease terms, closing underperforming locations, and selectively adding theaters to meaningfully strengthen the overall quality and profitability of our circuit. During the first quarter, we closed five locations and opened one.

Since 2020, we have now closed 218 locations and opened 66 for a net reduction of 152 theaters, or approximately 15% of our portfolio. Looking at the balance sheet, we ended the first quarter with $339 million of cash, excluding $42 million of restricted cash. As previously noted, our working capital cycle follows box office seasonality. Typically, we generate cash in the second and fourth quarters, and we use cash in the first and third quarters, with the largest outflow occurring in the first quarter. This pattern held true for the first quarter of 2026, contributing to our cash burn.

Balance sheet strength continues to be a priority, with a focus on maintaining liquidity, extending maturities, lowering borrowing costs, and reducing debt and leverage while still continuing to invest in our core business to enhance the moviegoing experience. To that end, as Adam noted, this quarter we successfully raised approximately $101 million through our at-the-market equity offering, plus the sale of Hycroft shares. The capital raised is being used to both strengthen the balance sheet and invest in initiatives that elevate and differentiate the guest experience.

Following the successful refinancing of $400 million of 12.75% debt maturing in 2027, with a new $425 million first lien term loan at 10.5% that is due in 2031, our sole remaining debt maturity prior to 2029 is $125.5 million of 6.25% unsecured notes, which mature in 2027. Of course, our balance sheet is further strengthened by the announcement earlier today that approximately $155.8 million of senior secured exchangeable notes due in 2030 are converting into equity. Yet another step along our path to reduce debt and improve financial metrics.

From a capital expenditure standpoint, CapEx net of lease incentives was $28.4 million in the quarter, and our 2026 CapEx guidance remains the same, between $175 million and $225 million net of lease incentives. In summary, the first quarter reflects a very strong start to the year with growth in attendance coupled with record per patron revenue and per patron profit driving significant improvement in Adjusted EBITDA. All of this positions us very well as we move into what we expect to be an increasingly robust box office environment as we progress through 2026. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Adam.

Thank you, Sean. Before we go to your questions, I want to briefly address five key topics that are important indicators of the progress being made at AMC. First, the 2026 film slate is bigger, bolder, deeper and more visually spectacular than what we've seen in many years. These are exactly the kinds of films that demand to be seen on the big screen in premium large format auditoriums, such as AMC's 225 IMAX at AMC auditoriums, our 181 Dolby Cinema at AMC screens, our eight ScreenX at AMC and two 4DX at AMC screens, along with our house brand 47 PRIME at AMC screens in the U.S. and 83 iSENSE auditoriums at ODEON across Europe. They all join our 3,543 Laser at AMC-equipped screens and our 168 XL screens across the world.

I'm giving you these numbers to remind you of the salient fact that no one has more premium screens than AMC. With the AMC Go Plan, we are not standing still on these quantities. We are yet again still significantly expanding the number of our premium offerings and adding even more laser projection technology. We also will be looking to increase the number of theaters, especially in the U.S., that offer our far more comfortable branded AMC Club Rocker seats, which have been the secret of our success at 3 notable theaters, Empire and Lincoln Square in Manhattan and Burbank in the Los Angeles market, which continually rank week after week as being among the absolute highest grossing theaters in the entire country.

We think they owe much of their success to the AMC Club Rocker seats, and we will be taking these Club Rockers to many more of our high-potential theaters. Second, speaking of our commitment to innovation, since 2023, with AMC's sensational partnership with Taylor Swift, AMC has gotten more and more involved in re-bringing musical artists in some shape or form to theaters. Taylor and Beyoncé and Usher and Billie Eilish and Nicole Scherzinger are just some of the musical greats who have graced AMC screens, either with concert films or album release celebrations. Today, I am especially excited to unveil something that is brand new to you all, that AMC will be taking music to a whole new level. We are announcing today a wholly new product line, Arena One at AMC.

Starting this June, right around the corner, AMC Theatres will offer a truly groundbreaking shared live concert experience from day one across more than 300 AMC Theatres locations in 89 markets nationwide. Arena One at AMC will deliver exclusive, real-time, interactive, live concerts where our artists will perform live from a purpose-built stage and engage and engage directly with audiences inside our theatres across the country. This is a highly immersive communal experience combining the energy of a live concert with the scale, comfort, accessibility, and affordability unique to AMC. We believe that this innovation can open an entirely new chapter in live entertainment while driving incremental attendance and revenue across our circuit.

Fascinatingly, with our Arena One at AMC experience, it is a two-way experience between the artist in a live stage remotely and the concertgoers all across the country in our various Arena One at AMC-equipped auditoriums. We are also excited to say that for the immediate future, this is an exclusive AMC offering. Arena One will only be available at AMC. Only available, that is, until we launch in the United States in June, because shortly thereafter, we will be taking Arena One AMC also to some 260 Odeon theaters in nine countries in Europe as well. This new live concert experience is an initiative that represents a major announcement by AMC Entertainment. The third topic for today, I also want to address the rapid developments of late as to exclusive theatrical windows.

The momentum in the industry is palpable with renewed commitments by our studio partners to both increase the number of theatrical movie releases and to extend theatrical windows to at least 45 days. Joining Disney, which has been constant in respecting an exclusive theatrical window heretofore, we are particularly pleased by the recent announcements by Universal and Paramount to do the same. We are appreciative of the public commentary by Sony and Lionsgate that a new industry standard is both needed and is emerging. Recognizing Paramount's commitment in this area, for example, this is one of the key reasons why we at AMC embraced Paramount's bid to move forward with its proposed Warner Brothers transaction.

This is such good news for the movie theater industry. We are pleased that AMC has played a central role in pushing this entire initiative of respecting longer theatrical windows forward. The real heroes here supporting our industry, especially on this windows topic, are the people who have really stepped up. Alan Bergman at Disney, Donna Langley at Universal, Tom Rothman at Sony, David Ellison at Paramount now, and eventually on behalf of Warner, and Adam Fogelson at Lionsgate all deserve praise for having a long-term view of restoring the health of our entire theatrical ecosystem. The fourth topic for today, the significance cannot be lost by anyone of Netflix's announcement that in February of 2027, just nine months from now, it will be giving Greta Gerwig's Narnia a global theatrical release with a 49-day window.

This is the biggest opportunity our industry has ever had to embrace Netflix as a theatrical content provider. Since our announcement at AMC in October 2025 that AMC and Netflix would be working cooperatively and collaboratively, we've had several joint projects which have been immensely successful for both companies. Netflix is well aware that AMC is solidly in their corner. We are all in with respect to Narnia, we enthusiastically will continue to seek more opportunities for our two great companies to work together in the future. Finally, fifth, it is so encouraging to remind you all that in just the past few weeks, film producers have reached multi-year labor agreements with both SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild, assuring us all of labor peace for several years ahead.

This means that the self-inflicted wounds of 2023 are not being repeated. To be sure, as we have said so often before, at AMC we're not entirely out of the woods yet. Challenges remain, but the indicators that we are seeing today point to a stronger and improving 2026. Indeed, it seems to us that so much has been breaking our way of late. Remember above all else two words: operating leverage. As revenues grow, which we believe they will, there's this very significant impact on AMC's bottom line financial performance. With that, let's turn the call over to our operator to poll for questions both from equity research analysts, and Sean will also give me some of the questions that have been submitted by our retail shareholders.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, press star one on your keypad now. To leave the queue at any time, please press star two. Once again that is star one to ask a question, and we'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone a chance to join the queue. Thank you. Our first question is with Eric Wold with Texas Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good afternoon. A couple questions. I guess first off on Arena One, not sure how much more you can share about briefly about the economics behind this, the technology spend required. Is the purpose-built stage something that you will own and be responsible for? Is this something that eventually will go more widespread? Is this geared towards artists currently on tour looking to reach markets where they're not going physically, or is it something that's kind of more for artists kind of doing this as a one-off opportunity?

Thank you, Eric. I'm happy to comment. There is a separate press release going out about Arena One, sort of concurrent with this call, so you'll get more detail. We've, we really are blown away by the technology where the artist performing in this purpose-built stage can actually interact with our audiences all around the country and eventually in Europe. The business proposition is so appealing. As you know, we've done a lot of things with even as we shaved down our capital expenditure program, and we were able to get Arena One implemented with essentially no upfront spending by AMC.

The economics are this is a rev share model where AMC will retain a significant percentage of the admissions revenue and the food and beverage revenue that occurs in our theaters. Arena One will also get a significant percentage of the ticket revenue that we generate. For concerts, these things will be cheap, but they're not gonna be priced at movie theater levels. The prices will vary by artist and by market, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see ticket prices in the $40-$75 range. As I said, that's very inexpensive when you look at what it costs to actually attend a live concert in an arena or a sports stadium.

Another benefit of the Arena One experience, unlike when you see a live concert in a large 20,000-seat arena or a 70,000 ft stadium, it feels to you like you're sitting in the front row because the artist is right in front of you. The product is great for consumers. The economics are favorable both to Arena One and for us. In terms of the artists who do it, we think we'll see whole sets of artists who'll come to our studio that is a massive complex in Eastern Pennsylvania, who will perform specifically for the Arena One audience. We're creating in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million seats available to Arena One concert ticket buyers if you add in our U.S. and European theaters.

This is a very exciting initiative that we got this done as an exclusive for the foreseeable future, that makes it just that much better for us.

Perfect. Thank you. Just my follow-up question, kind of going back to the, you know, the contribution margin per patron and kind of the growth you've experienced since, you know, pre-pandemic. I think I have the numbers right, 57% in the U.S. and 39% international. Again, if that was ex FX or not. Maybe talk about your thoughts on closing that gap overseas, the opportunity to do that, maybe what's been holding back the growth there or maybe say a different way, what's been driving the strong growth here versus overseas? Where are you with various ticketing and concession strategies you oversee that could kind of help to close that gap in the coming years?

Well, both Sean and I will take this question. Historically, our guests in our European theaters spend less on non-ticket type purchases in the buildings. It's not surprising to me that our U.S. performance would be higher than our European performance. We think that both numbers are great. The fact that we were able to drive up per patron contribution by so much in the U.S. and so much in Europe, we think they're both items of success. Sean, do you want to add anything?

Yeah. I think the U.S. has benefited from two areas that are a little bit different to the international business. The first is the U.S. business has benefited from the renegotiation of our screen advertising contract with National CineMedia. That has helped our other revenues per patron. You don't see that sort of impact in the international business. The second is when you look at food and beverage, which is obviously a huge driver of this area, the U.S. is a little more ahead in terms of merchandising food and beverage revenue with the popcorn collectible concessions. Europe is catching up in that area, and I think you saw this last quarter, Q1. Look at the European growth rate. It's quite phenomenal actually, like in excess of 6%, and that's in constant currency.

I think it's over 18% outside of constant currency. You're seeing some catch up in Europe, which is pretty exciting. Then I think there's an opportunity, you know, from an average ticket price point of view. We have had more competition on ticket pricing in Europe, but that is starting to normalize, so we've seen some benefits there. You're gonna see more variable type of pricing in Europe where it is more accepted than in the U.S. market, and I think that gives us opportunities in Europe as well.

While we're talking about Europe, Eric, I just wanna say that the first four months of the year, the first quarter that's reported and what we've seen with these successful movies in April, Europe's been gangbuster successful for AMC this year. Like we've been blowing through our budgets in Europe, week after week, month after month. We're so encouraged by our strong performance across our European network. Next question, operator.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Mike Hickey with StoneX. Your line is open.

Hey, Adam, Sean, John. Great quarter, guys. Congratulations. First quarter or first question from us, Adam. A lot of wins for you, a lot of progress from you and your team here. Looking at the window situation, I guess that's a win for the whole industry. Strong box office. Your debt situation has improved dramatically, a lot of work on your guys' part. You've optimized your network. You've been innovative with Arena One, and you stayed disciplined on CapEx. Adam, I guess the question is if you can sort of give us some an update on your path to free cash flow, milestones, maybe timing.

The follow-up would be thinking about Arena One here, depending on how you think you can scale it, if that will sort of lower maybe that box office target that you would need to get to to be free cash flow positive. The follow-up.

I'll let Sean talk about free cash flow positive and milestones like along the like. I wanna just point out one thing to everybody. Mike, nice of you to list the sort of the our getting things done on the to-do list. You know, I'm, we put a lot of personal capital into play to convince studios to lengthen windows. Our cooperating with Netflix has been a major change. As I said on the call, things really seem to have been breaking our way of late. I just wanna talk about the balance sheet for just a second.

I would remind everybody that in the quarter we just completed, especially with this $155 million debt to equity conversion that was announced this morning, that lowers our long-term debt to about $3.9 billion. Our debt going into COVID was over $5 billion. When you added in all the deferred rent obligations that we picked up in the closed year of 2020, by the time we ended 2020, we had over $6 billion of either actual long-term debt or deferred theater lease obligations that we've gotten rid of a third of it is, especially in a suboptimal box office environment the past several years we think is just a superb accomplishment. We obviously have been paying attention to driving our income as best we can and to improving our balance sheet as best we can.

As we look back on the last crazy six years that the good Lord threw our way with COVID and its aftermath, we're very proud of what we've accomplished at this company. As for free cash flow milestones, Sean?

Thanks, Adam. We are very focused on taking steps each day really to reduce the level of box office required for us to be free cash flow breakeven or free cash flow positive. If one looks back to pre-pandemic, the box office required to be free cash flow positive was significantly, very significantly higher than it is today. That's despite the fact that you have six, seven years of past costs that have increased significantly. Our debt services costs are also significantly higher than they were at pre-pandemic as well. That just gives you an indication of what has happened in the business to reduce the required box office to be free cash flow breakeven.

I said in my prepared remarks, and I've said it a number of times, that we don't need the box office to get to pre-pandemic levels to reach the same level of EBITDA as we had pre-pandemic. That is certainly the case as our profit and contribution margin per patron improves over time. A reference point that one can look at to get an indication of where we are from a box office/free cash flow perspective is look at the last nine months of 2025. Last nine months of 2025, we were not only free cash flow breakeven, we were free cash flow positive. Now there are some working capital benefits in that period of time that you can adjust for, but that just gives you an indication of where the business is at the moment.

I'll add one other thing, is that as the box office improves, automatically our interest rate on about $2.9 billion of debt reduces because inherent in the covenants or debt agreements that we have there is that the coupon or interest on that debt declines as our leverage improves. That will help us as well.

Mike, to your question about Arena One.

We know the technology works, and we know the economics work because our investment was upfront was like nonexistent, and it's a revenue share basis, which is sort of the whole model of our industry with studio partners. I think that what will determine. Well, we know that Americans and Europeans like to go to concerts, and we know that they pay up for it. I think ultimately the real success of Arena One will be based on what artists we attract to have these live concert events that are broadcast to 600-ish theaters in the U.S. and Europe.

We're quite optimistic, and as we said, we believe this is gonna be a very profitable activity for us, and one that we have on exclusive basis, and one that, we think has a great potential opportunity to deliver real dollars to the bottom line.

Thanks, guys. Second question from us is on film volume. You know, CinemaCon, obviously a lot of action this year, Adam, with the Paramount/Warner Bros. deal. David, I think, made a really compassionate pitch to you and your peer set, exhibitors at the conference, really sort of committing to that 30 films and 45 day window. There also seems to be a healthy amount of skepticism just from history, I guess, on their ability to execute on the 30 films. Just curious if you could sort of frame that for us. I'm guessing even if they got close, it would be a win. Curious your view on their ability, when you talk to David, for them to deliver on that promise.

On Netflix, You know, it's obviously very exciting and but also I think there's, you know, some pushback, maybe this is just a one-off led by Greta. Just wondering, you know, when you talk to Netflix and Ted, the appetite you see from them in terms of putting additional films into exhibition, and if you think that this sort of 51 day window to streaming is a workable model for other films in the future as well. Thanks, guys.

Let me talk about Paramount first. We've had private conversations with Paramount for months and months at the highest levels. What you described as the sort of passionate commitment that David made at CinemaCon in front of 5,000 people in the auditorium, he and the people who work for him made those same commitments to AMC privately in the days, weeks, and months previously. We believe him. We have great respect for the leadership at Paramount. By that, just like we have great respect for the leadership team at Warner. They had a sensational year in 2025. We strongly hope that the filmmakers at Warner stay because they're great. We have enormous confidence and trust in the leadership under David at Paramount.

We believe that he is fully committed to the promises that he made and fully capable of pulling them off. As for Netflix, again, there's been a tremendous amount of top-to-top diplomacy between the two companies that dating back to the fall of 2025. At AMC, we were very pleased to have participated in three projects with Netflix. The K-pop Bring Back at Halloween, the Stranger Things season finale at New Year's Eve, and the introduction of new episodes of One Piece, just a couple of months back. The success of those, to me, I think, is one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons that Netflix is trying to see what happens with Narnia.

I believe that the three things that we've done already with Netflix have been successful, that Narnia will be successful, that we will find other successful opportunities to work with Netflix. What this leads to, I'll leave you all to speculate amongst yourselves. It's not my place to sort out what or announce what is or is not Netflix's strategy. But I can tell you that the interpersonal dynamics that have existed between Netflix and AMC since September of 2025 have been very positive. Both companies have said repeatedly, both publicly and privately, that we are looking to do more together.

Awesome. Thank you, guys. Good luck.

Thank you. We'll move on to Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon. This is Chad from Macquarie. Wanted to ask about the merchandising opportunities.

I thought it was your cousin. I thought it was your cousin Brad.

Alter ego. It's after 5 o'clock. Thinking about the merchandising opportunities, Adam, I know you talked about this business, which kinda went from nothing, was on its way to approach $100 million in 2025. It seems like based on, you know, just looking at the titles and the content throughout the year, this should be another big merchandising year. Wondering if you could help us think about kinda what you have in store and how this business can continue to grow as more people come out to the theaters. Thank you.

If you judge by the number of people who wanted Prada purse popcorn bags, there is no end to the consumer's desire to have more movie-themed merchandise at our theaters. I think that we are fully capable of driving 20% growth per annum in this merchandise business, that's before Arena One. We also know that merchandise is very popular amongst live concertgoers. As you said, Chad, in 2022, our revenues were nothing, it's a $100 million a year business for AMC currently, and it's gonna continue to grow.

Okay. Just in terms of the convert, what the thinking was to strike that now given where the balance sheet is and the outlook. I know there's always working capital shifts. Sean, you talked about that. What was the reasoning for executing the convert deal this week? Thank you.

Yeah. Chad, in terms of the agreement for that exchange note, there is a mandatory conversion provision based on our share price. Our share price achieved the targets for the mandatory convert. Therefore, we were able to convert that debt into equity. The benefit of this, of course, is it takes $155.8 million of debt off the balance sheet. There were also various covenants associated with that debt, with that debt no longer being on the balance sheet, it frees us up to be even more opportunistic going forward in terms of refinancing opportunities that we may have.

Given, just a little aside on that, given the refinancing of the $400 million of owing debt due in 2027, we now can be completely opportunistic in terms of taking advantage of lower interest rates and extending maturities when those opportunities arise. We're not forced into a situation of having to refinance, based on a coming up maturity.

Chad, when you remember how much of our debt was due in 2026 or 2027, we've moved around $3 billion to a maturity of 2031. Or 2029 or 2031, I should say. We have a sizable amount of debt that's currently due in 2029, which is a long time from now. We do believe that as AMC's well, let me just go back to operating leverage. If the box office is gonna grow, AMC's EBITDA is gonna grow. If our EBITDA grows, by definition, our leverage levels fall. If our leverage levels fall, we ought to be able to refinance some, even our 2029 debt, at significantly lower interest rates and push their maturity out further.

I do think our management of our balance sheet has been one of our most important success stories of the past few years.

Thank you both.

That's fine. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move on to Patrick Sholl with Barrington Research. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. You provided a lot of detail on the screen-based. I was wondering if you could provide a just a little bit more on just where you think you are in that process of kind of right-sizing the footprint for profitability. Thank you.

Yes. I think the press has misunderstood some of the comments we've been making. I saw articles after the last quarterly earnings call that AMC was, quote, "closing theaters." That's not the way to look at this. The way to look at this is AMC will constantly be pruning the fleet, which is to say that, above 10% of our leases come up for renewal every single year. When we look at those theaters, some number of them are huge home run winners, some number of them could be more profitable if we could renegotiate rents with theater landlords, and some number of them are just, like, older buildings that are now 20, 30 years old. They may not be in ideal locations. They might have been in ideal locations when they were built 25 years ago, but not today.

It makes sense to let them go. At the same time, we are also adding new theaters. I mean, I would point out that the 60 theaters that we, these are round numbers. The 60 theaters that we opened in the last several years outgross the 200 theaters that we closed. I don't see this as, like, what's the right size of our footprint. I think that this is a perpetual business strategy that as our theaters come up for renewal consideration every single year, we're gonna be thrilled to renew some, we're gonna talk hard with landlords with others, and we'll close others.

At the same time all that's going on, we'll continue to look for either more new build theaters or more spot acquisitions where we can add theaters to our footprint that we think are economically attractive to do so. You know, think of it as, you know, you open shiny new theaters and you close older, more tired ones. That's I think that's something that we'll do year in and year out for years, if not decades to come.

Okay. Just on the shift in windows, do you think there's any sort of like consumer relearning that needs to happen with just, like, the longer windows? Or how do you kind of like expect that to sort of ultimately impact like either the tail of box office or just overall-

I will use the.

in our future?

Without attributing it to the studio executive who said it, I was at a industry-wide conference a few weeks ago, the head of one of major studios said that we are going to retrain the consumer, that movies will be in theaters longer and the movies will be going to the home at a slower pace. There are actually two windows to pay attention to, not one. We all talk about the 45-day window as a shorthand, but there are two windows. The first is the so-called PVOD window, the premium video-on-demand window, which is when movies go to the home where consumers can pay to watch that movie. Often, those movies are priced at $20 for a home viewing.

Also the same studios who've been committing to a 45-day window, many of them have also committed to a 90-day SVOD window or subscription video-on-demand window, that's when not when the movies go to the home where people pay for it to watch it, but it goes into subscription services where once you've paid your monthly membership fee up front, the cost of an incremental movie is zero. In the minds of many consumers, they're paying nothing to watch a movie at home.

It's just as important to us that the 90-day window go into play because it's giving the opportunity for theater operators, AMC included, to convey a sense to the consumers that if you wanna be part of this global phenomenon of seeing a movie when it's hot, you gotta do it in the theater and you can't wait till it comes in the home. That's something that's quite different than movies going to the home at 17 or 21 or 25 days after initial release.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. At this time, I'd be happy to return the call to Sean Goodman.

Thanks, operator. Adam, given the time, we'll just address one or two of the retail questions. The first question here, very high level broad question about we have a lot of growth opportunities, and there's a lot of things we talk about. The question to sort of prioritize, what are the key growth areas that you're focused on?

There are so many. There's so much opportunity within this company because of the operating leverage that I talked to in the call. As our revenues rise, our EBITDA rises at a faster pace. What we've been fighting for the last three years is that revenues have been, for the industry, have been flat. That seems to be changing fairly dramatically in 2026. We're looking, of course, at just the fact that there are more films coming out with bigger consumer appeal, where we can attract more guests to our theaters, which means you can sell them more food and drink, and we can introduce merchandise as we have over the past couple of years.

As one of the things that we have obviously noticed is that our premium large format screens command higher prices and sell first. Just the other day, when Michael came out, 10%, sorry, the approximately 48% of our revenues for Michael opening weekend took place on premium large format screens, even though premium large format screens are only less than 10% of the total screen count. Like, these are stunning numbers. We've obviously already figured out ways to significantly increase the number of premium large format screens. We created XL, extra large screens out of thin air, out of whole cloth two years ago, and we now have 168 of them.

I would not be surprised if we don't double that count of XL screens by the end of next year. There's also the opportunity, I believe, as I mentioned, to put in better seating at some of our most productive theaters. These new Club Rocker seats that we put in at Empire and Lincoln Square and Burbank, they are not recliner seats, so we don't have the 40% seat loss that we have when we put in recliners, but they're wider, they're much more comfortable, guests love them. And we've already identified 30 of our highest grossing theaters where we could put these seats in at pretty inexpensive capital costs because you don't have to renovate the whole theater or build new platforms. You're just putting in new seats themselves. On and on. It's sort of opportunity after opportunity after opportunity.

I also think there's opportunity to make our marketing programs even more potent than they are today. As many of you know, A-List is a smash hit, especially among Gen Z moviegoers. We just, in the last week, crossed 1 million people who are members of our A-List program. Our Stubs program, which is our loyalty program, which has 39 million member households. It only had 2 million member households when I joined this company 10 years ago. Stubs is a smashing program for us. There are some evolutions in the Stubs program that we think we can introduce later in 2026 that will appeal to people going to see, let's call it six to 15 movies a year, which is a slightly different audience than our A-List crowd, who tends on average to see more like 30 movies a year.

It's there's so much opportunity for this company. Not the least is there's pricing power in this business. There's pricing power both ways. The fact that people are willing to pay more to that has been the case traditionally, to see movies in our premium large format and extra large format screens. That's encouraging. I'll also tell you that in July of last year, we significantly upped our game by introducing Discount Wednesdays in addition to Discount Tuesdays, rebranding both as 50% off Tuesdays and Wednesdays. That's been a major positive for AMC. It's an example where taking prices down has actually worked for our company as well.

In the interest of time, we're over an hour, and that answer to that last question sort of touched on a lot of things that you might have asked me, Sean. I think at this point we're gonna let everyone run from this call. We thank you much. This was a great quarter for AMC, the first quarter of 2026. It was our best quarterly results for the first quarter in seven years. Our EBITDA was up $96 million year-over-year, quarter-to-quarter. It reminds us all how much operating leverage there is in this business. If revenues rise, which we believe firmly that they will, knowing the movie slate that's coming for the rest of this year, it's a very good news story for AMC going forward.

Thank you for joining us today, one and all.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.