DIS & AMCX : Buy For The Summer Blockbusters
“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Marvel’s (DIS) - Get Walt Disney Company Report mightiest sorcerer and directed by Sam Raimi, arrives nearly two decades after Raimi’s “Spider-Man” kick started the modern superhero boom.
Packed with twists and cameos, critics for the most part are liking the film, even if it sometimes sags under the weight of having to play off too many storylines from the larger Marvel Cinematic universe.
So far the film is off to a strong start with $36 million ticket sales on Thursday, which is one of the greatest sneak preview grosses ever.
But will the film, and the blockbuster season it presages, going to be enough for the beleaguered theater chain AMC (AMCX) - Get AMC Networks Inc. Class A Report?
AMC Hasn’t Had A Great Year So Far
Even before the pandemic hit, movie theaters were having a rough go of it.
“Avengers: Endgame” was a record-setting hit in 2019, but AMC nonetheless reported a net loss of $13.5 million that year, even as total revenue was up 2.4% to $1.44 billion from the year before.
2020 was, obviously, devastating to movie theaters, and AMC had one of its worst years ever, losing $4.6 billion.
Things rebounded for the company in 2021, thanks to vaccines and, for the most part, Marvel, with the phenomenal success of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as well hits like “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”
AMC saw an annual increase of 103%, with $2.54 billion in revenue, but this was still just 46.2 percent of the 5.47-billion-dollar revenue the company reported in 2019.
AMC hasn’t announced its first quarter earnings just yet, though we recently predicted that despite the continued success of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and DC’s hit “The Batman,” AMC management had signaled that it was a difficult quarter.
“The consensus among experts is for AMC to report a loss per share of 68 cents,” noted TheStreet’s Bernard Zamonin.
“That would imply growth of more than 50% compared to the same quarter last year, when the company was still struggling to climb out of the hole that the pandemic had put it in.”
AMC Needs Blockbusters, ASAP
One of AMC’s main problems is that thanks to streaming, it’s harder than ever to get people to see anything that’s not a blockbuster.
The cost of a ticket these days is usually around the same as a one month subscription to a streaming service.
Now people have gotten accustomed to waiting for the latest romantic comedy or indie drama to pop up on Netflix or Hulu, while only forking over cash for blockbuster films.
This can put theaters in a difficult position.
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$AMC Entertainment(AMC)$
NYSE:AMC fell by 6.33% during Friday’s tradingwhile Doctor Strange 2 is already posting massive numbers at the box office.
NYSE:AMC saw a major decline during Friday trading in the last session before it reports its Q1 earnings on Monday. Shares of AMC dropped by 6.33% and closed the trading week at $13.76. The closing price indicated the first time AMC had closed a session below $14.00 since May of 2021. All three major averages continued to fall lower on Friday although the damage was nowhere near as severe as the sell off during Thursday’s session. The Dow Jones closed out its sixth straight losing week, while the NASDAQ fell for its fifth consecutive week for the first time since 2012.
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