AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron has quoted famed British PM Winston Churchill during their quarterly earnings calls with investors this week where they also revealed a truly brutal 90% drop in earnings for the third quarter of this year compared to last year.
There was no way to cushion the bad news of earning just $119 million for the quarter as compared to the $1.3 billion they pulled in Q3 2019. At the end of September, AMC had $418 million in cash and was burning through around $108 million a month to keep the organisation running.
Aron then went on to incorporate part of Churchill’s famed speech as a rallying cry to show optimism for his sector: “In our industry, the gravity of our situation puts us all in almost a warlike position of resolve and determination. We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields.”
The sentiment is quite different to last quarter with Aron talking confidently about AMC living to see another day. This time out he says it comes down to one thing – the ability to raise more money to “lengthen the runway into next summer. The simple question becomes, will we raise the needed capital or not?”. This is going by the belief that a vaccine will have been settled on and widely distributed by next summer.
Aron says approximately 44 films by his count were pushed out of 2020 and are teed up and ready to go in 2021, with the lack of high profile studio fare now the main reason cinemas are having trouble coming back.
Source: Deadline
