AMC Raises Hundreds of Millions to Survive COVID-19
With worries they would shutter, AMC has raised enough cash to make it through the winter.
We were worried that AMC would not be back to show movies when COVID left us. Theaters all over have fallen apart and closed their doors. But recently, AMC announced it has raised $917 million in capital to stay afloat while vaccines are distributed.
If you want the details, Variety reports that of "the $917 million, AMC has raised $506 million of equity, from the issuance of 164.7 million new common shares, along with the previously announced securing of $100 million of additional first-lien debt and the concurrent issuance of 22 million new common shares to convert $100 million of second-lien debt into equity."
Adam Aron, AMC CEO and president, said in a statement: “Today, the sun is shining on AMC. After securing more than $1 billion of cash between April and November of 2020, through equity and debt raises along with a modest amount of asset sales, we are proud to announce today that over the past six weeks AMC has raised an additional $917 million capital infusion to bolster and solidify our liquidity and financial position. This means that any talk of an imminent bankruptcy for AMC is completely off the table.”
Aron said continued success depends upon the vaccine.
“Looking ahead, for AMC to succeed over the medium term, we are going to need for much of the general public in the U.S. and abroad to be vaccinated,” Aron said. “To that end, we are grateful to the world’s medical communities for their heroic efforts to thwart the COVID virus. Similarly, we welcome the commitment by the new Biden administration and of other governments domestically and internationally to a broad-based vaccination program.”
This is a huge deal for theaters across the country. With AMC staying open, we can mostly avoid studios sweeping in to buy them and only show their movies. This also means places like Netflix and Apple probably won't be purchasing theaters to show the movies they want to be Academy Award eligible.
Furthermore, when studios release movies after all of this, they can be sure there will be screens open. Movies are going to come back in a big way as people are vaccinated. Having places to go to the movies will help deliver huge box office returns for the titles we were supposed to get in 2020.
We're so close to the end! Let us know what movie you want to see first in the comments.
Source: Variety
