CEO Adam Aron On Billie Eilish Listening Event In Theaters Next Week & Renegotiating AMC Entertainment’s Hefty Debt

deadline.com:

AMC Entertainment’s biggest issue right now may be its $4.5 billion debt and the fact that most comes due in 2026. On a conference call post-earning today, CEO Adam Aron addressed it publicly for the first time, assuring investors the giant theater chain has been working with lenders for almost a year to extend the maturities and he’s hopeful they will. “I can assure everyone listening to this call that the management of this company, which has been pretty smart in how we’ve navigated through the pandemic … is wholly focused on the debt maturities that are due in 2026.

This is not something that we will look at next year or the year after.” The good news, he said, “is that we have lender syndicates who generally like AMC, have worked with us before, and are working with us now, and he’s “hopeful” for an agreement. “It has our highest attention.

We know about our obligations going forward and we intend to refinance, if at all possible, and we hope that we can do so on attractive terms.”   The company has indeed pulled out all the stops to survive Covid and its aftermath, some thrust on it like meme stock status, other just scrappy like creating, and then terminating, a new class of equity (APE), getting a court to allow it to sell shares over the objections of retail stockholders.

It built up cash reserves and has been steadily paying down debt. The company reported fourth-quarter earnings today (after preannouncing them last month) and said it had $624 million in cash at the end of March.