Q1 2025 AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc Earnings Call
Speaker Change: Greetings and welcome to the AMC Entertainment Holdings Incorporated First Quarter 2025 earnings webcast.
Speaker Change: At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation.
Speaker Change: If any much require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce John Merriwether. Thank you, John . You may begin.
John Merriwether: Thank you, Julian. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to AMC's first quarter, 2025 earnings webcast.
Speaker Change: With me this afternoon is Adam Aron, our chairman and CEO and Sean Goodman, our chief financial officer.
Speaker Change: Before I turn the call, the webcast over to Adam, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the comments made by a management during this webcast may contain forward-looking statements that are based on management's current expectations.
Speaker Change: Numerous risks on certainties 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 10K and 10Q.
Speaker Change: Several of the 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 statement, listeners are cautioned against relying on these statements.
Speaker Change: The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future events.
Speaker Change: On this webcast, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA and 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.
Speaker Change: 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 Invest Relations section of our website at amctheaters.com later today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam.
Adam: Thank you, John . Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us today.
Adam: Anyone who's ever driven a car knows that you spend far more time looking out the front windshield than you do looking at the rearview mirror.
Adam: That metaphor of it being more important to looking ahead, not looking backwards to the end of the day.
Adam: is particularly appropriate for the movie theater industry at this particular moment in time because the first quarter of 2025 was not at all indicative.
Adam: of the current strength and what we expect will be the coming strength of the movie theater business.
Simply put,
Adam: We believe that a dramatic rear-wakening of the industry-wide domestic box office has begun.
Right now,
Movie theaters are literally booming!
Adam: and we believe that this great news about a robust box office will continue for the foreseeable future.
Speaker Change: Clearly, though, that was not the case in the first quarter of 2025, which was entirely consistent with our earlier pronouncements that calendar year 2025 would start out slowly.
How slow was it? Really slow Oh
Speaker Change: Setting aside those first quarters directly impacted by COVID and its aftermath, the 2025 January to March industry wide domestic box office was the lowest it has been since 1996.
Speaker Change: But fortunately for us, in brilliant contrast to Q1 of 2025, we continue to believe that movie going demand for the balance of 2025 and all of 26, 2026 will show great strength.
So much so, in fact...
Speaker Change: that we now believe that the full year 2025 industry-wide domestic box office will come in at the high end.
Speaker Change: of our previously forecasted range of it being $500 million to $1 billion a head.
of the Industrywide Domestic 2024 Box Office.
Speaker Change: Even more compelling, we also believe that the 2026 box office will wind up being considerably larger than that of 2025.
Speaker Change: After all, the April 2025 in Shwai Domestic Box Office, April being the first month of Q2 was double.
Speaker Change: The Box Office of April 24, and so far in May, the box office again has been running at double the rate of a year ago.
Speaker Change: and the movies that will be released through the end of 2025 are Barnburners, one after another. As examples, just look at the dozen hit movie titles being released over the next 11 weekends, including among others.
Disney's Lilo and Stitch as well as Iliot [inaudible]
Tom Cruises, Mission Impossible, the final reckoning.
Speaker Change: Sony's Karate Kid, and 28 years later, Lionsgate's John Wick movie, Universal's how to train your dragon and Megan 2.0, along with Jurassic World Rebirth.
Apple's F1, Warner's DC Studios Superman, and Paramount's Smurfs.
All the way through year end.
Speaker Change: We will be seeing a pulpery of movie riches gracing the silver screens of AMZ theaters and
Speaker Change: It's going to be one potentially huge movie after another, after another, after another all the way through the year end opening of Avatar Fire and Ash in mid-December.
Speaker Change: Moving from the industry to AMC, we can take great comfort in AMC's resilience being on full display in the first quarter of 2025.
Speaker Change: AMC surpassed Wall Street expectations, yet another quarter that's been the case.
Speaker Change: and our ability to continue growing perpetrant operating metrics, including achieving an all-time first quarter record for US admissions revenue perpetrant, despite the challenging Fox office backdrop speaks volumes.
Speaker Change: About the enduring power of the AMC brand, the exceptional appeal of both our AMC Stubbs loyalty and a list subscription programs and our market leading premium foreman offerings.
Speaker Change: Given a box office for the rest of 2025 that is expected to be soaring above that of a lackluster Q1, we also expect AMC's coming financial results to show market growth.
over our 2004 results.
Looking ahead [inaudible]
Speaker Change: The release calendar is stacked with action driven blockbusters, precisely the kind of high intensity visually spectacular content.
that plays best. [inaudible]
on the big screen.
Speaker Change: with our injury leading PLF footprint of IMAX, Dolby Cinema, Private AMC, and I-Sense PLF screens in Europe , together with our expanding portfolio of Excel and AMC auditoriums.
Speaker Change: A.M.C. theaters and audience cinemas are perfectly positioned to lead into this action-heavy slate and reports significantly improving financial results in the balance of 2025.
My overarching comment about 2-1-2025 is this.
Speaker Change: Anyone trying to draw any negative conclusions about the appeal of movie theaters from the results of the first quarter of 2025 is highly likely to be mistaken.
Speaker Change: because the industry-wide domestic box office in Q1 was in our view a distorting outlier, an anomaly that has already corrected itself.
Speaker Change: We continue to believe that movie going demand in theaters for the balance of 25 and again in all of 2026 we'll show enormous strength.
That is spectacular news.
Speaker Change: for AMC Entertainment. I'll now pass the webcast over to Sean, our CFO , to provide more detail after which I'll return to provide an update on AMC's Go Plan. Sean?
Sean: Thanks Adam, and thanks to everyone for joining us this afternoon.
Sean: As Adam noted, the first quarter box office was indeed challenging.
Sean: Nonetheless, while the North American box office was down 12.4% compared to last year, A&C in fact outperformed by around 150 basis points.
Recording a Domestic Admissions Revenue Decline of 10.9 Cent [inaudible]
Sean: Despite the relatively modest box office in the first quarter, Ansley's business fundamentals were a bust, as evidenced by the sustained strength of our underlying performance metrics.
Sean: which coupled with the operating leverage that has inherited our business model mean that we are exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on the industry recovery that is expected in the remainder of 2025 and beyond.
Sean: The soft to noon are focused by comments from some of the key indicators of the health of our business.
Sean: In Q1, a consolidated revenue put patron on a constant currency basis.
Sean: was up 1.6% year over year and notably up a very substantial 40% compared to pre-pandemic 2019.
Sean: This was fueled by a 49% increase in food and beverage revenue perpetrant, along with a 26% increase in admissions revenue perpetrant.
Sean: Even more comparing, we grew our consolidated contribution margin per patron on a constant currency basis by 3.7% compared to last year and this is approximately 51% higher than pre-pandemic 2019.
Sean: Note that contribution margin for Patreon is calculated as total revenue minus full and food and beverage costs.
This divided by the total attendance [inaudible]
Sean: This measures intended to provide an indication of the incremental profit that we generate with each additional movie card.
Sean: and this incremental profit to the movie goer is around 51% higher than it was in pre-pandemic 2019.
Sean: With admissions revenue per patron achieving an all-time Q1 record of $12.31, this despite a notable lack of PLF friendly titles during the quarter.
Sean: Compared to Pre-Pandemic 2019, Domestic Revenue Prepatron is now up more than 45% and domestic contribution margin for patron is now up by a remarkable 59% compared to Pre-Pandemic 2019.
Sean: Our international market for liberty is strong and sustained growth with total revenue per pageant of 32% and contribution margin per pageant of approximately 39% on a constant currency basis when compared to pre-Bandemic 2019.
Sean: In summary, while the year of a year revenue growth and heat performance metrics might appear to be somewhat modest
Sean: The sustained gains of the pre-pandemic 2019 are significant and they illustrate the resilience of the business and successful execution of our strategic growth initiatives focused on enhancing the guest experience and optimizing our profitability.
Sean: Over the last five years we have also been strategically managing our theatre portfolio. We've been renegotiating Lisa's, closing underperforming locations and investing in new high performing
Sean: In total, since the beginning of January 2020, we've closed 200 and we've opened 62 locations for a net reduction of 138 theaters or nearly 14%.
Sean: In the last 15 months alone, we've closed 38 theaters and opened just three. And as previously noted, the 62 new locations opened since 2020, very significantly, I'll perform the 200 closed locations.
Sean: Going forward will continue to actively manage the theatre portfolio, to manage our lease costs, optimize our footprint and enhance overall quality of it at earnings from our circuit.
Sean: The sustained growth in our perpetrator matrix, the ongoing optimization of our theatre footprint and the inherent operating leverage in our business, allow us to reinforce an important point.
Sean: We do not require a full return to the 2019 box office levels in order to achieve pre-pandemic levels of a gesture deeper term.
Let's move over to the balance sheet.
Sean: As we previously discussed, AMC typically experiences a seasonal working capital shift from positive in Q4 when box office receipts are strong to negative in Q1 when firm rental payments become due.
Sean: This swing is amplified when the P1 box office is especially soft as it was this year.
Sean: But looking ahead to the remainder of the year, provided that the box office performs in line with our expectations, we anticipate being
Sean: and we continue to take actions to strengthen our balance sheet.
Sean: At the beginning of this year, we raised approximately $170 million of incremental equity capital.
Sean: And since the beginning of 2022, we've lowered the principal value of our debt and finance leases by approximately $1.1 billion and we've repaid approximately $281 million of their third leases
Sean: All of this for total debt and deferred rent reduction of $1.34 billion in a little over three years.
Now a few quick data points.
Sean: Capix, Net of Landlord Contributions, was 42.8 million in the first quarter, and we continue to expect net Capix in 2025 to be in the range of 175 to 225 million dollars.
Sean: And the deferred rent balance at the end of Q1 was approximately $34.3 million, and we plan to reduce this balance by around $4.7 million during the remainder of the year.
Sean: Our capital allocation of priorities remain one, ensuring sufficient equity, two, reducing financial leverage.
Sean: 3. Investing in our existing business and 4. Investing in attractive high return growth initiatives.
Sean: with an exceptionally strong start to Q2. This is already nicely in the books and an impressive lineup of films ahead. 2025 is on pace to deliver the strongest box office.
Sean: Since 2019 and the team at ANC is ready to seize the opportunity and unlock meaningful values for our stakeholders.
With that, I'll pass the call to Adam.
Thank you, Sean.
Speaker Change: Today, I'd like to take you a little bit deeper in how we're proactively positioning AMC to capitalize on what we firmly believe will be a resurgent box office for the balance of 2025 and full year
It starts with our strategic playbook.
Speaker Change: The AMC Go Plan, a forward-leaning intensely designed blueprint to elevate the guest experience and AMC theaters and audience cinemas.
Speaker Change: It was named the GO Plan, G.O. because we're going on the offensive. Frankly, we got tired of being on our heels defensively for the past five years, and it's time...
to move forward with big ideas.
Speaker Change: The GO plan is built around AMC's most compelling competitive strengths.
Our unmatched customer loyalty programs, our sophisticated marketing engine.
Speaker Change: Our innovative food and beverage offerings and our global leadership in immersive, premium large format experiences.
Speaker Change: AMC is already the global leader in premium large format and extra large format screens with more than 600 such screens in total.
Speaker Change: That's more premium experiences than that offered by any other movie theater operator in the world.
Speaker Change: But under the AMC GO plan, starting this year in 2025 and continuing in the years ahead,
Speaker Change: We are going to further that lead and we'll do so in a big way. We expect to grow our pre-un large format and extra large format screens from more than 600 now to more than
in the months and years ahead.
Speaker Change: To do so, we'll be doubling our footprint of upgraded IMAX with laser screens by converting some of our older IMAX auditoriums into state-of-the-art IMAX with laser systems.
We're also-
Speaker Change: Growing our count of Dolby City machines by almost 25% adding about 40 more. Both of these growth initiatives are structured so as to require a minimum up front capital expenditures from AMC.
Speaker Change: We expect more than triple our number of prime and AMC screens in the United States, growing the number of theaters with prime to 100.
Speaker Change: and something I'm particularly excited about. We've also just opened our very first XLF or extra large four-metal auditoriums in the United States.
Speaker Change: This initiative is a smart, capital-efficient way to spotlight the largest non-PLF auditoriums in our circuit all of which will feature massive at least 40-foot screens or larger and all with crisp 4K laser projection.
Speaker Change: With clear actual branding both inside the theater and across our app and website, guests can easily identify and choose this enhanced format.
Speaker Change: as many as 50 or more Excel and AMC locations by the end of 2025.
Speaker Change: and by the end of 2026, we should have around 250 Excel and AMC screens in place in the United States joining the 65 Excel screens that we piloted last year in Europe to great success.
Speaker Change: Innovation is in our DNA at AMC and we're turning up the volume on that innovation with a dynamic new partnership with CJ-40-PLUX.
Speaker Change: Including some this year being installed. We will bring 40, 40 X
Speaker Change: and 25 screen ex-autotoriums to audiences across the United States and Europe . In Europe , we've already opened screen ex-autotoriums in six audience in the locations where guest feedback has been quite positive.
Speaker Change: We're eager to scale this next level experience, even more moviegoers, World One.
Speaker Change: Additionally, our Laser and AMC initiative in partnership with Barco delivers a brighter, sharper, more energy-efficient projection experience that happens to be quite eco-friendly.
Speaker Change: It isn't just for excelling AMC auditoriums that we have laser projection.
Speaker Change: In fact, we already have deployed laser and AMC projection across nearly 40% of our U.S. circuit and we will take laser projection of the entire domestic fleet of our theaters on a moldy year roll-up.
Speaker Change: Another initiative under the AMC GO plan is the transformation of select high traffic theaters with premium seating upgrades.
Speaker Change: They've been deployed already in flagship locations like AMC Lincoln Square 15 in Manhattan, AMC Empire 25 in Manhattan and AMC Burbank 16 in Greater Los Angeles. This new luxury seating is being marketed as AMC Club Rockers.
Speaker Change: and it has significantly lifted guest satisfaction scores and overall theater performance. Indeed in recent weeks we repeatedly have seen nights.
Speaker Change: When out of the 550 or so theaters that we have in the United States, our three highest grossing theaters in the entire country.
Speaker Change: We're Lincoln Square, Empire and Burbank, all of which feature the new club rocker scene.
Speaker Change: It's a proven model and it's no wonder that we are looking to expand to more of our theaters these club rocker seats as the growth capital becomes available to us.
Elevating the guest experience isn't limited to sight.
Speaker Change: Sounds and Seats. But it also extends the delivering ease of access and developing customer loyalty. That's exactly what our loyalty and subscription platforms are engineered to do and no one does it better than AMC.
Speaker Change: In January of this year, for example, we launched AMC Stubbs Premier Go, a new tier within our AMC Stubbs that increases the rewards received by guests.
Impressively, we already have more than 300,000 Premier Go members.
Speaker Change: And just this morning, we launch enhancements to our flagship subscription service, AMC Stubbs A-Less.
with increased benefits
Speaker Change: Designed to ease the pain of a healthy price increase. The A-list weekly movie access has been expanded.
from three tails a week to four.
Speaker Change: and we've lowered the age eligibility from 16 to 13 to encourage teen and family movie going.
Speaker Change: We've also simplified how A-Listers can check in at our theaters with a new in-app photo ID system eliminating the need to produce a physical identification card.
and John Merriwether.
and we've introduced a new A-list classic here.
Speaker Change: A streamlined lower price plan for guests who prefer to watch a maximum of one movie per week only at our AMC classic locations. This new offering broadens our reach and makes subscription movie going accessible even more consumers.
Speaker Change: As we close today's full more remarks, we do so with genuine momentum.
Speaker Change: April delivered a powerful rebound to the box office and set the tone for what we believe will be a breakout second quarter for AMC and a post-pendemic record setting 2025 for AMC as well.
The road ahead is packed with blockbuster titles
Speaker Change: and with the successful execution of RMC Go plan, we are enhancing every aspect of the movie-going experience at AMC and Odin, from a immersive premium large format and extra large format auditoriums to upgraded seating.
Speaker Change: from Innovative Loyalty to Innovative Subscription Programs, all designed to increase attendance, to deepen guest engagement, to increase guest satisfaction, and to grow both AMC's revenue and our even though.
Speaker Change: After five challenging years, we believe the tide finally has turned.
Speaker Change: and that the future looks encouraging, not just for a quarter or two, but for extended multi-year period of sustained growth and increased shareholder value. Having said that, there are still other important achievements needed for full recovery.
Speaker Change: But we are optimistic that we'll get done what needs to get done and that AMC is poised to capture the momentum arising from a strengthen in 2025 and 2026 and what we believe will be an even brighter future ahead.
Speaker Change: With that, Sean, let's turn to questions from equity analysts and from our retail shareholders.
Speaker Change: All right, thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one or your telephone keypad. It confirmation toll will indicate that you are in the question queue.
Speaker Change: He may press star 2 to remove yourself from the queue for participants using speaker equipment and may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing star keys.
Speaker Change: Okay, well I would like to turn the floor back to management for further questions.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Adam, the first question from our care holders is related to the terrace. What are your thoughts about the current discussions around terrace and Hollywood?
Speaker Change: Obviously this is a new topic. It is our understanding that there are no final specific plans as to what may transpire, and that there is going to be ample opportunity for discussion between the government and industry on this topic.
Speaker Change: It goes without saying that we'll be paying very close attention to developments in this area.
A lot of questions about the GO plan.
Speaker Change: Some of them are as follows. What proportion of AMC locations do you think ultimately could include a premium format auditorium?
Speaker Change: Likewise, recline a seating. What percentage of auditoriums could have recline a seating?
Speaker Change: and then questions about other innovations that we might be looking at for our auditoriums, such as somebody suggesting semi-private viewing booths, for example.
Speaker Change: So, there's a lot in there. As I said in my prepare remarks,
Speaker Change: We have more than 600 PLF and the XLF screens. That number should grow to around something over a thousand.
Speaker Change: in what percentage of our theaters will we find that?
Thank you.
in the plant we have now.
Speaker Change: Probably we'll hit three-quarters of our theaters worldwide, but that's just the plans we have now. We've only announced 250 XL auditoriums in the United States.
That's based on our current plan.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: You can easily see the Excel auditorium if it's successful, if it resonates with consumers.
Speaker Change: You can easily see that number shooting up from 250 Excel uniforms to maybe 500 Excel uniforms, in which case we can find ourselves with the PLF or an Excel F in just about every theater in our circuit depends what guest response is.
The...
Speaker Change: in terms of recliners. More than half of our circuit is reclined at the moment. That number could grow.
Speaker Change: We will need growth capital available to us to do so because those theater renovations are not cheap, but interestingly, we have a significant number of theaters, I'd say 50.
Speaker Change: where to put in recliner seats would be un-economic to do so because the theaters have such high volumes that we can't afford the seed loss that comes with putting in recliner seats.
and for that reason, we just came up with this.
Speaker Change: Club Rocker seat, the AMC Club Rocker, that we put into AMC Burbank, we put it in Lincoln Square, we put an empire, and we have more than 500 theaters in the United States.
We look at these attendance reports on a daily basis.
Speaker Change: and it's just so stunning to see over and over again that the three highest grossings we have in the entire United States out of almost 550 theaters are Lincoln Square, Empire and Burbank. What do they have in common?
Speaker Change: They have the new AMC club rocker seat. Now, it will also cost the money to put in the club rockers. So again, we need more investment capital available to us before we can deploy them in more places.
But there are a significant number of theaters.
Speaker Change: 2015, maybe 20 theaters where we could put in those AMC club rocker seats.
Speaker Change: and we think we would see a fairly dramatic upturn in the bottom line results of the theaters where they're installed. So those are examples. We're excited about our new partnership
with C.J. to put in
4DX
Speaker Change: And screen ex auditoriums. We have six of them open at the moment. That number is going to grow to 71. That's a big increase.
Speaker Change: I think embedded in your question was something about a special, a different kind of seat. We have a theater in the UK in the city of Norwich that just opened in the last six months.
and in one of the auditoriums there, we experimented. [inaudible]
Speaker Change: with a two-person pod seat with a privacy shell around it. And it's really been very successful with consumers.
Speaker Change: So that's another thing we might choose to roll out. Of course, again, that's going to require some having investment capital to deploy. And I have to emphasize here on the GO plan.
We are very disciplined.
about our kept expensing.
Speaker Change: We're down to somewhere between 175 and 225 million dollars a year. That's significantly lower than it was in previous years.
Speaker Change: I could easily see us increasing our capital spend in the course of a year, maybe by $50-$100 million a year more than what we're spending now, but only.
If our EBITDA dramatically increases.
Speaker Change: So that we're we're in a position where with the discipline we're showing on capital spending
Speaker Change: We can afford to invest in these growth projects. And these growth projects are...
Speaker Change: I have quite attractive returns, very high ROI's, very fast paybacks.
Um, hi, I don't think-
Speaker Change: Nothing would make me more excited than the CR EBITDA double, both for what that does for free cash flow generation and what that does for increasing cash reserves, increasing shareholder value, but also enabling us to take some of the increased
Speaker Change: David David, is what will be versus what was say last year.
Speaker Change: and to redeploy that back into the fleet to invest in the growth initiatives so that it's a self-filling prophecy that if we invest in growth initiative we can drive even more profitability and even higher levels of guest satisfaction.
for the AMC and ODEON circuits.
kind of a related question.
Speaker Change: Care for one of our shareholders. At what point do you expect the business to be in a position to generate positive free cash flow?
Speaker Change: That's a nice question to get because the answer is right now.
Yeah, the first quarter, so bleak.
and yet...
Speaker Change: With anyone drawing any kind of negative conclusions from the first quarter, it's just going to be wrong because
Speaker Change: The second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter, 2025 are going to perform so radically different.
Speaker Change: Then did the first quarter of 2025. It wasn't wholly unexpected. We predicted last year of that the the industry would start very slowly in Q1 because we knew what titles were coming out, but we also know what titles are coming out for the balance of the year.
and if we hit our internal forecast.
Speaker Change: of what's going to happen for the bounce of 2025, then this company will be recatchable positive for the nine-month period, April to December 2025 and what a start change that is.
Speaker Change: compared to where we've been since the pandemic hit in 2020.
Let's talk a little bit about food and beverage.
Speaker Change: We're doing very well on food and beverage growth. Are they plans to enhance and expand the food and beverage offerings to our guests?
Bye.
You know this better than anybody, Sean. We're so proud.
Speaker Change: of what we've done to drive the revenues of this company and cut the cost of this company such that our contribution per patron.
is up more than 50%
Above where it was.
Pre-Pandemic Levels
It came with a lot of hard work.
Speaker Change: and we've got a lot of cooperation from a lot of sectors to pull this off. Our landlords cooperated not only did we close unprofitable theaters but we were able to reduce rents on a lot of our theaters which improved their profitability which allowed them to stay open.
Speaker Change: One of the other areas where we've had a lot of cooperation is from our guests because they're buying more stuff at the concession stand than they've ever done in AMC 105 year history and we are the industry leader.
Speaker Change: In terms of food and beverage spending per patron amongst the mass operators, I'm not trying to compare AMC against a small boutique dining chains, but when you look at AMC against other mass operators...
Speaker Change: We have the highest food and beverage been. We do that because we pay a lot of attention. We achieve that because we pay a lot of attention to innovation in the food and beverage area. And just as examples.
Speaker Change: We've put, I think when I got here, we only had like 100 bars in our theater. Now, 350 of them are up in bars in the United States. We're also serving liquor across Europe . Movie theme drinks is just a huge hit.
And I'd say twice a month.
Speaker Change: We have movie titles that are big enough where we're creating special movies, multiple movie
and they sell very well.
Then there's like obscure stuff, so...
In the first quarter, we just completed the rollout.
across the whole domestic fleet.
Speaker Change: of Dippendots, something that we started last year in 2024. Believe it or not, by introducing Dippendots, we have doubled the ice cream sales at AMC theaters. Good for us. Good for our guests.
Speaker Change: Right now, we have a very interesting pilot that's going to start in this summer at five of our Southern California theaters.
We're going to install new equipment.
Thank you.
Mike
Speaker Change: Craft Drinks. We'll perfectly formulate cocktails and mocktails. We've experimented with a bit here in our corporate office outside of working hours, of course.
and it's really impressive how exacting recipes can be followed.
Speaker Change: with minimal labor activation. If that test is successful, I think we'll be rolling this new drink equipment out broadly across our system. You know, and there's more. We just, we
We had, we've been, when we launched home delivery.
Speaker Change: We went with Uber Eats, we were able to add DoorDash to home delivery at the very end of 2024. I think we'll do $5 million a profit.
Speaker Change: on Home Delivery in 2025, something that didn't exist a couple of years ago. And speaking of something that didn't exist a couple of years ago.
Three years ago, our merchandise sales were precisely zero.
Speaker Change: And I anticipate that our merchandise sales for calendar 2025 will come in around $75 million across the US and Europe with maybe half of that dropping to the U.S. Donal line. Such good news for us.
Speaker Change: So we've been an innovator in F&B. We're going to stay an innovator in F&B. There are lots of good things coming.
Speaker Change: We're talking about that and the profitability perpetre that has been, as you say, so much higher than pre-pandemic levels. There is a question about how sustainable is that because as the box office recovers, is there going to be pressure on that profitability perpetre than that?
Speaker Change: Well, it depends if you want to think logically or get the data.
Logic says, if we add a ton of attendance,
Speaker Change: Which we expect to add to the remainder of 25 in 2026 .
Speaker Change: Then it might be hard to continue to drive these massive improvements in contribution per patron that we've enjoyed in over the last couple of years.
Speaker Change: uh, compared to pre-pandemic levels. And yet April was a month where we had a massive surge in attendance.
Speaker Change: and as opposed to that massive surgeon's hand is eroding these key performance metrics.
Speaker Change: and causing some of the revenue per patron to fall and the contribution per patron to fall. It's been the exact opposite. In April , our revenue per patron and our contribution per patron increased even on stronger attendance.
Speaker Change: So I think that there's good news in all this that we've managed the business with a lot of innovation and a lot of effort to drive revenues and to drive profit and it looks like it's going to continue.
Speaker Change: That's all the questions that we have at this time. Well good, thank you everybody for joining us today.
Doug.
Speaker Change: The first quarter of 2025, while at Beat Animal's expectations was nothing to write on about.
Speaker Change: But what you're going to see out of AMC and out of the movie theater industry generally across the remainder of 2025 will be something to write home about if we hit our forecast.
Speaker Change: We are going to do very well and show a dramatic improvement over where we were only a year ago. Thank you for joining us one and all.
patient. You may disconnect your lines at this time.