AMC Entertainment reported second-quarter revenue of about $1.6 billion, a 14.2% increase over the same quarter last year and the highest quarterly revenue in the company’s 106-year history. Adjusted EBITDA rose 69.6% to roughly $321.4 million. The chain posted adjusted earnings of 14 cents per share against a consensus forecast calling for a six-cent loss. Shares jumped more than 16% before the opening bell.
For a company that spent the post-pandemic years as a byword for financial distress, that is a genuine turn.
Attendance came back, but that is not the whole story
Domestic attendance at AMC rose 12% to 52.2 million patrons, up from 46.8 million a year earlier. International attendance climbed about 18% to 18.7 million. At the company’s European Odeon chain, adjusted EBITDA rose several hundred percent against a recovery the company’s own 2025 guidance had not anticipated.
Industry-wide, the domestic box office for the quarter came in near $2.99 billion, up 10.7% year over year — the biggest quarter in seven years and, by AMC’s accounting, the fifth largest ever.
But the more important shift is per-patron. Six separate films opened above $75 million domestically during the quarter. When The Odyssey launched, AMC drew 4.3 million patrons in a weekend, and management said more than half of the ticket receipts for the Nolan film came from giant-screen formats. IMAX, Dolby, and premium large-format screens carry materially higher ticket prices. The chain is not simply selling more admissions. It is selling more expensive ones.
The window is the negotiation
Underneath the numbers sits a structural change studios and exhibitors spent years fighting over. The theatrical window — the exclusive period before a film moves to home viewing — has settled at roughly 45 days, with studios committing both to longer exclusivity and to more theatrical releases.
That alignment matters more than any single quarter. A longer window gives a film time to build word of mouth, which is precisely what produced the unusually shallow second-weekend declines seen this summer. Studios capture more theatrical revenue; exhibitors get more time to convert audiences into premium-format buyers. Both sides benefit from the same clock.
The part that is still fragile
AMC’s GAAP net loss for the quarter was about $11.4 million. That is a small number against $1.6 billion in revenue, but it is still a loss, and the adjusted EBITDA figure driving the stock reaction excludes interest expense, depreciation, and one-time charges including tens of millions in debt-related costs.
The balance sheet remains the constraint. AMC completed a $150 million at-the-market equity offering and a $200 million registered direct offering of common stock earlier this year, both of which dilute existing shareholders to service a debt load built up during the years when the theaters were closed.
The company operates roughly 850 theaters and 9,500 screens across eleven countries. It is the largest exhibitor in the world, and it is running that footprint at record operating performance while still not clearing a GAAP profit.
Chief executive Adam Aron has said for years that the recovery formula is not complicated: exhibitors need studios to make more good movies. For one quarter, at least, they did.
Source reporting: AMC investor relations, Reuters via LSEG, The Hollywood Reporter, Quartz.