AMC is still a terrible investment: analyst
AMC Entertainment still makes for a bad investment despite a host of upcoming key titles such as "Top Gun 2" and "The Batman" poised to hit movie theaters this year, argues one long-time bear.
"We would continue to sell AMC here," said Lightshed Partners media analyst Rich Greenfield on Yahoo Finance Live.
Greenfield points to a host of concerns on AMC (AMC).
"The beginning of this year is an absolute disaster. The movies coming out are not generating a lot at box office and people are not showing up at theaters. You are seeing studios like Disney take their next Pixar movie and send it directly to Disney+. The trend of avoiding theaters is continuing, and you have the CEO of AMC selling every vested share he possibly has. I think it's a pretty clear sign that the movie theater business is not fixed," Greenfield explained.
Greenfield has said in the recent past AMC shares are worth a penny a share.
To be sure, the ongoing pressure on movie theaters has persisted into 2022 due to the Omicron variant as seen in box office data from Box Office Mojo. Receipts continue to be driven by the 2021 release of "Spiderman: No Way Home," with 2022 titles such as "Sing 2" and "Scream" seeing muted responses.
In turn, AMC shares have taken a beating to kick off the year with the stock crashing some 36%.
For its part, AMC hasn't done much to excite the bulls.
AMC CEO Adam Aron has dumped abut $40 million in stock in recent months as he has sought to diversify is personal holdings.
The company showed little in the third quarter to suggest its fundamentals will materially improve this year. And even if they do improve noticeably, it will likely be difficult to justify AMC's lofty $9 billion market cap that has been pushed higher this past year by the meme stock army.
For the nine months ended Sept. 30, AMC's sales rose 25.6% to $1.4 billion. The company's operating losses clocked in at $450.9 million.
Added Greenfield, "What's scary and what should be panicking every investors who owns AMC's stock is the box office is down 50% from 2020 from 2019/2018."
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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