AMC Earnings Climb Thanks to ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home,’ CEO Calls Skeptics’ Predictions ‘Load of Cow Dung’

variety.com:

AMC Entertainment, the exhibition giant that became an improbable meme stock, posted revenues $1.2 billion during the holiday quarter as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” galvanized ticket sales at the company.

That Q4 performance, revealed Tuesday by AMC, represented a huge jump from the $162.5 million in revenues that AMC posted in the year-ago period and marked the best quarter for the company in two years.Comparisons are tricky, because vaccines at that time were not readily available and there were few studio films debuting exclusively in theaters.The company had 60 million guests visit theater locations globally in Q4, AMC chairman and CEO Adam Aron said during the company’s earnings call Tuesday.

Aron shot down industry speculation that the theatrical business would be unable to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic: “What a load of cow dung.” “The problem with conventional wisdom is that conventional wisdom is often just utterly wrong,” Aron said. “Remember the breathless reporting that AMC would file for bankruptcy in 2022?

Wrong.”“For the first time in 2 years, at the end of Q4, AMC generated positive cash flow,” Aron noted, later saying of the skeptics: “They were wrong.