Amc Entertainment Holdings, Inc. Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call

Greetings and welcome to the AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. First Quarter 2024 Earnings Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, John Merriwether, Vice President, Capital Markets and IR. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to AMC's first quarter 2024 earnings webcast. With me this afternoon is Adam Aron, our Chairman and CEO; and Sean Goodman, our Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the webcast over to Adam, let me remind everyone that some of the comments made by management during this webcast may contain forward-looking statements that are based on management's current expectations. Numerous risks, uncertainties 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 10-K and 10-Q. 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 statements, listeners are cautioned against relying on these statements. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future events. On this webcast, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA, constant currency, free cash flow 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. 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 Investor Relations section of our website later today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam.

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, one and all, and thank you for joining us today. Against the backdrop of an industry box office that was hampered by Hollywood strike-induced production delays, AMC once again outperformed. We exceeded Wall Street expectations for total revenues, adjusted EBITDA, net income, and diluted earnings per share. It was no surprise for most observers that the number of major film releases in the first quarter of 2024 would be greatly reduced because of production delays caused by the five-month-long actors and writers strikes of 2023 in Hollywood. Indeed, we saw that one major studio had its first quarter domestic box office revenues decreased by an astounding 98% compared to the first quarter of 2023. That studio's decline was not because of some strategic shift to streaming or a disinterest by consumers in going to movie theaters. It was solely because they were not able to release new films into the market due to the actors and writers strikes of mid-summer last year. However, at AMC, we were heartened by several important events in the first quarter. First, the movie-going improved in March, which was a considerably stronger month than January or February. Second, our company's intensive review of the movies coming out later in 2024, 2025, and 2026 suggests that very good times are ahead for the movie theater industry. And third, our company AMC Entertainment performed well in Q1, increasing our market share and continuing to become a more potent and efficient operator. Notwithstanding a 6% decline in the quarter's North American box office compared to 2023, AMC's total revenue remained broadly in line with the prior year. Our per patron revenue and per patron profit continued along their stellar growth trajectory with all-time first quarter records achieved on these two metrics in our domestic business. At AMC in the quarter, our total revenue per patron was almost 36% above the pre-pandemic level in Q1 of 2019, and even more impressive is that our contribution margin per patron, defined as total revenue less film exhibition costs and less food and beverage costs divided by the number of patrons, was almost 44% above pre-pandemic Q1 of 2019. These achievements are thanks to our relentless focus on enhancing the guest experience at our theaters while at the same time driving efficiency in our operations. Through our resilience, resolve, creativity, and flexibility, AMC continues to adeptly navigate through changing and challenging circumstances. Our surging revenues per patron and surging profit numbers are why we believe that there is now a path for AMC to achieve the same levels of EBITDA that we enjoyed pre-pandemic, even at lower levels of revenue. What's more, if and when the industry revenue does fully recover, we would then expect to achieve substantially higher levels of EBITDA than we did in the past. Moviegoer sentiment is clear: guests want to see movies on a huge silver screen, and they are consistently willing to pay more for the best possible experience. That certainly favors AMC as we have more premium large format screens, namely IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and Prime than any other cinema operator in the world. Consumers are also paying up for innovative food and beverage offerings, and AMC continues to outsell all of our major competitors in F&B. All moviegoers also are now buying movie-themed merchandise from us, online, and in our concession stands in quantities that we have never before seen. Enough said for me about the first quarter of 2024, because my focus is not on a strike that impacted January and February movie releases. It is instead on two other things. First, it's not the movies that were not released in January and February. It is instead the movie slate that is coming over the next two to two and a half years. I am more optimistic now about the future of movie theaters than I have ever been, and that's because of the movie slate that's coming, especially towards the end of 2024, in 2025, and again in the first half of 2026, which holds, in my opinion, great promise. Second, I am paying great attention to our cash reserves. I've said over and over again on these calls that cash is king, and that the smartest thing AMC has ever done since COVID hit in 2020 was to make sure that our cash reserves at AMC were robust, while other theater operators fell by the wayside. To that end, it is so energizing and so reassuring that we had $624 million of unrestricted cash at the end of Q1 and that AMC has raised another $124.1 million of equity capital since March 31. With cash in the bank, we are better prepared to weather any storm, but fortunately storms do end. As a result, we see the box office turning an important corner later this year and again in the full year 2025. This is not just AMC's view. Having recently returned from our industry's largest and most important annual gathering, CinemaCon, the positive energy in the air was palpable. One studio after another confirmed that film production was once again in full motion, that they were eager to bring more titles to the silver screen, and that the value of theatrical exhibition has never been more evident. I'm not going to regale you with all the titles of the cavalcade of big movies that are coming, but they are indeed coming. And it all starts in just a few months with a great slate of movies exclusively for theatrical exhibition. They include new characters and captivating storylines along with familiar faces and popular franchises. When I look at year-end 2024, especially at full year 2025, and I see in the industry box office, I don't think I should say yet, Hallelujah, let the good times roll, but I can finally say with confidence, Hallelujah, let the significantly better times roll. Things are looking up as we look ahead. I'll now pass this webcast over to Sean to provide more details on our financial results just released, after which I'll return to update you on some key initiatives before taking questions from our sell-side analysts and from our retail shareholders.

Thanks, Adam, and thank you to everyone for joining us this afternoon. The box office in Q1 was impacted by last year's Hollywood strikes despite a 6% decline in the North American box office compared to Q1 of 2023. AMC was able to maintain total revenue within 1% of last year's first quarter. This was achieved thanks to the North American market share growing by over 70 basis points more than any other top 50 theater operator, solid attendance growth in our European business of approximately 6%, and total revenue per patron growth of 1.8%. Now looking at our domestic segment and comparing the first quarter of 2024 to Q1 of 2023, with the box office down by approximately 6%, our admissions revenue declined by 3.2%, outperforming the industry, and total revenue declined by only 2.2%. Total revenue per patron increased by 3.8%, with admissions revenue per patron up by 2.7% and food and beverage revenue per patron up by 1.2%. These per patron metrics were all-time first quarter records for AMC, and our total revenue per patron was some 43% ahead of the Q1 of pre-pandemic 2019. In addition, our contribution margin per patron, which we define as total revenue less film exhibition costs and less food and beverage costs divided by the number of guests, was $15.32. This is 5% above the first quarter of 2023 and 54% above the first quarter of pre-pandemic 2019. These strong per patron metrics are a result of the continued success of our innovative market-leading food and beverage offerings as well as our alternative content and immersive experiences and revenue diversification initiatives such as retail popcorn. Add to this our ongoing theater portfolio rationalization and thoughtful expense management, and we end up with record-setting results. Now looking at our international segment and comparing the first quarter of 2024 to Q1 of 2023, this is all in constant currency. Admissions revenue increased by 3.7%, and total revenue increased by 2.8%. Total revenue per patron declined by 2.9%, with admissions revenue per patron down by 2% and food and beverage revenue per patron down by 1.4%. Note that total revenue per patron was 27.8% ahead of the first quarter of pre-pandemic 2019. Contribution margin per patron was 3.6% below the first quarter of 2023, but up 30.3% above the first quarter of pre-pandemic 2019. Our international per patron metrics this quarter were adversely impacted by country mix, with relatively strong attendance growth in the traditionally lower revenue per patron market of Italy, coupled with attendance declines in the traditionally higher revenue per patron markets of Sweden and Germany. In addition, while our European attendance benefited from strong local content offerings, particularly in Finland, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, such content is associated with a lower premium large format mix and lower revenue per patron. As we continue along our recovery glide path, we will maintain our focus on providing a differentiated high-value guest experience at our theaters across the globe and profitable revenue growth through diversification initiatives such as retail popcorn, AMC-branded candy, and the distribution of alternative content. All of this while paying very close attention to our overall operating efficiency. Now moving to cash flow and the balance sheet. We ended the first quarter of 2024 with unrestricted cash of $624.2 million, which translates into $188.3 million of net cash used in operating activities for the quarter. This is broadly in line with the net cash used in operating activities in Q1 of 2023. CapEx net of landlord contributions was $46 million in the first quarter. We continue to expect net CapEx in 2024 to be in the range of $175 million to $225 million. From a theater portfolio perspective, we continue to actively manage our footprint. During the first quarter, we closed four underperforming locations and we added one new high-performing theater. This brings the total number of locations closed since the pandemic began to 169, and the total number of new locations opened to 60, for a net reduction of 109 locations or 10.9% of our locations at December 31, 2019. We continue to see that the 60 new locations clearly outperform the 169 closed locations. To ensure our ongoing recovery and position ourselves to thrive as our industry grows, our top two capital allocation priorities must remain. Number one, we must ensure that we have sufficient liquidity to manage through our recovery phase, including the impact of last year's Hollywood strikes. And number two, we must strengthen our balance sheet by extending debt maturities and improving our financial leverage. During the first quarter, we exchanged $17.5 million of debt for roughly 2.5 million shares of common stock, recording a profit of $5.8 million. We also repaid approximately $8.4 million of deferred rent. The deferred rent balance at the end of Q1 was $47.9 million, and we plan to reduce this balance by another approximately $12 million by the end of 2024. Thus far during the second quarter of 2024, we have raised $124.1 million of gross equity proceeds, excluding commissions and fees, through the sale of approximately 38.5 million shares under our existing at-the-market offering program. Overall, since the beginning of 2022, we have raised nearly $1.2 billion of gross equity capital, reduced the principal value of our debt and finance leases by $707 million through debt repayments and repurchases or exchanges of debt for equity, and repaid $267 million of deferred leases. This all translates to a total reduction of debt and deferred leases of $974 million. This debt reduction has also lowered our annual cash interest expense by approximately $60 million. These actions have prepared us to face with confidence a relatively weak box office in the first half of 2024. While the second quarter is forecast to be well below 2023's record second quarter, which benefited from the tremendous success of titles such as Super Mario Brothers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse, we are increasingly enthusiastic about the second half of the year and a return to a strong and vibrant post-pandemic growth trajectory. And now I hand the webcast back over to Adam.

Thank you, Sean. Before taking your questions, I'd like to bring you all up to date on five ongoing initiatives at AMC. First is our continuing dialogue with several of the world's greatest musical artists. As you know, for the first time in our company's history, in late 2023, we surprised the world with our Taylor Swift and Beyonce concert films. That appears to be the gift that keeps on giving because ever since we've been in conversation with artist after artist after artist. Some of the biggest names who routinely fill arenas and stadiums worldwide. This has led to an announcement just yesterday of our collaboration with nine-time Grammy Winner and two-time Academy Award winner, Billie Eilish, in partnership with Apple Music and Interscope Records. Next week on May 16 and 17, our AMC Theaters Dolby Cinemas will be an integral part of the launch of her new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. In a special listening event, Billie Eilish fans will be able to hear the new album in Dolby Atmos sound exclusively at AMC Theatres, the day before the album is released to the public. The visual content on screen has been carefully selected to delight those in attendance. This is just the beginning of the innovative programming that will be coming to our theaters from our new distribution arm, AMC Theaters Distribution. While the Billie Eilish listening event will take place only at AMC locations, we took great pride that so many of our fellow movie theater operators were included in our efforts with Taylor Swift and Beyonce. We expect that going forward, some of our activities in this sphere will be exclusively held at AMC locations only, and that other activities cooperatively will be shared across our entire industry. Second, let's talk briefly about the success of AMC's retail popcorn initiative, which just celebrated its one-year anniversary. Initially offered exclusively at Walmart with ready-to-eat popcorn at just 550 locations, we soon thereafter introduced our microwave popcorn varieties, and we expanded to some 2,600 Walmart stores as well as to walmart.com. Sales have been brisk and more retailers have decided to carry our branded popcorn for the home. Today, AMC's Perfectly Popcorn is now sold at 6,500 points of distribution, or nearly 12 times as many locations as when we first launched a year ago. We've added amazon.com, as well as grocery giants Publix and Kroger to our distribution channels, and we are ambitiously pursuing further growth, adding more grocery chains as we look ahead later this year and next. The third topic to discuss today is our exploding food and beverage sales numbers, which lead the industry among major operators in the United States. Naturally, we are pleased that the New York State legislature, just weeks ago, agreed to allow movie theaters to serve alcohol, a ban that has been in place for almost a century, believe it or not. This means for us that we can have lucrative liquor sales at 30 more AMC Movie Theaters across the State of New York. Beyond that, our culinary team continues to work passionately on innovative in-theater food and beverage offerings. For example, in more than 400 AMC theaters across the United States, we've just added fresh donut hole offerings in multiple flavors to sweeten the moviegoing experience. The Baker's Dozen shareable donut holes come in three flavors: cinnamon sugar, strawberry, and our proprietary peanut butter blend created in partnership with PB2. Every serving comes with a container of warm icing to make each bite even sweeter and add just a few calories to this neat little offering at AMC. These treats might look like donut holes to our guests, but to us, they represent incremental revenue. We expect to sell a lot. Similarly, we're innovating at our 50 dine-in theaters as well, where guests are served a more comprehensive food and beverage menu. We've added four entirely new offerings: artisan pizzas with five different toppings, two new chicken sandwich choices on toasted brioche buns, a new Caesar salad with chicken to complement our already popular Cobb salad. And last, but certainly not least, we have introduced milkshakes in five flavors, including chocolate with Ghirardelli chocolate syrup, vanilla, strawberry, peanut butter with REESE'S peanut butter sauce, and an Oreo shake with Oreo cookie pieces mixed in. It's no accident that AMC food and beverage leads the way in our industry. We devote substantial resources to imaginatively understanding the flavor palette and the diverse tastes and appetites of AMC moviegoers. The fourth topic to discuss quickly: at our European theaters, we have just introduced an intriguing innovation, which we've named XL. We have branded more than 60 of our larger screen auditoriums—screens that would not necessarily qualify as a premium large format. We've given them the XL name, XL for extra-large, of course, and gently nudged into the market with a small premium price in these auditoriums. We're watching the success of this new product very closely to see if we should expand the concept further in Europe and/or to our US theaters as well. And finally, fifth, we are taking our AMC Investor Connect program very seriously, both to reward our shareholders and to stimulate added patronage at our theaters from the more than one million members in this program. In the summer of 2021, AMC launched AMC Investor Connect, a first-of-its-kind program in which our shareholders were invited to enroll so that we could engage directly with them. Investor benefits to our retail shareholders through AMC Investor Connect have included shareholder-inclusive promotions, NFTs, free or discounted items, invitations to special screenings, and communications directly from me as CEO of the business. Our continued commitment to AMC Investor Connect recognizes the important role that our retail shareholders have played in getting AMC through these past difficult COVID and strike-impacted years, and the program is designed to provide them with truly exclusive rewards and benefits. Especially knowing that there are many retail shareholders listening to this webcast right now, I want to remind you all that at 7 P.M. local time tonight, in our IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and AMC Prime auditoriums, we are offering a special advanced screening of Disney's stunning new movie, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which opens to the general public this weekend. We hope you enjoy it. Now it's time to take your questions. But before I do, here are our final thoughts on the first quarter and our near and longer-term prospects. In the first quarter, AMC exceeded all expectations, a quarter that admittedly was impacted by last year's Hollywood strikes. The second quarter's box office, while likely sequentially stronger and bigger than Q1, will still be impacted by the strikes of last year and will fall significantly below last year's second quarter because last year's second quarter just happened to be the single strongest quarter in all of 2023. However, when we speak again in August after the second quarter is in the books, based on what we know today, we believe that the summer box office will be strong, healthy, and growing. AMC is poised handsomely to benefit as our moviegoing audience will be thoroughly entertained next summer by titles playing at an AMC theater near you, including Disney's Deadpool and Wolverine, and Universal's Despicable Me 4 and Twisters. Looking beyond just the summer, we similarly are excited about what we anticipate for the fourth quarter, with such blockbuster titles as Warner Bros.' Joker: Folie a Deux, Universal's Wicked bringing to the screen the Broadway musical that has run for decades, and more like Disney's Mufasa: The Lion King and Sony's Venom: The Last Dance. I could go on and on about the movies that are coming in 2024. Not only are we confident about the second half of 2024, but we are also literally enthralled about an accelerating box office recovery as we head into 2025 and on into 2026. The box office in 2025 should be materially stronger than it has been in several years. AMC continues to be resilient, leveraging innovation as well as hard and smart work to navigate through these turbulent times. We have positioned ourselves not only to survive troubled waters but also to thrive as our industry grows. Looking at 2025, we believe that our industry will again grow. The future, therefore, looks very bright. With that, Sean, let's move to questions.

And our first question comes from Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Please proceed.

All right. Thanks. Adam, regarding your discussion about food and beverage initiatives, clearly, dollars are more important than margin percentages. But I wonder if you could talk about how you think in terms of introducing items and the pricing attached to those items and where you feel the food and beverage margin should settle in. It slipped a little bit in the last quarters for some of the reasons that have taken place.

So Jim, we're picking up increased food and beverage sales, showcasing staggering numbers. Pre-pandemic, routinely, food and beverage sales per patron were about $5 ahead at AMC. I'm using the domestic numbers as a placeholder. The European numbers are a little bit less than the US numbers. They shot up to around $8 to $9 per head post-pandemic. So we're looking at a huge increase. Our F&B margins are in the low 80s. I know it varies item by item and quarter by quarter, but my rule of thumb is about 82% of incremental food and beverage sales flows to the bottom line. So when we see a $4 increase in food and beverage spending over where we were a few years ago, that's a huge driver of income for us. It's one of the reasons that our revenue per patron is up so much, and it's one of the reasons our profit per patron numbers are up so much. This comes from four factors: first, we slightly and only slightly raised the prices on our F&B products; second, more people are stopping at our concession stands and buying food and beverage items from us; the third factor is that they are buying more items; and the fourth item is our merchandise sales at the concession stands, which are not as high margin but are still attractive. Three or four years ago, we didn't have any merchandise sales at our concession stands, but in 2023, we had $54 million of merchandise sales just at our US theaters. This whole area has been one of staggering success for us. We've enhanced our food and beverage organization, providing more staffing and resources to run our F&B business. We've asked them to launch innovative new products in our theaters at our dine-in theaters, at our concession stands, at our regular theaters. So far, so good, and we're optimistic that this growth will continue and that the margins are going to stay high. The whole industry has been successful in improving F&B numbers over the last few years, but AMC has outpaced everybody else.

Okay. Thanks. And just one other one. If we use the Billie Eilish concert as a pre-recorded concert as an example, is this something you think you could share with cinema competitors? Or would that just be a one-off thing? Or could you do a limited run at AMC like every Wednesday or something of that nature to take advantage of it but not interfere with your first-run films?

So when you talk about every Wednesday, that means 52 Wednesdays. I know, but I would say with nine Grammys and two Oscars, there aren't 52 Billie Eilishs. It's a tremendous amount of work to get these artists to agree to showcase their talent in our theaters. But I don’t think we'll be doing 52 a year of them. I do think we'll be doing several per year. Even a one-time listening event is lucrative for us on a per-screen basis. The Taylor Swift and Beyonce concert films were enormous for AMC; they represented more than 15% of our total profitability for the year last year if you look at the EBITDA they generated. There’s a lot of interest in the movie industry based on what we pulled off collectively for Taylor and for Beyonce. I would expect several major projects a year. I'm really excited about this listening event for Billie Eilish because it's not a concert film; it’s her new album release with visuals. We put together the Billie Eilish event with tight timing, so it wasn't practical to take it to our competitors. But the success of Taylor and Beyonce was that we included our competitors in our efforts. We had a good market share, but it was also an industry-wide effort. We are going to be working hard with our fellow theater operators through AMC Theaters Distribution to offer experiences at both AMC and our competitors' theaters. This is one circumstance where our competitors have been fabulous to work with. We fight like cats and dogs all year long, but on pulling off Taylor Swift and Beyonce, many of the major theater chains in the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and globally have been our best possible partners in this effort. We expect to bring more such experiences to them, either later in 2024 or 2025.

All right. Well, thanks very much for taking my questions.

Thank you, Jim.

And the next question comes from the line of Alicia Reese with Wedbush Securities. Please proceed.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. I'm looking at the dynamics around market share and film rent. There are a few titles in the quarter that drove most of the box office, particularly domestically. A lot of that is coming from June, which presumably led your market share gains in the quarter as you have the largest footprint of IMAX screens, which played well on IMAX. But I'm wondering if you could talk qualitatively about the dynamics that drove your film rent substantially lower year-over-year.

Sure. I'll throw in something and Sean will take it in addition. In the first quarter, there were fewer big blockbuster films and more middle-sized films that were in our theaters and did really well. We've never disclosed our deal studio by studio, but they tend to be on sliding scales where studios command a higher film rent on higher grossing films. The abundance of middle-sized and smaller films in the first quarter largely explains why the film rent reduction was achieved by AMC. Sean, you want to add anything?

Yes. Just to add a bit more color: when we look at the number of titles that we played in Q1 2024, over $5 million, we had 41 in Q1 versus 35 in Q1 2023. Obviously, the box office was lower in '24 than 2023, and June was the biggest title of the quarter. But after June, the box office per title went down quite significantly. As Adam mentioned, when films have a lower gross per showing, that certainly impacts our film rent favorably.

Thank you.

There are no further questions on the audio line. I would like to turn the call back to management for retail shareholder questions.

Thank you, operator. Okay, Sean. What questions have come in from our retail shareholders?

The first question is related to market share as well. AMC has been growing market share in the US market while closing underperforming theaters. Can you comment on what we can attribute the success to? Do we see this market share growth as sustainable as the industry recovers?

Sure. It's a pretty impressive trick to increase your market share when you're closing 100 theaters, but that's exactly what we did. Part of it is—our 70 basis point improvement in market share was achieved by a higher market share growth than any of the 50 largest movie theater circuits in the United States. That's very encouraging for us. Our theaters are in good shape, and we have very strong marketing. The theaters we were closing were older, more tired buildings that were at the end of their useful lives and not grossing much. The theaters we opened are shiny new ones in great locations that usually come with reclining seats. As it turns out, it's incredible but true, the 60 theaters that we opened outgrossed the 169 theaters that we closed. So we're replacing older, tired unsuccessful theaters with thriving ones, and many of the ones we've opened are amongst our highest-grossing, most profitable theaters.

Terrific. The next question is about AMC Cinema Suites. Can you provide an update on Cinema Suites? Is there a chance we will release these products on the retail channel?

Cinema Suites is doing great. As you know, I think it was in the fourth quarter of 2023 when we unveiled a proprietary house brand of premium gourmet candies: chocolate-covered peanuts, chocolate-covered raisins, chocolate-covered almonds, and chocolate-covered pretzels. They've been selling well and are ahead of expectations. We've had no problem with the supply chain delivering these in quantity. I think we will take them to the retail market at some point going forward. It's not the highest priority, but we do have great results with Cinema Suites, and I'm glad we did it.

Great. The next question relates to our capital expenditure. Can we provide some color on AMC's CapEx spend? Where are we allocating the money?

We have been disciplined in our capital spend, particularly during this recovery period. The good news is that AMC has a large number of high return investment opportunities. Currently, we're prioritizing investments that maintain our existing buildings, equipment, and IT capabilities so that we can continue to provide the best possible guest experience. When I look to the future, I see many attractive investment opportunities, including our premium large-format auditoriums, sound upgrades, automation of the guest experience, and better seating. Around 75% of our capital spend is currently focused on improving our existing assets to enhance the guest experience.

Next question here is related to debt. The investor asks about the significant amount of debt maturing in 2026. What is the company doing to address this?

We've released a significant amount of long-term debt and other deferred obligations in the last two years, reducing it nearly $1 billion. We’ve done this partly by buying back debt in the open market at a discount, which has been a positive outcome. Our net debt today is less than it was just prior to COVID, despite needing to borrow about $2 billion to survive. We still have about $4.5 billion of debt due in 2026, and we're wholly focused on our obligations. We've been working with our Board of Directors and investment banks for almost a year discussing how to best extend our 2026 debt maturities into future periods. Our lender syndicates generally like AMC and have worked with us before, so we are optimistic about finding a path forward.

Absolutely agreed. The last question here is related to the upcoming shareholder meeting. How do I vote at the shareholder meeting if I have not received any proxy information?

I hope you all do vote. Still, the voting numbers at AMC have been pretty low because many retail investors haven't voted. This is a chance to have your voices heard. We listen to what you say in the shareholder votes. You can go to your broker where your shares are held, and get the proxy materials from them. If you haven't received the materials yet, call your broker and ask for your proxy materials. We have a proxy adviser, D.F. King; you can call them at 1-800-859-8511 if you need help. If you hold shares through DRS, you get your proxy materials from the registrar, Computershare. I encourage you to vote. Your participation means a lot to us. With that, I think you're telling me we're done with questions. Thank you all for joining us today. I leave you with two simple thoughts. As we look at the box office for the end of this year and next year, it looks spectacular compared to what we've suffered in 2020, '21, '22, and '23. It's not too late; at 7 o'clock local time across the country in our premium large formats, we're offering a special advanced screening of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. It should be a pretty big movie this weekend. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.