AMC Entertainment Holdings shares fell -6.3% Thursday, after the movie theatre chain reported wider-than-expected loss for the first-quarter.
The company incurred a net loss of -$1.25 a share for the quarter, which is worse than the -55 cents loss a share that Wall Street analysts had expected. The U.S. industry box office plunged -16.2% to $2.4 billion in the first quarter, with a -14.8% decline in attendance, which AMC indicated as headwinds.
AMC's revenue came in at $1.2 billion, missing the Street estimates of $1.19 billion. It was also -13.2% lower than the year-ago quarter.
Adam Aron, CEO and president of AMC hinted at a potentially challenging comparison from the year-ago period. That’s because, the first quarter saw the movie ‘Black Panther’ emerging as “second highest grossing first quarter of all time", as indicated by Aron.
But the company mentioned that box office momentum picked up at he end of the first quarter, with the April release of 'Avengers: Endgame' - a movie that has generated record blockbuster sales both domestically and internationally, grossing more than $2 billion globally in its first two weeks.