AMC stock: CEO says he won’t sell more shares

“I will not sell any of these any time soon. I ride with you!” he added, reiterating comments he made earlier this week.

AMC CEO Adam Aron will not sell more stock ‘any time soon,’ he tells investors: ‘I ride with you’

“About 2/3 of my total pay is in stock not cash,” he tweeted Monday. “Well publicized in advance, I sold shares only once in those 7 years, a 65 day span Nov 21 to Jan 22. My stock sales ended a year ago. I will NOT sell any more any time soon. I ride with you.”

Aron sold more than $40 million in AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc.’s 
AMC,
-2.40%
stock between November 2021 and January 2022.

Last month AMC’s stock plunged toward a 22-month low after the company announced a $110 million equity capital-raising plan and said it was seeking a 1-for-10 reverse split of its common stock. Shares of the meme-stock darling fell 75.6% in 2022, far outpacing the S&P 500 Index’s decline of 19.4%. The stock hit a 52-week low of $3.81 on Dec. 28, 2022.

See: AMC’s CEO asks board to freeze his pay, wants other top execs to forgo raises: ‘No increase for those at the top is the right thing to do’

The company’s stock is down 1.8% before market open on Friday.

Last week Aron said he has asked the company’s board to “red circle and freeze” his target cash and stock pay for 2023. Aron, who has led AMC since 2016, described his move in a series of tweets as AMC shares headed for their third consecutive decline after Aron announced the equity sale and plans for the reverse stock split.

The pay freeze is a move to assuage the cinema chain’s investors, according to Wedbush Vice President of Equity Research Alicia Reese.

See: What can we expect from meme stocks AMC, GameStop and Bed Bath & Beyond in 2023? 

AMC, like fellow meme stock GameStop Corp. 
GME,
-2.53%,
was a major beneficiary of a trading frenzy in January 2021, which sent the struggling companies’ shares skyrocketing to dizzying heights.

AMC’s Preferred Equity units
APE,
+0.75%,
 or APEs, made their trading debut in August, heralding the latest chapter in a journey that took the cinema chain from a beleaguered pandemic poster child to meme-stock phenomenon.

The APEs have fallen 77.5% since their debut. The name is a nod to the investors who turned the company into a meme stock, who often refer to themselves as “apes” or “ape nation.”

See: Is the golden age of the meme stock rally over?

Before market open Friday, the APEs were down 2.2%.

Last week Aron explained that he had also asked AMC’s top 15 to 20 executives to forgo an increase to their cash salaries for 2023, and that they had agreed. 

Despite the top-level salary freezes, the CEO confirmed that AMC’s employees will get a raise. “Yes, absolutely yes,” he tweeted in response to a question posed on Twitter. “We are asking for financial sacrifice only from those at the very top.”

See Now: As postproduction backlogs delay movie releases, B. Riley lowers industry box-office estimates

In November AMC reported its 12^th consecutive quarterly loss, sending the company’s stock tumbling. AMC, which describes itself as the world’s largest movie-theater chain, ended the third quarter with just under $895.8 million of liquidity. “We will use it to continue to grow but also to continue to de-lever,” said Aron during a conference call to discuss the results.

In a note released Tuesday, B. Riley Securities lowered its AMC share-price target to $4.50 from $7.50. The firm also lowered its 2023 and 2024 industry box-office estimates from $9.5 billion and $10.7 billion to $8.9 billion and $10.1 billion, respectively. “While studios are increasingly endorsing the theatrical window, post-production backlogs are delaying releases,” wrote B. Riley Securities analyst Eric Wold.