AMC Entertainment is leaning into the retail investor game with a new initiative designed to cultivate the company’s “extraordinary base of enthusiastic and passionate individual shareholders,” according to a press release put out on Wednesday (June 2).
Titled AMC Investor Connect, the initiative will provide investor updates and special offers to individual investors in the company, who beginning today can register at amctheatres.com/stockholders to receive access. To sign up, investors must be or enroll as a member of the company’s AMC Stubs rewards program, which includes AMC Stubs Insider, AMC Stubs Premiere and AMC Stubs A-List.
On sign-up, investors will receive a free large popcorn redeemable this summer when attending a movie at an AMC theater in the U.S. The offer will be made available via each shareholder’s AMC Stubs account. Ongoing benefits for investors will include free or discounted items, invitations to special screenings, direct communications from AMC Theatres CEO and president Adam Aron, and “other interesting information about AMC and its place in the movie eco-system,” as stated in Wednesday’s press release, which notes that the company’s retail shareholder base has grown to over 3 million.
“AMC Investor Connect will put our Company in direct communication with a retail investor shareholder base that owned more than 80% of AMC at last count,” said Aron in a statement. “Many of our investors have demonstrated support and confidence in AMC. We intend to communicate often with these investors, and from time to time provide them with special benefits at our theatres. We start with a free large popcorn on us, when they attend their first movie at an AMC theatre this summer.”
He added, “During my five-plus year tenure as CEO at AMC, I’ve taken great pride in the relationships I have forged with AMC’s owners. With AMC Investor Connect, that effort in relationship building will continue apace even if our shareholders now number in the millions. After all, these people are the owners of AMC, and I work for them.”
Today’s move by AMC is designed to capitalize on a recent surge of retail investor interest in the company. Since January, the exhibitor—along with several other companies, most notably video game retailer GameStop—has been the beneficiary of a campaign on Reddit forum WallStreetBets to engage in a coordinated short squeeze of the company’s stock.
Over the last week, AMC’s stock has seen a renewed surge of interest from retail investors, with the price at one point hitting an intraday high of $72.62 on Wednesday, according to CNBC. This continued even amid reports that hedge fund Mudrick Capital dumped the reported 8.5 million newly-issued AMC shares it acquired for $230.5 million on Tuesday, simultaneously calling the stock “massively overvalued.”
AMC Investor Connect is launching in tandem with the preliminary proxy statement for AMC’s July 29, 2021 annual meeting of shareholders, which is slated to be filed publicly on June 3.
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