AMC shares volatile after earnings, movie deal

Meme stock AMC went on a wild ride Tuesday as the Reddit-darling packed a lot of plot twists into its quarterly update including talk of accepting bitcoin for a night at the movies.

First – its earning report….which came in better than expected.

Thanks to the return of big-budget Hollywood blockbusters "F9: The Fast Saga" - the ninth installment in the "Fast and Furious" franchise and "Godzilla vs. Kong", along with upward vaccination rates, movie fans started to return to the theaters, resulting in a 19 percent jump in quarterly sales.

It still was a money-losing quarter though - with ticket sales still way down from 2019 levels.

AMC is looking to limit those losses going forward by striking a deal with Warner Brothers for an exclusive window of 45 days before any of its studio movies can be viewed at home.

For all of 2021, Warner Bros. has simultaneously released all of its movies - like this past weekend's debut of "Suicide Squad" in theaters and on its streaming service HBO MAX.

AMC is also possibly looking to capitalize on its meme-stock status by working on a potential deal to team up with another meme stock – GameStop. AMC said it is exploring the idea of using a portion of the theater to sell merchandise.

And that's not all. AMC said it will have technology in place by the end of the year to take bitcoin as payment for movie tickets and purchases at the concession stand.

The theater operator is looking for ways to transform the horde of tech-savvy small investors who have defended the stock on the trading forum Wall Street Bets into exclusive customers – and sees bitcoin as a tool as it waits for the box office to fully recover.

Investors seemed to have some trouble following all the different story lines – after an initial jump of roughly six percent, shares were down in late Tuesday trading.