Amc entertainment posting better than expected earnings. Last night, along with smaller than expected, eps loss. The company said the quarter was the strongest in two years. The stock is up more than one percent.

It's had solid gains over the last month with shares higher by nearly 20, but well off of those highs that we saw last year joining us now in a first on cnbc interview is amc, entertainment chairman and ceo, adam aaron, adam welcome back good to have you Always good to be with you, sarah, you were on fire last night on the conference. Call it came out with a real message for for all the haters and the critics about that. I think called it cow dung tell us how you really feel well. Actually, what i said was a load of cow dung and i thought i cleaned that up pretty nicely you, you should have seen the first draft.

Have you said that the point is that people have underestimated amc for a long time now, people you know, i call it the conventional wisdom, which is so often wrong. You know people wrote with certainty that we were going to file for bankruptcy in 2020. We did not uh people have been writing with certainty that there's no future for movie theaters in an era of streaming uh. You know the story we're storing radio is going to put us out of business.

Tv was going to put us out of business. Uh vcr's are going to put us out of business. Dvd was going to put dvds are going to put it out of business streaming's going to put us out of business guess what in the fourth quarter of 2021, even with omicron fears, 60 million people went to our theaters in the us europe and the middle east 60 million people in three months people want to go to movie theaters uh, the the consumer's appetite for content is so voracious. The world is big enough for all of us, i'm very confident in amc's future.

Well, what i don't think was predictable, though adam at all was the the voracious appetite for your stock by the the retail trader community, which did help build you out at a critical time and - and you know, made the financials look a lot better. You've got tons of cash so on the on the box office numbers. What? Where are we relative to pre-covet levels and you think we can get back to 100 of those levels this year? Well, first, we're very grateful to those shareholders who rallied around amc in 2021. They allowed us to raise a lot of money in 2021, we ended the year the december 31 quarter, with 1.8 billion dollars of cash for liquidity.

That's a war chest that puts amc in a very strong position. As for the box office uh, we were quite excited. Our revenues per patron in q4 were 25 higher than they were in the fourth quarter of 2019 before the pandemic. Now our attendance wasn't yet back to where we needed to be, but it was 60 million people uh.

As we looked at the box office for 2022, there are a lot of big movies coming a lot of blockbusters coming. You got the batman opening this week, top 10 mavericks around the corner jurassic world dominion. It just goes on and on all year, all the way to christmas when the sequel to avatar comes out. Avatar 2., definitely not wearing shorts.

Avatar originally was the largest movie of all. Time still is uh and its sequel is out. After a long wait. We think the box office is going to nearly double in 2022 compared to 2021, like these are all encouraging signs.

We're we're not fully out of the woods yet, but we have the resources to outlast this pandemic and all the signs are positive, adam um, if you're correct and the box office this year, approximately doubles and your revenue doubles uh alongside that. Let's just say that would get amc's revenue back to 2019 levels. Right, i mean that's. What we're talking about just catching up to 2019..

You've got five times as many outstanding shares, as you did in 2019. Obviously, through all the necessary capital raises uh and your market value is three times what it was back then, because of all that retail investor interest um. I just wonder you must be aware that the retail investors, the bold case on your stock, is these kind of conspiracy theories about invisible, short squeezes, and things like that. If you were ceo of a company where you thought there was nefarious shorting in your stock, would you not do something about it? Can you actually come out and say that's not really what's going on here.

Well, there's about seven questions in one. So let me try to get a couple uh. First of all, i don't think our revenues in full year 2022 in 2022, will be uh at pre-pandemic levels. I think that comes more likely in 2023.

They will, however, bought more than they were in 2021 uh and our you know. We had positive ebitda in the fourth quarter, uh of 2021, like that's a first in two years for our company in our industry. But, as i said, the signs are: are hopeful uh? The uh we are well aware - and we've been saying publicly since june of 2021, that our share price is not reflective of just the normal historic fundamentals of a movie theater company of our size. But we've also said that we are very much committed to transforming our company going forward.

We and we are not trying to bring back the old amc of 2019 just that, of course, we do want to bring that company back too, but we're going to do much more and we've already announced that we're uh we've had four nft programs since november uh. We're dabbling with cryptocurrency uh we've made a major announcement about expanding into the six billion dollar popcorn industry i mean who knows more about popcorn than amc on a p. They only sell 50 tons of this stuff uh, so move over orgo redenbacher. You got a competitor who's, going to be seen on convenience, store shelves and grocery store shelves before 2022 is over.

Then we have that 1.8 billion dollars of cash and liquidity to do some transformative m a uh. I think amc has proven in the last two years that we can rise to the challenges and the advances we're making and that's the bet that i'm making, after all, i'm a big shareholder in amc myself, no a little less than than you were last year. So adam, you know i'm going to ask about the popcorn, because i i too know a lot about it and i'm a big enthusiast and often go to movie theaters just for popcorn. How many other people like like me.

Are there, though, really how big of a revenue stream do you see this and how do you see it rolling out? Ubereats is gon na deliver it like food delivery and then what are you gon na start supplying grocery stores? Yes, yes and yes, so there are a lot of you, we sell a lot of popcorn in a year. The three biggest things that we sell in a year. Are we try to sell a lot of other things too, but the three biggest things we sell are movie tickets, soft drinks and popcorn uh and, as i said on an average day, we sold 35 tons on a peak day. We sold 50 tons.

We sell it to millions and millions of people every week. Our brand is credibility. If you go right now into supermarkets and you look at the microwavable popcorn, that's there, you know their brand names like movie, theater, popcorn. Well, guess who really has movies? We do and it's a big industry, uh we've hired someone with uh extensive brand management experience at pepsico, free delay and hostess brands.

He's got a ton of grocery experience to run this effort for us um. I i expect that we'll do a number of things in the popcorn front, all in 2022. yeah number one to go: containers and pick up containers for people who want to come to our theaters and take some of our food home and enjoy it when they're uh Watching their big screen tvs at home second yeah, we are going to sign up most likely with ubereats uh to deliver uh movie theater popcorn amc, perfectly popcorn movie, theater popcorn uh to homes all around the united states near our theaters. Third, we are actually going to open up kiosks in consumer malls in other locations where we'll freshly pop popcorn at you know, kiosk encounters just like we do in our movie theaters now and then.

Finally, i'm targeting, let's say september issue of 2022: we expect to be on grocery store shelves, uh inconvenience on convenience, store shelves, possibly other food venues around the country. We are going into the popcorn business and we expect to be successful. Adam thanks for the update, uh appreciate it and, unlike sarah, i also like to see the movie so uh we're glad you're, uh you're still up and running thanks again uh we'll catch you soon. Thank you very much uh.

When we come back, we'll have the highlights from city's investor day plus that looks like about that uh so digesting that right. The big thing that caught my attention coming straight from these uh, these interviewers, that i always get frustrated with. I don't know how people can run with this narrative. Uh is the conspiracy theories right, we're always labeled as conspiracy theorists, despite all the incredible research and thought process that goes into uh.

What we talk about, i'm gon na dive into do two different things here right. I'm gon na talk about what adam aaron sort of discussed and i'm gon na talk about uh. First off this conspiracy theory thing, because that just frustrates me, it really pisses me off it. It's it's a form of, i mean if you look at some of the uh, the the the people in the world who tried to rule by domination and by fear, a strategy that they use is discreditation.

They tried to discredit people and a way of discrediting your entire investor core is by saying the only reason your stock is up is because of conspiracy theories right when you label somebody an entire four million people as conspiracy theorists. What you're doing is you're saying that hey your entire company should not be worth this much because. Well, everyone here is just believing nonsense, but it's not nonsense right. What you're doing is you're looking at numbers, you're, looking at fact and you're, trying to make conclusions based on that evidence to uh come to some sort of reasonable assumption, and the assumption here is that hey, it seems like there's something nefarious and shitty.

That's going on with your stock price, it seems like there's a lot of bad players out there, which include msm market makers, which i will mark as m's, not m m's, which is uh tasty. I do like eminem's market makers. However, i've got a big bone to pick with uh mainstream media market makers. Algos right, there's a lot of a lot of big things that that contribute to sort of the bad price action.

The downwards price action on amc right and all we're doing is connecting dots. You look at things such as as max payne theory mpt. You look at things. Uh, like algorithmic trading.

You look at uh you. You look at the way that mainstream media can bash stocks. You look at the way that hedging and unhedging works with market makers. The way they can pin price in specific levels, i mean it's just obvious, what's happening here, it makes sense.

You don't even have to think about it twice. The way that uh the way that this works so to say that we're conspiracy theorists we're invested into a stock because of a conspiracy theory. I i just don't understand that it doesn't make any sense to me. The second thing is uh the interview itself right.

If you look at adam aaron's actual segment on uh on this piece, he was asked a couple different questions right and i i fully expected uh yesterday for for people to ask this uh regarding adam aaron right and it's. Why doesn't he come out and look into uh, the short selling? Why doesn't he come out and look? He came out and he said: hey we own 90 of the stock uh, excluding etfs 90 of the stock float, is retail right. So if we know that, why does it look into the actual numbers and the actual facts uh of this of the actual shorts themselves? Now, obviously, i would love nothing more i'd, love nothing more than for a.a to come out and say we have naked shorts right. I'd love for him to come out and talk.

That'd be beautiful. That looks like a fart, but i promise you it's a thought bubble uh, but is it going to happen? I don't know is, is uh? Is he going to to come out and make that statement? It's a great question: i can't speak for him. I know that he's very obviously paying attention he's very obviously has lots of people in his in his dms and his notifications. That say these things and i'm sure that if he feels it is uh the right time to do so he will i wish that he would you know i think everybody wishes he would.

But do you even need that? Do you need that? Looking at this number, do you need that looking at this 90 retail owns the float sort of situation here right now you had a couple different arguments. They talked about popcorn. Is this actually gon na be profitable? I think it's very obvious that that you know amc movie. Theater popcorn is going to be very profitable.

It's got great profit margins, it's good popcorn, it's tasty, you know uh, i'm i'm very satisfied with that venture. I i think, there's other things that are that are worth more attention. I think that they should have probably discussed uh the nfts, because i think this is a very profitable uh thing that they have. You know available to them this opportunity, which is essentially to uh monetize collectibles.

I mean it's basically like hey. You can purchase a collectible for your favorite movie. This non-fungible token can accrue in value and can be traded in a very simple way via the internet uh, and you guys can make money on that right. That's a great opportunity same as a cryptocurrency and i'm telling you uh blockchain technology.

What's beautiful beautiful about it is uh, you can't you can't lie. I mean crypto. Everybody has a ledger so if they were to make their own cryptocurrency, as has been talked about, everyone's got a ledger. I mean you have availability to see every sort of bit of activity.

That's happening. You can track it by looking at this ledger and seeing uh seeing the blockchain man, i mean it's really that simple, so uh the the big thing that it was obvious right. They they gave him a ding for uh. I think her name was sarah, the interviewer, but sarah said, albeit you own, you own less shares than you did less shares than prior right now.

Do i wish that adam aaron sold as many shares as he did? Do i wish that the executive sold as many shares as they did? Obviously not? I think it is a poor look for the company that everybody at pretty much the exact same time sold shares right. I think that's very obvious uh. You can look at that and you can say hey you know a lot of people sold shares. It's not a great look for the company.

You don't like seeing that uh. What i do like and what he did, though, is he announced that he was going to do it well in advance. He said it well in advance. He set it two quarters in advance.

Two quarterly earnings calls in advance before he sold any lick of a share. Uh, so to say that you couldn't see it coming, it's an entirely different ball game right. Oh that got me off guard. Give me one sec, all right, anywho uh! We saw it coming right, so that was that was a bit of uh.

I i you can't. Quite say a cheap shot because it didn't happen. He did do it uh, but i mean it's something that we all knew already happened so uh there we go if he would say that, could he get hit with insider training or some kind of legal violation because of his following uh he's got to step very Carefully right in a situation in shoes like like adam aaron's, when you come out and you state something even such as a you know - retail investors owned 90 of the float excluding etfs. He was very exact with his wording.

It's for a reason right because he's legally binded to whatever he says and can be held accountable by regulators that watch and and govern his stock within the the us stock market. Right uh there's there's a lot of importance behind anything that he says. So if he comes out - and he states, for example, like ater ceo did aders c uh aider ceo came out and said we have seen naked shorts selling uh in the midst of, i think it was about 50 of our float. Over 50 of our floor has been naked, shorts sold, which would mean that there was over 100 of his actual floats circulating around for the air ceo to come out and say that publicly he had to know with absolute certainty that exact amount of shares that he Was stating was being naked shortly and have proof verifiable proof of it now adam and i'm sure could do the same exact thing.

I think that he could what it comes down to is. He has to be able to show it and prove it and he's legally binded to it. So uh, that's what it comes down to. You know we'll, wait and see, we'll wait and see, and i'm with you i mean believe me when i say it.

I would love nothing more than uh, then for aa to come out and say: hey look. We have this many shares that have been naked short sold into the company, because guess what would happen the stock price would blow up. I mean everyone would love that. I don't know anyone on planet earth that wouldn't be happy with that happening.

You know uh. I would. I would freaking love for that to happen, but there there's there's no way that uh. It's very obvious that he's heard our voices.

You know he sees you guys on twitter. He hears what you guys have to say. He pays attention to what you guys say what it comes down to ultimately is. Is he going to execute it? Is he going to actually do it? I don't know yet.

You know uh so far, it doesn't seem that way and time will tell how does he know we own 90 uh of the float uh. He didn't state his methodology, but what i will say is uh. I do not think he would have used the exact vocabulary that he did and i don't think he would have stated it if it wasn't factual right uh. He states things like that.

He's very careful right, adam aaron, there's a reason he hasn't said anything about naked shorts and it's because he's very careful about what he states. Why would he come out like? Let's just look at these two statements? Why would he come out and say we will not comment uh on naked shorts, which we're just gon na drop. Is this we will not comment on naked shorts and then, at the same time say 90 of the float excluding etfs is retail right? Why would he do that? He's very articulate? I think, there's things that adam aaron has done that i disagree with. I think there are.

I think there are things that i wish he had done differently. Obviously, but this is what this is. What it comes down to. You know he stated this that has legally binding effects, so the only two options for a a here is either a he lied or b.

He told the truth. It's up to you ultimately to decide that i'm not here to convince you. I see a lot of different opinions in the chat and i i'm not so stupid as to thinking i'm going to convince anybody of anything. You guys all come to your own conclusions and that's the way that it ought to be.

You know i'm not here, to convince you of anything, i'm here to lay out a thesis uh if you've got a hole that you want to poke in the thesis you feel free to do so uh. My my grounding belief is that he told the truth, because adam aaron's track record has not been to be pursued by legal bodies, he's very careful and very articulate in the way that he expresses things and i think his statement that hey ninety percent of the float Is owned by retailers, excluding etfs is very articulate very exact and it stands for something you know. I personally believe that he's telling the truth here, because if he's not, he faces the legal ramifications and if he's lying you'll know you'll know he'd get dinged for it. He would absolutely get dinged for it.

Tattoo letters yoder mean the odor stands for year of the rat. It's uh, i graduated college in 2020 uh and our school mascot was the rat uh at st john's university. So it felt pretty suiting. You know i i i graduated at the year of the rat and our school mascot was the rat.

I this, i don't know it's cool. I thought it'd be a cool tattoo, so i got it uh. Some people think it's some lord of the rings reference, but it actually is just ear of the rat uh, which i find to be cool. Take it easy dole whip dad, thanks for stopping in my friend, thanks for stopping in all right amc closed the day up.

1.15, 21 cents total on the day uh. Obviously you had a pretty nice uh recovery off of a morning. Dip came back up, broke this momentum level about 18 and 44 cents. Short interest was up on the day about two percent, or so last we checked we'll give you guys a quick update so that you have uh some finalized numbers in terms of what is happening.

20.57 percent current short interest, estimated at free flow based on 85 of the exchange reported data reported from finra. This is actually excluding uh shares that are traded back and forth between a friend to friend basis. This could be bank to bank institution institution ceo or ceo. There's a lot of different ways that can happen, but that's why it's 85 compared to uh a hundred, so that is uh.

That is the update on uh on our girl amy. It was a pretty decent day: uh, i'm not mad in the least bit about uh. You know the recovery, i think that's very solid. I think we all would have wished for a better move coming off of the earnings uh, but there's there's lots to be hopeful for and there's lots to be happy about, and i will tell you myself personally that i'm very satisfied with uh with the call i'm Happy with the day, i'm happy with how we are moving forward with the stock and with the company and with investors, and i and i appreciate all of you taking the time to watch so that's what i've got for this live stream.

If you wouldn't mind doing me, a favor just drop a like on the way out. I don't appreciate it. It helps out and all that you already know the deal. Uh we'll be back tomorrow.

The exact same time we'll be back at 1, 30 p.m. Central standard time to do a live stream uh over over the market. Talk about amc, whatever's happening in the broad market. Did i meet j cole and he was at st john's.

I didn't get to meet him, no didn't get to meet him. That would have been sick, though i would have liked that a lot hey one more thing before trey gets off, bully him to drink water, yeah, yeah yeah, whatever that's what i've got for you guys so uh until the next one, we'll catch y'all later much love Light taps peace.