Everybody to all the apes out there welcome back to trees trades coming in here again to give you guys the second interview for adam aaron adam. It's a pleasure to have you here back again to speak with me and the rest of the apes who are here. Uh, join together for the culture of amc stock, hope you're having yourself a good evening, hello, trey, hello, to all your subscribers who are watching this live or who might watch later on uh. It's a really an honor and a privilege for me to be with you and to be with the people who follow you so closely.

I appreciate that immensely so we're not gon na waste too much of your time. We're just gon na dig right into these questions. So we're gon na throw you some hard balls here right off the bat. I want to talk about the 8.5 million shares that were sold to mud rick, so there's some speculation.

Coming from the the ape community, the retail investors out there that the sale that took place with mudric was you know it's a little bit shady, not in terms of what amc did but how they sold it and the way they got out of the stock. So they sold it immediately the next week on monday and then follow that up with a statement with uh you know, being amc is overvalued. Do you have anything to speak on about that, because there's just a little bit of fear, uncertainty and doubt in terms of the way that that whole transaction took place. Sure i've got a lot to say about that and um the way you phrase the question: trey is the way some of the people uh in our in your community.

Our community uh are talking, but it's not actually accurate, so and - and there are some nuances here so the first thing is that uh madrid capital has been incredibly helpful to amc. I want to remind you that back in december, when no one would give amc a dime, modern capital took a big risk and lent us a hundred million dollars 100 million dollars, and that was the catalyst for our uh continued capital raising between mid-december and late january. That brought in 1.2 billion dollars and i don't think we would have raised the 1.2 billion dollars if mudric hadn't, given us the first 100 million and um, and i don't know that amc would have been able to avoid bankruptcy court. Had we not raised that 1.2 billion dollars back then? So, let's start at the beginning, that mudrik's been a very good actor here, a very good actor.

Second, i don't know exactly what they own today, but i know that they have. I believe i don't know for sure, but i believe they have a couple of hundred million dollars of amc. Debt, uh and they've had they've held this debt for quite some time. Uh mudric as a firm, has every incentive for amc to thrive and prosper.

That's the kind of second thought, the the third thought. I i can confirm that we sold madrid 8.5 million shares and i can confirm that we did it at a price of 27 and 12 cents a share and that it brought in 200 and, i think, was 239 million dollars of cash. What they did with their shares is their business, not our business. We sold shares to them in good faith uh.

They can do what any shoulder can do. They can hold them, they can sell them uh, that's their decision, not ours, so i can't confirm exactly what they did. I can't confirm the timing of what they did. I do know that some of the estimates out there about how much money they might have made in the buying shares and selling shares are inaccurate reports, and i also know for a fact that they never made any public comment that they thought amc was overvalued.

So what you got was those were anonymous sources to people in the media who reported those comments that attributed them to madrid, but you'll never find a statement that moderate made to that effect on on the record uh. Having said that, look at what they did, they gave us 239 million dollars in cash um at what was then a sky-high price for the shares, uh uh, 27 dollars and 12 cents a share. Now we all know that, since that occurred, the share price is higher. Still uh but um, and so i'm like i would take that all of that what madrid did that was all very good for amc, as a company was very good for amc shoulders.

Uh next question all right. I i like the piece of that that you said uh there. There wasn't any hard proof stating that uh they actually made that statement. So i think that's a good thing too, to get out there that there wasn't any hard documentation, but the next question that i've got for you is regarding the 11.5 million shares that were sold today.

Now this is uh. This has just raised some concerns for a lot of the investors. Now there was the first interview here we talked about how amc had you know? 46 ish thousand shares total remaining after that issue. Those 43 million shares you know offering into the market and raise a great sum of cash uh.

So if there's there's a sentiment right now, passing along with the retail investor group, the apes that uh, they feel a little bit betrayed, they feel like um, like like the management, was hiding something that that was behind closed doors, and we just didn't get to see It now there's probably some sort of explanation for this, and you know i'd love to hear what you have to say. But where did these shares come from for this 11.5 million shares that you sold into the market for moderate capital for those 8.5 million shares, and are there any shares remaining that we should expect for the future? So we can make better investment decisions for ourselves. Sure thing and trey uh, that's one of the reasons i came on with you today is to make sure that we get the straight scoop out in front of all of the people who are shareholders of our company uh back when we said that we had 43 Million shares available for sale. You will also recall that was before the may 4 shareholder meeting that was postponed.

One of the items that was up for shareholder vote at the may 4 meeting was to put 20 million amc shares into what's called the management equity incentive plan. Those shares would be essentially given to the management of the company uh, given, i might add, for free to imagine the company right. The management team of the company cares so much about the company that we decided that, rather than us, taking those 20 million shares and those 20 million shares working for the benefit of officers of amc that we ought to use those shares a different way. We ought to use those shares to strengthen the company, the the company that all of your uh followers are invested in, and so, if you look at a press release that we put out just about an hour ago with a new proxy for the new july 29 Uh shareholder meeting you will see that there are zero shares being allocated to the management of the company.

Those 20 million shares that were going to go into my pocket in the pockets of other managers and executives. The company we decided instead that they should be used for that company's benefit, not for our personal benefit. So, though, if you look at the proxy that went out a few minutes ago, we are not making any requests of the shareholders to put any shares in the management equity incentive plan that essentially, those 20 million shares uh that we're going to go to us personally. For our own money that freed those 20 million shares up and we sold those 20 million shares eight and a half million earlier in the uh in over the last week to moderate and 11.5 million today, and between those two transactions raised over 800 million dollars of Cash not to line my pocket or anybody who works at amc, but to put that money in the treasury of amc to strengthen amc.

Let amc do more good things to grow our company, that's where the 20 million shares came from. We all know what we did with them. We put them into the market, we brought in over 800 million dollars doing so, and that makes amc an uh a much stronger company uh much easier for us to grow going forward and i think that's in the best interest of our shoulders. There's another point: i'd like to make uh and it's a very important point, because it goes to this whole issue of delusion.

I believe, amongst some amc shoulders. There is a fear. You use the phrase fud, you know, fear uncertainty right, there's a fear that just the mere fact of issuing shares is a bad thing for a company there's another a very strongly held view, and it's the view that i hold and that uh many other amc shoulders Have including many of your apes - and that is, let's look at the facts back in december and january uh, the press was absolutely convinced that amc was going to fail. We issued 250 million shares and sold them into the market, and we brought in, as you know, from that effort about 800 million dollars cash.

That way that also triggered us being able to borrow another 400 million dollars of cash. That made amc so much stronger. That single act of diluting shares saved the company and made the company a stronger company. The share price when that was done, was between three dollars and seven dollars a share.

Now, let's fast forward um, we put out some more shares, um that we announced on may 13 and we announced with a sale of 43 million shares, which we raised at an average price of nine, which we sold an average price of 9.98 that we brought in 428 billion dollars to amc, in our view. Yes, we were aware we were diluting the share count, but in our view, that 428 million dollars of cash greatly strengthened amc and made amc a much stronger company. And i don't need to ask you what happened to our share price between may 13 and now. Um uh, but what i do know uh is when we raised 428 million dollars at 990.

I think it's 9.94 a share actually at 9.94 a share. We strengthened amc now sure enough. We announced on tuesday we brought in another 239 million dollars and we announced today that we brought in another 508 million dollars. Look when we did this.

We did this when the trading volumes of amc stock were sky. High uh in in normal weeks, amc trades about 500 million, a 500 million shares in a week uh. If we just look at what we did this week, i would say that eight and a half million shares or 11 million shares in a week when we're trading 500 million shares. Normally it's just hard to see how that is, should be alarming.

Uh. It's such a small amount of shares compared to what's trading right, but that's against the normal week. The trading has not been normal of late. We've been trading 500 million shares as a company a day last week and this week right so 8 million shares or 11 million shares.

These are very small numbers in comparison to what's actually trading and it's our view that um uh that we're strengthening the company and we're not hurting the company. Now you asked me a question: how many shares do we have left and we made a public comment to that point this afternoon, at press release. We're done we're out, there's no more left. Now, when i say there's no more left, i want to be technical.

There are forty six thousand shares left forty six thousand remember this is a company. That's issued over 400 million shares over the last year. So if anybody wants to take comfort in the fact that there are no more shares coming unless the shareholders approve us doing something else, they can take comfort in that. I would actually tell you if i were a shareholder.

I would be more concerned that we don't have shares available to us because i think shares are a very powerful tool to do good things for a company look at the 1.6 billion dollars of cash that we brought into amc between january and may by using shares. That's very good for amc that strengthens amc that helps uh, make sure that our long-term future is very bright and right now we don't have that um. We don't have that tool at our disposal, because we've used up all about 46 000 shares that have been authorized in by the shoulders and they were authorized by the shoulders back in 2012.. It took us nine years to use those shares there were.

There was i i want to make sure i don't uh steamroll you and i want to make sure you ask me more questions, no worries, all the questions you have and but i i want to make sure, but he knows that um we can't do any more Shares unless the shareholders approve - and that's just it i mean that's those are straight facts and i'm going to make the case probably later in this call and responsibility. One of your questions that the shareholders should authorize more shares, because this could be a very valuable tool to build this company going forward and grow this company going forward. But let's save that for the next question all right before we move on to the next question. I just want to circle back to one clarification point, because i thought it was pretty interesting.

It was the the piece where you were saying that the equity incentive plan right for the management, so those 20 million shares whether or not you you decided to sell them. You know into the market for the company or to give them to the management either way those 20 million shares would have been. You know, essentially added to the overall shares outstanding. That's correct all right, that's good to know, but but instead they're not going to the 100 people in the company uh who normally get those shares they were, they were used uh this week for the benefit of all of our servers.

All right got it. We raised. We raised, we raised a lot of money that we just put in the bank. Perfect, i think, uh.

I think that's uh, obviously a great great way to use those chairs if they're going to be used either way. You know for the benefit of everybody. So that's a good, you know great clarification point and i'm glad that you doubled down on that. So we're gon na move into the next question here really quick.

I want to talk about that 25 million share vote now. It was obviously stated by amc, like you just kind of alluded to here today in a press release that you are you're requesting a 25 million share authorization for i'm, assuming it would be 2022.. So i guess the big clarification points that i have is, if this is approved, will a single one of these shares be used in 2021 and what sort of plans would you have for these 25 million shares? You know so that we would want to vote yes on this authorization. Well, let's start with uh.

They absolutely cannot be used in calendar year 2021.. That's just again: that's we wrote that into the plan. So no one even has to take my word for it. It's not even possible right, uh.

Second, you said that we would use those years in 2022.. What we would say is we wouldn't use those shares before 2022, but that doesn't mean we will use all those shares in 2022.. We could, but that doesn't mean we will. The last time the shelters authorized shares for this company was nine years ago.

It took us nine years to use up all those shares and um uh. Looking ahead, if the shareholders approved these new 25 million share trunks. Theoretically, we could use them quickly in 2022 or we could use them spread out over a long period of time. We would only use them if there are really good opportunities for amc.

So let's talk about what some of those opportunities might be um, god forbid. This coped virus comes back and puts us all on our keisters. I want to say: oh i mean emc, i mean like the country in the world tracking. If, if disaster comes back, we'll all be glad that we had this authorization sitting out there to be used.

Hopefully, that's not the case, so why don't we kind of take that one off the table because it sounds uh such bad karma? I think coveted 19 would come backward, there'd, be the invention of code 20 or god only knows what. But let's, let's look at some of the other good things we could do not just have it as rainy day money to prevent a catastrophe. We could use this cash that we might raise in 2022 and beyond. We might use some of the cash we already raised.

This week to pay down some of our expensive debt and to deleverage the company, that would be very good for amc. It would especially be good if we could buy some of that debt back at a discount and actually make a profit in buying back. Some of the debt, that's an example. Here's another example: uh.

We owe landlords over 400 million dollars in cash from rent that we incurred in 2020 that they very graciously said. Don't pay us now pay us later, but we owe that money well. What if we can go to some of those landlords and say yeah we're supposed to pay you back over two years or three years or five years or 10 years, but if you'd, let us pay you less, we'll pay you now, because we've got cash. Well again.

We owe them this money. These are binding legal contracts, so if we can use shares to generate cash to take future obligations and pay them off at a discount, that would be a wonderful thing for amc as a company, and for our shows that there are, there are more and like there Are many more and when you see the proxy that's coming out, we actually, this time we actually printed in the proxy some of the things that we might be able to use shares for, but i'll give you another one, and we were quite explicit about this in The press release we put out the other day. We believe that there's merger and acquisition opportunity for amc, while amc is clearly making it through this pandemic. Others of our competitors did not.

There are movie theater circuits out there that did go into bankruptcy. There are movie theater circuits that are faltering that are failing. There are theaters that are otherwise very powerful theaters that gross a lot of money in normal times that are now up for grabs, and we specifically mentioned theaters that were leased or owned by arclight and pacific theaters in southern cal, mostly in southern california, and a little Bit around the country, those theaters are now all closed. Landlords are looking for new tenants for those theaters we're going to chase those theaters hearts, some of them.

One of them that i can think of was the third most visited movie theater in all of los angeles. In the years 2017 and 2018. - wouldn't that be a great theater to add to amc as just an example. So we can also use the 800 million dollars we just raised and whatever we might be able to raise in 2022 and 2023 or beyond.

Maybe maybe there's another movie theater company we can buy. Maybe there's a great uh acquisition opportunity for us outside of pure play movie theaters. That would allow us to vertically integrate and create real value for amc showers. If you are must with the tool, meaning stock is a tool, if you are muscles with the tool to go, find value, creating opportunities, for instance, shoulders.

We can do that if we're not armed with this tool, then you're tying our hands behind our back and you'll. Make it just that much harder for us to land some of these attractive opportunities to benefit assault? Now we also know from the may 4 meeting that there was a lot of concern being expressed by our shareholders about the size of the equity aspect. We asked for 500 million shares right and the timing. There was no discussion as the time and some out there thought.

Oh, my goodness, they're going to put 500 million shares into the market tomorrow, uh which scared a few people and we were trying to say no. No, no, the last time the company authorized 100 shares it lasted for almost a decade, so we scrapped that meeting specifically because i we our management team, we were listening to our shareholders and we were changing our plans so as to mesh our thinking with the thinking Of our company's owners, which is our showroom base, and so this time around uh may 4 was only a few weeks ago, right yeah, we went out here right. We went out in writing and said, can't do anything with these shares now, because we can't use them in 2021.. That's actually a commitment i made to you on the first of our interviews.

I remember with respect to all 500 million shares and the second major change is instead of asking for an authority from the shareholders to issue 500 million shares. We asked for authority issued 25 million shares that quantity straight straight arithmetic. It's 95 less shares it's a much more measured request of the shareholders, and yet it still arms us with a very powerful tool to help us grow this business, to create value for our shareholders, which benefits all of us. That makes sense to me.

So i think the the the big point you've already said it, but i just want to double down, so we can close this question on a good note is that even you know with 2021. None of these are on the table. Uh, not gon na use a single one of these legally binding it's in the document, so you couldn't argue it. Even if you wanted to you, might not even use these shares in 2022.

It would be mainly, for you know, different opportunities to raise capital and to improve the company. You stated you know the possibility of a merger or an acquisition with different movie theater chains, and i suppose i'd like you to expand a little bit on. Maybe some that you're able to you know talk about some of the opportunities that are presenting themselves to you, because this has been a conversation that the apes have had. You know more than once about the potential of you know: amc, either a being acquired or b acquiring other companies to improve the strength of them and scare away short positions from the stock in the short term and the long term.

Is there anything that you're able to speak on for that sure, so think of it? This way the stronger amc is, as a company uh, the more people who bet against the company should be concerned. I'm disconnecting that from our share price. I'm not saying at the share price on january 15 or february 15 or march 15 or june 15th, just in general, not talking about trading activity. Just in general, the stronger a company is kind of.

By definition, the stronger a company is, and we've raised, uh billions of dollars uh over the past 10 months uh, and we have almost two billion dollars of cash in the bank. Now almost two billion dollars in cash how's that compared to your liabilities, oh um, a separate question. I'll answer: a second okay, no worries. Next, i promise um.

The question is: what do we do with that cash? How do we deploy it so as to make amc even stronger still, and i do believe that there's m a possibility for ams for amc, uh m, a being of course, merger and acquisition uh. We already said publicly: there are 17 arclight and pacific theaters that will not reopen. Some of them are some of the strongest theaters in the united states. Highest grossing, theaters united states would love to get some of those.

I will tell you that, because amc is strong again, we've had various theater landlords around the country approach us about taking over other attractive theaters, not arclight, pacific theaters, but other theaters operated by other uh chains, whose financial strength or the ingenuity of their management team is Not as well respected by those landlords, as they now respect amc, and so i think, there's an opportunity to pick up some highly attractive theaters there. There are other entire movie theater companies who have posited to us that they would like us to buy them outright, and the answer to all these things is always the same answer number one: do we have the resources to consummate such moves and number two? Is it smart for us to consummate those moves and if we can buy things at a very attractive price or we can lease some theaters on attractive these terms, then it's smart to proceed and if somebody wants us to pay an arm and a leg or overpay Or do something foolish we're not going to do that right? Remember this uh! I am an amc shoulder. I've run amc now for five and a half years other than when i gifted some shares to my two adult sons. I have not sold one amc share in five and a half years, uh uh and i have no current intentions to selling amc shares at the moment.

Uh i'm a believer. I believe that we can grow our company, strengthen our company, build our company and that's that's what our entire management team is focused on uh and again disconnecting this from the share price of the moment uh over the long term. My job is to build a stronger amc and that's what i'm committed to doing perfect. You know you said you kind of circled back to this, so i think this would be a good point to touch back on it's just the liabilities versus current cash on hand.

How is that situation looking after you've raised so much capital, so we have um in the neighborhood of just under six billion dollars of debt. It's five point something um. Those people who like to bad mouth amc and you're familiar with them right, absolutely are arguing about them for months now, absolutely they pointed that as if it was the end of the universe, well, they're kind of forgetting to mention that we have two billion dollars in Cash so right off the bat that lowers what we call the net debt to closer to 4 billion from 6 billion, and we have very few maturities maturities means when you have to pay debt back right until the years 25 and 26. We have a little bit of money that we owe in 23 a little bit of money that we own 24, but most of the money that we have to repay is 2025 and 2026.

uh. That gives us you know four or five years to earn money to pay some of that debt down. That's a long time. That's a lot of earning power for amc to pay down debt.

Additionally, companies carry a reasonable amount of debt all the time. So the other thing that we can do is refinance debt uh. It's not really like someone is going to walk up with an empty wheelbarrow in 2026 and say here. Pay me back.

What is more likely is that well before 2026, we'll work with our investment banks, we'll work with our commercial banks and we'll refinance some of this step stretching out the maturities from 2026 to a year way out of the future. I'm not concerned about our debt position in the least perfect, that's a great way to cap that off and honestly, that's how i felt too, i mean the amount of money you guys are raising and you expect the revenue as long as colbit doesn't get out of Hand again, you know amc's got a bright future. I think the fundamental thesis of a short position is weakening every single passing day. The the the strength of the company continues to grow, and i think this is a great opportunity to transition into the overall share count right.

So this is something that a lot of the apes and the retail investors were excited about, and you know in that recent you know press release that came out. It was fun. There was about 501 million total shares now. It's also, you know been found that only us and canada primarily makes up that overall share count.

So there's there's some speculation as to how many of the actual retail investors could have been left out of that overall count. You know, for example, we we, as you know the ape community, have taken tallies of all the people who own stock all over the world and we're leaving out little dozens and dozens and dozens of countries which there's an opportunity for a lot of shares to exist. Is there anything you'd like to speak on about the 500 million share outstanding account that was found here released today that isn't available in that that statement or that you just like clarification, points on sure and just for the record uh put uh, i'm happy to answer The question i'm gon na answer it as robustly, as i know how some of the things that you said in there were not correct and in my answer i'll correct, the record feel free, so we announced today um uh well before i say we announced today. We fulfilled a commitment, we've told people publicly that we were going to announce a share account as of june 2..

Well, today is june 3 and we put out the share count as of june 2. That was yesterday uh, it's actually 501, i think 0.8 million. So it's a little bit more than 500 yeah, my bad, my bad between 501 and 502.. Let's start there all right.

The international share count is included in that number of 501 point whatever it was seven or eight, whatever it was between 501 and 502. uh. Our understanding is the international shares, meaning the of the 501 million shares about 27 million of those were held outside the united states, and it's like more than dozens and dozens of countries. It's all around the world right you've got people who are subscribing to you.

Your youtube channel from a lot of companies internationally, we got shareholders all around the world too, so the share count is uh. Sorry, i i think i said that it's wrong uh. I i think it's 27 million shares are outside of the us and canada, because there are also a number of canadian shares, um that are included in the 501, but that 501 number does include all the shares that are outstanding worldwide and again, i think it's, my Understanding that 20, the canadians can easily vote in our uh normal annual meetings. I think you may be aware that some of the brokers, firms outside the united states make it difficult for international holders of our shares to vote.

So if you want to know how many shares, not all of them aren't risk for not voting, because some international brokers allow it and facilitate it, but it's 27 million of the 501. So that's 0.1 now there's been a tremendous amount of speculation amongst your followers, like amongst my shareholders and in most cases they're the same people um um that um - that there's must be something more than that because they see these enormous volumes of stock that are trading Every day and they're saying, if you only have 500 million shares like how do you trade 700 million shares in a day? Well, there are multiple answers to that question. One is um, you know a lot in your community really dislikes. Some of the practices that have developed on wall street over the last 5, 10 20 years right and one of the practices that has developed, is what's called machine trading yeah, where humans are not trading stock, but machines are trading stock in enormous quantities algorithmically and what They're doing is they're, taking a share and in something called high frequency trading, they're trading it and then trading it again and trading it again and trading again and over and over and over so an individual's share.

Might uh go back and forth um between these machines and between machines and humans? You know zillions of times in a day, so that explains part of it, the other part, and it's so big. We almost can't quantify it. As you know, the options market has been very active about about amc uh, especially over the last six months, puts and costs which uh can create what are called derivatives very to the livers where people are you know, taking, puts and calls and have various strategies right. Well, what this does uh a typical option.

Contract is for a hundred shares one contract, a hundred shares, and you know if to buy a hundred shares you might have to put down you know whatever is 100 times our closing price. You know five thousand dollars, but you might be able to buy or sell an option contract for two dollars or five dollars or fifty dollars or eighty dollars, and so what that does is allows people to um create the economic benefits as if they own the stock. Without actually owning the stock and or selling, or vice versa, selling selling stock, so it greatly increases the volatility of the stock because so much less cash has to be put up. And when i talk about this yesterday in the united states of america, amc shares represented 11 of all the options on all the public companies that exist in the united states.

Yesterday, one company 11 of all the options trading yesterday was in amc shares. That's why you see such high volumes in our stock? That's why you see such uh uh uh. That's not the only reason, but that's a reason why you see a high volume in our stock. It's why you see volatility in our stock um and that's something we're all living together beyond that.

I guess the only other thing to say about the share count issue is somebody out there in the world of reddit and twitter was trying to speculate. That amc was either going to split our stock or do a reverse split of our stock uh, and they were breathlessly reporting this as if they knew this to be true. Well guess what uh? I can tell you that i've never given any serious thought to splitting our stock or a reverse split of our stock. That's point number one point number two.

We have absolutely no plans to split our stock or do a reverse split of our stock. You wan na hear point number three: we can't split our stock or do a reverse split of our stock without shareholder approval. So if we wanted to do that - and we don't - but if we wanted to do that, we would have to go out to the shareholders for a vote. So guess who makes that decision adam aaron doesn't make that decision.

You, the owners of amc, you make that decision, which is fine by me, because i i i think my management team and i are pretty smart people. I think we've kept amc away from a lot of trauma over the last year. I think we've strengthened our company a lot but you've probably figured out by now. If you look at what i'm saying publicly, if you look at my tweets, if you look at the dion fosse contribution, i have an enormous amount of respect for the owners of our business.

I work for you, you are the bosses here, not me uh. I keep on seeing all this stuff on uh twitter, about uh, king, this and king, that you know well it's funny and it's flattering and it's more funny than flattering. But you know what you know who the real king is. The shareholder is king.

You are fully in charge. That's why we're not asking you for five to authorize 500 million shares, we're authorizing you to vote for 25 million shares, because we don't think you'd vote to approve 500 million shares. We think you might vote to approve 25 million shares, um and um. That's why um we take what you think we take what you have to say very carefully and we give a lot of thought to what you guys think and it's for a simple reason.

Like we exist in the capitalistic free market system, i went to what some people think is the best business school in the world. I hate to say that i went there over 40 years ago about a long time ago sure and with no disrespect intended for other business schools was the harvard business school. You know what they taught me in 1977, at the harvard business school professional management teams work for the owners of the business. Now, of course, we've got a responsibility to all stakeholders, so i've got to pay attention, not just as shareholders, but primarily our fiduciary duty is to shareholders and guess what you trey you're a shower.

The people who are watching your youtube channel right now, i'm guessing 90. 95 99 of those people are amc showers uh. We care what you think we respect who you are uh and honestly, it's a privilege for me to lead this company that you now um. You know, i think, uh it's very apparent too, and you know the whole stock split thing.

You know right off the bat there's there's only one way that you would actually know about this stock split. You know, and that's if you were watching and combing through the comments and concerns of you, know the apes, the retail investors out there, who you know you work for, which is, i think it shows how much you're really digging into the sentiment and the current climate Of the retail investors, so i'm glad that you made that statement. It's a good thing to to to kind of end that question on now. I think there's just a last question.

Can i just give a quick comment: yeah go ahead like i'm living on twitter right now, yeah read it read, it read it also, but more twitter and um uh. When many of you know my some parts of my background, you know a decade ago, i was the ceo of the philadelphia 76ers. I used to tweet like 10 to 15 times a day with a fan base in philadelphia um. I love doing it.

It's a lot of fun and i learned a lot by uh reading what the fans wrote back to me. I used to get two three hundred inbound tweets a day when i was running the sixes. Well, that was a long time ago, but i still had 21 000 twitter followers in april, mostly a remnant of those days. I've been pretty dormant on twitter, since i left i mean i'm still an owner of the sixers small, very small, but uh since i left the you know the day to day operational role, um literally today trey i crossed a hundred thousand twitter followers.

We went from twenty one thousand in april to a hundred thousand congratulations june and yeah. That's nothing compared to you you're like way ahead of me so um but um, but and i'm tweeting almost daily, now uh, but more important than the tweets that i write. Although they're important, because they're routinely being read by you, know anywhere from 200 000 to 2 million people each time i put out a tweet um, what's really more important, that is i'm reading the inbound messages that are coming to my feed because it allows me to Have my finger on the pulse of what you all are thinking and very quietly? I haven't made a lot of noise about this, but in the last four weeks i've followed about a thousand apes, a thousand and nobody's doing this. For me, i don't have somebody like running my twitter feed.

This is what i'm doing at 10 o'clock at night when i'm it's that or watch tv and and i'm following some people who have 100 000 followers, i'm following some people with 10 000 followers, i'm following people with a thousand followers, i'm following people with a hundred Followers i'm following people with two followers, but my twitter feed now includes so much inbound information of what you are thinking. Similarly, on a typical tweet that i put out, i'm getting in the neighborhood of a thousand replies to that tweet, i'm reading every single one of those replies myself nobody's summarizing them for me, i'm reading them - and i learn so much about what you all think by Reading what you have to say? No, it's not always flattering. You know in a world where everybody has an opinion, like not everybody's, going to agree with 100 of the things i say or do, but it sure helps me be a better executive to know what the owners of my company think and i'm learning a lot by Reading my inbound flows on twitter - that's awesome, i i think uh you know i i i was interested by the comment: uh they're, not always flattering, because to go through a thousand messages. You've got to have some pretty thick skin to to be able to.

I could speak on this myself. You're gon na have some pretty thick skin to be able to to go through everybody's opinions, because sometimes people don't agree with you and that's you know it is what it is. We don't always have to agree, but i think that just shows the dedication and the fact that you really do care about what the the apes thinking and we can see it in the way that this has come out, or at least i could see it in The way that this has come out with the recent press releases and the way that you've handled the questions i got to be honest, i had some speculation. I had some concerns coming into this interview and i think the way you're addressing these are is very solid.

So we'll leave those opinions on the rest of the people go ahead. Can i quickly respond you're coming a bit of thick skin yeah, try running a professional sports team in philadelphia where they famously booed santa claus, um! So um you develop. You develop a thick skin. Pretty fast but look uh.

If somebody wants to disagree, i would prefer that they do it civilly, instead of uh with a lot of profanity. But you know what um uh we're in the public eye: um we're big boys and girls. We can. We can take.

What's thrown at us, we should be able to take what's thrown at us, and i will tell you that uh pick your percentage 99 99.99 of what's on my twitter feed, and i think you actually can read the replies to my tweets. You can't read my dms, which i also read, but i i think you can read replies uh they're, so heartfelt they're so well intended whether they agree with us or they disagree with this and most of the time they've been agreeing with this delay. Um uh, as i said, i learn from hearing what you guys think and i nobody's doing this for me. Um.

I write my tweets myself. I'm reading my inbounds myself. I'm learning a lot from it i'll be a better executive for it awesome! That's good stuff! It's a good way to wrap up that question, so i i suppose you know - i think i already know the answer to this, but i'm going to ask anyways because there there are people out there who speculate and they're interested right. So i kind of wanted to ask about dividends and i've done some reading a little bit and i recognize that because of legalities, you probably can't speak on this, but if you're not able to answer if you'd like to move on a different question, we can absolutely Do so if you can, you want to say something feel free to do so, otherwise we can move on to the next piece, so yeah, what like one of the various other things in my job that i have to do is i have to make sure that I strictly adhere to all securities laws and it's really not appropriate for the sea of a public company to ever talk about dividend policy going forward uh, and so i think the law requires that.

I not answer that question all right. I would point out that we did pay a dividend, for i think it was seven years straight and then we stopped paying a dividend a year or two back um and a dividend is a use of cash and uh. I'm glad that the cash we might have put out in dividends within the rearview mirror that we had kept in the company treasury, because that's probably the difference between us having survived as a company and having gone down in that in the pandemic in 2020. Um and there's a lot of evidence that a lot of companies pay dividend a lot of companies, don't pay a dividend, there's a lot of evidence that companies are not hurt by not paying a dividend, making no comment about what we'll do in the future um.

I just know that we've now put a lot of cash in the treasury. That's our treasury, not the u.s treasury, and what i would like to use that cash for is to grow the company to seize on opportunities that come before us to create value for shareholders. To make amc a stronger company for the long haul and at the end of the day, um that's what uh our shareholders would want me to do all right. Perfect! That's honestly, more of a response than i was expecting.

So i appreciate the clarifications adam uh. It does mean a lot all right, so we've already kind of touched on the cash flow. That was one of the questions that i had, but in this next one uh this is. This is like a final message to you know the short sellers.

So our first interview, you know kind of wrapping things up here. The first interview. You said something at the end that i think a lot of people remembered. You said it's not a good idea to bet against movie theaters.

I definitely don't think it's a good idea to bet against amc and i'd like to think it's not a good idea to bet against adam aaron and that that rang true with a lot of people, and i think it came pretty well to fruition. So if you could revisit that question right, a message to pass along to short sellers, what would you have to say to them right now, as they continue to hold a pretty heavy short interest stake according to what's reported to the exchange data right in the company? What would you say to them now at this point? It's an interesting question. You know the the right answer to your question is that my job is not to run the stock. My job is to run the company.

My job is to build and create and build and increase value for you, the owners of my company for the long haul. That's the right answer and that's my answer. That's like, and my lawyers are going to wish that i stopped there, but i'm going to tell you something else um. This is the fifth company that i've run since 1993..

All the four that i ran before this were all successes. Uh. I think you have to look at amc right now, having uh moved ourselves into position from being the second biggest movie theater chain, the u.s. When i got here the biggest in the world, that's got to be good and um uh.

The fact that we dodged the bullet of this pandemic, given how awful it was that was thrown against us, that's got to be pretty good. I'd like to think that amc, when the history books are written, is going to be a very proud chapter in american business and a very proud chapter by the executives who ran the company um, so um it just really. Uh annoys me to no end that people bet against us and i spend every waking moment trying to make amc a stronger company. So the people who bet with us are the ones who succeed.

That's a beautiful way to wrap that up. Awesome well! Well, adam we've taken up a pretty good chunk of your time. I appreciate you answering some hard questions because you know, as you already know, you read through twitter, you read it. You pay attention to a lot of this stuff.

There was. There was a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt - and you know hopefully this helped answer some questions. I know that it helped. You know clear up some of the opinions that i had about the recent things that have happened with amc.

Are there any last comments? You know concerns questions that you have that you'd like to say before we end this live stream, yeah, yeah um. So like uh and adam aaron, you you get what you see, i'm a really a straight shooter uh. I call it as i see it. Uh uh! I'm not a spring chicken.

I've been at this a long time. I don't mean amc, but like business career. My word has always been my bond. I've always been a high integrity, guy, uh and just know just uh.

Give us the benefit of the doubt once in a while uh everything we're doing is in the best interests of the company and growing the company over the long haul um, and especially as you give us the benefit of doubt and trust us to try to make The best decisions we can we're human - we might make mistakes here and there, but we're our track record's been pretty good um. I just want to end this interview, uh, not only by thanking you for giving me the opportunity to talk to your subscribers on youtube, but to thank all of your subscribers um. I hope you buy a lot of movie tickets. I hope you come to our theaters.

I hope you enjoy your theaters, because this is your company. We just said a pro up a program. That's quite revolutionary yesterday called amc investor connects where we're going to start communicating with our shareholders directly and make special offers to our shoulders come to uh. All you got to do is it's free just like give us your name and email address and click a little box says you're a shelter like we're already giving you a free popcorn.

If you come to a movie this summer, there could be more offers coming. Um uh, one of the things that i've been most impressed by over the last six months as this phenomenon has occurred, is how passionate many of you are about. Amc um, like we give our hearts and souls for this company like we bleed, amc red and what i've learned over the last several months is. You do too, and i hope your shoulders of this company for years and years and years to come of your customers of our company for years and years to come, and i hope i know that we're the biggest movie theater in the world.

I believe that we're the best movie theater chain in the world. I hope that in what we do and how we conduct ourselves and how we continue to build our company and grow value for our shoulders. I hope we make all of you proud, and i am personally very grateful to you for your support of amc. Well, i appreciate that adam and the apes.

You know i think, what's what's really incredible about this, is the culture behind why everybody has has uh? You know from what i've read you know from my understanding. Is it's all about the stories, the personal stories, and i think this big connection that's been drawn between amc stock and what's drawn everybody together, the same same sort of mentality is the why right so they all have their own stories. They want heard. They want to feel like they matter.

They want to feel like these short sellers who bet against this stock and bet against the retail investor for years and years and decades, and decades was wrong. This whole time and amc kind of stands for that same sort of thing. It's that it's that freaking, like i, i have a million memories, great memories. I had my first kiss.

I remember saying that in the first interview at an amc movie, theater yeah and it's just it's the same sort of mentality right. It's all about the memories you make the the people that you grow connections with in both of these scenarios, and i think that's ultimately what gravitated so many people to to to amc stock for the short term, and i think that is obviously going to transition to The long term, so, thank you so much adam again for coming on to this live stream. It does mean a lot to me. Thank you.

Everybody who watched this uh on the way out drop a like if you'd like to. If not i'm chilling appreciate your time. You have a great rest of your night. Thank you, trey! Thank you, one and all.