Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, apes and eight bets on behalf of trey's trades, the gorilla gang and the amc investor community. I would like to say i am not a dead cat and we would like to extend a warm welcome to adam aaron, the ceo of amc, entertainment before we go any further. I wanted our community to know a little more about adam and i will spare you his illustrious resume. Adam graduated, with a bachelor of arts from harvard college and a master of business administration from harvard business.

School adam has worked in various executive positions, including 20 years of experience as chief executive officer 25 years of experience as corporate director and 35 years of experience as a consumer engagement experience manager with that being said, i would like to sincerely thank you adam for accepting Our interview request, helping us understand more about the upcoming shareholder meeting proposals and discussing amc's future with the gorilla gang. We're not sure if you're aware of this. But we consider you one of us and occasionally referred to you tenderly, as the silverback of the gorilla gang to her knowledge. Never in the history of publicly traded companies has a ceo had total access to tens of thousands of global retail investors by way of a youtube channel through one single influencer, and i have to say, i'm extremely humbled and honored to be able to be that that Guy speaking for the community, we view this as groundbreaking and i'm sure that you with your long history of consumer engagement experience, can appreciate that this has significant marketing and sentimental value to amc and its shareholders.

Adam and casey were not aware of how widespread community has grown. You know you and me included the entire community. There was a recent reddit post with recent requests for shareholders, location and amazingly found that we now have shareholding apes in 800 locations in 69 countries around the world. Before we begin i'd like to point out that we have reached out to our community and requested that apes suggest the subject, matters and questions that we're going to be covering today during this interview.

So a lot of this is questions that have been asked by the public uh specifically for you, and i just have to say one more time and it's an absolute honor to be able to speak with you. I'm very humbled, well trey, hello to you, hello to your subscribers uh. You know what you said about this being groundbreaking: um uh, my hat's off to you, i'm well aware that you have been talking about amc a lot over the last few months and you have uh. You know hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

You have uh tens and tens of tens and tens of thousands of people watching your shows on on the youtube channel here and my whole career. I i've been running companies now for a couple of decades, and i've always thought it's very important for management teams and for chief executives to talk with their shoulders to interact with their shareholders and you're, giving me that opportunity today and i appreciate it - you know i, I i said in a i my 30 year old son actually forwarded to me. That's awesome, your tweet, that requested this interview and um uh, and i tweeted you right away and said that i would uh be delighted to engage with you and uh those who follow. You and i said something that's very important, and that is that the shareholders of our company are the owners of our company and chief executives and boards and directors.

You may not think of it this way, but we have a boss and our boss is the collection of our shelters who own the company, so i actually work for you uh and um uh. For that reason, it's a special privilege for me to engage with all of you today. That means an absolute lot adam. It really does, and i think a lot of people are gon na get a lot of comfort from that.

You know. There's this. This misconception kind of that the the executives or the people at the top of a company don't really care about the shareholders. So for for a ceo to come out publicly, especially you.

This is a large reason why i love amc and i love talking about it. Is it genuinely comes across like the the management cares about the shareholders and increasing shareholder value? Well, trey, i'm sure, there's a question coming, but i just when you say that i want to make a point. I am an amc, show right i own or have been granted and they're waiting. The best i own, a ton of amc shares.

Uh. Last i checked. I owned 3.6 million shares or have been granted brothers that are awaiting the best that i will become the owner of. I am a shareholder.

You have no idea how much i care about the share price of amc stock, because a significant chunk of my net worth is tied up in amc stock and essentially, all of my professional time is invested in amc to improve the fortunes of our company. With the goal of building shareholder value, which is something that i assume that your subscribers are going to like to hear remember, our interests are directly aligned right years. You're older, i'm a shareholder. I only do well if shareholders do well.

I think a lot of people forget that yeah, but it's um and actually uh. That's the whole way. This thing is structured, um, uh, you know. Look: it's no secret ceos, get paid a lot of money in america to run large companies, but not as well understood.

5. 8 of my annual compensation is an amc stock right if that amc, stock tanks i do terribly and and by contrast, of course, if we can help drive up the value of the amc share price over time, the right way, slowly, uh uh and by building value By growing the company by delivering earnings over the long haul, uh uh, if we can do all that, then i'll do very well that's great to hear that that is a question you you've got some great uh great 20 20 vision, anticipating some of the things we're Going to talk about here today and we're going to come back to that because i actually do have some things that i want to discuss. But it's it's very reassuring. You know, at least for me.

You know when, when i did some digging on some of the executives that own you know, amc stock, we sometimes forget there's this disconnect where we don't realize that we're all in this together and i'm very familiar with the equity incentive plan that amc entertainment has for Executives, which i think is a great thing to really incentivize - you know stock price to increase you care about the shareholders. In fact, there are more than 100 executives at amc in the u.s and europe who are granted stock each year, and if we didn't grant that stock we'd have to pay them more money in cash right. So there is there's an advantage to the company of paying compensation in stock rather than paying compensation in cash, but it has a much bigger value than just saving the company, some some uh, some cash uh. What this is doing, when we compensate our executive team in stock, we're making sure that their shareholders, the company and also most companies do this.

But it's not talked about as much uh in your community. We actually have a requirement that our executives must hold a certain amount of stuff. Really. I didn't know that and i and i forget what the number is for me: it's either three times my salary or four times my salary or five times my salary fast.

But it's a big number. No, i'm way over that right, uh and in fact, not only have i been granted amc stock uh. I think, on three separate occasions, i went into the market and bought amc stock, just because i thought it was a good value at the time, one of us, but what? But i am one of you, but what this does with all the executives who are granted stock and are required just to hold some of that stock uh? It means we force them to act and think like shareholders. Why? Because they are shoulders uh and of course, the best thing we can do as a company is to incentivize.

Our management team uh to uh want the share price to rise, and i keep on saying rise responsibly rise over time rise, the right way, no game playing, uh uh grow, the earnings grow, the stature of our company, uh capitalize, on opportunities, uh rise to the challenge Of any any problems - and that's really - and you know when we talk about a hundred different people in the organization um who are granted stock each year - this isn't just fat cats. This isn't just like three people at the top or five people on top or eight people at the top. There's a hundred people deep - and this is people uh all across the united states and in europe uh, and we want them thinking like shelters so that their every waking decision is what's in the best interest of an amc. Shareholder.

100. That's that's! You know the the equity incentive plan. You know it's exactly, as you said it incentivizes the people who who work for the company to to care about increasing value, so that you're not just going to work to go to work you're going to work, because you take pride in the stuff that you hold And i think this is a great segue. It's kind of my first question that i have for the day um you know talking about that that growth over time uh being able to slowly generate revenue and continue to push a company forward.

Now, with that being said, you you obviously have previous experience. We've talked about. You know part of your resume, but i think it'd be important in a wasted opportunity not to talk about. You know some of the previous jobs that you've held.

So do you think you could tell us about one of the companies that you have worked for, and you know some some of the business adversities you had to overcome the successes that it brought to the company that couldn't have happened without you sure you know, i Think a career is a is a building block, uh you're, walking down a path and everything you do now is a result of the experience that you gather along the way um and um. You know uh, so i was the chief marketing officer of hyatt hotels back in the 1980s. That's a long time ago. I wasn't alive yet and they know that you, your parents, might not even uh they were around, but that for not for long, probably in elementary school.

So i was an expert in loyalty marketing, because i was one of the creators of airline frequent flyer programs, which is a when i i helped invent them when i was 28 years old. That was a good thing to help invent when you were 28 years old. It's awesome and a few years later i joined hyatt as the chief marketing officer. Hyatt did not have a loyalty program at all and marriott, who was, by his biggest competitor time, did, and i was getting his clock clean, and so i quickly created a program called hyattville passport, which was a strong player in the frequent guest program arena.

I was cmo of united airlines, but that led to my being given my first ceo job when i was 38 years old at norwegian cruise line in 1993 and norwegian cruise line was in real trouble. It had very little cash and a lot of debt. It had a bad product and a weak competitive position in the industry. Um.

When i took that job. The ceo of carnival corporation carnival cruise line right actually made a public speech and said that he thought that norwegian cruise line would be forced to file for chapter 11 within 90 days, and this is my first ceo job. I thought why welcome to the major leagues they throw the fastball really hard in poster in the major leagues, because here i've been ceo for like two weeks and my biggest competitor is already predicting that we're going to collapse. Well, it was a.

It was a tough, tough challenge, but i am very proud to say that we did a complete and massive turnaround at norwegian cruise line and not only did we not file for chapter 11, we improved our our leadership, we improved our productivity, we improved our marketing, we Improved our financial strength and fast forward, i'm still on the board of directors of norwegian cruise line to this day. It's the only other public company that i'm a director of at the moment and prior to the pandemic. Norwegian was still the third largest spruce company in the world with a 12 billion dollar market cap. That would not have been the case had we not saved a uh norwegian back in the uh mid-1990s and, of course, the relevance of that experience.

Amc is very obvious. Right, i certainly did not anticipate in december of 1919 2019 that uh the strongest movie theater company in the world, the biggest movie theater company in the world, the most successful movie theater in the company in the world, the most profitable movie theater company in the world - Would be on death's door in 90 days, because the world would literally stop who of us thought that we would be locked in our homes and apartments for almost a year right, uh, uh, and but that's what happened. We went from having uh 480 million dollars a month of revenue to zero dollars a month of revenue overnight, like literally overnight, and when i say literally overnight, you know people have missed something. So, oh, he means you know over 12 months or 20 shut down.

Once i mean overnight yeah. We need to shut a thousand theaters in the span of a week and our revenues disappeared and that put amc in quite a precarious position. We we're a high fixed cost, low variable cost business. So, even though we shed a lot of expenses to try to cope with the pandemic, we were still burning through a ton of cash uh, and there were five separate occasions between april of 2020 and january of 2021, where amc was within six to twelve weeks of Running out of money, but go back to the those norwegian cruise lines, i was used to staring death in the face and beating it and um.

We raised a lot of money between april of 2020 and uh january 21.. Uh we raised about 2.8 billion dollars of debt and equity and we also had a lot of friends, because you know this is a 100 year old company. We picked up a lot of friends along the way and then we had a lot of allies and there were so many constituencies who were rooting for amc to succeed. Take our theater landlords.

You know that our theater landlords deferred 450 million dollars of contractually owned rent for 2020 uh and they have been working with us hand in glove to help us to survive this crisis. Our lenders, who we owe a lot of money to uh again our first lien holders, our second lien holders. They were with us in one of our very sophisticated, complex refinances. Last july, we literally with a stroke of a pen, wiped away 555 million dollars of debt.

It just disappeared. It just went away. Why? Because we knew we were doing moles in company, our investment bankers and citibank, and goldman sachs and b riley our investment bankers. They knew what they were doing um and we all route we all rallied around this company and we were just going to be damned if amc was going to fail, which sort of takes me to your retail investors um.

This is another audience that is really rallying around amc over the past year, and i know sure there are some people who are in it only for a buck and are only or or 10 bucks is the case yeah right and are just looking at the share Price and hoping it will rise and they'll make money from that. But i also know for a fact that a lot of our retail investors rallied around amc, not only because they hope to be a profitable investment, but because they actually have an affection and an allegiance to our company sentimental value. And they want to see amc, thrive and survive. They don't want to see enemies of amc, put us under and run us out uh, and i certainly share.

I share that view going back to my experience. I just want to mention one other thing, because it's so unusual, but also relevant to the challenge at amc. Um, i've been a very casual sports fan. My whole life right in 2011, one of my closest friends bought the nba team in my hometown.

I grew up in philadelphia just a middle class kid i went to a big public high school with 975 kids in my graduating class, two of us had you said i went to harvard college two of us out of 975 got into harvard 29.75 wow, so i've Been def, i've been defying gravity for a long time, but one of my close friends bought the nba team in my hometown and there were like a dozen people in his ownership group and he not only invited me to join the ownership group of the 76ers he He asked me to chuck everything else. I was doing professionally and go move back to philadelphia and take over the sixers as ceo of my hometown team, but i'm going to tell you. I've done more substantial things in my life, but i've never done anything more fun than running an nba team in my hometown and uh. But it was business too, because when philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the united states, but the 76ers uh, who, in my youth were very you know popular whether it was will chamberlain or dr j or alan iverson.

I mean this was this was a great story: franchise in in the nba third, most playoff, appearances of all nba teams, only along with the lakers and the celtics and um, and yet philadelphia turned off on the sixers and by 2011, when our ownership group came in Uh, we were only filling half of our our arena and we were only selling 10 000 tickets, a game in a 21 000 seat stadium right and for the fifth largest city in the country to have an nba team with the 27th best attendance in a 30 Team league - that's pretty bad yeah, but uh. You may recall i've pretty much pretty much been a sales and marketing expert. My old career. Well, guess what we we applied: those skills at the in philadelphia this to the 60s and the 76ers uh.

We started selling out almost immediately and by our 15th game in the 2011-2012 season. We are selling out our building again and we actually had the biggest attendance increase of all 30 teams in the nba that year uh and i think those sales and marketing skills that i've had all along the way, including what i put in place in philadelphia go Sixers go um uh. The those skills are also going to be very important for amc, because what this pandemic has done is we had a very loyal customer base. Amc in the united states sold 250 million tickets more than 250 million tickets in 2019, but because of this pandemic, those people have been sitting on the sidelines and our job at amc.

My job as chief executive amc is to get those people to come back to our theaters and all those marketing skills and all those sales skills and all those consumer engagement skills. They are all going to be put to the test over the next eight months, uh. As we rebuild our business and bring it back, and i'm so glad that uh that you're able to discuss all this stuff - i mean it's, i think a lot of people don't realize that you're kind of the the comeback kid in a way i mean you've, come Out of some great adversity with with companies that you've worked with, you know specifically norwegian cruise line, and i got ta be honest. I don't even know about the you know the 76ers attendance.

I mean that really directly applies to amc, which should you know, bring a lot of uh, i'd, say: comfort to shareholders, especially with the way that the media sadly plays off that this is just a bankruptcy ridden company. That's dumb money and you know quote end quote for an investor to to get into. So that's really really awesome to hear that's good. Well, so here's the thing uh always be careful about conventional wisdom, because people sign on to conventional wisdom really fast.

It doesn't mean they're right and there were a lot of so-called experts who were absolutely convinced that amc was going to die because of this pandemic and look i understand why they had concerns. I've already said five different times, we're close to running out of money right, but here's the thing you shouldn't underestimate a company's resolve. You shouldn't underestimate the power of a ceo to lead. You shouldn't underestimate all the allies and friends companies pick up over time and i said to my board of directors.

This is a direct quote, um back in it was april or may we have any board meeting. We were talking about our situation and i said you know the first company i ran when i was 38 years old um everybody said it was gon na go bankrupt. I didn't let that happen right and i'm now 66 and a half, and i expect to be running amc for a long time. I've already run emc for uh five years and four months and i'm sure i'm gon na.

I can't say: i'm sure you know you never know, never know, what's gon na happen in life, but i've sure love to run amc for another five years and four months, more, maybe another 10 years and eight months more. But my plan is to be here and um, so i said my boy and you know, look and if i'm here for 10 more years i'll be 75, i mean at some point. You do. Hang it up right.

But if i i got a lot of energy for a 66 year old cat, let me tell you and um, i said in my board: i didn't let the first company i ran going to bankruptcy and i'll be damned. If i'm going to let the last company. I run go into bankruptcy and sure enough. We just we for us to pull it off.

We needed to do everything flawlessly, but that's when you feel good about the experience that you have and the drive that you have and the smarts that you have and i'm so proud of the management team of amc. We did really execute so well post-pandemic, so we proved all those experts wrong, but, as those experts talked us down and talked us down and talked us down by january 5, i believe was the date they've gotten our share price down to a dollar ninety-one uh and They were still saying: uh it's going down more and we just uh would not let that happen. We laid out our plan publicly and we said in late december of 2020 that we were going to try to raise 750 million dollars to make sure that we could uh have the financial runway to get to the other side of this pandemic. And remember: we didn't cause this pandemic, it's not.

It wasn't the mismanagement of amc exactly right. The company is in trouble, the world stopped and and sure enough not only raised 750 million dollars when people predicted. I could show you article after article after article that was written in january. That said, they're not going to raise the money.

Well, on january 25, we announced that we had raised 917 million dollars and on wednesday january 27th we said. Actually, we raised another 305 million dollars between monday and wednesday, so it got up to a billion to 222. and between wednesday and friday that same week we raised another 600 million dollars, so we raised 1.822 billion dollars between december 14, uh and uh january 2009. I guess it would have been uh and, as we sat there at the end of february, we had more than 1.1 billion dollars in the bank and we have every confidence that, with any kind of semblance of recovery of the movie industry in the movie theater industry And with all these vaccinations out, there, um and and people being so sick and tired of being cooped up yeah at home uh, it feels like movies, are going to get released again.

We just had godzilla.com uh you're, well aware that i, i think, you're well aware, i'm very well aware, but you know um uh, our attendance for the five first five days of godzilla uh khan vs godzilla um was quintuple five times what our business had been the Wednesday, the sunday before and the wednesday sunday before then the wednesday sunday before that so uh, you just feel like the business, is going back with any kind of semblance of recovery of our industry. This money that we raised is enough to get us through to get to the other side uh, but even now we're sort of planning uh. If we need more money, what do we do? Because the worst thing that i could possibly do is let the company share price slide back down to 1.91, as uh people come out and again try to uh, doomtel and naysay the future prospects of amc. Like you're well aware, there's one analyst who put out a report says our share price is going to a penny yeah right, there's another analyst who said our share price go to a dollar there's another analyst who's chat, who says the share price about two dollars.

Personally, i, like the report that came out from an analyst about two weeks ago, saying our share price is going to rise to 13. What's going to happen, nobody really knows. What's going to happen, it depends on the pace of recovery and a whole host of other factors, but we're already putting contingency plans uh into place so that if we need to raise more cash, we can raise more cash. And i'm not talking now about the 500 million share yesterday right, which we'll get into here, i'm sure i'm only talking about the fact that we have 63 million shares that have already been authorized by the board years ago in 2013.

That was eight years ago uh. We already know that if we needed to raise more equity, we could, because we have um. Essentially, it says 63 million shares are available, but there's normally only 43 million shares are available because we have to allocate 20 million of the 63 million to the compensation grants for the next several years right. But we have 43 million shares at our disposal that we could uh use to raise liquidity if we need it um again, i'm just telling you what the management of your company because you're a shoulder i know uh, i haven't done any shares you own, because you Tweeted yeah, that's good uh, but um we're putting contingency plans in place just to make sure that we can survive this pandemic, the pandemic's not over.

Yet it's in the process of being over, but we're not out of the woods totally yet, but i've. Every confidence will get there and um, but we're also putting in we're also proposing other ideas which we think can greatly advance the company. I'm tired of playing defense we've been playing defense since march of 2020. Against this pandemic.

I want to plan against short sellers. I want to i want to play offense again, you know, i i told you a minute ago that we turned amc from being the second largest movie theater company in the united states to the largest movie theater company in the world, uh. We we were going to pandemic the most profitable movie theater company on the planet, right uh, and i do believe that very bright days are ahead for amc, i'm not in this for a week or a month or a year. I've been in this for five and a half years already.

I intend to be in this for another five and a half or ten and a half years going forward and my job and the job and the whole executive team of amc is to build shareholder value. And we have a lot of ideas. How we can do that uh and i'm sure we're gon na talk about some of them uh later in in this interview? Definitely so i i feel very good. It's good to have this confidence to talk about the things that you know.

We we uh. We have working for us with amc. We've got great experience, we've got uh incentivized. You know executives that work for the company we've got.

You know a lot of great prospect coming up as long as covenant quarantine, work out the way that we anticipate they do. But i kind of want to address some of the concerns that people have. You know just for clarity, because to be frank, anytime, that you you end up on the news they twist it it ends up. You see, i'm sure that you saw when uh.

You know all these brokerage firms sent out the the the the fud fear uncertainty in doubt about the 500 million share dilution which we'll get into in a little bit, but i wanted to start off here talking about wanda and talking about insider selling. Now i want to talk about wanda because they're, a major amc shareholder um, our community has reviewed. You know recent sec documents. You know indicating that they sold approximately 15 million shares, hold about 30 million shares, as it sits right now and that there have been insiders that you know between january and march have sold part of their positions in amc, and this is uh.

You know coming from my perspective, i'm 23 years old, a young investor, but typically when insiders sell a stake in afc, whether it be you know, wanda or executives, working within the company, that could be a red flag. You know um, would you mind just kind of talking about that? A little bit giving some reassurance, maybe an explanation as to what's going on there um how your relationship with wanda still is now as a company um just to give clarification because there's a lot of uncertainty regarding the the selling, that's possibly happened. Sure, let's talk about them as separate issues, let me do a wanda. Definitely so wanda has been uh a really wonderful, shoulder of amc, really wonderful, shoulder they bought the company and are controlling the company at all.

The company bought control the company in 2012. uh. Actually, i guess they bought all the company and they took part of the company public right briefly, the young all of it um, but when you actually get into what was going on at wanda in 2017, that's four years ago right, the chinese government made a major Change in policy and strategy uh in 2012, though the previous time that the chinese government had made a big pronouncement. They encourage chinese companies, and one is one of the largest companies in china right prior to the company, not government-owned private company, to invest internationally and wanda, and many other giant.

Major chinese companies started buying things in europe and the united states and asia, and, and that was strongly encouraged by the government in 2017, the chinese government made a major change in strategy uh. They started to see that the chinese domestic economy was slowing, and so the change that they a big pronouncement was that chinese companies, instead of investing internationally, should invest in the chinese domestic economy. Instead, that's caused a lot of chinese companies to start to disengage internationally and to take their investment dollars back home, and one is no exception. So in 2018 they sold some stock right and again in 2021 they sold some stock uh, but that's um.

I i personally believe - and i don't sit in the wanda boardroom, right, yeah right right, so i i i can't speculate from wanda, but my take on it is that has a lot less to do with amc as a company, their their confidence in amc and their View the future of amc, uh and much more to do with the fact that they they needed and wanted to bring dollars back to their domestic economy, and they did it in 2018 and they did it again in 2021. um. So just i was thinking about this. They are the largest movie theater chain in china, right and, and china is the second largest movie market country on the planet and uh.

They still own 30 million amc shares and we still have the closest of relations, and i expect that, no matter what the ownership situation is of wanda in amc will still main very tight relations, because it's good for us as we deal with studios. You know we're the largest exhibitor in europe, we're a large exhibitor in the united states. Our sister company is the largest exhibitor in china and that's good, and i expect it will be in a you know, a friendly one to orbit for a long time. I think the important thing about juan is selling down shares is not whether they bought or they sold it's that they fact that they did it in such an orderly fashion when they sold shares in 2018.

Our share price increased. Normally, if you think a big insider is selling the share price, our our share price went up because wanda intelligently sold shares in an orderly fashion in 2018.. They didn't sell another share again for two and a half years and when they sold stock again again, the share price was rising. They did it in an orderly fashion that did not hurt other shoulders and that's my opinion.

It's no one. It's life's too complicated to totally understand how stocks trade and why stocks trade and what influence is causing. What? But in my view, wanda has been a very responsible shareholder and if they've had to sell down they've done it in a way that does not hurt their fellow amc showers. That's awesome.

I was actually going to ask about that. That was my. My question was, if you know when they did sell off, people were speculating that it affected the stock price. It could have tanked it, and then you know a second part to that would have been down the road, considering that it's not really so much they're selling because of amc as a company, but more so their relations within china.

Is it possible that we see them pull out more from the 30 million shares? Do you anticipate that you'll be good business partners down the road? Is that personally, just from what i'm hearing it doesn't seem like something to be concerned with, but um yeah you. Let me know: hey, i don't know what they're going to do with their 30 million shares right b. I do expect they will be good business partners for the long haul, no matter what they do, with their 30 million shares, but you're focusing on the wrong issue. When you look at this recent uh share price decline because that occurred after juan decided not but not before.

That's what i thought uh and the on the on the favorite subject of your not the favorite subject, a favorite subject of your subscribers uh, the new short sale report just came out right and on march 15 ish we had 49 million in short shares on march 30, we had 73 million short shares, so that means that our short share count increased by 50 percent, almost between march 15 and march 30. um. I think our company is under attack again uh and um, and i think that's why um we're seeing what we're seeing it may have to do with other factors too um uh, some more movie titles, have been pushed back a little bit top gun maverick, got pushed From fourth of july, weekend to november 19, before thanksgiving, there's no real way to know exactly what's causing the movement in a share price, but here's what i do, though uh. I believe that amc has survived this pandemic and will survive this pandemic.

I believe that we have the tools in our toolkit to keep the keep amc going strong. Now there are a whole bunch of risks and there's something in official sec land called a forward-looking statement, and we have a whole bunch of disclosures that we put out in our various printed filings in our press releases that people should ignore any forward-looking statement and that They should carefully read our prospectuses and our filings and i'm going to do that right now, i'm going to say anything that i say about the future. You all take with a grain of salt, because maybe i'm wrong right and or maybe i don't have a crystal ball or maybe my crystal ball is a little off code. But, given that there are a whole set of risks and uncertainties that surround amc and they are there, there is no doubt about that and we've disclosed what they are.

If you go to our sec filings, i encourage you to look at them and to read them carefully. Having said that, long-term adam aaron is a bull. I own a lot of amc stock. I'm investing all my professional time to try to drive this business forward.

As i said earlier, there are strategies we have that are very good for amc to come out of this pandemic to rebuild our company rebuild. We have to do because we sold 250 million tickets in the u.s 100 million tickets a year in the middle east. We did in 2019. We didn't do that in 2020.

We're not going to be done in 2021, but boy would i like to get there in 2022 or 2023 or 2024., and but not only get back to where we were i'd like to keep going and i'd? Like to grow this company, even more so that's uh, that's good things to hear. I it's it's fascinating because you said that i think people are focused on all the wrong things. They're worried about wanda, you know affecting the the share prices or or the insiders. You know you can address that if you'd like to um, you know affecting the share prices but um, it's it's the inner clockings of the the mechanism of the stock market right, it's um more than just that, like we don't live in a vacuum where one specific Event is going to cause the entire.

You know downtrend of a stock. I mean, as we just talked about the short boards came out and i pay for some data. You know to keep up to date with the short interest which continuously increases every single day. This the company 100 percent, is on an attack, it's being attacked by hedge funds and shorters, and i think that's to blame more so than you know, wanda, taking out a stake of the stock, or you know insiders which i'd actually like to hear your opinion on.

If you're able to talk about that, why that may be, you know happening if i just you know, because i know about the equity incentive plan, you know, maybe it's just that they liquidated some shares to you know, pay their mortgages or feed their families or whatever It might be, but uh feel free to speak on that if you'd like to well uh, you think about the fact that some executive sold right look. These people are human beings and um their stock. They look, they've been living under attack for a year uh and they saw the stock. You know uh quadruple, quintuple sex tuple, like it's only human nature, to take some of the chips off the table.

I'll tell you this. I would solely stock uh. I know that, and i would know that i haven't sold any stock uh in the five and a half years. I've been here.

All i've been doing is adding stock, with one caveat, because i believe in full transparency and full disclosure. My two i've got twin boys. They turned 30 years of age this year, uh i'm 66 and a half years old for estate planning purposes purposes. I did gifts, um uh uh, i think just under uh uh 250 000 shares is that what it was yeah i was gon na.

Do the percentage - but i think i gifted six percent of my amc stock to each of my two adult sons for them to do with what they wish without my fatherly interference, their 30 years of age now, um, but other than that uh. I have not sold a single share uh and i don't intend to sell any shares anytime soon. I am a believer in in this company. I am as well, i think you know the majority, especially the retail investor, which i think makes up as of now 85 of the total uh.

You know float available to the public, which is incredible. Uh just shows you how much we're invested in the community uh. We've all been holding you know through the ups and downs, the emotional rollercoaster that has been uh. You know amc's company over the last couple of months um and i i think you've got a really loyal.

You know investor core, which is awesome to see it's great to be a part of i kind of wanted to tie into it, and we and we appreciate that you all are there. Oh, we we love it. You know it's uh, it's a great community and i got to be honest. You know my my personal, i'm very happy and grateful because the the business that i've built for myself was was created off of a community of awesome people like and - and i have to be so grateful for the people that have brought me because of that.

The team that i've got the the friends that i've made uh it's it's a lot deeper, that's where the sentimental value where we talked about comes into play where people really feel attached to the people who invest in this company and the company itself. It's it's! It's great to see: hey go back to where i was trained. You know i got my mba at harvard. You know what they taught me back, then, what's that they said, companies are on by their shoulders, and companies are supposed to do what's in the best interest of their shareholders right uh and that community that you described is our shoulder base.

They are the owners of our company, which is why i'm talking to you today, uh i'd like to engage with our shoulders, and this is a platform for me to do just that. Awesome, it's an absolute honor. Once again. I really do appreciate that.

So i think the the biggest piece that we probably want to dissect here is you know, proposal one of the recent proxy statement. The 500 million share dilution. I've paid very close attention to this. I've been covering it, as you know, on the channel for quite a while now trying to dig through everything that's going on, and you know we've come up with a couple of questions, but the the main thing is the fud, the fear, uncertainty and doubt there's a Lot of unknowns regarding the 500 million dilution, the proposal for it and the media is not helping in the least bit.

It spreads a massive amount of fear, and that scares a lot of the retail investors. So i want to take the opportunity. Well, this is just my first question. We can kind of go from here and have a conversation but um.

You know. We know that the board of directors is urging that we vote yes to proposal, one at the annual meeting of stockholders on may 4th and it's it's a critical requirement right. It was in quotations as i take that directly from proposal, one in the proxy statement. So you know this would increase the total number of shares by 500 million shares if we were to hypothetically put them all into the market, which i don't personally believe will happen.

I don't, i think, there's some fear that will happen to a total of over one billion shares. So what are the possible benefits to your shareholders of doubling the number of authorized shares out on the market? You know it's important for people to realize that this is the right, not the obligation to issue stock. So i want to that's that's my first question i'll. Let you take the reins and you know kind of talk about it.

You talk about fear, uncertainty and doubt. There's more misinformation floating around the internet floating around the media about this proposal to increase the authorization by 500 million shares uh. So i'm mike doing a bit of a filibuster here, not because i want a filibuster, but because you give me a perfect opportunity to explain. What's going on, i also intend to make one brand new announcement right now, uh that is unknown to anyone heretofore and we because that's big news so we're actually gon na - have to file this publicly uh.

Today, uh after your uh after this tape session airs um. First of all, there's confusion about what this share authorization means. Some people incorrectly think that that means that we will massively dilute the stock. We did this as a company once before 2013 right in 2013, the board authorized approximately 500 million shares the exact number doesn't matter.

The first time that any of those shares were used was the end of 2016 and early 2017, when we used approximately 32 million shares out of the 500 million approximately 500 right to acquire help us finance the acquisition of odin and nordic and carmich, which turned amc In the largest movie theater circuit in the world, and do you know what happened to our share price back then i went back and i looked, i fact checked it too. Yeah our share price in early sixth 2016. was around 17 a share. We issued 32 million new shares, remember, half a billion have been authorized but um, but they had been used right, but 33 years later, 32 million were used.

Our share price almost doubled. Now, if you thought well, dilution is bad. Then you were wrong because foolish solution is bad. Smart dilution is smart and uh.

Our share price went up to like 32 33 34 on the strength of the carmike odeon and nordic acquisitions, which we could not have done if we did not have those 32 million shares sitting in our pocket. You know the next time we used any of those shares 2020 right september, the last days of september of 2020, another three and a half years later uh - and we put about - i want to say, uh - 300 million shares in the market. Had we not had the ability to put those 300 million shares in the market, our company would have collapsed financially and the share price would have gone to zero and of those 300 million shares. 250 million of those 300 million shares went out between december 14 and january 27th.

Six, actually, six and again, if your theory is dilution, is just bad. Then, if we put 250 million shares out in the market in the span of two months, i guess our share price should have fallen. What happened to our share price prior to the reddit rally, the so-called reddit rally, our share price tripled, because, yes, we diluted the stock, but we did it smartly for a good cause which was to save the company. We did it at the right time.

We did it at the right price and it actually caused our share price to soar. It tripled between uh, early january uh and late january, because we raised the money, which was considered to be a very positive development for mc now that takes so there's. There's a history there that we've authorized shares, but we didn't use them for years and we only use them when it was smart to do so and when we needed to do so and in both cases we increased shareholder value as a result. Now, as we sit here today from the old authorization from back in the 2013 authorization, we have 43 million shares that we could use to raise capital to raise cash if we needed to do so uh and at the current share price.

You know that could bring in another 300 400 million dollars less of the share price went down more of the share price went up, we think, that's, probably all we need to get through the pendulum. So why are we asking for another authorization for 500 million additional shares right? The answer is because companies don't do this with a five week or a five month time frame, they do it with a five year time frame. They do with a seven year time frame. They do with a ten year time frame, uh uh.

When these 43 million shares are exhausted, we will have none left and we lose uh an arrow in our quiver. We lose a tool in our toolkit. We will no longer have the optionality and the flexibility to be able to issue shares if issuing shares is in the best interests of shareholders, and so looking ahead for the next five to ten years we've authorized. This we've asked the shoulders to authorize more shares.

That doesn't mean that we will issue them right. Remember the last time we did this. We didn't issue any shares for three and a half years. We didn't issue any shares after that for three and a half years.

More uh but - and that's what's going on here - we're not asking the shareholders to authorize these shares, so we can flood the market with them. That would be crazy and foolish, and there are two things that i know that we're not we're not crazy and we're not fools. So i told he's going to make some news uh here we go excited for this um. We are going to pledge right now today.

Publicly - and we will file this publicly, so they will be binding on us because can't announce intentions and then not carry through. We hereby pledge at amc that if the shareholders approve this authorization for 500 million new shares to be issued, we will not use one of those 500 million shares in calendar year 2021.. That's huge news, wow people that that's that's the big concern. Adam that's been the hugest concern with this.

Is you can't be a stranger to the short squeeze phenomenon it was addressed in some filings, and people were really nervous about it. They were like what happens if this kills. All the momentum of the potential to essentially bleed short positions, because it's no, you know you know that hedge funds are short on the stock and wow holy cow. I got my heart beating, i can't well what i don't want to do.

Is i don't want to get too in the farthest right? No, no! I'm not i'm not asking that. I know you're not, but but i'm still going to kind of act like a real ceo and not talk about it right, but i got you uh, but what i do know is uh if we need to raise some cash in the short term. Remember we already have 43 million shares that are out there that were authorized in the year 2013 right that we could use if we wish to to raise some cash - and we decided that's a good idea. We have made no decisions yet we're thinking about it, but we haven't made decisions yet, but i'm just here by pledging we will not use a single one of these 500 million additional shares in calendar 2021..

I've read some of the stuff. That's coming out of uh. The the voices of retail investors and they're saying things like yeah, we get it. The 500 million share authorization might be good for the company for the long term, but we're really much more concerned.

What's going to happen the next month or two or three well, i can take that whole issue off the table, because i'm just telling you right now amc will not use any of these 500 million new shares in calendar 21.. Just will not do it and that's not only a pledge that i'm making on trey's trades um or as your backwards twitter man, twitter, twitter handle rate stray is very confusing by the way i know um uh, but that's not just the pledge we're making here we're Going to make that publicly also today um but remember we're asking for these shares, because we believe that if shareholders give us as a management team who, i think you basically trust, we've proven to be pretty adept so far, right um. If you give us the flexibility to use those shareholders, those shares when it makes sense for you the shareholder, that's when we'll use them uh and not before, and let me tell you and remember the last time we did this. We didn't use shares for three and a half years right.

We didn't use shares for three and a half years again after that uh, but let me give you you see there adam and we could use stock as a currency. Well, that could be very trapped. We traded from anywhere from seven to thirteen times our utah on the public markets. What happens if we could buy another company at four or five times? You thought well, if you can buy a company or five times, even though and trade at seven or nine or ten or twelve times, even though the arbitrage of that you make money like on day, one plus, because we already exist that we already have a big Overhead we could probably absorb another movie theater circuit and get rid of their overhead and use our existing overhead.

So we even more efficient and drive even more even more earnings right out of an acquired movie, theater circuit, but the only way i'm going to pull that off in the short term. With this pandemic hanging around our head is survived stock to do so. If the shareholders don't give us the authorization to use stock in that way, then wave goodbye to the acquisition opportunities where we can make kind of instant money for our shareholders create instant value for our shoulders just on the strength of an acquisition. So that's one example: another example: we have hundreds of millions of dollars of public debt.

Today trading at a substantial discount to the face value of that debt. We have a couple of billion dollars of debt trading at a small discount to their face value today, um. What if we could use stock to buy back some of that debt at a discount uh, i'm not predicting that we can i'm not predicting that we will, but what i am saying is: if the shareholders make this vote in the affirmative, then at least we'll have The flexibility and optionality to think about it, and if we could pull it off, that would create instant value for our shoulders. The value of buying back the debt, as at a minor or a major discount would be would it would be creative? It would be far more valuable to the shareholder than the dilution that would accompany it and we're not doing this in a vacuum.

We have some of the smartest financial advisors in the united states who are telling us when we should do certain things and when we shouldn't do things, but even if you could buy it back at a big discount, if you don't know the resources to do it, It doesn't matter right, and so again this goes back to playing offense, not playing defense. I'd love to be able to buy some debt back at a discount, but i it would be unwise to use our precious cash to do it because none of us know the base what what this recovery will be: uh and um uh, and so we need to Husband, our cash. We need to be very conservative with our cash, but if but stock is legitimate currency. Now, if we misuse that currency again, if we do something that um uh, i guess what you're the the the basic fund these days is that we would flood the market right, yeah or alternatively, there are some people just think that the mere authorization of the shares Is actually issuing the shares which, of course it is right um but, as i said, we're not going to do that because we are shareholders also uh and uh uh.

So i want this optionality. I want this flexibility so that, if, if it's wise to do something, if we can create value for our shoulders by doing something, we have the opportunity and the capability to do it, i'm going to give you a third example. We have um the public number that we disclosed as of december 31. Is we have 450 million dollars of back rent from 2020? That's payable over uh several years, some cases only a year, some cases it's like years and years and years and years.