Amazon beat Wall Street forecasts for profit and revenue in the first quarter as advertising continued to grow at a healthy clip.
26.04.2024 - 21:03 / deadline.com
Top movie theater circuit AMC Entertainment offered investors a preview of its first-quarter financial results late Friday, with key metrics coming in ahead of Wall Street expectations.
The company plans to report its final quarterly numbers on May 8. Occasionally, public companies release preliminary numbers, especially those under scrutiny as AMC is during its recovery from the dual strikes of 2023. Like its peers in exhibition, the company has been hurt by a slowdown in the overall production pipeline, with total box office slumping this year on top of the painful crawl out of the long shutdowns of the pandemic.
Revenue in the quarter ended March 31 came in at $951.4 million, a shade less than the $954.4 million in the same period of 2023. Diluted losses per share were 62 cents, compared with a loss of $1.71 per share in the year-ago quarter. Wall Street analysts’ consensus calls for revenue of $861.1 million and a loss per share of 79 cents.
“While we anticipate that the second quarter box office will continue to be affected by the 2023 Hollywood strikes, we are ebullient about the upcoming film slate, and we expect to see an increasingly strong box office as the year progresses,” CEO Adam Aron said in the earnings preview release.
AMC also said it had raised $41.8 million as of Thursday from the sale of up to $250 million of Class A shares, an initiative it began in March.
In a separate development, Bloomberg reported Thursday that a group of lenders to AMC pitched a proposal to push back its near-term debt maturities, a stated goal for company management.
AMC Entertainment owes about $4.5 billion in long-term debt, including more than $2.8 billion of maturities in 2026, according to regulatory filings.
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Amazon beat Wall Street forecasts for profit and revenue in the first quarter as advertising continued to grow at a healthy clip.
George Cheeks, Brian Robbins and Chris McCarthy, the Paramount Global executives chosen to occupy the Office of the CEO as a replacement for the departing Bob Bakish, sought to reassure Wall Street on Monday that they have a plan.
Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer Taylor Swift has broken yet another record with her new album “The Tortured Poets Department,” as she becomes the first artist to claim the top 14 songs on the Billboard Hot 100. Swift breaks her previous record for most songs to claim the top spots on the chart, which she achieved with 10 tracks from 2022’s “Midnights” that dominated the tally.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In,” a Hong Kong-produced action thriller, took the top spot at the mainland China box office over the latest weekend. But it was a quiet session and came ahead of a welter of new releases targeting the May Day public holiday. The film, which is among those that have a Wednesday (May 1) official release date, earned $5.5 million (RMB38.9 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. The nationwide weekend total was a slender $18.7 million.
Lexi Carson At Variety’s 2024 Entertainment Marketing Summit, Andrew Wallenstein, president and chief media analyst of Variety Intelligence Platform, sat down with Jana Arbanas, vice chair and Deloitte‘s US Telecom, Media, and Entertainment sector leader, to discuss the background and themes of Deloitte’s annual digital media trends. This year was Deloitte’s 18th year of the Gen Z and Millennial survey. The survey analyzes over 3,500 consumers from ages 14 and up and is then sent back to the United States Census Bureau to obtain a real representative look at consumer behavior.
Roku posted solid first-quarter financials, with positive results in several key metrics illustrating the benefits of ongoing price inflation in the streaming sector.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor YouTube keeps eating up more share of the advertising pie: The Google-owned video giant posted $8.1 billion in ad sales for the first quarter of 2024, its highest Q1 total to date. The figure for YouTube ad sales, up 21% year over year, was announced as part of parent company Alphabet’s Q1 earnings. Wall Street analysts expected YouTube’s ad revenue for Q1 to come in at $7.72 billion, according to StreetAccount.
Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Roku reported its first-quarter 2024 earnings Thursday, revealing the company reached 81.6 million active accounts, an increase of 1.6 million from the previous quarter, and streaming hours rose to 30.8 billion, up from 29.1 million in Q4 2023. Wall Street forecast a loss per share of 61 cents on $848.62 million in revenue, according to analyst consensus data provided by LSEG, formerly Refinitiv. Roku reported adjusted loss per share of 35 cents on $882 million in revenue (+19% year over year).
Wheelhouse is getting ready for a rollercoaster ride.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Imax fans turned up in droves to see “Dune 2” on the really big screen, helping the company top analyst earnings estimates for the first quarter of 2024. Despite the sandworm bump, it was a tough compare with the year-ago period when Imax benefited from the blockbuster success of “Avatar: The Way of Water” in 2023 to deliver its highest-grossing Q1 to date.
Comcast reported first quarter results that outpaced Wall Street expectations, with Peacock reaching 34 million subscribers but posting higher programming costs.
Chris Pratt suited up for another day on the set of his upcoming movie Mercy!
Karen Idelson With the pandemic in media executives’ rearview mirrors, media trends are still emerging at the speed of sound, and this year’s Variety Entertainment Marketing Summit, presented by Deloitte, will spotlight the strategies of top industry marketers. The event will take place April 24 in Los Angeles.
EXCLUSIVE: Horror film Stream, from the producers of the breakout Terrifier franchise, has secured an August 21 U.S., Canada and Mexico theatrical release via Iconic Events Releasing.
(G)I-DLE singer Yuqi has dropped the music video for her new solo single, ‘Freak’.In the music video for ‘Freak’, (G)I-DLE’s Yuqi finds herself haunted by characters from horror music such as Scream, Saw, The Shining and more. But as the weeks go on, she gets used to living with these “freaks”, and soon befriends them and goes on to form a band.“She’s a certified freak / Ten days a week / The way she’s movin’ got me crazy, got me weak,” the Chinese K-pop idol sings on ‘Freak’.
After months of training tens of thousands of people will take to the streets of the nation's capital to take parts in the famous TCS London Marathon. Sunday's huge race, which is in its 44th year, will see a record 50,000 athletes - from elite runners to charity fundraisers - take on the iconic 26.2-mile route.
to sell liquor, including wine and beer to their customers, under the $237 billion state budget deal crafted by Gov. Kathy Hochul and the legislature.But lawmakers don’t want filmgoers to get blotto on cocktails while watching “Ghostbusters” so customers will be limited to buying one drink per transaction.For years, legislators had resisted calls to sell alcohol in theaters but they’ve grown more receptive as the landscape changed for the film industry due to the emergence of streaming options.The COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse after theaters already struggled to fill seats in the age of high-definition televisions at home.Theaters got the green light to serve wine, beer and cider in 2022.Previously, theaters could only sell the drinks if they had a restaurant license with a full kitchen and waitstaff to bring the alcohol to customers in their seats — or a tavern license that limited drinking to a table, often in the lobby.The budget also extends cocktails to go from bars and restaurants for another five years.Lawmakers toasted the new measure.“I’m proud that my legislation to allow movie theaters to apply for on-premise licenses for alcoholic beverages made it into the final budget,” said state Sen.
Quentin Tarantino has reportedly decided to drop The Movie Critic as his final film.According to a report from Deadline Hollywood, undisclosed sources have allegedly told the outlet that filmmaker “simply changed his mind” about making The Movie Critic. Deadline‘s report also notes that there were rumours of Tarantino rewriting the script, and that the film’s production had been delayed due to last year’s writers’ and actors strikes.Instead, Deadline reports that Tarantino will be focusing on an entirely new project for his tenth and final film.
It’s been a minute since we’ve heard from “Orphan Black: Echoes,” the series spin-off of AMC’s hit series, “Orphan Black,” which ran for five seasons between 2013 and 2017 and turned Tatiana Maslany into a star. Last we heard, “Orphan Black: Echoes” had a TBD 2024 date, but recently, a new trailer revealed a June 23, 2024 release date on AMC.
Chris Hemsworth revealed that he tried unseccessfully to land a starring role in a new Kevin Costner movie.