AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the AMC Entertainment first quarter 2022 earnings webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Merriweather, Vice President of Capital Markets and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sarah. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to AMC's first quarter 2022 earnings webcast. With me this afternoon is Adam Aaron, our Chairman and CEO, and Sean Goodman, our Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the webcast over to Adam, let me remind everyone that some of the comments made by management during this webcast may contain forward-looking statements. that are based on management's current expectations. Numerous risks, uncertainties, and other factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those that might be expressed today. Many of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in our most recent public filings, including our most recently filed 10-K and 10-Q. Several of the factors that will determine the company's future results are beyond the ability of the company to control In light of the uncertainties inherent in any forward-looking statements, listeners are cautioned to not place undue reliance on these statements. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future events. On this webcast, we may reference non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA, operating free cash flow, operating cash burn, operating cash generated, among others. For a full reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to GAAP results, please see our earnings release posted in the investor relations section of our website. After our prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. This afternoon's webcast is being recorded, and a replay will be available in the investor relations section of our website at amctheaters.com later today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam.

Thank you, John. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Following in the heels of our progress throughout 2021, AMC's first quarter of 2022 marked yet another milestone. Thanks in part to Sony's Uncharted and Warner Brothers' The Batman, it was our best first quarter in two years. And we exceeded market expectations with a more than five-fold or $637 million improvement in revenue and an almost 80% or $233 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA compared to the same quarter of a year ago. What a difference a year makes. We are especially encouraged that when they did come to our theaters, our guests have been spending like never before, with revenues per patron through the roof at AMC up 34% above pre-pandemic norms and meaningfully higher than was seen at our largest competitors. During our last earnings webcast, we noted the timing of when big movies would release this year, not because of streaming and not because of COVID fears among patrons, but rather solely because of what titles would open when. We told you on our last call that the first quarter of 2022 would be the softest quarter of this year, and that box office numbers would improve sequentially as the year progressed. This view remains exactly how we see this year unfolding, with an improving box office and improving financial performance at AMC each and every successive quarter. But the real news of the day is the $187.4 million domestic opening and the $450 million global opening of Disney's Doctor Strange. This one was the biggest movie opening of 2022 and the second biggest opening of the pandemic era, second only to Spider-Man No Way Home. Let me say it again to all those who doubted the consumer appeal of movie theaters. Doctor Strange, Doctor Strange, Doctor Strange, Doctor Strange. And not only is the movie clearly a big hit, I'm also absolutely pleased to report to you that AMC overperformed for this movie on opening weekend with a 26% domestic market share considerably higher than our historic 22% domestic market share norms. Given that AMC is the largest movie theater company in the world, we can say to our shareholders with some glee and delight that the resilience of movie theaters is right now on clear display and that the future of the cinema is bright. Indeed, we've already kicked off the second quarter with Sonic, who raced his way to the highest domestic opening weekend of all time for a video game adaptation and has thus far generated nearly $350 million of worldwide box office revenue. And as I said just a moment ago, this past weekend, Dr. Strange, Dr. Strange, Dr. Strange, Dr. Strange. But we believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for what's to come in the summer and the balance of 2022. What an array of compelling and exciting film titles lies ahead for the rest of the year. We are just two and a half weeks away from the premiere of my personal favorite, Paramount and Tom Cruise's long-awaited and highly anticipated Top Gun Maverick. I saw the movie in a private screening for exhibitors a few weeks ago. It is just stunning. In my view, it's a cinematic masterpiece, and oh my, are we gonna sell tickets for Top Gun Maverick at AMC. The second quarter also will include such crowd pleasers as Universal's Jurassic World Dominion, and for audiences young and old, Back from Infinity and Beyond, Pixar's Lightyear. Later in the year, in the second half, we have one amazing title after another, especially including Baz Luhrmann's brilliant biopic of Elvis, starring Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker, along with Illumination's Minions, The Rise of Gru, Marvel's Thor, Love and Thunder, Jordan Peele's latest original edge-of-your-seat horror flick, Nope, and Brad Pitt's action-packed thriller, bullet train. The movies keep coming in 2022. We'll finish the year with Warner Brothers DC Comics based Black Adam starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson and three more Disney films which are sure to be monstrous hits including the animated Strange World and two highly anticipated tentpole Disney sequels Marvel's Black Panther Wakanda Forever and James Cameron's Avatar 2, the sequel to Avatar at the time of its original release, the highest worldwide grossing movie of all time. I've had the privilege of spending some time with the brilliant James Cameron and his producing partner, John Landau, and have seen actual footage from Avatar 2, which is just glorious. I can tell you with certainty that movie audiences are going to be mesmerized by their return to Pandora. As a result, the entire movie industry is going to end 2022 in grand style. It's just so very clear in our eyes. Just as Nicole Kidman proclaimed in our ever-so-successful television advertising, which has attained a cult-like status, moviegoers are so eager to return to the magic offered at AMC theaters. They want dazzling images on a huge silver screen. They want to immerse themselves in stories that are perfect and powerful. They want to enjoy comfortable recliner seating, a bucket of buttered popcorn, and a Coke. They want more IMAX and Dolby Cinema screens at AMC than are offered by any other movie exhibitor. And for just a few hours. They want to escape. They want to escape the news, the internet, war, politics, inflation. interest rate hikes, their phone, and the interruptions that inevitably come when at home. So there is no confusion. At AMC, we are very optimistic about the outlook for the 2022 box office that we believe could be close to double that of 2021 and four times that of 2020. No one is a perfect crystal ball, but our hope and current expectations is that the fourth quarter of 2022 will finally reach or will get close to pre-pandemic levels of revenue. Some on Wall Street and some in the press have been filling our heads for two years now about the rise of streaming and the corresponding end of theaters. This won't be the first time or the last time that conventional wisdom will be proven to be filled with so much folly and so very wrong. Movie theaters have been central to the cultural fabric of America and the world for more than a century, and their promise and potential remains resilient and real. Many of us on this call can remember the revealing and clarifying language that came out of the 1992 presidential campaign when James Carville said, it's the economy, stupid. Well, for the movie theater business, it's the movies, stupid. and oh, do we have hit movies now coming to an AMC theater near you. I'll be back in a few minutes to provide some strategic updates and take your questions, but now I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Sean Goodman. Sean?