AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc.

Greetings and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AMC Entertainment second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. And afterwards, we'll conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. This conference has been recorded Thursday, August 4, 2022. And now I'd like to turn the conference over to John Merriweather. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to AMC's second 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. Newest 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 10K and 10Q. Several of the factors that will determine the company's future results are beyond the ability of the company to control or predict. 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, constant currency, free cash flow, operating cash burn, and 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 earlier today. After our prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer 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, one and all, and thank you for joining us. Today, we have tremendously exciting news to share with you. First, our results for the second quarter, which were massively ahead of last year's second quarter, and exceeded market expectations for revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and net income. And second, our plan to issue later this month a special AMC preferred equity non-dilutive stock dividend as it will all be going and only be going to our shareholder base as of the dividend date. This is a move that fundamentally and deeply strengthens our company and will give us enormous flexibility as we go forward. These are exciting times for AMC and for our investors. I'll start this webcast by talking about the business. I'll then pass the call over to Sean Goodman, our CFO, to talk about our financials in more detail. And then I'll come back to talk about our special dividend announcement and the significant benefits that it brings for our shareholders. I cannot begin to put into words how much progress AMC Entertainment made in the second quarter of 2022. Thank you to Dr. Stephen Strange, to Tom Maverick-Cruz, to Elvis Presley, and to all those hungry people eating Jurassic dinosaurs, because they all graced our big screens at AMC. The second quarter was quite the success. and our best second quarter in three years. What's more, and this is very important, they boosted Hollywood's confidence in theatrical exhibition and they boosted Hollywood's commitment to theatrical exhibition. Just as we predicted, our improving second quarter results boost our spirits and serve to further convince that we indeed are making great strides on our path towards pandemic recovery. As you can see in our press release, AMC exceeded expectations as people came back to movie theaters in droves. Some 59 million moviegoers came to our AMC theaters across the world in the second quarter, up 168% from the same quarter a year ago. That's more than two and a half times. They're taking us to new highs in our high margin food and beverage business. And thanks to their patronage, we generated positive adjusted EBITDA of $107 million in the second quarter of 2022, a $258 million improvement over that figure in Q2 of 2021. We generated positive operating cash, too, in the second quarter of 2022 of $52 million. That was a $178 million improvement from the figure of the same quarter a year ago. The second quarter marked the strongest North American box office since 2019. Numerous films shine brightly in the second quarter, but none shine brighter than Top Gun Maverick. I've seen it myself. four times now. Top Gun Maverick is now approaching 1.3 billion dollars in worldwide box office receipts and holds the number one box office position thus far in 2022. Maverick also broke all time records by becoming the highest grossing movie of all time to open on Memorial Day weekend. It also is becoming the highest grossing movie ever both for Paramount Pictures and for a movie starring Tom Cruise. I have said all along that people would come back to theaters in eye-popping numbers, and that is exactly what they did in the second quarter of 2022 and what they've been doing since. To the naysayers who foolishly, in our opinion, have been predicting a secular decline of theatrical exhibition All I can say is, well, you've seen my feisty hashtags on Twitter. You know what I say. The second half of this year promises to be equally exciting with a great mix of family-friendly horror, action, drama, and comedy genres to please everyone from young to old, including Warner Brothers DC Comics-based Black Adam, starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson, and three Disney films, including the animated Strange World, and two very highly anticipated tentpole Disney sequels, James Cameron's Avatar 2, The Way of Water, and Marvel's Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. Just last week, the powerful and poignant trailer for Black Panther 2, Wakanda Forever, was released and garnered a staggering amount 172 million views of the trailer in just the first 24 hours, becoming one of Marvel Cinematic Universe's top ever trailer debuts. As Nicole Kidman reminds us in AMC's now iconic and revered advertising campaign, given that Hollywood has great stories to tell, it's clear that movie fans are ever so eager to enjoy those dazzling images on AMC's huge silver screens. On speaking of Nicole, our ad campaign was so effective that we signed her to be our spokesperson for another full year. The success of the second quarter has continued into the start of the third quarter. As but two examples of let the good times roll, attendance in the just completed month of July 2022. So the highest number of guests visit AMC US theaters since December of 2019. And our preliminary July food and beverage revenue numbers appear to be the biggest single month figure at our US theaters in our company's entire 102 year history. For full transparency, There is a dearth of new big movie titles being released in August and September. So things will slow for several weeks. Don't expect too much of us for all of Q3. But then comes the fourth quarter of 2022. Talk about star power showing itself in movie theaters. These movies and more will all grace our screens in just the 13 weeks of the fourth quarter of 2022. Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween Ends. Julia Roberts and George Clooney in Ticket to Paradise. Dwayne Johnson, Pierce Brosnan and Viola Davis in Black Adam. Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway and Sir Anthony Hopkins in Armageddon Time. Margot Robbie, Christian Bale and Robert De Niro in Amsterdam. Tom Hanks in A Man Called Otto. Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in Babylon. Oh, and don't forget the ever so much anticipated sequels to Black Panther, Shazam, and Avatar. So too, the movie slate for calendar year 2023 should also make us all smile. Our current internal forecast is that the 2023 domestic box office, the basic metrics suggesting the health of theatrical exhibition, both in the US and globally, is likely to be billions of dollars larger than that of calendar year 22. Billions of dollars ahead. We look forward to Q4 of 2022 and we look forward to calendar year 2023 with absolute glee. There were other strides forward made at AMC in the recent months since our last quarterly call. We've started the installation of the biggest environmentally friendly green initiative in our company's history with the introduction of laser projection technology coming over the next few years to almost half of our U.S. screens. And laser projection will make the pictures on those screens so much brighter and so much sharper that it's certain to excite movie buffs going forward. We're already in test market in Chicago and Kansas City with our partner Uber Eats for home delivery of AMC Perfectly Popcorn and other concession items from our theaters. The early results are favorable, so we expect to roll out nationally in Q4 of this year. Similarly, recipe development for microwavable and ready-to-eat popcorn is well underway, going extremely well, and we look forward to being able to sell our popcorn products in grocery stores and or convenience stores next year. We're also in active dialogue with a credit card issuer and hope to introduce a co-branded AMC credit card that can be launched nationally in early 2023 or possibly as early as late 2022. And at the specific urging of our shareholders, We are stepping up our game mightily on AMC-branded and MUBI-branded merchandise. As for Highcroft Mining, Highcroft just announced its largest exploration program in about a decade. Remember that heretofore, Highcroft has explored only about 2% of its 71,000-acre mine site. We have every confidence that our Highcroft investment will pan out, excusing the pun, to be quite lucrative for AMC. Speaking of investments, our board of directors also has authorized us to establish a fund of up to $100 million for additional transformative investments where AMC can seek to add value and thereby create meaningful additional value for our shareholders. Indeed, as I've often said, Previously, we are absolutely committed to transforming AMC into a bigger, bolder, stronger, and more successful company than even the one that existed prior to the pandemic. With that said, I'll now turn the call over to Sean to discuss our financials in more detail. Sean? Just one person, please.