You were on fire last night on the conference. Call it came out with a real message for for all the haters and the critics about the the death of movie theaters in a streaming world. I think called it cow dung tell us how you really feel well. Actually, what i said was a load of cow dung and i thought i cleaned that up pretty nicely.

You should have seen the first draft uh. Having said that, look the the point is that people have underestimated amc for a long time now, people, you know, i call it the conventional wisdom, which is so often wrong. You know people wrote with certainty that we were going to file for bankruptcy in 2020. We did not uh people have been writing with certainty that there's no future for movie theaters in an era of streaming uh.

You know the story. We're storing radio was going to put us out of business. Tv was going to put us out of business. Uh.

Vcr is going to put us out of business. Dvd was going to put dvds are going to put it out of business streaming's going to put us out of business guess what in the fourth quarter of 2021, even with omnicron fears, 60 million people went to our theaters europe and the middle east 60 million people In three months, people want to go to movie theaters uh, the the consumer's appetite for content is so voracious. The world is big enough for all of us, i'm very confident in amc's future. Well, what i don't think was predictable, though adam at all was the the voracious appetite for your stock by the the retail trader community, which did help build you out at a critical time and - and you know, made the financials look a lot better.

You've got tons of cash so on the on the box office numbers. What? Where are we relative to pre-covered levels and you think we can get back to 100 of those levels this year? Well, first, we're very grateful to those shareholders who rallied around amc in 2021. They allowed us to raise a lot of money in 2021., we ended the year the december 31 quarter, with 1.8 billion dollars of cash for liquidity. That's a war chest that puts amc in a very strong position.

As for the box office uh, we were quite excited. Our revenues per patron in q4 were 25 higher than they were in the fourth quarter of 2019 before the pandemic. Now our attendance wasn't yet back to where we needed to be, but it was 60 million people uh. As we look at the box office for 2022, there are a lot of big movies coming a lot of blockbusters coming.

You got the batman opening this week, top 10 mavericks around the corner jurassic world dominion. It just goes on and on all year, all the way to christmas when the sequel to avatar comes out avatar two in an inflation adjusted dollars, uh avatar originally was the largest movie of all. Time still is uh and its sequel is out. After a long wait.

We think the box office is going to nearly double in 2022 compared to 2021.. These are all encouraging signs, we're we're not fully out of the woods yet, but we have the resources to outlast this pandemic and all the signs are possible. Adam um, if you're correct and the box office this year, approximately doubles and your revenue doubles uh alongside that, let's just say that would get amc's revenue back to 2019 levels. Right, i mean that's.

What we're talking about just catching up to 2019. You've got five times as many outstanding shares, as you did in 2019. Obviously, through all the necessary capital raises uh and your market value is three times what it was back then, because of all that retail investor interest um. I just wonder you must be aware that the retail investors, the bold case on your stock, is these kind of conspiracy theories about invisible, short squeezes, and things like that.

If you were ceo of a company where you thought there was a fairly shorting in your stock, would you not do something about it? Can you actually come out and say that's not really what's going on here. Well, there's about seven questions in one. So let me try to get a couple uh. First of all, i don't think that our revenues in full year 2022 in 2022, will be uh at pre-pandemic levels.

I think that comes more likely in 2023.. They will, however, bought more than they were in 2021 uh and our you know. We had positive ebitda in the fourth quarter, uh of 2021, like that's the first in two years, for our company in our industry uh. But, as i said, the signs are: are hopeful uh, the uh? We are well aware, and we've been saying publicly since june of 2021, that our share price is not reflective of just the normal historic fundamentals of a movie theater company of our size.

But we've also said that we are very much committed to transforming our company going forward. We and we are not trying to bring back the old amc of 2019 just that, of course, we do want to bring that company back too, but we're going to do much more and we've already announced that we're uh we've had four nft programs since november uh. We're dabbling with cryptocurrency uh we've made a major announcement about expanding into the six billion dollar popcorn industry. I mean who knows more about popcorn than amc on a p.

They we sell 50 tons of the stuff uh, so move over orgo redenbacher. You got a competitor who's, going to be seeing on convenience, store shelves and grocery store shelves before 2022 is over. Then we have that 1.8 billion dollars of cash and liquidity to do some transformative m a uh. I think amc has proven in the last two years that we can rise to the challenges before us, uh and startle and dazzle with the innovation and the advances we're making, and that's the bet that i'm making, after all, i'm a big shareholder in amc myself, though, A little less than than you were last year, so adam, you know about the popcorn, because i i too know a lot about it and i'm a big enthusiast and often go to movie theaters just for popcorn.

How many other people like me? Are there, though, really how big of a revenue stream do you see this and how do you see it rolling out? Ubereats is gon na deliver it like food delivery and then what are you gon na start supplying grocery stores? Yes, yes and yes, so there are a lot of you, we sell a lot of popcorn in a year. The three biggest things that we sell in a year. Are we try to sell a lot of other things too, but the three biggest things we sell are movie tickets, soft drinks and popcorn and, as i said on an average day, we sell 35 tons on a peak day. We sold 50 tons.

We sell it to millions and millions of people every week. Our brand is credibility. If you go right now into supermarkets and you look at the microwavable popcorn. That's there.

You know they're brand names like movie theater, popcorn. Well, guess who really has movie theater popcorn? We do and it's a big industry, uh we've hired someone with uh extensive brand management experience at pepsico, free delay and hostess brands has got a ton of grocery experience to run this effort for us um. I i expect that we'll do a number of things in the popcorn front, all in 2022. number one to go, containers and pick up containers for people who want to come to our theaters and take some of our food home and enjoy it when they're uh watching Their big screen tvs at home.

Second yeah. We are going to sign up most likely with ubereats uh to deliver uh movie theater popcorn amc, perfectly popcorn movie, theater popcorn uh to homes all around the united states near our theaters. Third, we are actually going to open up kiosks in consumer malls in other locations where we'll freshly pop popcorn at you know, kiosk encounters just like we do in our movie theaters now and then. Finally, i'm targeting, let's say september issue of 2022: we expect to be on grocery store shelves, uh inconvenience on convenience, store shelves, possibly other food venues around the country.

We are going into the popcorn business uh and we expect to be successful. Adam thanks for the update, uh appreciate it and, unlike sarah, i also like to see the movie so uh we're glad you're, uh you're still up and running thanks again uh we'll catch you soon. Thank you very much uh. When we come back, we'll have the highlights from city's investor day plus the news: why do they have a smile on their face like that, like that was a borderline hit job, the one guy whoa? You guys see that invisible short squeeze that three-word pairing right there, invisible short squeeze, has not been uttered by anyone in this community.

What is an invisible short squeeze that we're? Just where are we getting this he's just an invisible one? It's like it's like a normal one. You just can't see it. You have to have on your invisible short gl short squeeze glasses, whoa brother, oh brother, you see all these invisible short squeezes like come on, come on and then the girl she was throwing down. She.

She woke up this morning and she chose war, but a little bit less than last year. She that was emotional damage like that was what was that interview? That was one of the most exciting ones that adam aaron has been in in terms of like the feistiness rating pure 10 out of 10. 11 out of 10 feistiness rating from those interviewers uh, adam aaron, reiterating some of the key key points from the earnings announcement. Yesterday, let me quickly go over some of them amc.

Q4 of 2021. Basically it ended december 31st of 2021, 60 million guests in our theater, so good, but not at their 2019 levels, but it's definitely trending in the right direction. Eight um wait uh eight million a year ago, so obviously quite a considerable growth revenues per patron 25 more than pre pandemic of 2019, so they actually beat on that metric uh 160 million ebitda. So they went ebitda positive.

So that's basically earnings before like interest taxes, depreciations amortization, that type of stuff uh, 220 million operating cash generated a record 1.8 billion of year and liquidity, and on top of that uh exciting in the world of crypto. Yes, they're accepting various forms of crypto as payment they're, most the newest ones, that are about to come out in a few days, depending on when you're watching. This is sheba inu and doge, and then on top of that they have had four successful nfp releases, launches and various forms of partnerships, and it sounds like they're kind of getting interested in the world of maybe making some revenue off of those. And then they even kind of um - i guess flirted with the idea of an amc, crypto itself um, like kind of like a amc, crypto coin, something like that uh, but they're kind of, like figuring out what the regulation is or isn't for that.

But overall, are they back at their 2019 levels? No, are they trending that way strongly yeah, i mean you just heard it they're looking for their prediction is that the box office doubles in 2022 relative to 2021 and by no means is their goal to, i suppose, simply match what they were already doing in 2019. Right now, with the influx of basically apes they're in the situation where they can think a little bit more outside the box and do things that literally no other movie theater chain is doing um. So he kind of reiterated that which was nice for the rest of the world, especially cnbc viewers, to hear but man, oh man, the invisible short squeeze thing and once again being called conspiracist. I guess like what do you expect and then, on top of that? But a little less that was so like uh.

It took balls for her to say that it really did. That was interesting, but man, let me know your thoughts in a comment below. I want to know your thoughts on it that was so wild to watch. What the hell is an invisible short squeeze.

That's a great question. I haven't really come across that in my financial education um, i don't know it sounds like we're getting cnbc confirmation of a second book. That's the only a secret price folks right there. What else do you need that? There's a secret market with secret prices run by the lizardmen illuminati? That's where all the invisible squeezes are happening.

It's on that whole market. It conf cnbc, just confirmed an entire second market, with secret prices and secret price movement. He he said it invisible. That might be the name of the exchange on that market, the invisible exchange, invb or something's, probably the ticker for it.

You heard it right there, first they're confirming naked shorts with melissa lee and then that guy, who had? Let's be honest, a pretty nice suit he's confirming a whole secret market man. What a day mark this down march, 2nd adam aaron interview on cnbc secret market, confirmed there's no other conclusion to be taken from that literally no other conclusion, like you're, there's gon na be a lot of you listening right now and you're like matt. I don't know like usually i come to you because you're a little bit more grounded you're a little bit more factual. I, like your metaphors, like obviously you have a keen eye for fashion, but this one i don't know if i can mop up your spill on this particular incident and i'm here to tell you that yeah you can mop up that spill, because this is just data Points it it's just.

The data points, no opinion whatsoever, the secret market, you.