No idea what was really uh going on there, but i was talking to myself for like minutes and now, if i'm being, if i'm being honest, i feel like some sort of dumb dumb. I was like literally just talking into my camera for like five minutes about. What's going on uh with amc and everything related to that and like i i'm thoroughly confused on what could have possibly happened there but uh, it looks like we're live again um. I don't know why it just like wasn't connecting or something.

Let me double check. Let me double check this all videos, i i can i talking to myself again. I guess that's like a better question is: is matt talking to himself see, let's see, no clue i could be very well might be talking to myself. I think we have some people in here just double check on my end that i'm not playing any music should start in about six minutes, roughly roughly roughly roughly, we have that we are good.

We are good. We have this live stream all right. I think i am back we're just trying to get it ready. Five minutes till we have the earnings call.

I did tweet out some of the information. The reason amc ran from what 33 80 up to 37 it be. It beat top line numbers bottom line numbers. They have two billion dollars in liquidity.

Things are looking uh, looking pretty good. Looking looking pretty good, why kick me out of this? Let me see if i can figure out one thing that we have going on here: messing up messing up folks, we're just waiting. I'm listening to them in the background. Just so, everyone knows we're not going to miss um we're not going to miss any of the action, i'm listening to their elevator music.

That got me like demonetized last time, some blaring jazz music, this music man next level stuff. Next level, all right, so why did my stream just completely fail on me? Why, oh, why? What are you doing? At least we have a couple minutes to get this all figured out. I think youtube is all good. You guys can hear me loud and clear references.

Oh yeah, i know that is like super wrong. This is just not gon na happen. There then all right. I think i figured it out all right.

I think we are all good with two minutes to spare professionals. Do it folks? This is how professionals do it all right. All i need to do here is kind of get this tweeted out we're less than a minute, and it should be starting, i'm excited, but the amc beats top and bottom line. Amc entertainment shares are trading higher after the company reported better than expected, q2 earnings per share and sales results.

The company reported it currently has liquidity available of more than two billion dollars. That's with b billion uh, exciting stuff causing obviously causing some excitement. Why would it not? I mean those? Are it's a really good, really, really good, really good right, they're playing some jazz music i'd play it for you guys, but uh. Last time i got in some trouble for it, because it's not my job's music.

It is some smooth jazz, and i have my notes ready for everything that we need to talk about before or after all, that good stuff. All right. We are ready to rock team. It should be starting in like a minute, all right, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet! Oh i guess i could tweet this out.

Why not good call tweet it out share? How do i get it all right there we go quote to myself quote tweet. Let's rock! All right all right, we're rocking followed by the four on your telephone. If, at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star is the volume good. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded monday august 9th.

I would now like to turn the conference over to john merriweather. Vice president investor relations, please go ahead. Thank you kevin good morning or good afternoon. Everyone i'd like to welcome you to amc's.

Second quarter: 2021 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 10q.

Several of the factors that will determine the company's future results were 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 measures such as adjusted ebitda and free cash flow, constant currency, among others, which are non-gaap financial measure, measures for 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 q, 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 amc theaters.com later today, with that i'll turn the call over to app thank you john good afternoon silverback, and thank you for joining us today. The second quarter of 2021 was another very important quarter for amc. We have a lot to talk about on this call as the considerable progress towards recovery that amc is making, and we have some real news to break today as well.

That will be new information to all of you before we go there in detail. I first would like to express a very warm welcome to what from past experience makes us believe that more than ten thousand individual amc investors will be listening. Live to this webcast right. Another warm welcome to the at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our investors, who will be listening to replays reading our press releases and amc investor connect, communications or following on twitter and other social media platforms, our earnings report and the company accompanying new news That we'll be discussing later in the call realizing, that is that it is these investors who now actually own control of amc, entertainment holdings for the first time ever later.

In this call, we will answer a potpourri of questions that have been submitted to us directly by our shareholders. As to our second quarter performance, i think you can see from the release that was issued after the market closed today. We're making tremendous progress as our business emerges from the impact of covet 19.. This progress can be seen not only in our operating statistics and financial performance, but also by the significant strengthening of our balance sheet.

Amc is stronger today than it has been at any point since the pandemic forced the closure of all our theaters in march of 2020. Our quarter ending liquidity at the end of q2 on june 30, is actually once again at a 100 year high. Now, that's precisely what we said on the q1 call when we reported to you that at march 31 we had a billion dollars of quarter ending liquidity, and that was the highest quarter, ending liquidity that amc had ever had well. In q2, mostly may and june, we raised another 1.25 billion dollars of fresh equity capital and our cash burn was meaningfully less than we had previously experienced in recently past quarters.

So we ended q2 with some two billion dollars of liquidity. That's cash in the bank and undrawn revolver, and just a short three months later from our last call that two billion dollar figure is literally double the q1 mark, a new record, doubling the old record that was set just 91 days prior yeah. There we go there. We go folks as for our earnings in q2, thanks to rising attendance, increased ticket prices achieved both through mixed changes and actual price increases, soaring food and beverage revenues per patron, a relentless focus on cost containment and the pruning of marginal theaters from our network.

Our financial results in q2 we're well ahead of our own and consensus third party expectations. Here we go in short, amc crushed it crushed. It you've already seen some of the highlight headline numbers revenues in q2 of 445 million dollars, consolidated food and beverage revenues per patron up: 44.1 percent. Over that same statistic of the second quarter of 2019, the comparable quarter pre-pandemic a net loss of 334 million dollars, an ebitda loss of only 151 million dollars, an eps loss of only 71 cents per share, gross capex expenditures in q2, 2021 of only 17.9 million dollars.

These are very strong metrics across for across the board performance by amc compared to what many people ourselves included. Thought might happen in q2 of 2021, and here are more operating statistics. That also suggests things are improving at amc as 2021 unfolds. Overall ticket admissions revenue in the united states in 2021 versus 2019 pre-pandemic, so this is overall ticket emissions revenue in the u.s.

Well, it was 13 of what it was two years ago in this year's q1, but it was 29 percent of what it was two years ago in q2 of 19. and so far in the first weeks of q3, we're running 45 percent of our two years ago. Levels so q1, it was 13 of what it was q2 29 percent of what it was q3. So far, 45 percent of it was it's still down, but the trend line shows significant improvement and even that's somewhat misleading, because we've reduced so many show times at our theaters to save on theater operating expenses which partially mitigate those revenue declines.

So if, instead, rather just looking at ticket admission revenues, if one looks instead at capacity utilization, that's the percentage of seats that we sold as a total of what was available for sale. You'd see that our capacity utilization was 41 percent in q1 of 2021 of what it was two years ago in 2-1, it was 61 of two years ago - levels in q2 and 68 of two years ago levels so far in q3, again capacitization 41 in q1, 61. In q2, wow 68, so far into three, i like that trend again, that trend line is pointing up. We have, we certainly have a way to go, but progress is clear and we should be getting to play a lot more big movie titles in the balance of q3 and q4 2021 as contrasted with what was shown in our theaters in the first six months of This year, incidentally, we see the same exact, positive trends at our european theaters.

Let's start with 2021 admission revenues in q1 of 2021, there was a pretty bleak two percent of 2019 levels. Two percent in q2 is 18 percent of 2019 levels, but so far in q3, we're now running at 57, wow of 2019 levels to 1857, clearly an upwards trend. The same holds true for that same capacity: utilization statistic in europe for us in q1, our capacity utilization in 2021 was 53 of the 2019 level in q2 is 56 of the 2019 level, but so far in q3, it's 69 percent of the 2019 level. 53.

56. 69 again up arrows with ways still to go for sure, but up arrows. Nonetheless, despite the financial and operating results which suggests we're on a path to recovery, i want to assure you there are no victory laps being taken. We are still losing money.

We are still burning cash, we're burning lots of it, but we're using cash, not generating cash, so we're not out of the woods yet. We do still live in a covent infected world, but fortunately we can see a light at the end of this tunnel. Vaccination rates have climbed quickly in 2021, and the counter-intuitive result of this new delta variant is that vaccinations likely will continue to rise, and vaccination increasing is very important for amc and for the movie theater industry generally. No one is a perfect crystal ball, of course, but based on what we know and what we see today, we currently estimate that amc's theater level cash flows will turn positive in q4 of this year, assuming that we all see at least a 5.2 billion dollar domestic Box office, cumulatively, for the year now, there are some naysayers who are quick to point out the size of our debt load.

What they do not bother to mention, perhaps because it does not fit their narrative, is that we have smartly laddered that debt. We have no debt maturities at all until 2023 and most of our maturities do not come before 2026.. This gives us considerable time to deleverage our company to further strengthen our balance sheet and to refinance our liabilities, and hopefully, in better times, i'm reminded in all of this that there were those who were absolutely certain. They just knew that amc would file for bankruptcy in calendar year 2020 or early in 2021.

At amc we proved them wrong. Yeah we did. There are those who are sure that our recovery in q2 would be slower than is the current reality again. The q2 numbers for amc have proved them wrong as well, but there are those still who continue to forecast the demise of the theatrical exhibition business overall or maybe they just want to predict the demise of amc.

They say that streaming is going to beat us. That's their conventional wisdom. Well, a lot of people mock conventional wisdom because so often it's just plain out wrong. You've likely heard before this mantra, maybe even repeated it yourself.

Radio was going to kill off movie theaters tv was going to kill off movie theaters. The ecr's was going to kill off movie theaters. Dvds were going to kill off movie theaters each time movie theaters proved resilient. Americans went to a movie theater a billion times in 2019..

That's a billion with a b and the global box office in 2019 was a record high 43 billion dollars. Yes, there was a pandemic, but now streaming is going to kill off theaters. We breathlessly hear well at amc. We intend, with all of our might and brains and heart and sinnoh, to prove those procrastinators and prognosticators wrong too.

I'm now going to turn over the call, there's our chief financial officer, sean goodman, to give you some more insight into the progress we're making and then i'll come back to break some news before we head the q, a sean thanks adam and thank you, everyone for Joining us this afternoon, as adam noted, this quarter marked an important and very successful step along our pathway to recovery. Overall, our global attendance in q2 was more than three times that of q1. While this is approximately 77 below 2019's attendance levels, it is only approximately 45 below our 2019 attendance per showing. This is an illustration of how we actively managing our show times and associated costs to optimize the efficiency of our operations.

We have a way to go before the business fully normalizes, but clearly we are on the right path and making significant progress in general. Comparison of our results to 2020 and 2019 are not particularly meaningful, given that we are still in a ramp-up phase. However, there are certain metrics that are really very encouraging and worth mentioning compared to the second quarter of 2019, the domestic average ticket price was up more than 15 percent and food and beverage revenue per patron was up nearly 42 to a very impressive 7.91 cents, and This compares to 5.58 during the same quarter of 2019.. Similarly, the international average ticket price was up 6 and food, and beverage revenue per patron was up nearly 33 compared to the second quarter of 2019.

This food and beverage increase is primarily driven by a significantly higher percentage of guests choosing to purchase our food and beverage concessions. We are continuing to see strength in both the average ticket price and food and beverage per patron, as we move through the third quarter. Clearly, our guests are celebrating the event of going out to see a movie and enjoying the full immersive theatrical experience the sights the sounds and innovative amc concessions. Let's talk a bit about our balance sheet.

As adam noted, we ended the quarter with 2.023 billion dollars of total liquidity, and this is comprised of 1.811 billion dollars of unrestricted cash and 212 million dollars available under our revolving credit facilities. This record liquidity level was made possible by our equity issuances during the quarter, plus the completion of the sale of our remaining equity interest in theaters in lithuania on average. During the second quarter, our cash burn was 85 million dollars per month. This is a significant improvement from q1 when the average cash burn per month was 120 million dollars, and this improvement in cash burn is a result of higher gross box office grosses, together with a very strong operating performance, and it's particularly noteworthy and an impressive improvement when One considers that our cash interest spend and deferred rent repayments were significantly higher in q2 than they were in q1.

If we look at cash burn before the payback of deferred, rent and debt servicing costs, it was approximately 40 million dollars per month in q2 versus a burn of 115 million dollars per month in q1. A very significant improvement note that our cash burn numbers are stated after normalizing for the impact of capital raised during the quarter and therefore exclude the proceeds from completion of the sale of our theaters in lithuania and the equity capital that we raised during the quarter. Regarding capital allocation, we're pursuing a balanced approach to capital allocation and our priorities are as follows: one ensuring that we have sufficient liquidity to withstand any bumps along the road and the inevitable volatility, as our industry recovers from the impact of the coveted pandemic. Two strengthening our balance sheet by reducing our debt and associated just costs; three investing in our business to enhance the guest experience and four opportunistically pursuing value, enhancing partnerships or acquisition opportunities with our current solid liquidity position and the recovery that we are seeing in the business.

We believe that it is appropriate to carefully deploy our cash in ways that are most beneficial for the long term, future of the business. Well, of course, we will continue to be ultra focused on our operating efficiency. This will be rather than focusing on short-term monthly cash burn, and what i mean in this regard is we expect going forward that we will choose to pay cash interest as opposed to payment in kind of pick interest. This will avoid any increases in our debt position.

We also anticipate taking thoughtful actions to reduce our debt, including the deferred rent balance. All of this with a view to strengthen our company for the future. In addition, we will continue to actively manage our theater portfolio. Closing underperforming locations we've quietly closed more than 74 marginal or money losing locations over the last 18 months and opportunistically pursuing attractive high potential locations which adam will discuss when he comes back on turning to our landlords.

At the end of the second quarter, we had deferred rent obligations of 420 million dollars, representing a decline in obligations of approximately 55 million dollars compared to q1 of 2021.. For the second quarter, actual cash rent paid was approximately 55 million more than what is shown on the face of the income statement as we repaid deferred rent. While future cash rent payments will continue to be dependent on ongoing discussions with landlords. We anticipate cash rent paid in the second half of 2021 will be significantly higher than in the first half, as we continue to work on reducing the deferred rent balance, and we take advantage of opportunities that may arise to, for example, prepay rent in exchange for favorable Lease terms for now, we continue to focus the substantial majority of our capital expenditures on maintenance spend.

However, a small amount of growth capacity could arise from potential opportunistic high return investments later on in the earth. Capex for the second quarter was 10.5 million. This is net of landlord contributions. Net capex for the whole of 2021 is expected to be in the range of 100 to 120 million dollars, reflecting on our results and the financial position at the end of q2.

It is quite remarkable just how far we have come in a relatively short period of time. We believe that we are uniquely well positioned for a strong and profitable recovery. Now that all our theaters are open, we have a backlog of exciting movie titles to be released and we have record levels of liquidity and with that i'll pass the call back over to adam. Thank you, sean good stuff.

I've been saying publicly ever since we raised that life prolonging additional equity in may and june that it was high time for amc to start playing on offense again and earlier on this call, i promised you some news, so here goes quickly on ten specific items. One you already know that, with arclight and pacific theater's decision to permanently shut down, we announced that we've executed two leases with rick caruso's world-class real estate organization, to add to the amc fleet of theaters, two of los angeles, highest grossing cinemas, the grove and americana at Brand were the second and fifth highest grossing theaters, in greater los angeles, as recently as calendar year 2018.. They should open uh later this month as amc theaters. However, i can confirm today that the number is not two new theaters for amc.

It might be 10.. We actually now have six new theater pickups under lease or signed letter of intent. Not two three of those are in los angeles. Two are in chicago, one is in atlanta, and we also are currently in advanced negotiations to add four more bring the possible pickups to ten.

Eight of the ten would come from former arclight pacific locations, knives item two speaking of new theaters in 2021. We will open about a dozen new build theaters in the u.s europe and the middle east that were all well underway before covet struck. I'm happy to report that we do know something about designing beautiful and productive theaters in the united states. For example, we opened three new theaters in 2021, the two in los angeles, amc, porter ranch and amc dine in montclair are already each among the top 25 highest grossing movie theaters in the entire united states.

That puts each of these two theaters in the top one. Half of the 99th percentile of highest grossing u.s cinemas, and that was achieved in just their first few months of operation, really astounding. Our new amc, dinan theater in sunnyvale, california, also is doing amazingly well, it's in the 94th percentile of highest grossing u.s theaters item three. Many of our new individual investors have showered us with great ideas about how we can strengthen and brighten.

The future of amc among their ideas, for amc are that we show concert movies, professional sporting events, esports and gaming events wasting no time. We've immediately started to implement on these very good ideas. Our first two ufc matchups, which were in july, drew significant attendance to our theaters. Our first two concert movies with chance.

The rapper and halsey will show in amc theaters across the country later this month. In august. We're quite optimistic that this alternative programming can be built into a real revenue opportunity for amc in future years and we're chasing it hard. We also hope to engage in meaningful dialogue with professional sports, leagues and collegiate sports conferences to see if we can obtain the rights to show more sporting events at our theaters.

As for gaming opportunity, indeed, the president of epic games is a member of the amc board of directors, and i cannot even count the number of times already that our shareholders have asked us to reach out and partner with gamestop we're on the case more to come. I love that item four. Many of our new shareholders also are quite enthusiastic about cryptocurrency. Some of you may know that my best friend of almost 25 years duration in europe, the billionaire former chairman and owner of silversea cruises, formed a spec earlier this year called centricus, and he asked me to join its board of directors spak.

For those who don't know it stands for a special purpose acquisition company - that's a fancy name for a pool of investment capital in search of a company to buy ironically, centricus is under contract to buy a fascinating company called arkit arquit. Who just happens to be on the very cutting edge of quantum encryption and blockchain technologies? It was initially funded by the british government. Its clients include british telecom, the european space agency and verizon, among others. My role as a board member is merely to ensure that all laws and stack norms are being complied with.

When that acquisition of market is completed, which will be soon, i would expect. I will then drop off the board of directors. However, to get to this point, i've had to learn more in the past six months about blockchain and cryptocurrency. Then i learned about it in the entire decade before that this increased knowledge has given me the confidence to tell you all today that amc is hereby formally announcing on this call that by year end, we will have the information technology systems in place to accept bitcoin.

As payment for movie tickets and concessions, if purchased online at all of our us theaters - oh i love it. I love it. I love it are in the preliminary stage of now exploring how else amc can participate in this new burgeoning cryptocurrency universe and we're quite intrigued by potentially lucrative business opportunity for amc. If we intelligently pursue further serious involvement with cryptocurrency, more detail will be shared publicly with you, but only if, as and when our plans are more firm item five, since we have to do the it programming to accept bitcoin anyway, we are simultaneously writing the code right Now to accept apple pay and google pay for online purchases at our u.s leaders.

Also, these new payment methodologies for us should also be implemented by year-end item six again speaking of our new shareholders. In june, we introduced a new program, called amc investor connect that got a lot of press attention. It's part of amc stubs and offers our shareholders who participate full stubs benefits. We are thrilled that almost 300 000 of our shareholders have already joined our goals with the program.

Are simple we'd like to improve the communications that we have with the people who own amc, and we also want to convince many of the millions of people who are now our shareholders into becoming avid customers of our theaters as well? Hence we already have made multiple free and discounted offers to participants in amc investor connect and we're setting up a program of special advanced screenings for our amc investor connect members. To that end, a very special thank you to sony pictures for enabling our first such advanced screening in july, ahead of the scheduled, theatrical release of escape room tournament of champions item seven also to heighten the information exchange with our new shareholders, as well as with the Public at large in april, i started actively tweeting again, which i had not done since my days when running the philadelphia 76ers back in 2013, when twitter, when twitter was my social media platform of choice to interact with sports fans. My twitter followers have more than coupled since april and now exceed 150 000.. But what kind of blows my mind is that, according to twitter analytics, my tweets, which i write personally so far, have been read more than 72 million times.

In addition, i'm actively following almost 2 000 people who appear to be interested in amc to get a better sense of what they're saying and thinking. I also make it a point to check and read my inbound twitter feeds. Personally, there are hundreds and hundreds of replies to any tweet that i publish, which i find giving a more sophisticated and better understanding of. What's on the minds of amc's new owners item eight with labor costs going up in some places around the country.

Our costs are rising in the united states. We've also noticed that there's appeared to be little price resistance to the increased prices currently being charged at our u.s theaters. So, just last week we imposed an approximate five percent admissions ticket price increase at many of our u.s theaters. On average, that's about 50 cents or so in an increased admissions ticket price.

We think consumers will find that palatable, but hopefully that will meaningfully strengthen the amc. Bottom line: item: nine: there's a lot of talk currently about exclusive, theatrical windows or the lack thereof. You all know that amc was way ahead of this issue, reaching a landmark and historic agreement with universal in july of 2020 on their concept of premium video on demand. We were pleased, then, and we're still very pleased now with the outcome of the universal amc agreement and in our mutually working through that initially contentious issue, amc and universal are now very close.

In fact, i think we have the best working relationship that we've had together. In many years, in this same vein, i'm also pleased to announce today that amc just reached formal agreement with our friends at warner brothers to show all of their movies in calendar year, 22. Importantly, respecting an exclusive theatrical window of 45 days prior to home release for all warner brothers films, it's no secret! That amc was not at all happy when warner decided in december to take movies to the home on hbo max simultaneously, with with theatrical release. Therefore, it's especially gratifying that warner is yet again embracing an exclusive theatrical window and for us at amc, it's especially pleasing to be working so harmoniously with warner brothers.

Once again, we actually are in dialogue, active dialogue with every major studio on this very important topic. We are hearing considerable support in hollywood that an exclusive, theatrical window is an important way to build big and successful movie franchises. Clearly, though, this whole subject is quite topical, it's very much a work in progress. We will keep you posted as things turn out.

Finally, 10.. I'd like to thank the board of directors of amc for electing me in july to serve as chairman of the board as well as ceo of amc, entertainment. You know all that, and you've also heard that former u.s ambassador to the united kingdom still later was elected to serve as the board's lead director. To be no surprise to any of you that we have a highly able experienced and dedicated board, i feel fortunate to serve with them all.

But the news on this point is that at our first meeting of the board in my new role, i discussed with the board that i think it is extremely important that company insiders maintain a significant financial ownership stake in amc through owned and or granted shares, so That insiders have financial interests that are directly aligned with those of our shareholders. Our board members already have a policy in place that they must hold any granted shares for at least one full year, but there was no such plan currently in place for the company's 19. Most senior executives, therefore, i will be recommending to the board a new policy without going through all the nuances, then it's kind of complex, but to simplify it and break it down. I will propose that i, as ceo, be required to hold a number of owned or granted shares at least equal to eight years of my salary.

In my case, eight years of my salary would mean that i would be required to have at least a 12 million dollar ownership stake in amc of owned or granted amc shares sean. Our chief financial officer would be required to hold six years of his salary. Our executive vice presidents will be asked to hold four years of their salaries in owned or granite shares, and our senior vice presidents will be asked to hold two years of their salaries in owned or granted shares all right. The board will consider this proposal as new policy at its next regularly scheduled meeting.

I like that. I like that, a lot at the same time as i am emphasizing, share ownership, i'd like to remind you that i have not sold one share of amc stock in the five full years. I've been running this company, even though it represents more than three fifths of my annual when i say it when stock represents more than three fifths of my total annual compensation other than gifting a small percentage of my amc ownership stake to my two adult children earlier. This year i also did not sell any amc shares in march.

When i could have. I did not sell any amc shares in june when i could have in 2021. I similarly will commit that. I do not intend to sell any amc shares in september of 2021 when i'm legally permitted to do so, but as much as this pains me to admit in september i'll be celebrating my 67th birthday, i'm going to be a young vibrant 67, but hey it's 67.

Nonetheless, two months ago, more than 85 percent of my net worth was in amc stock and proper estate planning for a 67 year old suggests. I should diversify my assets a bit, but i don't want any of you ever to think that i have anything but full confidence in amc's future. So i will do so under the auspices of the parameters of what is called a 10b51 plan where i pass off. All the share trading control of the shares that i own or granted to an independent third-party bank based on parameters of the plan that i only partially set the plan, would not go into effect until towards your end at the earliest, and only a small percentage of My own or granted shares could get sold in any one month and that would then be repeated over a period of at least several months.

This way, i really have passed on the decision making to someone else on this important topic. Additionally, whatever is sold or not sold by an independent third party, i still will have millions of amc shares that either are owned by me personally or have been previously granted to me personally. My economic incentives are very much aligned with yours to increase shareholder value for all the owners of amc. What's more, i so fully believe in transparency that i'm letting you all know this well in advance, even though current u.s law does not require me to make this or even any public disclosure now at this time or at any time soon, prior to any shares.

Actually being sold well, there you go. That's the quarter, that's 10 items of news. It's awesome! Our second quarter was a very encouraging one for amc. We believe we're in a road to recovery and we're ever so grateful to our friends and allies who share our passion that amc's best days should be those that are coming.

You can take comfort that our deeper financial reserves allow us to stay the course to innovate. Again, and to capitalize on the opportunities that we see around us, we fundamentally believe that ours is the future that is bright, because there is nothing as magical as seeing dazzling images on a huge silver screen. We're now going to turn this call to the questions that were submitted and upvoted with the greatest shareholder interest on the say, technology platform uh and then we'll take some questions from analysts. If we, if you all, can spare us the time, i should point out that this is an experiment.

This state technologies platform for us it works really, interestingly, but it only works with some brokerage firms. Not all so many of our us shoulders, and especially many of our international shelters, may not have had a chance to ask their questions on this call. Still, we've had quite a bountiful array of questions posed to us to answer. Uh sean.

What's the first question, thanks adam, so the first question we have is from timothy and the question is: do you have any plans to offer a dividend again? Thank you, timothy um. We appreciate the question uh. If you look at our past, since going public in 2013, amc paid a sizable, quarterly dividend: uh every quarter until we got close to the pandemic and realizing that our liquidity would be stretched. We ceased offering a dividend.

There are some commitments that we've made in some of our debt instruments that we cannot pay a dividend uh until at the earliest about a year from now uh. Having said that, we do know that dividends are very much on the mind of our shareholders, so we'll take that interest quite seriously when we have the ability to make dividends once again, we'll balance those shareholder desires against the other competing uses of our cash. What opportunities are available in m a? How much do we need for liquidity? What can we do in the way to deleverage the company all the priorities that sean talked about previously great thanks adam and the next question is from david? The question is: will amc consider partnering with gamestop to offer more theater experiences by local and national gaming competitions? As i said in my remarks just a few minutes ago, i don't even think i can count the number of times people have asked me if we could partner with gamestop uh, we're certainly willing to do so uh. It seems to me it's one of those interesting ideas: that's flowed in from our individual investors and we're happy to reach out to gamestop and see if they have any interest.

The next question is from ryan. The question is: would amc ever consider re-establishing drive impedance with current state of the world? It would bring a lot of revenue with a little worry for people trying to social distance ryan. That's a great question and the reason i say it's a great question is i asked that same question last july and we went through an exhaustive analysis of drive-in theaters and honestly we came to the conclusion that they're a bad economic idea. It sounds appealing.

Yes, you stay in your car, but there are two problems: go into a parking lot and look at how much uh asphalt is needed to put a lot of cars in a lot. The viewing experience at a drive-in theater is not necessarily great, because many people are quite far from the screen. Additionally, a drive-in theaters are very seasonal, uh they're, not popular in the winter, in colder locations in the united states and in the summer in much united states. It doesn't get dark before eight or nine o'clock p.m, which means that you really can only use the driving screen for one show time a night uh, the economics aren't there it's unlikely that we would go forward.

It sounds like it's a great idea, but it isn't actually thanks adam and the next question is from terrell. The question is: how is amc preparing for the possible large-scale covert surge that could potentially shut theaters down again? You know when i think back over the last year. I think the thing that i'm most proud of is that we prevented a catastrophe at amc which so many were predicting, but right there right up there, along with it. I am so proud of the safe and clean protocols that we developed in partnership with the clorox company and current and former faculty of harvard university's prestigious school of public health to our knowledge, there's not been a single transmission of coven to an amc guest over the Last year, uh, and so the first thing that we're doing is staying very strongly committed to our safe and clean protocols to continue to operate our theaters safely and cleanly as we go forward.

In addition to that, i think we also can hope that there may not be the a large-scale, coveted surge that would force the kind of lockdown or shutdown that we saw in the united states and countries abroad a year back now. Most scientific experts will tell you that the virus will increase in the winter compared to the summer, but the the big change between this winter and last winter is vaccination and fortunately the the number of vaccinations, especially among the most vulnerable population uh, has been so extensive. Uh that we're optimistic that we won't see the kind of lockdown of society this winter that we saw last. We also hope that vaccination continues.

There is no more important thing that any of you can do to protect yourselves. Your families, your friends and the country as a whole. There's nothing more important. You can do that to get vaccinated.

I know that many of our shelters are younger uh, who think that they're invincible uh. It is true that older people are more susceptible to cova than younger, but no one is totally uh invincible against this virus. The solution for amc is vaccination. I would remind each of you the solution for each of you is vaccination too.

Next question arun asks: are there ways you are considering to reduce the company debt without issuing new shares? Yes, um. Some of our debt is trading at a discount. We might be able to buy it back at a discount uh, some of our landlords, where we have deferred rent obligations. That stretch out for years and years have indicated to us that they might be willing to take a reduction in what we owe them.

If we're willing to pay them in cash now, unfortunately, we do have this two billion dollars of quarter ending liquidity uh. Once we have satisfied ourselves that we have the liquidity, you get the code, no matter what covenant throws out of uh. We then will be turning to debt reduction uh and see there's opportunity there. Next question is from mike mike asks: how does amc plan to combat day and date, releases of movies on stream platforms and theaters? Well, you know this is such an important topic and i addressed it earlier in my remarks that um, you know we're especially pleased that warner brothers uh, has decided to move away from day and day releases and commit to an exclusive theatrical window as well.

We are having five conversations with every studio in hollywood on this very one topic and we're seeing a lot of consensus merge that exclusive theater window is a good way to build major motion picture. It's a fluid situation, a lot of studios that have experimented with day and date say that they're doing it only in short epidemic times, we'll all see how together this plays out. But we know that studios are going to do what's in their interest. They're not going to help out amc charitably, so we are all sure that our marketing programs are as vibrant and powerful and as potent as they can possibly be.

Uh amc is the marketing leader in this industry for the past five years, and we've got a few tricks up our sleeves. We intend to continue to be a bold, pier and lead the industry in marketing hobby driving audiences to our leaders, hopefully selling more tickets, which then turn. Hopefully this is our studio partners that the smartest thing for them to do give us their respect and, let's tell them all different next question: would you consider selling amc, merchandise and online forms? I think it would be a problem uh. We would consider it uh.

This is again one of these ideas. I've, not i've, received a lot of glasses um. It's intriguing uh, it's complicated to merge into 600 retail locations uh. We have to make sure to tell that we can get stock with uh inventory.

That makes it a little probable businessman, so i'm going to take articles next question from amy would like to encounter events be sure to hit based on the premises of hilton. I expect this would be a real seat pulling success. Yes, yes, yes and yes, maybe not milton because that's already come and gone but um. You know we are experimenting now with these two concert: movies.

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