If you’ve been watching the market for the last week, AMC somehow pulled together over 900 million dollars from its investors. Originally around 2-3 dollars a share, the company reached almost 26 dollars per share on Tuesday night after gaining over 400% in after-hour trading, or stock trading that occurs after the trading day of a stock exchange. 

AMC is the largest movie theater entertainment enterprise in the world, yet the company is worth only a fraction of the major tech and shipping companies like Amazon and Apple. 

While CNBC gave many readers the impression that AMC was never going to recover (refer to The Banner’s previous article: “Movie Theaters In Panic Mode Eight Months Into Quarantine”), AMC now says that they can survive for the rest of the year. Originally, AMC was only able to collect around 200 million dollars in April. After January 25th, however, AMC pulled together over 900 million dollars.

Soon afterward, the AMC stock exploded from 3 dollars per share to 5 dollars and then to 26 dollars in after-hours. The funding alone does not explain why AMC is increasing to such a large extent. There could be something happening that’s even bigger than just the 900 million dollars. Perhaps a major company like Netflix, Apple, or Amazon is looking to purchase the theater chain.                     

The main reason for AMC’s insane jump is partially because of a Reddit/ discord group that has been rallying “troops” to buy GameStop and other stocks like AMC.

Also, with the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, tweeting “gamestonk!!,” the two stocks went to the moon. These groups wanted to fight Wall Street and make them lose money on bets for stocks like AMC and GME. Those sites were eventually shut down and blocked, but many people lost money.

Also, another major factor for upcoming profit for AMC is the upcoming movies. Check out The Banner’s “The Biggest Films of 2021” for more movie information. Each month of 2021 comes with a handful of major films. While some companies like Disney or the Warner Brothers are releasing movies on their own platforms, many people are anxious to watch movies in the big theater surrounded by fellow audience members.

With the vaccine distribution across the US and the world, we could see people returning to theaters and eating concessions by the end of 2021. 

Maybe AMC will even fill 100% capacity by the end of the year. The company will need to sell concessions, which are AMC’s largest source of profit. We could see an uprising in the movie industry this year because people have been trapped in their homes and are itching to escape their homes and experience the cinema in a group experience.

The year 2021 will see an AMC revamp: With a plethora of upcoming movies, vaccine distribution throughout the U.S., a “get out of jail free card” from multiple investors, and a possible buyer, AMC could have one of their best years in a while. The only things holding AMC back now are Covid-10 and the impending threat of online screenings to the movie theater industry.