AMC Entertainment closed the second quarter of 2026 with a quarter the company itself is calling the best in its 106-year history: total revenue of $1,596.7 million, up 14.2% year over year; Adjusted EBITDA of $321.4 million, up 69.6%; free cash flow of $190.1 million, more than double the year-ago $88.9 million; and the first time AMC has ever cleared $300 million of Adjusted EBITDA in a single quarter. Attendance rose 13.5% to 71.3 million patrons. It is the quarter the post-COVID rebuild was supposed to deliver, and it landed in the middle of a domestic box office that the company itself says was the biggest quarter in seven years and the fifth biggest ever, at roughly $2.99 billion industry-wide, up 10.7%.
The first look at the GAAP line is colder. Net loss of $11.4 million versus a $4.7 million loss a year ago is a $6.7 million deterioration; basic and diluted loss per share widened to $0.02 from $0.01; weighted average diluted shares outstanding rose 66.7% to 722.0 million from 433.1 million. That is not a number to gloss over. AMC spent the quarter raising equity to refinance debt and to retire its highest-cost notes, and the share count moved accordingly. Diluted loss per share on the same dollar loss still doubled because the share base nearly doubled. The story of the quarter is the operating engine against the share-count drag - a record cash quarter, a meaningfully worse per-share number, and a balance sheet that the company is rebuilding underneath both.
The other thing that changed in the quarter is the capital structure. AMC refinanced the entire $400 million of 12.75% Odeon Senior Secured Notes due 2027 into 10.5% Odeon Term Loans due 2031, eliminating the 2027 wall, and used proceeds from a $150 million at-the-market offering and a $200 million registered direct offering (95.25 million shares at $2.10, closed June 24) to retire the $125.5 million of 6.125% Senior Subordinated Notes due 2027 and complete the conversion of $155.8 million of 1.5% exchangeable notes. Total corporate borrowings principal ended June 30 at $3,914.2 million, down from $4,024.2 million at year-end 2025. The company states there are no material debt maturities before calendar 2029. For a balance sheet that was the dominant question on the stock in 2024, the 2026 rebuild is the dominant fact in the second-quarter report.
The bear case has not vanished: total stockholders' equity is still a deficit of $1,452.7 million against $8,043.6 million of total assets; Adjusted EBITDA margin at 20.1% remains dependent on a strong film slate; the international segment was breakeven in operating terms only with the help of an FX tail; and the prior-year quarter carried a one-time $32.1 million Other Income swing that flattered the year-ago GAAP comparison. But the operating engine is real, the film slate through the rest of 2026 looks unusually strong, and the company has now spent two consecutive quarters delivering $300M-plus of EBITDA. The market is pricing a leveraged movie exhibitor at roughly $2.26 billion of equity value against $3.9 billion of principal debt; the test of the next two quarters is whether the EBITDA engine keeps running into 2026's strongest calendar.