Recently Cash-Poor AMC Investing $27.9M in Gold and Silver Mine

AMC Entertainment, which came perilously close to running out of cash early last year amid COVID-19 pandemic-induced theater closures and audience declines (see 2101220036), will spend $27.9 million to buy 22% of Hycroft, a 71,000-acre gold and silver mine in northern Nevada, said the theater chain Tuesday. The box office strength of Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Batman and the strong 2022 theatrical film slate heighten AMC’s “conviction that we are on a glide path to recovery,” said CEO Adam Aron. Investing in Hycroft “is the result of our having identified a company in an unrelated industry that appears to be just like AMC of a year ago,” he said. “It, too, has rock-solid assets, but for a variety of reasons, it has been facing a severe and immediate liquidity issue.” The company said "independent third-party studies" confirm that Hycroft has about 15 million ounces of gold deposits and 600 million ounces of silver deposits. Aron said on a recent AMC earnings call that “our job is not yet done” in luring mass movie audiences back to theaters (see 2203020015).