Shares in AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. AMC -6.86% fell more than 10% in trading on Friday after the chief executive officer and chief financial officer sold all or most of their currently vested interest in the company.
After the market closed on Thursday, Chairman and CEO Adam Aron and CFO Sean Goodman disclosed that they have sold 312,500 and 18,316 shares in the company, respectively, according to filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
At an average selling price of around $30.86 a share, the sale generated $10.2 million for the two executives of the world’s largest cinema chain.
AMC didn’t respond to a request for comment.
After falling to as low as $26 during trading on Friday, AMC shares closed at $27.44, down 6.9% for the day.
AMC, which has nearly 1,000 theaters world-wide, has become popular among retail investors who have coalesced on social media around their supposed commitment to hold on to their shares and never sell them.
Since the beginning of the year, the stock has soared from $2.01 on Jan. 4 to over $27 today.
According to FactSet, the average target price among analysts on AMC’s stock is $10.45, with the majority recommending to either hold or sell.
Mr. Aron regularly engages with his online fan base, which has only helped fuel AMC’s status as a meme stock.
In early November, Mr. Aron hired J.P. Morgan Securities LLC to handle the sale of 1.25 million shares according to a securities filing. A separate filing showed he sold half of those shares at an average price of $40.53 for a total of $25.3 million.
After today’s sale, he will have only 95,997 shares left, according to Thursday’s filing. Roughly three million additional shares are tied to his continued employment and performance.
Mr. Goodman’s sale takes his active shareholding to zero. He has roughly 590,000 shares tied to his continued employment and performance.
During the pandemic, AMC came close to filing for bankruptcy but was able to improve its financial position by selling shares to eager retail investors, as well as securing certain financing deals from institutional investment funds.
Days before Mr. Aron’s first major stock sale in early November, the company reported sharply narrowed losses as moviegoers returned to theaters during the September quarter.
Nearly 40 million attendees were reported during the quarter, the first three-month period since the pandemic began that essentially all of AMC’s locations were reopened, which was still behind pre-pandemic levels but up from about 22 million in the June quarter.
Write to Adriano Marchese at [email protected]
Corrections & Amplifications
Shares of AMC Entertainment Inc. opened at $29.35 on Friday. An earlier version of this story said that was the shares’ opening price on Friday. (Corrected on Dec. 10.)
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