FILE PHOTO: An AMC theatre is pictured amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., January 27, 2021. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo
June 4, 2021
(Reuters) -Shares of AMC Entertainment shuffled between gains and losses on Friday morning after a blistering rally that left the company’s stock up around 90% for the week.
The movie theater chain’s shares were recently up around 1.5% at $52.80 after both rallying and swinging into the red earlier in the session.
AMC has been at the center of a second wave of buying by retail investors who have hyped the stock in forums such as Reddit’s WallStreetBets, reinvigorating the “meme stock” phenomenon that sent shares of video game retailer GameStop up 1,600% in January.
AMC’s shares are up nearly 2,400% this year and its market capitalization has ballooned to $25.76 billion as of Thursday, making it more valuable than 40% of the companies in the S&P 500.
The company on Thursday completed its second share offering in three days, taking advantage of a nearly 400% surge in its share price since mid-May.
“AMC has made the best of its current ‘meme stock’ status by selling shares at a premium, and has raised significant capital doing so,” said Wedbush analyst Alicia Reese.
“We expect significant volatility in shares of AMC to continue, driven by trading momentum unrelated to AMC’s fundamentals,” Reese said.
BlackBerry Ltd, another company whose shares have been caught up in a social media-driven “meme stock” rally, slid 5.2%, leaving it with a 49% gain for the week to date. The company’s shares are up 115% year-to-date.
Shares of other “meme stocks” GameStop and Koss Corp were down 2.4% and 3.1%, respectively.
(Reporting by Sagarika Jaisinghani and Aaron Saldanha in Bengaluru; David Randall in New York; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Shounak Dasgupta and Kirsten Donovan)
Source: One America News Network
