Within the last several days, rumors have been bustling about a potential takeover of the crippled AMC Theaters by the godlike entity known as Amazon.
According to Marketwatch, “Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings rocketed on heavy volume Monday, after a media report that the struggling movie theater chain had held buyout talks with Amazon, as AMC’s value has shrunk since the COVID-19 pandemic led to theater shutdowns worldwide.” Now in AMC’s defense, their stock value wasn’t dropping because of poor earnings or business decisions, almost a majority of financial experts agree that when the full might of the American economy reopens, many large and small businesses alike will come back to life, meaning many conversations like the one with Amazon might be meaningless several months after we begin to see the new “normal.”
So, will Amazon buy AMC theaters?
AMC did announce the talks were occurring however stating that “AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., and e-commerce and cloud giant Amazon.com Inc., which also is a parent of Amazon Studios, have previously held talks.” Another report stated that it wasn’t clear however if “merger talks were still active, or will lead to a deal.”
It’s important to know that AMC is the parent company of AMC and Carmike theater chains in the “U.S. and the Odeon Cinemas chain in the U.K.,” which apparently have been struggling since the COVID-19 pandemic which led to “shutdowns of movie theaters across the globe.” Meanwhile things have still been rather peachy for Amazon, especially Amazon Prime Video which was “recently ranked second, behind Netflix Inc.” in U.S. streaming consumers.
Another thing to note is that content streaming services might continue to see a healthy rise as a whole, especially as movie theaters might be one industry that will have a harder time seeing a positive rate of returning customers in a post-COVID-19 world.
