Earnings Labs

AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (AMC)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 1, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the AMC Entertainment Second Quarter 2016 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host, John Merriwether, Vice President Investor Relations. Thank you. You may now begin.

John Merriwether

Analyst

Thanks, Rob. Good morning everyone. I’d like to welcome you to AMC’s second quarter 2016 earnings conference call. Before we get started with our prepared remarks, we’d like to remind everyone that as referenced in our press release issued earlier this morning, we have posted the CFO commentary about the second quarter and the six months ended June 30, 2016 on the Investor Relations page of our website at amctheaters.com. Some of the comments made by management during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are discussed in our public filings, including our most recent 10-K. Statements made throughout this presentation are based on current estimates of future events and the company has no obligation to update or correct these estimates. Listeners are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainty and that actual results may differ materially as a result of these various factors. In addition, comments made on this call may refer to certain measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted free cash flow and adjusted diluted earnings per share, which are not in accordance with GAAP. However, management believes these results more clearly reflect the operating performance. For a full reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to GAAP results in accordance with Regulation G, please see our press release issued earlier this morning and furnished as an exhibit to our Form 8-K dated August 1, 2016 which is located in the Investor Relations area of our website at amctheaters.com. Please note that the following communication is not an offer to sell or solicitation to offer or buy any securities or solicitation of any votes for approval. We urge investors and security holders to read the registration statement on Form S-4, including the definitive joint proxy statement prospectus and all other relevant documents filed with the SEC for _ available. After our prepared remarks, there will be a brief question-and-answer session. Joining me on the call today are Adam Aron, CEO and President and Craig Ramsey, Chief Financial Officer. I’ll now turn the call over to Adam.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Thank you, John. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us to learn more about AMC’s second quarter results and to get an update on the actions we’ve taken during the actions we’ve taken during the first six months of 2016 relative to some of the key priorities that I immediately laid out on my January 4 hiring that we believe will uniquely position AMC for future growth and success in the years to come. As you all know, AMC is coming off an extraordinary first quarter in 2016 in which adjusted EBITDA was up some 51% year-over-year excluding extraordinary items. Turning to the second quarter, the period April to June was in fact much more challenging for AMC for several reasons. First, last year second quarter of $3.1 billion was an all-time industry box office record, making it a tough comp for everyone. Second, film successes industry wide in this year's Q2 were few and far between. Movie after movie disappointed in this year's second quarter and domestic box office grosses were often considerably smaller than what was anticipated across our industry. As far as AMC specifically, we were further disadvantaged in 3 ways. One, this year’s few Q2 film slate successes included more family movies in which AMC tends to mildly underperform and sells more discounted children's tickets versus last year's second quarter, which included films like Jurassic World where AMC tends to over perform and sells more higher priced adult ticket. Two, AMC by far is the largest IMAX operator in North America. Normally, IMAX dramatically over indexes for us, but in the second quarter of 2016, the lackluster industry film slate led even to IMAX movies, a typically showing double digit weakness. And finally, 3 as the industry leader in introducing tax on top pricing a…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from the line of Eric Handler with MKM Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Eric Handler

Analyst

Yes, thanks for taking my question. 2 questions, first for Craig. One of the items mentioned in ticket pricing in your printed CFO commentary was promotional pricing as something that impacted pricing in the quarter. Is this something new? Is this anything in particular you can discuss with regard to what exactly is promotional pricing? Secondly, with Starplex, where do you stand with the renovations of these theaters and is it too early to say what you're seeing in terms of improvements from when you first acquired them?

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

Eric, on the first point about promotional pricing, that’s more about kind of looking at a theater, a certain number of theaters, not a large percentage, but a few of our theaters in relation to their market position and pricing at a more of a value oriented pricing structure. It is a fairly small percentage of theaters, but it does have some impact. The Starplex impact is probably more significant in the second quarter, where their average ticket prices run about 50% of the traditional 2D, and then the biggest impact in pricing for the quarter was just the change in IMAX product. I think our total ticket prices, average ticket price is down $0.28. If you volume weight the IMAX business, it accounts for about $0.32 price declines, so it was more a matter of mix. Now, on Starplex, we had talked about 80 to 90 I think total screens being renovated. Those are working their way into the development Q as you might expect. We aren't even a year into having acquired Starplex. We did that last December. We had a full, kind of a full Q of receipt projects already in line. So those theaters that we had targeted for receipting will start getting receipts as you look into the next year 2017. A little too early for them to have a broken into the queue, but we expect that to take place over the next year.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Eric, it’s Adam. If I can just give a little more clarity to the promotional pricing comment. Sometime in the middle of 2015, the company took about 10% of its theaters and lowered prices across the board, putting into place an everyday low pricing strategy. So it's not really new, but it does affect year over year comparisons. The first project assigned to the new vice president of pricing is look at every single one of those 40 everyday low prices theaters and see if it was a smart decision to reduce prices for those theaters in their locales. Hopefully we’ll find some theaters where we can take prices back up.

Eric Handler

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Barton Crockett with FBR. Please proceed with your question.

Barton Crockett

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask a little bit more about the loyalty initiative here. Could you remind us again how much of your ticket sales come through your current members of Stubs? And give us a sense of what you see now as the revenue lift to come from this? You’re talking about an EBITDA drive from the initial launch, but can you size what you see for the revenue lift to come?

Adam Aron

Analyst

Sure. Historically, like prior to the April 1 market test in those 40 theaters, AMC was tracking 21% of our total guests within the AMC Stubs program. Meaning, approximately 40 million tickets of the 200 million were receiving credit for AMC rewards along with the food and beverage concession purchases of those members. There's been lots of analysis about the incrementality that comes from the loyalty program, and the number that I've seen, that I want to settle on is in the mid-20% range of that purchase activity being incremental, which needless to say makes us quite excited when we see the results of a new loyalty scheme. The fact we got a 20% increase -- 20% surge in the number of new members in just a couple months or just a couple of weeks at most of our theaters, is exciting. The fact that the sign up rate for new members is double to triple where it's been historically as exciting. The fact that we were losing half our AMC Stubs members because they weren't renewing in prior years, now those paid members who don't renew, instead of falling out of our system, will just fall from the premier tier to the so-called insider tier, the free tier. All that leads us to think that we could very easily double the activity base of AMC Stubs over the next 2 to 3 years. That would take that 21% participation rate up into a 40% participation rate. That’s not unheard of. Airlines and hotels have participation rates in their frequent user programs above 50%. And again, if you think about incrementality being in double digits, you're talking about you pick it, 2% to 5% of revenue growth purely incremental because of the existence of AMC Stubs.

Barton Crockett

Analyst

Okay, that's very helpful. Now, can you give us a little better sense of the breakdown in this growth between the paid and the free tier? I mean the 20% surge, the doubling, how much is that going to be people paying versus getting the free tier?

Adam Aron

Analyst

I think by the time we're done, all of our paid members still exist in the system. I'm guessing that our paid free mix will probably be about 85/15 over time, 85% free, 15% paid, but as I said in my prepared comments, is that people in the paid program have a 10% generosity in rewards, which essentially is a 10% discount for future purchases, and the people in the free tier have only a 2% reward generosity level, which I'm sure would work up to 3% or 4% as we stimulate them and excite them with ad-hoc bonuses and promotions, but still you're probably seeing the generosity of the program fall by two thirds and that essentially offsets any loss of membership fees. Also remember the old membership fee was $12 and we renewed most people at $9 and the current program now is priced at $15, which is another offset for the free tier. The economics of the free tier are every bit as appealing to AMC as the economics of the paid tier.

Barton Crockett

Analyst

Okay, and then if I can switch gears with one other separate question, I was just curious for your perspective on this and it may me unanswerable by you, but you talked about your Odeon acquisition and how you're paying less in the publicly traded theater peers in Europe. My question is this, which is why, why would the owners of Odeon sell to you guys for a lower multiple than they could get if they just took it public? What’s your perspective on that?

Adam Aron

Analyst

Sure. First of all, you have to ask the seller, but I think the other more logical reason is that the seller has been trying to sell Odeon and UCI for a couple of years now with – privately, not publicly, with a much higher price tag than we paid. They didn’t get it for whatever reason and rather than take the company public, they kept on repeating cycle after cycle to sell the asset privately. That occurred again this spring. This is a private equity firm that’s owned Odeon UCI for 12 years, historically private equity funds of a 10 year life, so there probably was some imperative for them to finally monetize the assets, and then came Brexit. We had negotiated a price before June 23 that was higher than the price of Odeon UCI after June 23. So we also were able to convert a significant amount of the purchase price from cash to stock, which saves us a considerable amount of money as contrasted with floating stock publicly and taking underwriter discounts and the like, underwriter fees and discounts and the like. And finally you’ve got the impact of the pound. The pound affects us. It doesn’t affect the seller of course. They could have gone public in the UK market, but basing on where they sold the asset, a private sale is what ensued, and we got a good deal, both in pounds and in dollars.

Barton Crockett

Analyst

Let me ask you this way. Is there some reason you think that were Odeon to go public, it would be valued at a discount to these comparables since there are structural problems?

Adam Aron

Analyst

No. To the contrary, because Odeon was founded in the 1920s, it has some of the premier theater locations across the United Kingdom. One of the reasons that we’re keeping Odeon and UCI intact as a wholly owned sub of the company, is so that if we ever chose to take Odeon, not that it’s in our current plan, but if we ever chose to take Odeon UCI public in Europe at European multiples, we would more easily have the ability to do so, which we think augurs to convince all of you that the way you should be looking at AMC as a sum of the parts valuation. We do in10d to report results for our US theaters and our European theaters separately going forward for closing so you can easily track which of our cash flows are US generated and which are European generated. Craig also wants to make a comment.

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

Barton, I’ve lived through this before when we were private equity owned, and when we ultimately as a company and our owners decided to sell to, in our case, to Wanda, and we had the same debate. And at the end of the day, the immediate realization through a sale of 100% of the company to a buyer was more attractive at that point in time for our private equity owners than a protracted go-public sell 20%, then sell 10, then sell 10, then sell 10. Those are the decisions that investors make, and it has really nothing to do with the company and the company’s prospects. It has more to do with, I’ve been here 12 years. In this case I have an opportunity for 100% realization and I think that’s really what motivated the seller in this case.

Barton Crockett

Analyst

Okay, that’s great. Thanks a lot guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Mike Hickey with the Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

Mike Hickey

Analyst

Hey guys. Hey Adam and Craig. Thank you for taking my questions. I’m curious on your Odeon transaction, if you’ve seen any sort of I guess strategic considerations from your competitive circuits in Europe just thinking about I guess the reaction that the operators have in Europe to your amenity investment and the success you’ve had in that category. I have a quick follow up.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Sure. Already there’s been a reaction to our acquisition of Odeon UCI. You saw that Cineworld just bought five theaters in the UK and paid 10 plus times worth compared to our 9.1 times for Odeon. But I assume the reaction in Europe is going to be similar to the reaction in the United States, which is we’ll go first. We’ll prove that the economic returns are dramatic. We’re in the third or fourth year of this now and the economic returns are still dramatic. I assume they will copy this in some places, because they will also see that more people will go to movie theaters more often if it’s more enjoyable to watch a movie. Your follow up?

Mike Hickey

Analyst

Thanks Adam. I guess you touched on it, but since Odeon, what you are seeing in Europe in terms of deal activity now that you’re introduced to the buyer and operator and of course your capital investment strategy, which will obviously stress some of your competitors, if you’re seeing any increase in deal activity or opportunities for you in Europe to grow.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Oh gosh. It was only a couple of weeks ago that we put Odeon to bed. I must say that between Carmike and Odeon, my interest and ability to pull off yet another acquisition is probably about zero. I do think that we’re on a blistering M&A pace so far in 2016. It would be wise to take a breath. We do have -- buying right is important, but we also have to bring these two companies, assuming that they both go forward or the one company, if only Odeon and UCI go forward, we do have to bring them into our system well. The amount of work and emphasis that AMC as an organization will focus on bringing these acquisitions into our system, absorbing the theaters and them monetizing the returns that were inherent in our acquisition models, that is so important. I would like to think at least for the balance of 2016 you’ll see us slow down more acquisitions and instead focus on bringing these 2 massive purchases and wealth and growing, achieving the growth in revenues and earnings that we envisioned that caused the actions in the first place. Having said that, there’ll probably be more circuits brought to our attention and we’ll deal with it as the time comes.

Mike Hickey

Analyst

No, I hear you. I guess the presumption was that I didn’t identify in the question would be that Carmike shareholders, for whatever reason, vote against your current deal. I think the theory is that then maybe you have a bigger appetite to grow in Europe where you see maybe a better asset return in the first place.

Adam Aron

Analyst

No, let me -- since you asked the question more specifically, let me respond more specifically. My comments about -- taking a bit of a breath here, assumes that we’re getting both Carmike and Odeon and UCI and that we do have the opportunity to integrate both organizations into ours over the next 6 months plus or minus. If that assumption is not the case, that does free up a billions dollars that we had allocated for Carmike to do something else with. Yes. Our eyes will be much more open if the Carmike transactions does not occur. As you said, there are some people who follow us who think that the Odeon acquisition is more intriguing than the Carmike acquisition because as opposed to just adding more theaters to the states, which is certainly a good thing, it opens up a whole new beach head in an important part of the world with hundreds of millions of people who go to the movies.

Mike Hickey

Analyst

Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Eric Wold of B. Riley. Please state your questions.

Eric Wold

Analyst

Thank you, Good morning. I guess one, given that Odeon acquisition is more of a done deal with Carmike, I assume you’ve already been in there. You’ve identified theaters to remodel and improve. Assuming it closed at year end, how quickly can you get in there to make those changes ahead of the 2017 film slate? I have a follow up.

Adam Aron

Analyst

The lawyers are telling us that under EEU rules, we really have to wait until closing before we get too deep into the inside of Odeon and UCI. Fortunately that’s probably only four months from now, so it will happen pretty quick. You are correct. We've already visited over 100 of their theaters. We've already identified, I want to say dozens and dozens, but that would be too small. So whatever a multiple of dozens and dozens is, a lot of sites where we do that, IMAX and or Dolby cinema locations, we've also identified 80 or so theaters that are attractive candidates for renovation. We will start the planning of that effort as soon as we can. Theater renovations, you only get the chance to do it – if you want to get – if all you want to throw in recliner seats, you can do renovation fast, but we don't -- That's not the kind of renovation that AMC has been doing. We've been renovating the entire theater, looking at customers flows, looking at F&B activity, as well as what goes on in the auditoriums. It takes a little longer to plan a more comprehensive theater renovation than just quickly throwing in recliners. So I think at the earliest, you're looking at the third trimester of 2017 for renovations actually to occur in Europe. The renovation strategy really kicks in 2018 and beyond.

Eric Wold

Analyst

Okay and then the follow up question, you laid out the remodel plan for AMC standalone over the next couple of years. Does that indicate that the remodel plans for AMC, Odeon and Carmike get all 2 of those are completed are kind of mutually exclusive and go on their own? Or if you acquire Odeon and Carmike, could that impact your plan with AMC you get to do some trade-off and save on CapEx or to reallocate CapEx?

Adam Aron

Analyst

The former of your 2 assertions. We have the capital to grow the AMC circuit -- don’t want to say grow. I should say to grow revenues and earnings from renovations in the AMC circuit, additionally to do so on the Carmike circuit, additionally to do so in the Odeon and UCI circuits. So the numbers that I laid out in the call today for the AMC circuit are likely to be achieved, highly likely to be achieved, bank on it regardless of whether we also buy Odeon and regardless of whether we also buy Carmike. So actually, if we are successful in buying Carmike, the number of renovated US theaters in total is going to be higher than those numbers. And of course, we are going to buy Odeon and UCI, so the number of renovated theaters in the totality of AMC’s family will be higher than the numbers outlined on the call for of the AMC circuit alone.

Eric Wold

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Leo Kulp with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Leo Kulp

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. You said previously that you can increase the Odeon and UCI EBITDA by 50% over 4 years. Can you provide a little more color on where that's coming from? Is it primarily revenue? Is there expense savings in there? Just if you provide I guess some expectations on where it's going to come from, that’d very helpful.

Adam Aron

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Sure. We already said that we thought there were at least $10 million of expense synergies over the next 5 years. I think I said it was going to happen in 4 years if my memory is right, that over the next 4 to 5 years, they should have some natural growth anyway, just because most businesses do, but the vast majority of that surge in bottom line EBITDA growth comes from successfully renovating the theaters. So I'd say 20% is expense energy, 20% is natural growth and 60% will come from renovating theaters in Europe.

Leo Kulp

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Got it, thank you. That's helpful and then just one more, if I could. Can you provide some color around the returns you've seen from your more recent receipts in the US relative to the earlier ones?

Adam Aron

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, I'm going to give that that mostly to Craig, but I just want to lay in that, having looked at it myself, the recent renovation projects still have huge IRR’s and huge returns on investment. Where we’re seeing painted AMC is not because renovations are less successful than they might have been a few years ago, even though we did do the easiest theaters first. So you would expect that the very first theaters had higher returns than as you get deeper into the circuits, but we’re still above 25% of unlevered cash and cash returns. The real issue is what’s going on in the unrenovated theaters. We are educating the populous to enjoy recliner seats, to enjoy MacGuffins Bars, to enjoy IMAX, to enjoy Dolby Cinema. There’s a double whammy effect going on in our renovations. We’re doing them offensively because the returns are so high and we’re doing defensively because that’s what consumers want. Consumers are making trade-offs to go to renovated theatres over non-renovated theatres. You want to add?

Craig Ramsey

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Not a lot to add to that. Adam said pretty it succinctly that even with the new group of our most recently renovated, they’re well in excess of our 25% threshold. We’re not hitting the 70s -- 60s and 70s that we had early on because those were the fast movers and easiest to achieve. Returns are still very strong. I think as important, landlords’ support of the program and their contribution to the capital required to do it, we’re still running at 35% to 40% .When we started out, we actually thought that might tail off, that we might dry up that source. We haven’t really seen that yet. I think that’s a testament to how really strong the concept it. They’re still generating very good returns and we’re still seeing a lot of support from the landlord community to provide capital, which of course only reduces the denominator and makes the returns better. So a very, very attractive return proposition for us.

Adam Aron

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

But just to add on to what Craig just said, when we look to Europe, where the low-hanging fruit theater renovations have not yet been done, returns might be pretty high in Leicester Square.

Leo Kulp

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Guys, thank you both.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Ben Mogil with Stifel. Please proceed with your questions.

Ben Mogil

Analyst

Hi guys, good morning. So a couple of different questions. On that Dolby target that you set out or should have accelerated by 6 years or seven years, does that now include with the original targets AMC, only that now at least includes UCI Odeon in terms of that 100 screen by screen by 2017 target?

Adam Aron

Analyst

No, that’s all AMC US. That’s not Carmike either. That’s all AMC US.

Ben Mogil

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks. In terms of where you see the best ROIs, if you had infinite capital, are you still seeing the best ROIs still at AMC legacy theoretically at Carmike or theoretically at UCI Odeon?

Adam Aron

Analyst

The reason I hesitate to answer your question is we’re not inside Carmike or Odeon yet, so I guess we’re going to find out when we do our first ones. But at some point we’re going to have to prioritize which theaters in the Q get done first. Another factor as Craig just pointed out is landlords are paying for a huge chunk of our theater renovations because they want more modern theaters as anchor tenants in their malls or commercial complexes. Another factor in determining who gets renovated first is where the landlords are most cooperative.

Ben Mogil

Analyst

Okay, that’s fair enough. And then lastly, and Adam this obviously falls downstairs a little bit with your hotel experience, when you look at the loyalty card program you’re offering, obviously there’s enough of a gap between both the price of the paid one, the free one, and obviously enough of a gap in terms of what each program offers in terms of the 2% versus 10%.When you look at Cineplex, which has done a pretty good -- actually a very good job on their loyalty card program with both a credit card as well as a debit card tying with one of the major banks, given your experiences, why not do the same thing with where you’re at?

Adam Aron

Analyst

So when we have 85 % market share, we’ll do that too. Look, never -- I’ve only been here 7 months and already we’ve totally overhauled Stubs, totally overhauled -- in the works, you haven’t see it, but I have, the website, the smartphone app. We’ve introduced a pricing department. There’s more good stuff coming, but how much can you do in 7 months, especially when you throw in $2 billion acquisitions at the same time? I do think …

Ben Mogil

Analyst

I didn't say you weren’t [bossy]. I never said that.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Okay, and actually I’m not actually trying to sound defensive. I'm actually ...

Ben Mogil

Analyst

No, you’re not.

Adam Aron

Analyst

I'm actually quite proud of how our marketing organization is, especially our Executive Vice President of Marketing has stepped up this past half year. This may not come as a great shock to you, I'm a pretty tough grader when it comes to giving out grades to the marketing department, because it's something I've done most of my career and even I I’m impressed by how well our marketing organization has stepped up to put really good initiatives on the table. Just go into the lobbies of any of our theaters right now, and you'll see all of our associates wearing AMC Stubs t-shirts. You're going to see point of purchase materials all over our theaters, talking about why you should enroll on AMC Stubs, choosing the right tier for you. We bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of ropes and poles to create all these VIP lines at our box offices and concession stands. And it's an incredibly powerful ego stroking device to tell people that you can stand in that short line over there if you commit to AMC. We just put on screen for the first time ever, a special welcome to AMC Stubs members in the audience just a few seconds before the feature film began. So there’s so much going on here that I think these are four big initiatives that we've talked about Stubbs, website, smartphone, pricing. More good market activity coming in the next six months, the six months after that, and the six months after that. And by the way we're not too proud to copy anybody else's good idea, so if Ellis is doing something smart up in Canada, maybe we’ll do it too.

Ben Mogil

Analyst

Okay, that's great, Adam. Thanks again.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Bryan Goldberg with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead with your question.

Bryan Goldberg

Analyst

Thank you very much. I’ve got 2 questions. First, on the on the relative performance of the reseated portion of your circuit versus the industry, I think you mentioned about 700 basis points of out performance on attendance basis.

Adam Aron

Analyst

That 1,100 basis points is on the revenue, 1,080.

Bryan Goldberg

Analyst

On box office. Okay. In the past you cited data that suggests a good portion of the uplift in attendance was coming from either share shift from competitors, or behavioral change, or incremental movie going on the part of consumers, or as you suggested just earlier in Q&A, even possibly cannibalization of your old core given how consumer expectations are changing. I was just curious if you had any updates on these dynamics, and sort of how would you bucket out where the incremental attendance is actually coming from? And then I have a follow up.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Sorry, I’ll come to your follow up in a second. No real updates to what we traditionally have been saying other than this. This film slate in May, April, May and June is really an odd duck. As I look back over the past decade, I don't see too many times when attendance is down 12%. So, especially if you're trying to draw any conclusions from what went on in the second quarter, it's such an anomaly. Hollywood has had 3 or 4 record years in the last 4 or 5 years. It's just such a rarity to see a quarter perform as poorly as this second quarter did. And as I said, there's no indication that that’s continuing. Film going is up in July 7% whereas film going was down 12%. April, May and June. It's just because a lot of movies that were suspected to be big busted out. They got hit hard by critics or consumer reactions. So I don't know what -- I don't know -- I think it’d very tough to try to draw insightful conclusions by what went on in April, May and June. I think what would be more relevant is what went on in the first quarter, the third quarter and then as we look at 2017 and beyond.

Bryan Goldberg

Analyst

Okay, fair enough. And then my follow-up question is I guess around Starplex and just the company’s overall integration strategy towards all the M&A you’ve announced. Craig gave some color earlier on the upgrade strategy at Starplex, but could you just update us on where you stand with Starplex integration form a cost out perspective? And then maybe to help us think about all the integration activity potentially on your plate in 2017, operationally or logistically, what parts of your organization are really going to be flexed in terms of digesting the deals that you’ve announced? And do you have all the resources you need in-house to fully execute all this or if not, where might you need to round things out?

Adam Aron

Analyst

Can you repeat that question? No, I’m just kidding. Look, these are the very points that we’ve all been talking about internally for months and months. With respect to Starplex, boy that was an easy as pie integration. We expanded our theater count by about 10% and we did not add even one single employee at our Leawood, Kansas headquarters location, because the AMC organization was deep enough to be able to absorb that growth in our system, without needing to acquire additional staff. As we said earlier, while we will have renovations of these Starplex theaters, we haven’t had them yet, so we spend very little at their theaters physically. So from a cost standpoint, the Starplex acquisition is a homerun and with all these metrics that we announced in Starplex, the company knew before we bought Starplex they were lower priced theaters. We paid a multiple of their EBITDA and if anything, the EBITDA is pleasing us because we’ve been able to run the Starplex theaters without adding any corporate overhead. With respect to Carmike and Odeon, the integration strategy was different than the Starplex integration. It’s one thing to add 35 theaters to AMC. It’s another thing to add 250 or more theaters to AMC. We are going to have to add staff here in Leawood, but the number of positions that -- And we will be hiring, so that’s good news for people here in Kansas City or Carmike employees who want to make the move to AMC. But we won’t need as many people to run those 250 theaters that Carmike will need as a standalone company, hence the $35 million announcement on synergies that we expect to receive on the cost side for Carmike. It is our plan to, as we did for Starplex,…

Brian Goldberg

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time I will turn the floor back to management for closing remarks.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Thank you all. I guess I end with the points we tried to make in our statement today. We think fabulous things are going on at AMC, whether that’s in what we do in our theaters, what we do to market to guests, our embracing of technology and of course our announced acquisition strategy, which is out there for one and all to see. As we look at 2017, we have a very simple goal at AMC, to be the biggest and best movie theater operator in the world and we are glad you are along with us for that journey. Thank you all. We’ll talk to you all soon.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.