Earnings Labs

AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (AMC)

Q1 2018 Earnings Call· Mon, May 7, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the AMC Entertainment First Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, John Merriwether.

John Merriwether

Analyst

Thank you, Devin. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to AMC's first quarter 2018 earnings conference call. With me this afternoon is Adam Aron, our Chief Executive Officer and President and Craig Ramsey, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the call over to Adam, let me remind everyone that some of the comments made by management during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations. Numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those that might be expressed today. Many of those risks and uncertainties are discussed in our public filings, including our most recently filed 10-K and 10-Q. Several of the factors that will determine the Company's future results are beyond the ability of the Company to control or predict. In light of the uncertainties inherent in any forward-looking statements, listeners are cautioned to not place undue reliance on these statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future events. On this call, we may reference measures such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and constant currency, which are non-GAAP financial measures. For a full reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to GAAP results, please see our first quarter earnings release issued earlier today. In conjunction with our first quarter earnings release, we encourage you to review the CFO Commentary for the 2018 first quarter that we published earlier today on our Web site in tandem with the earnings release. After our prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. This afternoon's call is being recorded and a webcast replay will be available on the Investor Relations section of our Web site at amctheatres.com later today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. As we sit here today in early May of 2018, I could not be more pleased with the results that we’re seeing at AMC and the results that we’re seeing across the entire movie business generally. In the first quarter of 2018, we continued to build on the financial and strategic progress we made in the fourth quarter of 2017 and for that matter, the third trimester of 2017, both of which you recall were strong. Q1 '18 was another quarter of some records for the industry box office and another quarter where AMC set some records as well. Although, we were together on our last call, only 60 days ago, we have accomplished much in that short time since. And in so doing, we now have high confidence that AMC should perform well for the second quarter 2018 and beyond. I would like to start this call by reflecting on the robust nature of the domestic industry box office since so many naysayers interpreted last summer’s box office slew as a secular and permanent change that somehow signaled the end of theatrical exhibition. Simply put and as we said then and since, they were wrong. When Hollywood makes movies that people want to see, they flock to our theaters and they do so in huge numbers. From an industry perspective, the first quarter of 2018 far exceeded most everyone's early expectations, declining only 2.6% from the record-setting first quarter of a year ago. Q1 of 2018 ended as the second highest March quarter ever behind only last year. Just about all you know this already but it's worth repeating. Many forecasted a double digit decline in box office for this year's first quarter based on the strength of the tough comp, represented…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is with Eric Handler with MKM Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Eric Handler

Analyst

Just focusing a little on the international operations, on a pro forma basis, you had a weaker margin. Now understanding when attendance declines, your margins also decline. But I’m just curious, are you seeing any impact because you're taking out or your closing some of your more profitable Odeon theaters and until those start opening again, we’re going to have a similar situation like we had with Carmike and maybe talk about when those start coming back online?

Adam Aron

Analyst

First of all, it’s just like United States. It’s a high fix cost, low variable cost business. If revenues are declining, remember industry demand was down 6.7% in Western Europe across the Odeon countries. If industry demand is declining, our margins are going to fall and our EBITDA is going to fall. But the converse is also true. When revenues improve margins improve, and EBITDA improves. As to the theater renovations, it was a reason that our revenues might've been down, but it's not our most profitable theaters that we were taking out of service in the UK, for example. It’s actually some of our least profitable theaters. Those were the best candidates for recliner renovation, because we could take a theater that was quite tired in a really good location and in just a few months, somewhere between three and six, we could turn that theater into one of our best. What I said about lesser square theater was not that is our most problems -- I said, it was one of our largest theaters. The lesser square theatre is a massive reconstruction. And it’s going to be out of service for nine or 10 months, but that's the only theater that I know of in Europe where the renovation is going to take so long. Most of these renovations we can get in and out pretty fast, three, four, five months.

Eric Handler

Analyst

And I'm also curious -- the follow up question. U.S. box office is up quarter-to-date something like 25% 26%. I wondered if you have any perspective on how Europe is performing quarter-to-date at this point?

Adam Aron

Analyst

I don't actually, to be honest. Craig might.

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

No, we don't really get interim visibility on those. Actually there is so much local product that they have to roll up and track. So we don't get a lot of inter quarter...

Adam Aron

Analyst

…industry share. We do know Avengers is playing well in Europe. And maybe just to go back to your first quarter, Black Panther is a very American movie. It’s not going to play as well in Europe as Beauty and the Beast did last year. That’s probably -- that’s the local product there, probably the biggest explanations of Q1. But I just can't say it enough. With the returns that we’re seeing from these early recliner renovation projects and the number of theaters that we’re going to do in 2018 and 2019, nobody should get spooked because Europe had a soft quarter. And if you take our international activity in total, if we had not purchased Odeon and Nordic, I don't think we ever would have the opportunity to go into Saudi Arabia. And the profitability that we’re going to enjoy in Saudi Arabia -- okay, admittedly not in the first year where we have one theater, I mean it will be profitable but it’s not going to change our fortunes as a company. By the time we get 30, 40, 50 a 100 theaters opened in Saudi, the profitability in Saudi Arabia is going to be a big lift to our international profitability overall. And that’s a direct result of our having gone into Europe and becoming the largest exhibitor in Europe in 2017.

Eric Handler

Analyst

So just as a one last follow up then. The financial performance from Saudi Arabia, when that starts to kick-in more meaningfully. Is that fully consolidated, is that considered a JV? How is that going to flow through the P&L?

Adam Aron

Analyst

Eric, it’ll be a joint venture, so equity and earnings.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is with Leo Kofman with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Leo Kofman

Analyst

I have just got two. Based on my numbers, it looks like you have performed in the industry on both attendance and ticket pricing domestically. And I’m just trying to understand the drivers. Did you see a benefit from the slate weighted more heavily toward ten folds like Black Panther? Carmike, sounds like a few quarters ago, it was driven -- the underperformance was driven by a lack of recliners, but sounds like Carmike is still under index there. So can you just provide a little color around to how the Carmike issue is fixed? Was it primarily pricing or what happened there?

Adam Aron

Analyst

So remember the numbers just for last week in Avengers. Legacy AMC was up 220%, legacy Carmike was up 271%. So it's not just that we’re performing well in big cities. This company is performing well on all cylinders, period. On the Carmike circuit, I have talked about in earlier calls it wasn't one answer for the Carmike circuit as a circuit. We did a tremendous amount of analysis and work. We rolled up our sleeves. We got into a theater by theater. And we really found more than half of dozen different reasons that explain this pocket of Carmike theaters and that pocket of Carmike theaters, and that pocket of Carmike theaters and attacked each issue one-by-one. And we saw Carmike's market share flattened out in October and start to grow again in November. And as we said in the last quarterly call, we saw plenty of data that suggested Carmike is doing really well. And you heard the numbers earlier in my remarks that Carmike theaters are doing really well. It is also true when you said that not breaking down AMC versus Carmike, but looking at the entirety of the AMC circuit. We hit very well attendance. We did very well on price. We so leaned in the Black Panther. We so leaned in the Avengers. At Black Panther, we had a theater in Atlanta, one theater in Atlanta played Black Panther 83 times Thursday to Sunday. You only get five show times a day out of the auditorium. For Avengers, we had three theaters that stayed open 24 hours a day and ran nonstop for several days. We had 74 AMC theaters that set all-time attendance records for Avengers. I could go on and on. I said in my remarks, with the Friday night for a…

Leo Kofman

Analyst

And then just one follow-up please. You’ve got some moving parts in the domestic rent expense including sale leaseback and lease modifications benefits. If we add back the lease modification benefit, this implies domestic rent expense of about $157 million for the quarter. Going forward, is that a good run rate for the rest of the year?

Adam Aron

Analyst

Let me check your math. Yes, that looks to be. Net-net you would have the full quarter of the sale-leaseback and as you say you just the 20 plus million for the one lease amendment fee, so 157 should be a reasonable domestic number.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is with Jason Bazinet with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Jason Bazinet

Analyst

A lot of the -- since we’re talking about the bears. A lot of bears are focused on the declining attendance, offset on ticketing prices. But what struck me on the quarter was the other revenue. It was at least much stronger than we expected. And I know there's quite a few items in there from ads to Internet ticketing fees, and gift cards. But my one question was, is MoviePass -- if MoviePass sends you money, does that go through other or is that booked as just normal ticketing revenue?

Adam Aron

Analyst

It’s booked as ticket revenue. And you are right that the other revenue -- so to be clear, MoviePass tickets are tickets, and they are in our admissions numbers, both for attendance and revenues, and the price we charge. But going back to the other revenues for second, yes, they were wonderful. And I particularly enjoy that online ticketing revenues are so high. Think of it, 47% of our tickets in last week were booked online in advance. This is another benefit of AMC introducing recliner seating in more and more theaters, because when we do we have advanced reservations by seat. And we also do that in Manhattan. We’re looking at doing that in other cities as well. People find this to be a great benefit, because it takes a lot of the anxiety of the movie going. You don't have to show up 45 minutes and stand in a line outside in inclement weather to make sure you’re going to get good seat on Saturday night. And so it’s a great service that we offer. It's obviously one that consumers like, 47% of our tickets being booked online. And to put that in perspective, about four years ago five years ago maybe, that number would've been 20%. And four or five years ago, that number would've been 15% Fandango and 5% AMC proprietary channels. And now we're seeing -- and Fandango has been better than 15%, but little better. But AMC has marched up from about 5% to 27% a week ago of our total ticket sales as being booked on our Web site or on our phone app in advance the show time. These are very good numbers for us. And we're way out in front of a lot of people in this industry who don’t have that capability. For example, in the Carmike circuit, they didn’t even have a proprietary way to book tickets online through the Carmike Web site or Carmike phone app. All they use was Fandango. They had nothing in addition to fandango. Obviously, we still have Fandango as a great partner of us. We work very closely to Fandango. We’re happy every Sunday selling more tickets, but we have our own proprietary site and app as well.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is with Chad Beynon with Macquarie and Company. Please proceed with your question.

Chad Beynon

Analyst

Nice quarter and certainly one that put the trajectory, I think of estimates in a better place. So with that in mind, could you update us in terms of what's on the table off the table in terms of the non-core assets? And I am not sure if you’re willing to say anything on the potential IPOs. So if you're not, maybe just an update on the on the non-core assets. What your view is on selling or monetizing the remainder of that given your appetite of share repurchases?

Adam Aron

Analyst

So we did $250 million of non-core asset sales last year. I think we called the non-strategic, you call it non-core. We still have a lot of NCM shares that we need to sell. We could sell and we need to sell by the end of 2018 that will certainly occur. We like to comply with the law. And we had some quite successful theater sale-leasebacks in 2017. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of those in 2018. This is a much better business for us to be leasing our theaters rather than owning our theaters. Just like the hotel industry has gone asset like over the past decade, theater chains too are smarter not on real estate but to lease it. And less than 10% of our theaters were owned and some those were not our biggest. But there is some significant value still to be had and sale-leaseback possibilities. I do think that we will hit -- we said we’d hit $400 million of asset sales in the first two years. I wouldn’t be surprised if we do that in the first 18 months or even less, and possibly significantly less.

Chad Beynon

Analyst

And then if you're willing to comment on the status of the European…

Adam Aron

Analyst

On Europe, there is no new news and nothing has changed. We said it’s increasing, something that we are looking at, studying, preparing for, if we decide to do it. I can’t say that no decision has been made yet whether to go or no go. The timing hasn’t changed. We said in the last call there will be second half ’18 or first half ’19, if we do go. I think all those comments from before are still operative. There's nothing new to report today.

Chad Beynon

Analyst

And then on that CapEx, I think during prior calls, you said that about a third of the CapEx dollars would go to Europe, and two thirds in the U.S., given the returns that you're seeing in Europe. Does this change your view on how those CapEx dollars are allocated, or the outlook maybe beyond 2018? And that’s all for me. Thanks.

Adam Aron

Analyst

So European is depending upon the quarter 20 to 25% of AMC and we allocated more than 35% of our CapEx to Europe. So we already were biasing in favor of Europe. Yes, the returns are pretty stunning there. But let’s see how we do with the Carmike theaters, because like the Odeon circuit had essentially nothing in any quantity recline, the Carmike circuit had essentially nothing in any quantity recline. So when we start renovating 20 Carmike theaters this year, that’s approximate number. We're expecting -- as I said that’s flowing through domestically, we’re expecting to see pretty high returns out of some of the Carmike theaters. So the good news is we don’t have to decide 2019 projects until the last pass due with third to a quarter of 2018. So we’ve got some time to make those decisions. And clearly, we’ll be taking into account what the results are from our efforts in 2018. There were -- many of you who follow us when we started talking recliners in Europe, said that we were a Show-Me story, which I think is probably pretty relevant for a company that’s based in Kansas City, outside the Kansas and Missouri the Show-me state. But the early return is that the recliner projects are showing quite, quite handsomely, and that’s something that has us on.

Chad Beynon

Analyst

Thanks, nice results.

Adam Aron

Analyst

And by the way, I can't -- thanks for saying that. And I just can't say again, when all the Odeon Leicester Square opens up next fall, it is going to be something to the whole and I have seen the plans. This is going to be one gorgeous theatre and big and successful.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is with Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Michael Ng

Analyst

I have one for Adam, one for Craig and one for whomever would like to take it. Adam, you mentioned that AMC outperformed its natural market share on Black Panther. I was just wondering if you get -- if you could help us understand the magnitude of that outperformance whether that was 10s of basis points or 100s of the basis points, or any detail you can provide. And whether you're seeing a similar level of outperformance for Avengers to-date?

Adam Aron

Analyst

It was a significant outperformance of Black Panther, and we’re doing just great on Avengers. And we don’t release numbers on a title-by-title basis. And if we did with 400 movies coming out a year, it would drive all of us crazy you and us. So I think I'll just leave our comments that on a little day, good on the two biggest movies a year, AMC crushed it. By the way, two biggest movies of the year so far, we got a lot of good movies coming.

Michael Ng

Analyst

Yes, that’s definitely true. I guess, Craig, just on the film rents. The film rents were much better than I had expected. I think you had -- film rents were 210 basis points on a pro forma basis. I was just wondering if you could parse out how much of that was due to box office mix and whether or not you’re still seeing incremental cost synergies year-over-year from the Carmike deal?

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

There’s probably two pieces and we’ve talked about it before. We do start to work with the studios wherever we can to help promote movies, whether it’d be through trailers or other access to our media assets like our mailing list. And we've seen increases in the monetization of those assets, the studios will pay us for that kind of access. And that's probably a good piece of it. I don't know if it's half of it, but it’s meaningful. And then the other second factor is just film mix, as you suggested. And it's really, in not the top five titles, which I think on a film cost basis putting aside the monetization for a minute, the film cost was fairly consistent top to top five last year. It was the 6 to 10 and 11 to 15 titles where we saw fairly significant year-over-year decline. And I think that's just mix of product, and different studio involved and so two factors, the combination of the monetization and also just mix of products. Carmike, most of the synergy was realized early on last year was in the quarter last year. So that wouldn't be a big factor in the current year.

Michael Ng

Analyst

And then lastly, I just want to follow-up about some of the comments you guys made about the lease modifications. I just wondering if you could offer a little more color about that, and what do you see as the biggest negotiation or leverage points that give you the ability of getting these modifications from your landlords. And do you expect some of these lease modifications to continue into the future? Thank you very much.

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

Well, we modify leases all the time. We’re constantly working with our landlord partners as we look at individual assets. Some of those modifications, and we talked about the numbers of recliners, some of those are for improvements or receding. And generally speaking, those don’t -- those would result in maybe some rent adjustment or some, as we talked about 35%, an average of capital that landlords are willing to contribute. And those modifications wouldn't typically run through the operating statements. There are occasionally those, it’s not uncommon, but you do have some where just the structure and the terms are set to go through the operating statements. And that was the case here. So it's not uncommon, and we do a lot of lease modifications. As you might suspect 607 some theaters, a majority of those are under a lease. So we’re constantly in modification mode, I guess you would say, so it’s not uncommon.

Operator

Operator

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

Mike Hickey

Analyst

Just curious I guess at Q1 your attendance per screen on a pro forma basis, international looks like it was down 12.5%, we heard the slate in screen closures, I get that. You also said competitive pricing impacts. Just curious if you can give more color on that, and it feel like that could be an ongoing impact through 2018 on international market. And then I have a follow up.

Adam Aron

Analyst

As a circuit view, in particular, took some pricing actions in Q1 which look to some of us internally at AMC as unusual. And we -- obviously, we have no way of knowing what their plans are for the remainder of the year.

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

Mike, there was about 1% decline in streams as well. So it's not 12, I've got 11. It doesn’t really change the question or Adam's answer, but just to clarify.

Mike Hickey

Analyst

And then I guess just to clarify something else. The mission -- I guess in the domestic market, your missions per screen look to be down about 2.6%. I think the market was down 2%. I don’t know if you have with the market for screen, benchmark that performance. But it's not -- it looks like you underperformed the domestic market by a little bit, just curious …

Adam Aron

Analyst

Yes, but look at the average price that we charge in the first quarter. It was up 5.5% to 978 a ticket that's very strong performance. And as we said earlier, if you look at our performance domestically, we outperformed the industry by 160 basis points. You can’t just look at volume, you got to look at volume-times price and multiply them together.

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

So I don't -- again, we work the numbers off-line. I've got the industry on admissions revenue, is that what -- you're looking at missions…

Adam Aron

Analyst

It was just attendance.

Mike Hickey

Analyst

So I was looking at admissions per screen down 2.55% in the quarter?

Adam Aron

Analyst

For the industry…

Mike Hickey

Analyst

For you guys…

Adam Aron

Analyst

I don't have that. I've got it down about 1.5 % for AMC domestic. So again, the screens were down 1%.

Mike Hickey

Analyst

Look like I had screens 8,100 to prior year 8,000, that's screen count.

Adam Aron

Analyst

Average?

Mike Hickey

Analyst

Yes…

Adam Aron

Analyst

Well as you and Craig work on that offline, let me just make an important point. We all knew in March of 2018 that Avengers was opening April 27th. The industry box office was down about 3.5% on year-to-date on April 26th and by April 30th, it was up 3.5% year-to-date. Just those four days in April reversed the entire slide of the almost four full months before. And as we sit here today, May 7th, the industry box office is up 4.6% year-to-date. So I do want to emphasize you should be very careful about trying to use January to March numbers to give us an indication of how the box office is performing, because the box office Jan 01 to April 30 is very different than the box office Jan 1 to March 31.

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

Mike, you’re looking at pro forma?

Mike Hickey

Analyst

So the screen difference is what -- that would now include the vested screens with Carmike, would be the difference between the straight up 2017 screens and the pro forma. And that could well in fact drive the productivity down. Those are some of the lowest performing screens in the circuit that we've sold off. And frankly, I would look at the 2017 as adjusted.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is with Ryan Sundby with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan Sundby

Analyst

Just I guess probably Eric had most questions a little differently. Is there any reason to think why Europe would either outperform or underperformance this next set of movies come out here from April through July, so today’s skew more American, or is there even the potential? I think we don't have a lot of history here, but it does seem like Q2 is relatively small quarter in Europe. Does that limit some of the upside potentially? Just any thoughts there would be great.

Adam Aron

Analyst

So we do think the slate -- you are right that Q2 is a small quarter in UK. The big quarter in the UK is fourth quarter, its right around Christmas. We do half of our profitability for the full year in the month of December. But the films that are coming, big ones like Jurassic World and Deadpool and Solo with the Star Wars and Incredibles, and Mission Impossible and Ocean’s 8, I guess Avengers too if I didn’t put that in the list, they all performed pretty well in Europe. But about 20% to 30% of our product in Italy, Spain and Germany is not made in Hollywood, its local language product made in Italy, Spain and Germany, and in Sweden for that matter. And there is no rhyme or reason as to how big or the slate will be or not in Q2 in the local language product.

Ryan Sundby

Analyst

And then I guess I hate to be the one to go here, but I am surprised we haven’t hit on subscription this late into the call. Any color you can provide on what subscription services going to add to the quarter? And then any thoughts on how you see that evolving now that we see a new entrant into the subscriptions game as well, I guess?

Adam Aron

Analyst

I have been waiting for that question the whole call. So thank you for asking it. We have had a very successful subscription program for three years in the United Kingdom, called Limitless in the Odeon circuit. And our views about subscription have not changed 1iota since the August press statement that we put out on the first day of movie passes, in my opinion, ridiculous price reduction. We said go back and look at our statements. We said that there's nothing wrong with subscriptions programs. They can be quite positive actually if they’re done rationally and intelligibly. But they have to be done at a price that is sustainable. And it was our view that 995 for up to 30 or 31 movies a month is not enough money to spread around MoviePass, Hollywood studios and theater operators, so that Hollywood can make quality movies and theaters can operate quality theaters. Fast forward to today, in March and April, MoviePass paid AMC $12.02 per ticket on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tickets each month, hundreds of thousands of their subscribers came through AMC theaters to enjoy our product. They did so at a frequency of 2.62 times in March and 2.75 times in April. Now, I took the calculator out and I multiplied 2.75 times $12.02, and I got to a number that was considerably larger than 995. So just as we were hearing that -- the MoviePass price point was unsustainable in August, we have the same questions today. And apparently we’re not alone in that view. Our doubts are now shared and articulated by MoviePass's orders.

Operator

Operator

We have time for one more question, from the line of…

Adam Aron

Analyst

Operator, we’re willing to go long if we don’t want to cut questions off.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is with Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Please proceed with your question.

Jim Goss

Analyst

I’d like to take this as a next step then. To the extent that Limitless is priced well and seems to work for you. Why are you not considering doing that within the Stubs program in the U.S.?

Adam Aron

Analyst

We have given a tremendous amount of thoughts to this issue, as you might expect. We've have lots of conversations with Hollywood studios on this subject. And when we have the ability to tell you more about our thinking in detail, we will do so at that time. But it’s not something that we should foreshadow as to what, how or when. I will say this, whatever we do if we ever do it, needs to be done rationally and intelligently and profitably.

Jim Goss

Analyst

Can you say then whether or how it's working within Limitless? Is it priced appropriately relative to the issues you get, and is it page in advance so that there is a flock involved or at least some obligation, so that you come out whole on it and then some.

Adam Aron

Analyst

I could go into it in detail. But what we do in London may not, or in Germany, may not be one. We wind up doing the United States. So I don't know that you should draw instant conclusions that what is being done in the UK is what we might do in the U.S. someday. We’ve given this area a tremendous amount of thought. So again, I don't know that what's going on in UK is what would go on the United States. What I can tell you is there's a lot of learning that occurred in the UK. We not only have the usage data month-by-month for MoviePass dating back to September, but we have the usage data for Limitless dating back three years, and we have torn all this apart as you might expect. This is still a small part of our business. The subscription numbers are under 5% of our ticket sold, but the whole subject is intriguing one and it has our attention.

Jim Goss

Analyst

And just one other thing. Have you further thought on dynamic pricing as it might apply here markets share, I know you’re a marketer?

Adam Aron

Analyst

Yes, thank you, Jim. We’ve given a lot of thought to it and you can only do so many things at once. We've already put in essentially a 10% weekend surcharge on average. In Europe, we charge more for the best seats. In Europe, we charge more for the biggest two movies a month that’s come out. If you go back and -- what I want to call is what’s called Ec10, economic 10, introduction to microeconomics, you’re supposed to charge more in the peak and less in the off peak. So guess what, AMC is now charging more on Fridays and Saturdays, and we just lowered prices to five bucks on Tuesday. If we were to put in higher prices on the best seats in the house, they’d say if not when. It might be a good idea to lower prices in the worse seats in the house. It’s called optimizing pricing, right. And then there are still many ideas that you could think of, but it’s generally not a good idea to speculate about pricing going forward, Justice Department usually love that. And even so you can't -- to say we can get a small price premium for this and a small price premium for that, and a small price premium for this and a small price premium for that, but if we do it all at the same time, it’s not a small price premium anymore. So you do have to spread these initiatives out. And that’s what we will be doing. And as I said, I like the go up on the stuff that's being sold to capture more revenue on the most popular items and go down on the stuff that’s not being sold to see if we can spurn increased demand by making parts of AMC available to more price-sensitive guests.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is with Robert Carlson with Jenny Montgomery Scott. Please proceed with your question.

Robert Carlson

Analyst

Congratulations on the call, and let me say it’s appreciative that you guys stayed on the call with the last guys on the bust getting answer and as far as question. And most of my questions have been answered. But I was just wondering when you do a renovation, do you find it’s that the same people that come back or do you get a total new crowd, more affluent crowd versus…

Craig Ramsey

Analyst

Our research from our mailing list suggests that we attract some new moviegoers, and we see increased avidity from existing moviegoers. So it’s a combination. You mentioned more affluent. We do try to strike a balance in what the author and what we charge, so that we maintain movie going as something that's available for the mass audience, and maybe not everyone. But certainly we are not trying to striving in our remodels to be a high end experience. We wanted to be high quality and enjoyable entertainment, but affordable. So I wouldn’t say necessarily we see a more affluent guest. We certainly see attracting new people that we haven't seen before, and we’re seeing increased stability from our long-time moviegoers who like the experience much better to go one or more times a month than they did before.

Robert Carlson

Analyst

Again, thank you for the call.

Adam Aron

Analyst

So we’re going to wrap it up with a following comment. I’ve talked a lot about -- that we think AMC is very much in recovery mode and we gave you lots of reasons why, we gave you some data, turned in a good performance that was better than all of us expected. And we’re obviously quite bullish about second quarter. But let me tease you with a Christmas movie instead of talking about Mission Impossible and Jurassic World, and Deadpool one more time. Disney knows some about making movies, and they're coming out with what looks to be a fabulous sequel for Mary Poppins coming out in Christmas time. Mary Poppins grossed $102 million at the box office in 1964. Adjusted for inflation, that would translate to a box office today of $716 million. I can't wait to see Mary Poppins at Christmas. And I bet I won't be alone. Thank you for joining us today. We will certainly look forward to the second quarter call and hope to see many of you before then. All of best.

Operator

Operator

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