It was a conflicted sales pitch: We’re selling new shares of stock, but don’t buy them unless you can afford to lose all your money. Also, free popcorn.
AMC Entertainment Holdings, the beleaguered theater chain that made the pitch, sold over half a billion dollars in new shares on Thursday in a matter of hours. It was the latest sign that the company, which was
on the verge of bankruptcy months ago, is embracing its status as a meme stock — the label for a group of wildly volatile stocks that have become favorites of small traders who loosely organize online to push up the price.
And in doing so, AMC was rushing to collect the cash that investors are throwing at it, all while admitting that its surging market price had little to do with the state of its actual business.
“We believe that recent volatility and our current market prices reflect market and trading dynamics unrelated to our underlying business,” AMC said in its pitch to investors. The company cautioned against buying the shares unless investors were willing to risk “losing all or a substantial portion of your investment.”
Investors ignored such warnings and snapped up the new offering in just four hours, netting AMC $587 million.