In early January, AMC, the world’s largest exhibition company, owner of UK chain Odeon, dipped to its lowest ever share price of $1.44.
It wasn’t alone. Boutique UK operator, Everyman Media Group, respected US exhibitor Cinemark Holdings and ambitious Belgian outfit Kinepolis Group, have all recently experienced tumbling share prices, with millions written off balance sheets because of falling investor confidence in the sector.
“There is a total breakdown in investment trust in cinemas as an asset class,” suggests UK-based veteran exhibitor John Sullivan, founding director at consultancy firm The Big Picture.
At the end of the year, Cinemark’s stock price was down 23.61% over the previous six months; AMC’s was down 44% in the same time frame. Everyman had seen its stock price fall by 53.4% over the past two years and Kinepolis had witnessed an 18.9% drop over the past six months.
While share prices are prone to wild fluctuations and most analysts agree Cinemark and Kinepolis are among the most resilient exhibitors in the business, three different developments are spooking investors.
The first is uncertainty and concern about the sale of Warner Bros Discovery. Regardless of whether it is Paramount Pictures or Netflix that eventually buys the theatrically-focused studio, either outcome is highly likely to reduce the number of huge box-office hits available exclusively to cinemas for a decent amount of time.
Second, coming out of 2025, the industry can see a decline in admissions in major markets (only partially cloaked by rising ticket prices), and described by AMC owner Adam Aron as “flat as a pancake” box -office results in North America in the past year.
Third, there is the huge debt load being carried by many of the biggest players in the exhibition sector.
Sullivan said occupancy levels at UK multi-screen venues are currently 15% to 20%. This is down from around 30% in the 1990s when many of the cinemas were built.
“A hotel or an airline that ran an occupancy rate of 15% would be out of business in a week,” he claimed. “The falling share prices reflect a lack of investment confidence in anyone who has cinema real estate.”
Big-screen recovery?
But not everyone shares his downbeat analysis.
The perennially upbeat Tim Richards, founder and CEO of Vue International, expects the sector to rebound.
“2026 is going to be the year that we recover,” he predicts. “We may not recover completely to pre-pandemic levels but we are going to recover. We have seen records set for every genre of film, for every demographic, in the last two years. The narrative on the sector is playing catch-up with the realities of what is really going on
“Our customers want to see a great movie on a big screen. We have proved that over and over again. We just need to build up confidence in the financial community that we are still a very strong, viable business going forward.”
Even if Richards acknowledges“negative sentiment in the industry” caused by the uncertainty around the rival bids for Warner Bros from Paramount and Netflix may have hit share prices, he is bullish about box-office prospects for 2026.
“You just look through the releases coming out this summer, and they are going to be huge,” he says.“There are so many movies with major breakout potential. It is looking very, very strong.”
Leading Swedish exhibitor, Peter Fornstam, director of Svenska Bio and chairman of the Swedish Cinema Owners’ Association, echoes Richards’ optimism. Fornstam said cinemas are simply dealing with an issue of supply and demand.
“When we have the movies, I don’t see any change in consumer habits. If you give the audience something they appreciate, then they pay for it, and price doesn’t become an issue,” Fornstam reflects.
Imax is bucking the trend, reporting that 2025 had been the best year in its history with $1.28 billion grossed worldwide. Significantly, Imax is not an exhibitor as such and doesn’t have to deal with the bricks-and-mortar problems of running cinemas.
“The market is recognising just how differentiated Imax is from exhibition,” says Imax CEO Rich Gelfond. “We’re a global platform with a fully diversified content portfolio and we continue to drive the box office worldwide.
Investors also appreciate that we’re asset-lite and not dependent on concessions; we’re focused on helping filmmakers create and audiences experience entertainment in the best way possible.”
As for the exhibitors themselves, they continue to hope their own boosterish confidence in what Aron calls the “long term viability of the movie theatre experience” will eventually rub off on investors.
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