The movie theater stock raised an additional $917 million in the past six weeks
The shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (NYSE:AMC) are surging today, up 28.4% to trade at $4.51 at last check, and one of the best stocks on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The pop comes after CEO Adam Aron laid bankruptcy rumors to rest, noting that the movie theater company has raised an additional $917 million in the past six weeks, including $506 million in equity from the issuance of 164.7 million new common shares.
What's more, the security recently appeared on Schaeffer's Senior Quantitative Analyst Rocky White's list of stocks that have attracted the highest weekly options volume within the last two weeks, with one new name to the list highlighted in yellow. In AMC's case, 917,175 weekly calls, and 204,262 weekly puts have crossed the tape in the past 10 days.
Today's headlines are only reinforcing this bullish sentiment. So far, 866,000 calls and 208,000 puts have exchanged hands, which is seven times the intraday average. Most popular is the weekly 1/29 7-strike call, followed by the 5-strike call in the same series, with new positions being opened at both. Buyers of these options expect to see more upside for the equity by the end of the week, when the contracts are set to expire.
Digging deeper, AMC stock has had a volatile run on the charts over the past year, surging above the $7 level in November before dropping to a Jan. 5 all-time low of $1.92. Shares have since struggled with overhead pressure at the $5 mark, though reclaimed support from the 10-day moving average is now guiding the security upwards. Year-to-date, AMC has added 112%.
Analysts were overwhelmingly bearish toward the equity coming into today, with seven of the nine in question calling it a tepid "hold," while two said "strong sell." Plus, AMC's 12-month consensus target price of $2.15 is a 52% discount to current levels, leaving ample room for price-target hikes and/or upgrades moving forward, which could push the security even higher.
More tailwinds could come in the form of a short squeeze. Short interest is up 16.4% in the last two reporting periods, and the 38.99 million shares sold short still make up no less than 74.9% of the stock's available float, or over a day's worth of pent-up buying power.