A Hollywood box office recovery underpinned solid revenue growth for AMC Theatres during the second quarter.

Overall revenue was up 35.6 percent to $1.39 billion, and AMC shrunk its net loss to $4.7 million, against a year-earlier $32.8 million loss. Investors betting market challenges brought on by the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes are behind the debt-laden company rewarded AMC for its latest financial results.

Stock in parent AMC Entertainment Holdings jumped 22 cents, or 7.5 percent, to $3.15 in pre-market trading on Monday. Elsewhere, adjusted EBITDA soared to $189.2 million, compared to $38.5 million for the second quarter of 2024. It is a simple reality, and hopefully a harbinger of things to come that as AMCs revenues grow, our EBITDA can soar, AMC CEO Adam Aron said in a statement on Monday morning.

Aron also pointed to gains in admissions revenue per patron and food and beverage revenue per guest metrics. And his company is riding a premium screen gold rush at the local multiplexby offering varied immersive auditoriums like Imax, Dolby Cinema, iSense, XL and laser projection-equipped screens.

Our premium auditoriums are operating at close to three times the occupancy of a regular auditorium and command a healthy price premium to boot. Clearly, moviegoing guests prefer to see their favorite films in the most immersive, most spectacular formats possible, Aron argued.

His comment follows a recent media report pointing to major U.S. theater chains eying a joint premium large format brand to compete against Imax, with whom AMC has a longstanding partnership.

U.S. market attendance jumped 28.5 percent to 46.8 million patrons, while international markets attendance was up 17.7 percent to 16 million cinema-goers, as Hollywood tentpoles like Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning, Sinners and F1: The Movie played at the multiplex during the summer season.

Aron and AMC execs will hold an after-market analyst call on Monday to discuss the latest results and whether the latest financial quarter is more than a one-off and the mega-exhibitor can leverage the certainty of a steady supply of Hollywood tentpole releases to get film lovers back in the habit of going to the multiplex in pre-pandemic numbers.