AMC stock jumps on reported Amazon acquisition

Yahoo Finance Live anchors Julie Hyman and Brad Smith discuss reports that Amazon is interested in acquiring AMC.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Let's talk about another mover here. That's AMC. It surged 13% yesterday after a Substack report suggested that Amazon may consider purchasing the movie-theater chain. Shares of AMC have since come down.

We got-- our Brian Sozzi get a no comment from AMC CEO Adam Aron, and there are some analysts who have thrown cold water on the idea that this would happen, would make sense, was imminent, right? So we're seeing the shares come down a little bit today.

And again, you know, it's not clear where exactly-- I mean, we know it came from a Substack, but we don't know the source of this particular report. But it just also kind of shows how much attention is still on the meme space when you do get little glimmers that people like to latch on to.

BRAD SMITH: Right.

JULIE HYMAN: There's also still a lot of short interest that can cause it-- squeezes upwards.

BRAD SMITH: Sure. And if anybody is wondering what Amazon might even want with AMC, well, according to the reports, the insider here had said that the e-commerce giant views a potential acquisition of AMC as a means of obtaining brick-and-mortar kind of marketing way stations.

So what does that even look like? They could promote kind of Amazon Prime videos within that. They could have, you know, a plethora of other Amazon services that would essentially be able to be offered through these AMC brick-and-mortar distribution hubs as you might be able to kind of look at it, or Amazon might figure to rebrand it at that point.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. Some analysts over at Wedbush said that maybe Amazon would be better off buying a piece of Cineworld, which is another theater chain that has had some financial troubles.

And by the way, on that point, later in the 4:00 PM hour, Yahoo Finance is going to talk to one of the folks at Wedbush. That is Michael Pachter who is going to have more on Amazon and what it might see in AMC or what it might not see in AMC and kind of its strategy going forward.

BRAD SMITH: I'm calling out Michael. You know why? This picture is not representative of how he shows up on air with us. He's wearing a T-shirt all the time. Michael, I love you, my man, but we never see you in a tie. Let's just put this in a T-shirt.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, let's do it.