AMC Cashes In on Meme Stock Mania, Raising $587 Million

AMC doubled in value last week, rose 23 percent on Tuesday and exploded by an additional 95 percent on Wednesday, leaving it up more than 500 percent over the last month. By the close of trading on Wednesday, AMC’s market value of more than $30 billion put it in roughly the same class as companies like Best Buy, Tyson Foods and the stock market operator Nasdaq.

The company has moved to quickly capitalize on those gains, embarking on a flurry of share sales that allowed AMC to raise more than $1.2 billion just this quarter, including Thursday’s offering. (Remember, a rise in share price benefits a company only if it can sell new shares in exchange for cash that it can then use for business purposes.)

On Tuesday, AMC sold 8.5 million shares for roughly $230 million to the hedge fund Mudrick Capital, which quickly flipped them for a profit.

According to the company, more than three million individual investors hold about 80 percent of AMC’s shares, making the company something of a people’s stock. On Wednesday, AMC announced a new effort to correspond with shareholders through AMC Investor Connect, a newsletter that will also offer perks.

“We intend to communicate often with these investors, and from time to time provide them with special benefits at our theaters,” Mr. Aron said. “We start with a free large popcorn on us, when they attend their first movie at an AMC theater this summer.”

The gesture was appreciated.

“I’m keeping my shares,” one commenter wrote on WallStreetBets. “I like popcorn.”

The stock rocketed higher throughout Wednesday, on enormous trading volume that prompted four trading halts that afternoon. When all was said and done, AMC was one of the world’s most heavily traded stocks, with nearly $40 billion worth of buying and selling, a trading pace that dwarfed that of corporate giants like Tesla, Apple and Amazon, according to Bloomberg data.