UPDATE with the inventory surge. AMC Entertainment shares jumped 24% to close at $ 12.77 as another wave of retail investors bought the top theaters channel,

The #AMCSqueeze hashtag is all the rage on Twitter. Discussions on Reddit were excited by the exhibitor’s shares. Some hedge funds and other financial institutions have “shorted” AMC stocks, meaning they bet on the stock’s fall, citing the coronavirus pandemic and the rise of streaming. Individual investors, organized on Reddit forums like WallStreetBets, attempted to press short sellers with the rallying cry “to the moon” in reference to where they hoped to lead the stock.

The standoff between short sellers and those willing to bet on the future of movie theaters has reshaped AMC’s financial structure. Hedge fund Silver Lake, once the largest shareholder, sold its entire stake after a previous soaring share price. Chinese conglomerate Wanda, also a former major shareholder, saw its position diluted as more than 3 million people piled into stocks.

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Top cinema tour AMC Entertainment said it raised $ 428 million in new capital through the sale of 43 million shares at an average price of $ 9.94.

The results of the sale followed a plan presented in an SEC filing on April 27. The company announced the plan to sell the shares to the market at that time, and said it had abandoned plans to increase the number of shares by 500 million.

The capital increase “will immediately strengthen and fortify our liquidity profile,” said CEO Adam Aron, and “puts AMC in a stronger position to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead.”

The reversal prevented a major stock market overhang, which investors greeted enthusiastically. Shares were up 16% at midday, to around $ 12.

AMC has managed to survive after being on the verge of bankruptcy on several occasions. Its entire circuit has been closed for months due to the coronavirus pandemic and has only been reopened in major markets like New York and Los Angeles for a month or two. The company’s debt levels remain high and there are a lot of skeptics out there, especially after its stock has taken a wild ride with the stock of GameStop and other stocks even.

Aron has repeatedly praised the optimism of retail investors towards the company, describing it as validation of the company’s efforts to remain solvent.

When the company announced its quarterly results last week, Aron cited Winston Churchill (a favorite inspiration) to detail his strategy to Wall Street analysts. He quoted Churchill’s line on World War II: “This is not the end. It’s not even the beginning of the end. But maybe this is the end of the beginning. Aron added: “Sir Winston has won his titanic fight. I believe that AMC will also win our war. “

Despite the stubbornly optimistic view from the corner office, the reality AMC faces is austere as it attempts to bring the exhibition industry back to full operations in a world increasingly obsessed with streaming. In the most recent quarter, the company’s revenue fell to $ 148 million from $ 941 million the year before. Net losses narrowed to $ 576 million from $ 2.2 billion, but that was only because the previous year’s quarter included a one-time write-down of $ 1.85 billion.