The meme-stock rally has a sequel, with shares from movie channel AMC Entertainment seeing dizzying heights again after rising rapidly last winter due to a mix of cheerleaders on social media and easy access in the stock market through millennial-friendly brokerage apps like Robinhood.

AMC’s stock price has risen more than 50% in the past two weeks to recently hit $ 14. AMC shares started the year at $ 2 apiece, meaning the stock price has so far climbed 563% in 2021.

The stock is propelled up, in part, by the assumption that the economic reopening will lead to more movie ticket sales. Equities also appear to have been boosted by the Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks, even in indoor environments such as cinemas.

Social media also seems to play a role. On Reddit’s Popular Wallstreetbets forum, which now has 10 million subscribers, commentators once again express their confidence that AMC’s shares will increase. A Reddit poster on Tuesday said AMC shares looked “juicy” and predicted the stock could climb above the high it set earlier this year of just over $ 20 a year. action.

Another poster, which goes by the screen name “mo_gunz87”, wrote in the juvenile jargon of the stock exchange discussion board: “Too many losing paperhands selling AMC for pennies. Idiots!”

Yet another poster, “Commander943”, lamented that he could no longer profit from AMC’s stock market run. “My mother sold the shares I had in AMC without telling me a few days ago,” Commander943 wrote on Tuesday.

The continued enthusiasm for AMC stock despite its recent price spike has led some Wall Street analysts to nervously recommend that investors sell their stocks before the movie ends badly. AMC earlier this month reported a loss of nearly $ 575 million in the first three months of the year. Sales were also down slightly from the last three months of 2020. Analysts estimate that AMC will lose $ 1.5 billion in 2021 and do not expect the company to return to profitability until 2024 at the earliest. .

AMC’s biggest problem – besides reduced capacity during the pandemic and the question of whether or not movie viewers will continue to stream home movies even after the pandemic appears to be the company’s debt, which increased by $ 900 million last year. AMC now has $ 5.6 billion in long-term debt, more than double its burden five years ago.

“We expect continued volatility in AMC stocks, as well as business momentum unrelated to AMC fundamentals,” Wedbush analyst Alicia Reese wrote in a research note shortly before the channel Cinema does not publish its first quarter results. “As such, we do not recommend buying AMC stock here.”

AMC chief executive Adam Aron returned criticism of the company in a conference call with analysts after the company’s latest quarterly report. He said AMC had more than enough cash – nearly $ 1 billion at the end of March – to safely pass at least 2022. He also embraced his supporters on social media, suggesting that all the online enthusiasm for AMC should lead to more business.

“Just go to Twitter, just go to Reddit, just go to YouTube, read what these people are writing,” Adam said on the call. “They love AMC. And these are not people who are just going to be investors in AMC. They will be AMC customers who come to our theaters and enjoy watching movies in our theaters as paying guests.”