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AMC could have cashed in more on its meme stock status

The movie theater chain’s stock has risen from $3 to above $13.

5/14/24 8:41AM

One of the most interesting things to watch during meme stock manias is when frenzied buying activity morphs from a video game on a screen completely untethered from reality into something that actually has a real-world impact.

Hertz is probably the best example of this. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2020, but the sheer power of retail buying was able provide a lifeline for the company to come out the other side.

This is an example of legendary investor George Soros’s general theory of reflexivity, where market participants’ buying and selling decisions based on their perceptions — even if flawed — are able to shape and define reality.

Along these lines, it seems like movie theater chain AMC Entertainment just missed out on the ability to secure some even-cheaper funding after its stock surged from just below $3 at the end of this week to above $13 in pre-market trading on Tuesday.

This morning, AMC published a Form 8-K showing that it had completed an “at-the market” equity offering launched on March 28, 2024 on May 13. Translation: it was raising money by selling 72.5 million new shares of the company into the market. The average price it sold shares at was $3.45.

Since the start of the week through 8:30am ET, the volume-weighted average price for shares of AMC has been $5.38.

Granted, from the time this offering was launched on March 28 until the start of this week, the volume-weighed average price was just $3.13.

So management was still able to benefit a little bit from the nascent return of meme stock mania, but certainly not as much as it could have.

Especially considering (again, as of 8:30 am ET), AMC shares have nearly the same volume in the past barely-over-one-trading day than the previous 31 trading days combined!

J. Edward Moreno7h

Molina implodes after earnings miss, gloomy guidance

Molina Healthcare tanked after it reported earnings results that missed Wall Street expectations and gave disappointing full-year guidance.

For the last three months of 2025, Molina reported:

An adjusted loss per share of $2.75, compared to the $0.34 earnings per share analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The company said about $2 per share of its earnings miss was due to “retroactive premium adjustments attributable to the Company’s Medicaid business in California and ongoing medical cost pressure in Medicare and Marketplace.”
Revenue of $11.3 billion, compared to the $10.8 billion the Street was penciling in.
A medical cost ratio of 94.6%, higher than the 93.1% analysts expected.

For the full year in 2026, Molina expects:

Adjusted earnings per share of at least $5.00, compared to the $13.66 analysts had forecast. Molina said its guidance takes into account ongoing losses in its traditional Medicare Advantage Part D business, which it now plans to exit in 2027.
Revenues of about $42.2 billion, compared to the $46.6 billion analysts had penciled in.
Its medical cost ratio to sit at 92.6%, while analysts had expected 91.4%.

Health insurers have been under pressure for the past year amid rising health costs. Molina, one of the largest providers of ACA Marketplace plans, has taken a hit as tax credits for the program lapsed in January.

Molina’s report also dragged down competitors, including Centene, which is also a major provider of ACA plans and reports earnings Friday morning.

Bloom Energy surges after topping expectations for sales, EPS

Here’s how the print looked at first glance.

Matt Phillips7h

Max Knoblauch7h

Roblox surges as it guides for stronger-than-expected full-year bookings, touts AI vision

Kid-centric gaming platform Roblox reported its fourth-quarter results after the market closed on Thursday. Its shares surged more than 20% in after-hours trading.

For the full year ahead, Roblox guided for bookings of between $8.28 billion and $8.55 billion, which would represent annual growth of 22% to 26%. That’s well ahead of Wall Street’s estimates: analysts polled by FactSet expected $8.03 billion.

Roblox forecasts Q1 bookings to land between $1.69 billion and $1.74 billion, compared to the $1.7 billion Wall Street consensus estimate.

An average of 144 million daily users logged on to Roblox in its fourth quarter, beating estimates of 138 million and up 69% from last year. The platform paid out $1.5 billion to creators last year, up from $922 million in 2024.

Roblox engagement surged in 2025, a year marred by several legal issues surrounding child safety on the platform. Late last year, analysts began to warn that some of its most popular titles were past their peak.

Recently, shares of the company have dropped on investor fears of Google’s Project Genie AI tool, which generates playable worlds. As of Thursday’s close, Roblox had shed more than $10 billion in market cap since Project Genie launched. On Wednesday, Roblox appeared to answer Genie’s release with the open beta launch of its own “4D” generative-AI tool. Roblox’s tool lets users generate objects made up of multiple working parts (e.g., a drivable car with spinning wheels) as opposed to static 3D objects.

In its letter to shareholders, Roblox said it was “innovating aggressively in AI to accelerate the creation of content, improve the safety of our platform, and fuel ongoing user engagement, discovery and monetization improvements.”

Jon Keegan

Amazon slides as it misses on Q4 earnings, gives downbeat profit guidance

The tech giant also forecast it would spend $200 billion on capex in 2026.