Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas files for bankruptcy, seeks buyer

Alamo Denton RRTC Exterior Rendering-01-13-17

by AP News.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas Holdings, a Texas-based dine-in theater chain, said Wednesday that it has filed for bankruptcy due to financial woes during the pandemic.

The company plans to find a buyer during its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows it to continue operating while its managers and advisers work on repaying creditors.

“The transaction will provide the company with much-needed incremental financing to stabilize the business during the pandemic, which has had an unprecedented and outsized impact upon the movie theater and dining industries,” the company said in a statement. “More importantly, it will position Alamo Drafthouse to return to growth and continue executing on its long-term strategic vision.”

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In its bankruptcy petition, Alamo Drafthouse listed assets and liabilities of as much as $500 million each. Court papers show that private equity firm Altamont Capital Management owns 40% of the company.

Alamo Drafthouse, like many others in the entertainment industry, has been facing a rough year since the pandemic began forcing many businesses to temporarily close.

The Austin-based company has more than 40 theaters nationwide, including some in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Kansas City, Missouri. Most of those theaters closed last March but reopened in late summer 2020 with a detailed pandemic protocol plan.