AMC Hycroft Mining Investment: Cost, Sale and Stake

No, AMC did not buy a mine. In March 2022 AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE: AMC), the cinema chain, paid US$27.9 million for a minority stake in Hycroft Mining Holding Corporation (Nasdaq: HYMC), the company that owns the Hycroft gold and silver project in Nevada. Hycroft’s own release put the stake at about 21.8% of its shares at signing (Hycroft, 15 March 2022). On 5 December 2025 AMC said it had sold most of that position to Sprott Mining for about US$24.1 million net (AMC, 5 December 2025).

This page sets out the facts in date order, from filings and company releases opened in October 2026: what AMC paid, what it sold, what it kept, and what has happened at the mine since. It does not forecast prices and it is not investment advice.

Did AMC buy a gold and silver mine?

It bought shares and warrants, not a mine. A share is a unit of ownership in a company. A warrant is a contract that lets the holder buy a share later at a fixed price, called the strike price. AMC held both, so it owned part of Hycroft Mining Holding Corporation. It never owned or ran the Hycroft Mine itself.

The deal gave AMC the right to name one person to Hycroft’s board of directors (Hycroft, 15 March 2022). In December 2025 AMC said its chief financial officer, Sean Goodman, would remain on the Hycroft board after the sale.

The wording “AMC buys gold and silver mine” spread because the headline is simple: a movie-theatre company putting cash into a Nevada mining developer. The details are narrower. This was a private placement, which means Hycroft sold new shares directly to two investors instead of on the open market. The other investor was Eric Sprott, a Canadian precious-metals investor.

AMC and Hycroft timeline: from private placement to sale

These are the dated events that can be checked against filings and company releases.

Each row is sourced in the sections below.

How the deal worked

Hycroft sold units. Each unit was one common share plus one warrant. Sprott and AMC each bought 23,408,240 units at US$1.193 per unit, which Hycroft said was the Nasdaq minimum bid price for an at-the-market purchase. Each paid US$27.9 million in cash, for US$56 million in total. The warrants had a strike price of US$1.068 and a five-year term from issue (Hycroft, 15 March 2022).

Hycroft said the money would go to general corporate purposes, including debt repayment, refinancing or repurchase, working capital and capital spending. It also named two project uses: moving the Initial Assessment toward a pre-feasibility or feasibility study, and more exploration at the Hycroft Mine.

Trade press at the time added two debt changes tied to the raise. Sprott’s lending arm agreed in principle to move principal repayments from May 2025 to a single payment in May 2027, and second-lien lenders agreed to extend their loan to December 2027 (Mining Technology, 16 March 2022).

The reverse split matters for reading later numbers. Hycroft filed notice of a 1-for-10 reverse split of its Class A common stock, effective after the close of trading on 14 November 2023, so ten old shares became one (Hycroft Form 8-K, November 2023). That is why the 2022 warrant strike of US$1.068 appears as US$10.68 in AMC’s December 2025 release. The arithmetic matches: 23,408,240 units divided by ten is about 2.34 million.

What AMC sold in December and what it kept

AMC said it sold about 2.34 million Hycroft shares, warrants over about 1.34 million shares, and rights to about 12,000 future-vesting shares. The net consideration was about US$24.1 million. The buyer was Sprott Mining, a private Canadian company owned by Eric Sprott. AMC kept warrants over approximately 1 million shares with a strike of US$10.68 and about 64,000 common shares. AMC described the cash received as roughly equal to the original capital invested in the transferred securities (AMC, 5 December 2025).

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AMC and Hycroft: the dollar figures

US$ million

By our arithmetic, the warrants sold (about 1.34 million) plus the warrants kept (approximately 1 million, per AMC’s 2025 Form 10-K) come to about 2.34 million, the same as the 2022 warrant count after the 1-for-10 split. The 2.34 million shares sold likewise equal the post-split count of the original units. Hycroft’s 2025 Form 10-K lists these March 2022 warrants as expiring on 15 March 2027, each exercisable for one-tenth of a share at US$1.068, which is US$10.68 per whole share after the split (Hycroft 10-K, 2025).

AMC’s own reporting adds the accounting view. Its results release of 23 February 2026 shows US$34.4 million of gains on its Hycroft investments for full-year 2025, covering realized and unrealized gains (AMC, 23 February 2026). A realized gain is booked when a holding is sold. An unrealized gain is a change in the value of a holding that is still owned. Both are accounting measures, not a single return figure for the whole 2022 to 2025 holding.

The figures below are the ones the filings give. They are not netted into a “profit”, because the sale covered the majority of the position, not all of it, and the retained warrants still have a value that changes with the share price.

What is the Hycroft Mine?

Hycroft is a gold and silver project in northern Nevada. Hycroft’s annual report (Form 10-K for 2025) says mining restarted in 2019 on a pre-commercial scale and stopped in November 2021, and that processing of ore already on the leach pads finished by 31 December 2022 (Hycroft 10-K, 2025). A leach pad is a lined stockpile of crushed ore sprayed with a weak cyanide solution that dissolves gold and silver. So when AMC invested, the company was winding down production and moving toward a study of a larger project.

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Hycroft gold produced, 2011 to 2014

Ounces per calendar year, as reported to the Nevada Division of Minerals

The mine has produced for decades. The Nevada Division of Minerals, in its annual Major Mines of Nevada reports, lists Hycroft output rising from 104,002 ounces of gold and 479,440 ounces of silver in 2011 to 214,345 ounces of gold and 1,818,637 ounces of silver in 2014, under the previous operators (Nevada Division of Minerals, Major Mines of Nevada 2014). Today’s company is a developer, not a producer.

Nevada is the main US gold state. The US Geological Survey estimates the state produced about 64% of the 160 tons of US mine gold in 2025, and says Nevada was second to Alaska in silver (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, gold). Silver is mostly a by-product: the same agency counts 4 US silver mines against 31 base- and precious-metal operations that recover silver as a by-product or co-product (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, silver). For wider silver context see our review of global annual silver production.

▶ Follows one gold nugget from rock to ring, showing the steps behind the ounces a mine reports. · 5:27

Hycroft since the deal: shareholders, cash and shares

The Form 10-K reports that 2176423 Ontario Limited, an entity affiliated with Eric Sprott, beneficially owned about 38% of Hycroft’s voting securities at 31 December 2025, and that 91,036,037 shares were outstanding on 2 March 2026 (Hycroft 10-K, 2025). Unrestricted cash was US$181.7 million at year end. The filing also lists several equity financings during 2025, so the share count is far higher than in 2022 and any old per-share figure needs adjusting.

In its second-quarter release of 28 July 2026 the company reported US$220.5 million of unrestricted cash and no debt at 30 June 2026, and said it was added to the Russell 3000 Index effective 29 June 2026 (Hycroft, 28 July 2026). The plan for the rest of 2026 was to add two core drill rigs for a total of four, to evaluate a possible high-grade mining scenario with an exploration decline, and to continue roasting test work against pressure oxidation.

Two points follow for anyone comparing AMC’s 2022 entry with today. First, AMC paid US$1.193 per unit before the reverse split, which is the same as US$11.93 after it. Second, because Hycroft sold more shares since, AMC’s original 21.8% share would be much smaller now; AMC’s roughly 64,000 retained shares are under 0.1% of the 91,036,037 shares outstanding on 2 March 2026 (our arithmetic), before counting its warrants.

The technical report: ounces, costs and payback

On 3 June 2026 Hycroft published results from its S-K 1300 Technical Report Summary and Initial Assessment. S-K 1300 is the US rule set that governs how mining companies describe mineral resources in SEC filings. An Initial Assessment is an early-stage economic study. Hycroft’s own risk language lists “the lack of a completed feasibility study” (Hycroft, 28 July 2026). The report has an effective date of 21 January 2026 and replaces the 2023 version, according to a Hycroft filing that reports events of 17 February 2026 (Hycroft Form 8-K, February 2026).

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Hycroft Initial Assessment: base case against spot prices

Post-tax NPV at 5% (US$ billion), post-tax IRR (%) and post-tax payback (years)

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Hycroft gold ounces: resource and mine plan

Million ounces of gold

The 2026 mineral resource estimate is 16.4 million ounces of gold and 562.6 million ounces of silver in the measured and indicated categories, plus 5.0 million ounces of gold and 132.8 million ounces of silver as inferred (Hycroft, 3 June 2026). Measured and indicated resources are better drilled and carry more confidence than inferred ones, which the mine plan excludes. The 10-K adds that the report does not support disclosure of mineral reserves, and that the resource was estimated at US$3,100 per ounce of gold and US$36.00 per ounce of silver. A resource is mineralization with reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction. A reserve is the part shown to be economic by a feasibility-level study. Hycroft has no reserve.

The plan covers a 51-year mine life and a plant of 57,100 tons per day using pressure oxidation (POX) and heap leach. POX uses heat and oxygen under pressure to break down sulfide minerals that trap gold. Gold-equivalent ounces (AuEq) convert silver to gold at the study’s base price ratio. Life-of-mine output is 10.4 million ounces of gold, 347.5 million ounces of silver and 15.1 million ounces AuEq. Initial capital is US$2.4 billion, with US$3.1 billion of sustaining capital over the life of mine. Cash cost is US$1,924 per ounce AuEq and all-in sustaining cost (AISC) is US$2,147 per ounce AuEq (Hycroft, 3 June 2026).

The economics depend on the price deck. NPV5 is net present value discounted at 5% a year; IRR is the internal rate of return; payback is the time to recover capital after tax. The base case uses US$3,600 per ounce for gold and US$48.00 for silver. The “spot” case uses prices as of 25 May 2026, US$4,569 for gold and US$77.94 for silver. The company states that each US$100 rise in gold adds US$300 million to post-tax NPV5, and each US$5.00 rise in silver adds US$460 million.

The report is a study, not a decision to build. It sits ahead of a pre-feasibility or feasibility study, and the company lists the lack of a completed feasibility study among its risks. Hycroft reported US$220.5 million of cash at 30 June 2026, while the plan assumes US$2.4 billion of initial capital.

Metal prices behind the study

The study’s base prices sit above the averages the US Geological Survey uses for recent years. USGS puts the average gold price at US$2,388 per troy ounce in 2024 and an estimated US$3,300 in 2025, up from US$1,801 in 2021 (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, gold). For silver the agency lists an average bullion price of US$28.37 per troy ounce in 2024 and an estimated US$38 in 2025, up from US$25.23 in 2021 (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, silver). Those are annual averages, so they will not match the 25 May 2026 spot prices in the Hycroft study. The point is the gap: a study run at US$3,600 gold and US$48.00 silver assumes prices stay well above those recent averages, and Hycroft’s own sensitivity figures show how much the result moves with each price.

Look up the day’s gold and silver prices from a named source such as LBMA or Kitco before you reuse any NPV. Prices in a company study are fixed on one date; the market moves every day.

Brimstone and Vortex: what the drill results show

The high-grade silver zones called Brimstone and Vortex are the main exploration story at Hycroft. A drill intercept is the length of core in one hole that averages a stated grade. Grade is shown in grams per tonne (g/t). One tonne of rock at 1,000 g/t silver holds one kilogram of silver. The company says these intercepts are not resource estimates, and the 2026 mine plan leaves them out.

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Silver grade of reported Hycroft drill intercepts

Grams per tonne silver over the interval stated in the release

On 9 September 2026 Hycroft reported hole H26D-6090 at Vortex with 30.5 meters at 780.53 g/t silver and 0.49 g/t gold, including 11.2 meters at 1,664.80 g/t silver. Hole H26D-6166 had 20.0 meters at 460.82 g/t silver. At Brimstone, hole H26D-6167A had 5.5 meters at 1,345.27 g/t silver. Hole H26D-6172 had a gold interval of 6.1 meters at 21.12 g/t gold (Hycroft, 9 September 2026). The same table lists wider, lower-grade runs in the same holes, so judge a system by the whole set of intercepts, not only the best number.

Two cautions apply. These are selected highlights chosen by the company. And an intercept is a drilled length, not necessarily the true thickness of the rock body. Resource estimates exist to turn many holes into a consistent model; one hole does not do that. For a plain explanation of what drilling does and does not prove, see our guide to satellite gold exploration in the United States and the Nevada context in our note on Walker Lane gold in Nevada.

What to watch in Hycroft’s next filings

These are items the company itself has said are under way, with the date of the statement. They are not predictions.

• Drill program. The 2025-2026 program continues, with two more core rigs planned for a total of four (Hycroft, 28 July 2026).
• Underground option. The company plans to evaluate a high-grade mining scenario, including an exploration decline (Hycroft, 28 July 2026).
• Processing route. Roasting test work, with a trade-off study against pressure oxidation, is pending (Hycroft, 3 June and 28 July 2026).
• Studies. The Initial Assessment is not a feasibility study. A later study is the next formal step named in the 2022 use-of-proceeds language.
• Warrants. The original five-year warrants from March 2022 expire on 15 March 2027 (Hycroft 10-K, 2025).

The next quarterly report on Form 10-Q is where new cash, share count and any change in major holders will show up first.

How to read a mining stake in the filings: 6 steps

You can apply the same checks to any listed miner or developer. They take an hour with the filings open.

1. Find the stage. Is the project producing, building, or studying? Hycroft’s 10-K says mining stopped in November 2021 and no reserve is declared.
2. Separate resource from reserve. A resource is not proof of profit. Look for the words “does not support mineral reserves.”
3. Note the price deck. Compare the metal prices behind each NPV with prices on the date you read it. Hycroft’s base and spot cases differ by more than US$5 billion of NPV.
4. Count shares and warrants after splits. Convert old numbers with the split ratio, as with the 1-for-10 split above.
5. Read who owns what. The 10-K gives the largest holder’s share. Compare it with the share count on the cover page.
6. Check cash and debt. Developers spend before they earn. Hycroft reported US$220.5 million cash and no debt at 30 June 2026, against US$2.4 billion of planned initial capital.

For related reading on how the industry uses data across a project, see digital transformation providers in mining and, for site risk at remote operations, mine security and digital risks.

Retained AMC warrants: a quick calculator

AMC kept warrants and a few shares. The calculator below shows the intrinsic value of those warrants at a share price you type in. Intrinsic value is the share price minus the strike, never below zero. It is not an option price, because it ignores the time left before the warrants expire and the chance the price moves. AMC’s 10-K says it kept warrants to buy approximately 1 million shares, so the count here is rounded, not exact.

Where satellite data fits in mining due diligence

Satellites cannot see gold. They map the rock around it: iron-stained surfaces, clay minerals and fault lines. Operators and investors use that to rank target areas before drilling. Farmonaut offers satellite mineral detection as an early screen, delivered as exploration targets ahead of a resource estimate. It is not a resource or reserve statement, and it does not replace sampling and drilling.

▶ Explains how satellites map the rock around gold: iron stains, clay minerals and faults. · 4:25

Frequently asked questions

Did AMC Entertainment buy a gold and silver mine?

No. AMC bought 23,408,240 units, each a share plus a warrant, in Hycroft Mining Holding Corporation for US$27.9 million in March 2022. It held a minority stake in the company, not the mine.

How much did AMC pay for its Hycroft stake?

US$27.9 million in cash at US$1.193 per unit, matching an equal US$27.9 million from Eric Sprott. Together the two investors put in US$56 million (Hycroft, 15 March 2022).

What percentage of Hycroft did AMC own?

About 21.8% of the outstanding common shares when the deal was announced. Hycroft has issued more shares since. AMC’s roughly 64,000 retained shares are under 0.1% of the 91,036,037 shares outstanding on 2 March 2026 (our arithmetic), before counting its warrants.

Did AMC sell its Hycroft shares?

It sold most of them. On 5 December 2025 AMC announced the transfer of about 2.34 million shares and warrants over about 1.34 million shares to Sprott Mining for about US$24.1 million net.

Does AMC still own any Hycroft shares?

Per the December 2025 release, AMC kept warrants over approximately 1 million shares with a US$10.68 strike and about 64,000 common shares. The warrants expire on 15 March 2027 (Hycroft 10-K, 2025).

Who is the largest Hycroft shareholder now?

The 2025 Form 10-K says an entity affiliated with Eric Sprott beneficially owned about 38% of voting securities at 31 December 2025.

Is the Hycroft Mine producing gold and silver?

Not at commercial scale. Mining stopped in November 2021, leach-pad processing ended by 31 December 2022, and the company describes itself as exploring and developing the mine.

How much gold and silver does Hycroft have?

The 2026 resource estimate has 16.4 million ounces of gold and 562.6 million ounces of silver measured and indicated, plus 5.0 and 132.8 million ounces inferred. These are resources, not reserves.

What is the Hycroft technical report worth?

The Initial Assessment gives a post-tax NPV5 of US$4.3 billion at base prices and US$10.0 billion at 25 May 2026 spot prices. It is an early-stage study and not a feasibility study.

What are Brimstone and Vortex?

They are two high-grade silver systems that Hycroft found inside its land package and has been drilling since 2025. Results are drill intercepts, and the 2026 mine plan does not include them.

Was AMC’s investment a good one?

This page does not judge that. The filings show US$27.9 million paid, about US$24.1 million received for the majority position and US$34.4 million of reported 2025 gains. Not investment advice.

Where can I check these figures?

Search SEC EDGAR for Hycroft Mining Holding Corp and AMC Entertainment Holdings. The 2022 release, the 2025 Form 10-K and the June 2026 technical report are the primary documents.