AMC Aims to Raise $400 Million in I.P.O.

A year after being acquired by the Wanda Group, AMC Entertainment Holdings is looking to go public.

AMC, the second-largest movie theater owner in North America, is aiming to raise up to $400 million in an initial public offering, according to a regulatory filing on Friday. That amount, however, may change; the company did not specify the number of shares it planned to sell or the price.

An I.P.O. would be the latest corporate maneuver for AMC, which last year was sold to Wanda, a Chinese conglomerate with extensive holdings in the entertainment business, for about $2.6 billion, including the assumption of $2 billion in debt. At the time of the deal, Wang Jianlin, the chairman and president of Wanda, said he aimed to own theaters covering 20 percent of the world theater market by 2020.

AMC said it planned to use the proceeds from an I.P.O. in part for capital expenditures and reducing debt. The company reported $2.2 billion of total debt as of June 30.

A giant in the movie theater business â€" with 343 theaters that it owned, operated or held interests in as of June 30 â€" AMC is centering its strategy on a “pivot towards quality,” it said in the filing. Last year, the company attracted 200 million guests to its theaters, generating $2.7 billion of revenue, an increase of 10.8 percent from the year earlier, the company said.

The filing on Friday is AMC’s third attempt in recent years to sell its shares to the public. After a private equity buyout in 2004, AMC moved toward an I.P.O. but canceled those plans in 2007 because of adverse market conditions, it said at the time.

The company again filed for an I.P.O. in 2010, but it was in preliminary talks with Wanda at the time, and a public offering never happened.

The Wanda Group, a privately held conglomerate, is primarily a developer and owner of commercial real estate, but it has holdings in the entertainment, retail and hospitality industries. It has been trying in recent years to bolster its presence in the United States.

In the latest filing, AMC did not specify which banks would underwrite an I.P.O. The company said it intended to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “AMC.”