Earnings Labs

Century Casinos, Inc. (CNTY)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 16, 2015

$1.44

+2.50%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+2.35%

1 Week

-0.72%

1 Month

+5.23%

vs S&P

+4.38%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Century Casinos Fourth Quarter 2014 earnings conference call. This call will be recorded. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. I would like to introduce our host for today's call, Mr. Peter Hoetzinger. Mr. Hoetzinger, you may begin.

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Thank you, operator and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter 2014 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are my Co-CEO and Chairman of the Company, Erwin Haitzmann; as well as Margaret Stapleton, Executive Vice President of Finance. Before we begin, I need to remind you that in our remarks today we will be discussing forward-looking information, which involves a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. We provide a detailed discussion of the various risk factors in our SEC filings and encourage you to review these filings. In addition, throughout our call, we may refer to several non-GAAP financial measures, including but not limited to adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations of our non-GAAP performance and liquidity measures to the appropriate GAAP measures can be found in our news release from this morning and in the 10-K filings, which will be available shortly in the Investor section of our Web site at cnty.com. I will now present the results. We ended 2014 on a strong note. A more streamline cost structure and better overall macroeconomic trends resulted in healthy year-over-year increases of 6% in net operating revenues and 82% adjusted EBITDA during the fourth quarter. And it was a very busy quarter for us. Not only did our entire management team did a great job in growing revenues and improving margins at our existing operations, we also added new projects to our portfolio. During the quarter all entities except the ship casinos generated higher EBITDA. Our ongoing focus on enhancing operating efficiencies in maintaining a disciplined approach to marketing paid off and resulted in improved EBITDA margins…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will conduct the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Robert [Rojek] CJS Securities. Please state your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

In Poland, can you give us a little more color on what caused the margin jump in the quarter and what further steps your taking to reach your EBITDA margin goal?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Yes, we’ve increased slot revenues quite substantially and obviously an increase in slot revenue has more impact on the EBITDA line compared to table revenue, so that is monetary and then overall cost management was just something that really paid off the last quarter and also going forward, we will -- we see that right here in the first quarter, we will be able to generate higher margins because of revenue growth and cost control, so it’s working on both sides.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

That’s helpful and can you give us a better sense for the remaining size of the slot arcade industry operating outside of casinos in Poland and given the ban how much of that you hope to pick up this year?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

By end of this year we can expect all machines that are operating outside of the licensed casinos to disappear and we believe that this will have a significant impact from early 2016 on for all licensed casinos of which we have the major market share. It is hard to quantify but some industry sources estimated that this street machine market is worth about $100 million per year and if all these machines fall away and the significant portion of this will be played in casino slots we have the highest market share, than you can imagine that we’re excited about that and we’re gearing up with our slot product to take advantage of that opportunity that’s going to present itself from the end of this year on.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

That’s great and my last one, do you have an opening date set yet for the new racino in Calgary?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

That is April 1.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Fuhrman, Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Alex Fuhrman

Analyst · Alex Fuhrman, Craig-Hallum. Your line is open

I wanted to ask specifically thinking about your operations in Canada and Poland and let me say that the U.S. dollar has been strong here even just last couple of weeks and I think you’ve mentioned in your prepared remarks that Poland has been very strong here in the first quarter something like double digit revenue growth. I would imagine that is in local currency and would it be reasonable to think that revenue in Poland could increase this year on a dollar level or would that just too much to ask for given the strength of the dollar?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

That was actually in dollar terms, so we’re seeing a very, very strong start to the year in Poland.

Alex Fuhrman

Analyst · Alex Fuhrman, Craig-Hallum. Your line is open

That’s fantastic and then secondly just wanted to ask little bit about the Colorado market, I mean sounds like that’s really starting to turn for you and do you envision that now being a multiyear trend that you could actually grow or is it just more about kind of stopping bleeding here?

Erwin Haitzmann

Analyst · Alex Fuhrman, Craig-Hallum. Your line is open

It’s hard to predict but I think the industry estimate is that -- looking at the regional markets, we should be looking at a hopefully longer term trend.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions], There are no further questions. I'll turn the call back to our host for closing remarks.

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Thank you operator. And thanks everyone for your interest in Century Casinos and your participation in the call. For a recording of the call, please visit the Financial Results section of our Web site at cnty.com. We look forward to getting together with you again for our first quarter earnings call in May. Thank you and good bye.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending.