Earnings Labs

Century Casinos, Inc. (CNTY)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Mar 11, 2016

$1.41

+1.44%

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1 Month

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Century Casinos Q4 2015 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

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining Century Casinos' fourth quarter and year-end 2015 conference call. We will get to the presentation of the results momentarily, but first I will review the safe harbor disclosure. In today's call, 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 we 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 and in the 10-K filing from this morning, available in the Investor Section of our website at cnty.com. I will now present our prepared remarks, followed by a Q&A session with my co-CEO and Chairman of the company, Erwin Haitzmann and our Executive Vice President of Finance, Margaret Stapleton. Here is what we said at our earnings call one year ago. We expect our 2015 results to benefit from our ongoing disciplined management of our resources, from continued growth and efficiencies being achieved at our existing properties, from nine months of operation of Century Downs as well as our off-track betting network in Southern Alberta and from continuing margin improvement at all our properties in Poland. While I am happy to report that we have fulfilled all of it, 100%, here is what we achieved in the categories mentioned. Our balance sheet is in great shape. Net debt decreased from…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Robert Majek from CJS Securities. Your line is open.

Robert Majek

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

Good morning.

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Hi Robert.

Robert Majek

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

In Poland, I know you are early in the process, but can you quantify the size of the potential one-time charge in anyway?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Thank you. Would you like to come in on that one?

Margaret Stapleton

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

Robert, on the U.S. GAAP side, we do have a contingent liability up for a piece of this and at this point in time, we really can't quantify how much we will have as an expense hit to the books.

Robert Majek

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

Okay. And given you should now have full benefit from the closing of the non-casino slot arcades, can you perhaps quantify the magnitude of the tickup anyway year-to-date?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

May I ask you, Erwin?

Erwin Haitzmann

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

I think it's a combination of both the closing of the slot arcades and also of new product that we got in, but it's been significant. In some casinos, we target the slot revenue, in others we have an increase of one-third.

Robert Majek

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

Thank you. And you touched on it in your prepared remarks, but can you give us a little more color on what may have impacted results in each of your properties in Alberta? Or we simply starting to see the initial impact of oil prices impacting traffic across the board?

Erwin Haitzmann

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

We have pretty solid, if you look at the drop at the tables and the coin-in, we actually had pretty solid performance because even in Calgary, the drop at the gaming tables was up by a third. So that is really significant. Unfortunately we had pretty significant swings. February, for example was extremely busy and extremely strong year-over-year on the revenue side. So overall we are not concerned in Alberta. Edmonton, the same thing. The coin-in was solid and we also in January and February and March to-date, we are not seeing any significant or any downward movement at all actually.

Robert Majek

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

I appreciate it. I will jump back in the queue.

Erwin Haitzmann

Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is open

Thanks Robert.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your next question comes from Mark Rosenkranz from Craig-Hallum Capital. Please state your question.

Mark Rosenkranz

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital. Please state your question

Hi everyone. Thanks for taking the question and congrats on a really strong 2015 performance.

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Thanks Mark.

Mark Rosenkranz

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital. Please state your question

I was wondering if you could, going back to the one-time charge in Poland, could you just kind of give us a sense of timing? Would that be a 1Q event, if that were to occur? Or would that be more in the second quarter or maybe throughout 2016?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Maggie?

Margaret Stapleton

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital. Please state your question

Mark, at this point in time, we are going to have to analyze the impact of it. I think it would be difficult for us to get it analyzed before Q1. But I can't say for sure. So it will be Q1 or Q2.

Mark Rosenkranz

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital. Please state your question

Okay. Fair enough. And then going back to Poland a little bit, you had revenues down a little over 5% in the quarter. Could you just maybe talk about what kind of shift in there year-over-year in the quarter?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Market was really like the currency translation because local currency revenue was up 9%. EBITDA was up 14%. But the złoty lost value against the U.S. dollar. So locally, Poland is strong and continues to grow.

Mark Rosenkranz

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital. Please state your question

Sure. Fair enough. And then a last question for me. I was wondering if you could talk about maybe some geographic expansion? You have talked in the past about different opportunities. Could you maybe talk about the pipeline you are seeing in terms of perhaps new acquisitions or maybe just organic growth you see in maybe different geographies?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

In Canada, we see both organic growth. As indicated in our prepared remarks, we are planning a substantial expansion of our Edmonton property. We also see M&A opportunities in Canada. And then we are looking at across Southeast Asia and there's some very interesting leads that we have and we are pretty confident that in 2016 we will have a project there

Mark Rosenkranz

Analyst · Craig-Hallum Capital. Please state your question

Okay. Good. Thanks for taking my question. And congrats again on a good 2015.

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Thanks Mark

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Robert Maltbie from Singular Research. Please state your question.

Debra Fiakas

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Thank you. This is Debra Fiakas, in for Robert today. And I apologize if these questions have already been asked. I was disconnected for a few moments from your call. I wanted to return to your discussion of Canada and your description of the slot and table revenues in Edmonton and Calgary. It seemed like there's a little bit of a difference in those two markets and I wondered if this is typical. You mentioned the table revenue being up in Edmonton but the slot revenue being down and then even more exceptional gaming table revenue increase in Calgary. And I wondered if you could just comment on those two markets and how they are faring?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Going with number one from the start. The number one difference is that in Calgary additional slot capacity came online by our own Century Downs Racetrack and Casino which opened in April. So in Q4 of 2015, the Calgary market had to digest 550 additional slots that were not in the market in Q4 2014 and that certainly took some small market share away from the existing casinos, including our own casino in Calgary. Is there any other difference that you see, Erwin?

Erwin Haitzmann

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Yes. If I may add, historically, traditionally, the Calgary market is hit earlier by an economic downswing than the Edmonton market. And obviously with the oil price going down, the casinos in Calgary felt that long before the Edmonton casinos.

Debra Fiakas

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Okay. Very good. And also, you mentioned that in Edmonton you plan on doing some renovations, putting in a new bar and expanding the number of gaming tables. And I was wondering if you could also tell us what you anticipate your investment will be there? And if you could give us the numbers on the tables that you are going to be putting in?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

The investment will be between $1 million and $1.5 million. And it is not so much the addition of tables, but it is the addition of private gaming room. We now have the regular gaming room and the high limit room, but in addition to that, we will add a private room. We see some demand there in the market and we think that should be helpful.

Debra Fiakas

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Okay. Very good. And then I also was hoping that you might just give us a little bit more color on the great results, it appeared that you got from the Casino Downs. This is really a big increase in EBITDA. Was that just a matter of just getting started and running greater revenues or greater volumes through the facility? You mentioned improved cost structure and I just wondered if you could comment on what you did to improve the cost structure of Casino Downs?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

If I may, the main area there was the food and beverage. It is always difficult to put together a good and functional team when we have such a large food and beverage operation, particularly one that has weekly swings, where there much business on the weekend and on racing days and less business on the other days. So initially it took us while until we could get the right team together and in order to prevent major disasters, we rather overstaffed initially and as the weeks went by, we were able to get great staff and could streamline the operations. So now we have a great team together.

Debra Fiakas

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Okay. Very good. And then my last question is in regard to Poland. Of course, it's unfortunate that you have had this ruling which appears to be not in your favor. I wondered if this change will have any impact on your personnel? Will it be more difficult to attract good personnel now that you have got to collect from their payroll for the tax allocation?

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

It will nominally increase our staff cost, right?

Erwin Haitzmann

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Yes. It will be a combination of on the one hand, we have to negotiate this also with the unions and with the top members of the staff individually. It will be probably a compromise. We pay some of that and the employees will maybe take a little hit. But that will be a process that will go on during the next month. At the end of the day, people have to understand that this was, the way we did it has been done from day one of the casino opening. And for 20 years it was good and suddenly it wasn't good anymore. It's certainly outside of our control. We followed it to the very end and we have just been doing it.

Debra Fiakas

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Okay. And do you have any knowledge of what other gaming operators in Poland do? Are they also being put to the test and being required to make this change too? Or was it something that had been adopted by some of your competitors ahead of you?

Erwin Haitzmann

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

In short, a little bit like that in the others, they have the same situation. Although every company handled it a little bit differently and every company that we are aware of at least had a little bit of a different case. But in short everybody is facing that problem.

Debra Fiakas

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Okay. Very good. Thank you for taking our questions.

Erwin Haitzmann

Analyst · Singular Research. Please state your question

Always.

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

Thanks Debra.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to Mr. Hoetzinger.

Peter Hoetzinger

Management

All right. Thank you everybody for listening to our call. Thank you for your interest in Century Casinos. For a recording of the call, please visit the financial results section of website at cnty.com. Thanks again and goodbye.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.