Good afternoon and welcome to the Full House Resorts Third Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Lewis Fanger, Chief Financial Officer of Full House Resorts. Please go ahead sir.

Thank you, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. As always, before we begin, we remind you that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements that we're making under the Safe Harbor provision of federal securities laws. I would also like to remind you that the company's actual results could differ materially from the anticipated results in these forward-looking statements. Please see today's press release under the caption Forward-Looking Statements for the discussion of risks that may affect our results. Also, we may make reference to non-GAAP measures such as adjusted EBITDA. For a reconciliation of those measures, please see our website as well as the various press releases that we issue. And we also have a presentation today on the website. If you go to investors.fullhouseresorts.com click on the lower banner, click company info and then presentations, and it will take you to that presentation. Maybe the most fun piece of that is on Page 4. There are two video links for an ad that we're about to start running this week for Chamonix, as well as a drone fly through of the property. And then lastly, we're also broadcasting this conference call at fullhouseresorts.com, where you can find today's earnings release as well as all of our SEC filings. And with that said. You ready to go, Dan?

Yes, I'm ready. Okay. All right, everybody look at. There's kind of no way around it. It was not a good quarter, and I'm not happy about it. Colorado in particularly was disappointing. Just reminding everybody it was partly open in the first quarter. It opened just before New Year's and with only part of the hotel. And then it was more open in the second quarter, but in the third quarter it was mostly open. I mean, most of the spa opened early in the quarter. The only thing left from a customer perspective today, is some fancy lights and curbing in the parking lots. Everything else that a customer would see is open. Now, the expenses are up, not surprisingly. Back in 2023, for example, the total expenses in the four quarters were $4.3 million, $4.2 million, $4.8 million, and $5.0 million. That was really just Bronco Billy's with a little bit of Chamonix right at the end. And then as we opened the new property, it jumped in the first quarter to $9.1 million and then $10.3 million into Q2 and a $13.7 million in Q3. The bad news is, while revenues have been growing, they've been growing only as fast as the expenses. So the revenues back 2023, Q1 was $3.7 million, $4.1 million, $4.7 million, $4.5 million. And we weren't making a lot of money in 2023, because we had a lot of construction disruption. So it was understandable. And then in 2024, the revenue has been $8.7 million, $10.8 million and $13.0 million, which is good growth, but only as fast as the expenses have grown. And this results in little income and in fact, a small loss in the quarter. The good news is that when you look at the magnitude of the…

Good, Dan. Let me give you a quick peek into October for what it's worth. So Dan hinted at American Place. We actually did have a pretty decent month at American Place. Slot volumes were up about 13% versus last year's October. Table game volumes were up 46%. That's the really good news there. Hold was off pretty meaningfully, unfortunately. So the slot hold was up about 50 basis points, table hold of 450 basis points from the prior year and 230 basis points from what we would have normally expected. And so when you put --

But we very seldom show you a monthly number. And by the time you get to the end of the quarter --

No, it's true.

-- they're usually normalized.

They do. My way point and all that, Dan, was going to be we're still going to be up pretty decently over the prior year with gaming revenue despite all that. So if you -- it's a month when you see these monthly revenue numbers that come out in a week or so, just know that, that number, while higher than the prior year, should have been up even more. Rising Star revenues and EBITDA are pretty -- are both up pretty meaningfully versus last year. And as Dan mentioned, we have a new General Manager that will start there.

I forgot to mention. We have a new general manager. There's another thing that happened in September, I forgot to mention. When the news came out that we were going to try to move to Fort Wayne, it unnerved both our employees and our customers. And we had to go to our employees and say, hey, come down This is not at all certain. And even if it happens, it's 5 years away. So don't quit on us here. And by the way, if we do get to move and we end up closing Rising Star and we move, those employees get first crack at the new place. And if they don't go, we will have nice stay bonuses for them and kind of a severance thing for staying with us until the end. And so they will actually benefit when they see the size of those stay bonuses, a lot of those employees are going to be rooting for us to move. And -- but on the customer side, people -- we actually got phone calls from people saying, hey, I have a reservation this weekend. Should I be worried? Are you closing? And we're like, no, we're not closing. And well, if I gamble there, what am I going to do with my points? And so we've had to go back and calm people down. But September took an immediate hit when that hit the newspaper and it's kind of come back. So I'm sorry, I --

No, no, no, that's perfect, Dan. So a nice rebound there in October versus prior year and certainly versus the September that just ended and the new GM that will start there in a week. Silver Slipper admissions are up about 2% or 3% spend per guest is down a little bit. Although as Dan mentioned, we also have a brand-new GM, Angie that's moving down there from Rising Star. And then over at Grand Lodge, both slots and tables are up pretty meaningfully over the prior year period. So up about 10% on the slot side and 20% on tables. So October is actually shaking out to be pretty decent. The only other thing I had there, Dan, was that Stockman sale, if you assume an EBITDA figure there of about $800,000, that's 11.5x EBITDA multiple. It's a very strong multiple. And so we're quite pleased with that sale.

And the guys buying it are --

Smart guys, good guys.

They are smart guys who operate small casinos like that. So it's in their wheelhouse, and it's not in our wheelhouse. So it's a pretty logical transaction.

So moving on to questions there?

Sure.

So let's open up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question we have comes from David Bain of B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Thanks, Dan and Lewis for all the info. It seems like we're at trough margins for Chamonix and revenue grows basically on a relatively fixed cost base from here through the initiatives you spoke to. You seem to infer, I think, Dan, in the beginning that 2025 is really when we see more of a meaningful margin ramp. I'm just wondering if you guys could kind of big picture, how you feel comfortable with that progression? Is it like low single digits in 1Q or single digits to double in 2Q? Just any thoughts around how you would envision that and to help us sort of think about things as we enter the new year?

Okay. Well, first off, I think we've built the nicest casino in the state. Now I will tell you, Monarch is also very nice. And both Denver and Colorado Springs are still gambling a lot less per capita than places like the state of Washington where the casinos are also some distance away on Indian reservations up in the mountains or even California, where it's travel gaming. And so I think there's a lot more growth in the market. I often cite Monarch as our competition, which it really is at the high end. And -- but I think we will both do well going forward. If you look at their numbers, they have 500 rooms and they didn't get there overnight. It took them a while. But -- and they don't break out Reno, but guys like you back into it and give me an estimate, and I can get -- I used to be an analyst myself, so I can get a pretty good estimate. They seem to be earning upwards of at least $100 million, maybe $100 million of EBIT $120 million of EBITDA on about $300 million of revenue, which is about the margin you'd expect in a regional market. And they're about a 30% market share in Black Hawk. And I believe Ameristar is pretty close to those numbers. They're probably number two now, but they're not far behind that. And they also have about 500 guestrooms. We only have 300 guestrooms. So we don't expect to get to those numbers. But can we get to half those numbers? We should be able to over time. And recognize the people who live on the south side of Denver, like Castle Rock and even Centennial and Parker, they're about equal distance from us to Black Hawk.…

We're also warming up. I'll tell you this, too, Dave. There's -- while traditionally, winter is seasonally slower for that market, historically, there haven't been any rooms in that town either. And if you look at what happened in Black Hawk with room product, a lot of that seasonality starts to go away. We have half of the room product now in town. And so I think that will actually help us out with some of offset a lot of the seasonality that you usually see. But on top of that, there's a lot that I think will be going on there over this coming winter. There's this thing that they do called Ice Castles that brings thousands and thousands of people on their own to town every year. It was -- did it for the first time last winter as we were getting ready to open. And so we'll be back for its second year this year. We've got some marketing plans behind the scenes for some events that we're going to try to drive as well. Icefest is by far one of the biggest weeks in that market every year where they bring tens of thousands of people as well. And so there are a lot of other natural marketing events in the city beyond what we're doing that will help bring people over to see us for the first time. So it's -- I think there are a lot of reasons to still be quite excited. But that ramp, as Dan kind of alluded to in his comments, is always difficult to get. It's quite easy to figure out what the long-term run rate is. It's always a little more difficult to figure out that ramp to it.

Yes. And I went into a lot of detail on those direct mail programs because I wanted to kind of appreciate the sort of trial and error that happens in any new properties. I mean there's things we tried at American Place when it first opened that it was like, oh, that didn't work, don't try that again. And then you gradually figure out what does work and you go back like the one mailing list that did work, we'll probably go back and mail to those people again. And now we know if we're going to buy a large mailing list and it's not clear, somebody said, well, these have a propensity to gamble and they're not willing to tell us what it is. Well, let's try it out with 1,000 people, not 175,000 people and find out if it works. And so you get smarter at that. And even with the advertising, part of the reason we're hiring this new VP of Advertising is it's important -- it's a pretty complex algorithm. Like do you want to be on streaming television? Do you want to be on Facebook? Do you want to be on network television in Colorado Springs, in Denver. We're in Pueblo. What program, what time of day and so on. And this is something that she's been doing for 20 years, and she's very good at it, and we're happy to have her. And she'll bring a lot of benefit to us in Colorado, but she'll also help us in all the other markets so.

Right. No, that's helpful. And I mean, back on the marketing thing Dan, if we could just follow-up on that. It seems like it's about showing folks the amenities because I assume like in Colorado Springs through press and other outlets, they must know the properties there. But it may be helpful to give a sense of repeat business from new carded players and maybe if there's been any change in frequency from legacy carded ones, if you have that off hand?

It all depends on how you --

Or even big picture.

Yes. If you look at that big list of -- that's on the slides that Lewis posted, it shows what, 140,000 people in the mailing list. But that's a mailing list that has been accumulated since Bronco Billy's open, and some of those people are dead. And so we cut it down into people we've seen in the last 36 months, people we've seen in the last year and how often are we seeing them. Now that we have a hotel, of course, we're seeing people more. They tend to stay overnight. They tend to gamble more. But to get to where we need to be, we need to find more new people and get the new people to come. And so even the grand opening weekend was part of that. I mean, to some extent, we held the party for really good players in Bronco Billy's, but a lot of the people were new who didn't know us before, and we want them to go home and tell their neighbors, usually a gambler hangs with gamblers and go back and say, hey, we went up there, they had a surprise entertainer. And guess what, it was Jay Leno and who was terrific. And he was expensive, but the comedians are a lot cheaper than a big band, but he's one of the best comedians. And he's the sort of name that people will talk about. And we have a venue where we can sit 600 people for a show like that and escalator away from the casino. Monarch doesn't and Ameristar, they have a ballroom, but I don't think they could do it as well as we do. And so it's a little bit of a competitive edge. And so we purposely did that. And by the way, nobody…

And if you were to look at the early reviews versus what you would see today, it's a massive improvement. Now the appreciation, I think, for the product that we built is absolutely there. The repeat visitation is absolutely there. If you look at the customers coming in the door today versus a year ago, all the right things are happening behind the scenes. So I look when we sit around the room and think about where that property can be in year two, year three, year four, nothing's changed. I mean, the excitement that we have for that building is as strong as it ever was, in large part because of the way customers have reacted to it.

The only thing that's changed, the population of Denver and Colorado Springs keep growing.

That's very true.

And by the way, the other thing I should point out, this wasn't when you think grand opening, this wasn't like you might have with a big casino in Las Vegas with fireworks and all this. We didn't publicize this. It was only for 300 invited guests and their spouses. We're not a very big place. We only have 300 hotel rooms. And so it was really just for the top echelon Players. And that's intentional. You could not buy a ticket to see Jay Leno. And so if you're a customer of, say, the Golden Nugget, you're like, if we sold tickets, Golden Nugget would go buy tickets and give it to their customers. We're not doing that. You want to come see Jay Leno, you've got to be our customer. And we will continue to do stuff like that.

No, I mean, clearly your confidence in Chamonix remains unchanged. And I just wanted to lastly congratulate you on the sales stock. Means that the valuation seems great for shareholders and good for the buyer as well. Thank you.

You mean on the sale of stocks?

I was just congratulating you on a good transaction.

Okay. Well, I mean, just so you know, I had a bunch of options I got when I took the job, just under a million options, and they were going to expire November 28th, and therefore, I had to exercise them. And that incurs a whole big tax bill and the exercise prices, if that's what you're talking about.

You said, stockman

I'll let somebody else.

My intent is to hold the shares. I had a 10b5 program. It sold some shares to pay my taxes, and the remaining shares I intend to hold. So it's like, I didn't actually take any money out of the company. I just paid my taxes. But it ends up being the filing shows me it's having sold shares.

But we do thank you on that stock.

When you say congratulations on your stock, I thought, okay.

I'm sorry.

That's okay. No details of that are in our 10Q. So we're trying to make sure people understand I have not lost confidence in the company. I just had to pay a big tax bill.

So. Got it. Perfect. Thank you.

Thanks, Dave.

The next question we have comes from Jordan Bender of Citizens JMP. Please, go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Just one for me. When we think about the legacy portfolio, so I guess outside of Illinois and Colorado, without getting into guidance, can you just maybe give us a sense or the general outlook of what growth looks like next year? And then how should we think about your expense growth into 2025 as well? Thank you.

Okay, well, the silver slipper, in my opinion, should be earning in the high-teens, if not 20. It's not there now. It's somewhere 13, 14 million a year, maybe 15. And I'm hoping that Angie will get us back there. She's very good at coming up with marketing programs and controlling costs, and she did that. And I think she doubled the results in Rising Sun after she became GM. And so I have high hopes on that. I'm sure she's listening and probably swallowing hard, but that's where I think it should be. If you look at normal margins in a regional casino, that's what it should be doing. And we did have some storms this year and so on, but I also think a fresh set of eyes is going to help us. And then, at Tahoe, we've always made about three to four million a year. At one year we get a little above four. Now if Ellison, and it's always been kind of a short term lease that gets renewed. Now we just redid it as a 10-year lease that they can cancel on short notice. So it's still a short term lease, if you will. But we've been running it now for at least 10 years. And the Pritzkers and Larry Ellison don't want to go get a gaming license. And so we have good relationships with them. We pay them pretty significant rent. And so it's a way for them to have a casino in their place and benefit from the economics of it and be competitive with other hotels at Lake Tahoe without having to get a casino license. So hopefully we're there for a long time. And if that, and if Larry Ellison really does fix the place up, it's already a…

Other properties, no, no. American Place, EBITDA will continue to gain in 2025. So the stretch would be to have EBITDA start with a four. I think if we're in somewhere in the mid to upper 30s, so we'll be pretty pleased. I'm trying to think of what one we didn't have in there.

I mean, Legacy Properties. basically we're a three legged stool. We got Silver Slipper Colorado and American Place. And Rising Sun is a growth opportunity outside of that. And Tahoe, our return on our investment there is very good. We'll continue to run it as long as they allow us to run it and we'll run it as best we can. But essentially it's a three legged stool with a couple little extras.

Yes, in Colorado, I mean, if we're doing something between 1 and 2 million a month in the earlier part of the year. I think we'd be pretty, pretty happy.

Yes. I mean, I pay a lot of attention to Monarch because they're a successful company and a competitor of ours. They only have two places and they focus on the two place and they do a really good job at the two. And if we could do a really good job at our three, I'd be very happy. We don't have to diversify on your behalf. You can diversify on your own. And so, our focus is on doing a really good job on the three schools we have and go from there.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Ryan Sigdahl of Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Dan Lewis. Not to nitpick too much because American Place is performing really strongly here, but margins appear to be down year-over-year. Revenue grew faster than EBITDA. Is there anything to call out there? And then how should we think about the cost structure within that property specifically going forward?

I hadn't actually focused on the margins, but my guess is it would be because we opened the steakhouse, which is actually a big revenue driver, but of course has employees and food beverage revenue, which is less profitable.

Our cable business has been growing pretty robustly.

Yes. Oh, yes. I mean, we do pay attention to margins to some extent, but if you run the company based on margins, you know, like I could improve the margins of Rising Sun if I just closed the hotel and closed the golf course and closed the ferry boat and we'd have higher margins and less income. And so you try to maximize income. But the main thing that's changed at American Place over the past year is opening the high end restaurant, which we did back in February. And the minute we opened it, our casino revenue got a lot better. But operating restaurant like that is a low margin business, so that may have affected the margins.

Yes, we also had a, if you're looking at, if you're comparing it to the third quarter of last year, too, we had a $600,000 true up that benefited us in last year's third quarter. So year-over-year, we did not have that in this year's third quarter. True up was. It was a reversal of something. We won't go into it, but yes, it was true up. Yes.

It was a reversal of expenses you took earlier when it should have been capitalized.

Good. The one quick follow up on Chamonix, still varying degrees of success on the mailing list and marketing and strategy there. But I guess why not lean more into the convention business and really trying to drive people in to see the property through that?

Well, frankly, the convention business should be pretty important and we were a little slower on this than we should be. Normally you would hire a pretty big sales and marketing force before you even open. We had one person. We've recently added two more. We should have five. I mean the Broadmoor has 900 rooms. They have about 18 people in sales and marketing. And the Broadmoor, probably, I'm guessing the Broadmoor, this is the big five star hotel in Colorado Springs. I think it's the largest five star hotel outside of Las Vegas. And I think they run about 85% occupancy and I'll bet about 75% of that occupancy is group meeting and connecting business. And so you look at that and say, okay, well for us we're just getting going, we're just starting. Broadmoor, by the way, has been around 100 years, so they've had time to build that book. And we're just starting and we're building up that sales force. We've added, as I mentioned, two other people in the last few months and frankly I'd like to hire two more, but it takes time. That's the bread and butter in Las Vegas. I mean, not the bread and butter. Las Vegas could fill every weekend with people driving over from Los Angeles and then they fill the midweek with meetings and conventions. So it's the same formula as the Strip, really?

That's it for me.

Thanks, Ryan. All right, Dan, we have two questions in the queue. Let's try to get through these real quick.

The next question we have comes from John DeCree of CBRE. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, I think most of my questions have been answered already, but maybe one on Chamonix and Cripple Creek overall. So it appears you haven't had much impact on the local market yet in spite of ramping revenues. So curious. Dan, your plan has always been to expand the market with what you built there. But is there some low hanging fruit maybe in that market or are competitors being incrementally more promotional maybe as you ramp up? And so we felt maybe you would have taken some customers, some more customers from your competition in that market. So curious in your kind of thoughts as to what's kind of happening in Triple Creek around your competitors?

For the last few months we are over 100% of the growth in both Cripple Creek and the State. In other words, we look at our revenues and we look at the growth in the market and the growth in the state. And so now, I think if you take our numbers out, the casinos excluding us from Cripple Creek as a group are down some. Not down dramatically, but down some. Now, it's not an analogous group like the Century Casino is right across the street from us. And Century on their earnings call said they're doing well in Cripple Creek. Well, of course they are. Our restaurants get jammed. We can't accommodate everybody for lunch. And they go across the street to Century because they have a decent restaurant for lunch. The Double Eagle, who's two blocks away from us, is probably not getting that sort of spillover. And I'm guessing they may be down. And the two partners who owned it have both passed away. So they're operationally in a bit of flux. The Golden Nugget, which acquired the Wildwood. They brought in, they're a well-managed company. They brought in good management and I think they're doing well. And we kind of welcome that, I think. And then Triple Crown has always been well run. And so, I don't think we're eviscerating anybody. I don't think we will eviscerate anybody. But we are more than 100% of the growth in the market.

Yes. And you'll always get a little bit of an impact in the short term. But I think a year, two, three years from now, when everyone looks back, I think everyone in the market will say, wow, this market grew pretty much entirely because of this new opening.

Yes. We don't get all the details in Blackhawk, but I would guess that Monarch is doing very well. Has had some impact on Ameristar and perhaps the Horseshoe, but not all that much. I think they're all doing well. And I think we will do the same over time in Cripple Creek.

Yes, look, I will tell you, if the opposite happened. If we opened up and you saw massive declines at our competitors, that would have pointed to the fact that maybe this wasn't as undersaturated a market as we would have expected. The fact that we have grown this market so much without really any impact on the others just speaks to the deepness and the kind of underserved nature of both Colorado Springs and Denver, especially those southern suburbs.

It's actually our strategy. We want to go into underserved markets because you get a higher return on investment in an underserved market than you do if you just competing for market share. And so Fort Wayne is the ultimate underserved market. It has no casino within an hour and a half of it. But even in Lake County, in Waukegan, we've been able to generate the revenues we're generating. I think we're now one of the more higher revenue casinos in the state, despite being in a tent. And we've had almost no impact on rivers or as near as we could tell, the Potawatomi tribe, who would be our closest competitors, or even the slot machines and pups we've had very little impact on. We have grown the market because it's an underserved market and we do that as a strategy. And I got asked the other day about why don't we try to get something on the strip. And I'm like, it's not an underserved market anymore. There's 63 Indian tribes in California with casinos. And this is a pretty mature market and the returns on investment here or subpar unless you do something like stations did with Durango, which was a neighborhood that was underserved, and they went in with a very good product and they're doing very well. But just about everything else in Las Vegas has not gotten a great return. And although we live here and our offices are here, we've kind of avoided it for that reason.

Very good. Thanks, guys. Appreciate that.

Thanks John.

Thank you. The last question we have comes from Chad Beynon of Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Hi Chad.

Good afternoon, Daniel, Lewis. Thanks for taking my question First, I just wanted to go back to Silver Slipper on one of your competitors' earnings calls, they talked about the extraordinary growth at Treasure Chest. And I believe historically, there were some markets between Silver Slipper and Treasure Chest that were battleground ZIP codes. Have you seen any impact since that property went from barge to land-based? And is that something that we should expect in the next couple of quarters? Thanks.

Yes. I actually went and looked at that. Treasure Chest is at the foot of the causeway that goes to Jefferson Parish from the North Shore Lake Pontchartrain. It's a pretty long drive. Our customers tend to be a little more from the eastern part of the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. And so they are doing much better in the land base than they did in the boat. Boat was a 30-year-old dump. But I think that the reason they were incentivized to do that, it's a little bit hidden. You have to dig a little bit to find it because it's overseen by the Racing Commission rather than the Gaming Commission. But the Churchill was able to put slot machines in off-track betting parlors and a lot of those are in Jefferson Parish that is near -- which is where Treasure Chest is. And so was it a year and a half ago, Boomtown and the West Bank, which was part of Pinnacle that was not used to run and Treasure Chest were both showing big revenue declines. And if you just looked at the numbers out of the Gaming Commission, you couldn't figure out what's going on. What's happened? Why are they down so much? And it was so much so that I asked one of our people to go down there and sniff around and find out what it was. He called back and he says, Churchill is snuck. I forget how many 50 slot machines in each of 10 off-track betting probably the historical racing machines, which is a Trojan horse for slot machine. And they were doing very well. In fact, I've heard some numbers that are very well. And Churchill kind of, I think, disguises it because they don't want people to understand what they're doing competitively. And they keep trying to figure out a way to do something similar in Slidel and the courts have turned them down. And so Treasure Chest built a bigger place, I think they're getting back. I would expect that they are getting back some of that off-track betting business from Churchill, because if you have a nicer land-based casino, why would you go to an OTB parlay with a handful of machines. And - but it's far enough away from us that it doesn't seem to be having any impact on us. I will tell you, the Hollywood casino near us has a new GM, who used to work for us, is a good guy, and he keeps coming out with aggressive promotions. And I think that's had a bigger impact on us. I don't know that they've all been successful. But after years of dealing with kind of suboptimal GMs, now Damn it, we have a good GM down the street from us. And so we're trying to up our management team as well. And I think that's a bigger impact than Treasure Chest.

Okay. Thank you very much, Dan. Lewis, quick last one. Just as we think about the free cash flow build in the next couple of years, 2025, will there be much higher maintenance CapEx or any project CapEx for the permanent in Waukegan? Or will that all be '26 and '27 based on where things currently stand with the lawsuit?

So maintenance CapEx traditionally is closer to $3 million, $4 million a year. It's not a giant number. With the new properties, maybe that number edges up a little bit, but it's still going to be a single-digit number, not $10 million or $15 million. You know, they are brand new. So most of what you would spend would be more on slot machines versus anything else. For the permanent casino, ask me again in a quarter. We've got that...

It depends on the timing. I mean if everything came together and you had the financing in June, you'd start spending money in July. But if it wakes - if it's September, you'd start spending money in October. So how much money we spend in calendar 2025 will depend on when we've been able to get Chamonix up and the bond market is right and everything comes together to get the funding for the permanent. But this is part of it. We watch this all the time. We have big investments in this company. And it's like managing the liquidity and looking at the spending and looking at the cash flow. And sometimes the answer doesn't fit calendar years. The answer is we won't start spending significant money on the permanent until we have the funding to complete the permanent. And we will get that funding when the markets are right and we can show good numbers to address the market right. And we have quite a bit of flexibility on when we start. And the same is true of Fort Wayne. We have a lot of flexibility if it ever happens.

And the other piece of that is maybe cash taxes. And with these two new properties open, we're not expecting to pay cash taxes here in 2024. And in fact, our NOL balance actually climbed with our 2023 financials or sorry, income tax returns being filed. So we went up from my gosh. I don't know was it $13 million or $14 million up to $27.5 million of NOLs. And so, we'll continue to benefit from that with these two large new assets with some pretty big D&A taxes.

I want to point out, a lot of people get focused on GAAP and you forget the fact that for tax purposes, when you build a new building, you get accelerated depreciation on an awful lot of the investment. So, we end up generating some pretty nice tax losses on these new properties, because it ends up - a lot of the depreciation gets to be front-end loaded.

Perfect. Thank you both. Appreciate it.

Thank you everybody, I apologize for the quarter, we will do better.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I will now hand the call back to Daniel Lee for closing remarks.

I think you said it, yes.

I think I said it. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that then concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.