Earnings Labs

Golden Entertainment, Inc. (GDEN)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 3, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Golden Entertainment Second Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal remarks. Please note that this conference call is being recorded today August 3, 2016. Now I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jacques Cornet with ICR. Please go ahead, sir.

Jacques Cornet

Management

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. By now everyone should have access to our second quarter 2016 earnings release, which can be found on the company website at www.goldenent.com, under the Investors section. Before we begin our formal remarks, need to remind everyone, discussion today will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements, which are usually identified by the use of words such as will, expect, believe, anticipate, should, or other similar phrases, are not guarantees of future performance. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements and therefore you should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on them. We refer all of you to the risk factors in our recent SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K as updated by our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results, financial condition, and other forward-looking statements. During today’s call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which management uses and believes are useful in evaluating the company’s operating performance. Financial results before August 2015 did not include results of Sartini Gaming. Sartini Gaming was merged with a subsidiary of the company on July 31, 2015 and its financial results were included beginning in August, 2015. Because of the merger, management believes it is helpful to provide comparisons on an unaudited combined basis where the results of the company are combined with the pre-merger results of Sartini Gaming for the relevant period. We have provided that information in the press release issued earlier today. The combined presentation does not conform to GAAP or the SEC’s rules for pro forma presentation. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in our second quarter 2016 earnings release. Hosting the call today, we have Blake Sartini, who serves as Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer of the company; and Matt Flandermeyer, who serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Management will provide prepared remarks after which we will open the call to questions. With that I’ll turn the call over to Blake.

Blake Sartini

Management

Thank you, Jacq, and good afternoon. We appreciate you joining us and welcome you to our second quarter call. Since we last spoke, we continued to execute on our strategic initiatives during the quarter, because our second acquisition in Montana, and we opened two new taverns in Las Vegas, and are now operating 51 locations in the state. We completed the first phase of upgrades and renovations at our Rocky Gap property. We declared a special cash dividend of $1.71 per eligible share related to the Jamul Note sale, which was paid on July 14, 2016 to eligible shareholders of record as of June 30, 2016. Finally, we filed a universal S-3 shelf registration statement with the SEC for sales of securities of up to $150 million. Together, these activities all advance our strategy to expand our core markets by scaling our leadership position in distributed gaming and taking advantage of organic growth opportunities in our casino portfolio. Executing on this strategy is central to our goal, enhancing shareholder value, and positioning the company for long-term success. Overall, performance was in line with our expectations. For the second quarter, net revenues were $102.6 million, up 16.5% compared to the combined net revenues from the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA during the quarter was $13.3 million, up 12.2% compared to the combined adjusted EBITDA for the same quarter of last year. The improved results were primarily driven by the following four items. One, in our tavern portfolio, same-store revenue increased 9.3%. And in addition, we have added three new locations, when compared to the prior year period. Two, our Nevada Rausch showed positive signs and third-party accounts. However, we did see major – some disruption on our major same-store portfolio. Three, the addition of our first Montana acquisition for the…

Matt Flandermeyer

Management

Thanks, Blake. Before getting into the result, let me remind you that the financial results of second quarter last year did not include the results of Sartini Gaming. Sartini Gaming was merged with a subsidiary of the company on July 31, 2015. These financial results were included in the beginning in August of 2015. Because of the merger, we believe it is helpful to provide comparisons on an unaudited combined basis, where we include the results of the company with the pre-merger results of the Sartini Gaming for the relevant period. We have provided that information in the press release issued earlier today. Turning to the quarter, net revenues for three months ended June 30, 2016, were $102.6 million, an increase of 16.5% compared to the combined results from the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the current quarter was $13.3 million, compared to $11.9 million combined adjusted EBITDA in the prior year. Turning to our segments, distributed gaming net revenues during the second quarter was $77.8 million, up 23.2% compared to the combined amount for the same period last year. Distributed gaming adjusted EBITDA was $11.4 million versus a combined $10.1 million for the prior year period, an increase of 12.3%, adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.6%, compares to 16% combined margin for the second quarter of 2015. Despite same gross store revenue that was flattish, impacted margin was due to soft results from our grocery store operations within our Nevada operation. Our result changes involving 51 locations created disruption including consumer brand confusion and closers during transition. In regards to the two recently acquired Montana distributed gaming operations, we entered a market consisting of approximately 16,000 gaming devices and $380 million in gaming revenue. As a result, we currently have approximately 18% market share of gaming devices and 15%…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. [Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Howard Rosencrans with Value Advisory.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

Hi guys, looks like a very nice quarter, congratulations.

Blake Sartini

Management

Thanks, Howard.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

A few different questions. So you’ve talked about the headwinds on the supermarket part in the distributed gaming side, and I’ll leap into the next part of that question. And you had despite that I guess from the strength in the tavern business, 9% plus comp, we through together distributed gaming, the strong comp in tavern, you had negative leverage in the distributed gaming business as the adjusted EBITDA increased less than the revenues. So is that a function of the headwinds in the distributed gaming or really heightened investment in Montana?

Matt Flandermeyer

Management

Howard, this is Matt. Thanks for the question. I would say that the majority of it was the headwinds in the grocery same stores, but there was some just as far as we integrated in Montana results as well.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

Okay. And is that comp – I apologize if you said this. Is that competition to where the supermarket situation are abiding?

Blake Sartini

Management

It’s not a competitive issue, Howard. I think Matt outlined at his comments, unique to this quarter year-over-year, there was significant ownership and brand disruption which was out of our control essentially.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

Great.

Blake Sartini

Management

So I wouldn’t categorize that as an ongoing competitive issue.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

Okay. Is that situation now behind us?

Blake Sartini

Management

There will be some tail to it probably – I would say through the end of the year, but I would say it’s mostly this quarter year-over-year.

Matt Flandermeyer

Management

Mostly this quarter year-over-year.

Blake Sartini

Management

So there may be a small tail going forward.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

Okay. And the second question regarding the casinos, you commented regarding the Nevada casinos. Again, if I got this right that there was a competitive issue with the Nevada casinos, despite that it looked like you had a fabulous quarter in casinos broadly. You made a comment about an 890 bps pickup, I thought that was specific to Nevada and it sounds like Rocky Gap was great as well. So I know if you could just clear me up on that please? Thank you.

Blake Sartini

Management

All right, I think that’s accurate. I think your interpretation of both of those comments on the casinos is accurate. Specifically how were the small competitors in the Pahrump market, Nye County market opened in March of last year. It was approximately 200 machine smaller location and we’ve laughed that entry into the market.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

Okay.

Blake Sartini

Management

That along with our approach to focusing on our operating efficiencies as well as some of these capital investments that have been made early on in this year to enhance those properties are beginning to show results.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

Great. And last question and then I’ll get back in queue. Any thoughts on providing guidance for the full year or guidance at some future point maybe for 2017 or what is your thoughts on providing guidance? Thank you.

Blake Sartini

Management

Look, that’s a good question. We do talk about that internally, I think our position at this point is not to provide specific guidance until we mature. And so I think more of a – I guess if we get a bit larger, we’ll start to consider little bit more, but at the moment, we’re not considering specific guidance.

Howard Rosencrans

Analyst

Okay, thank you. Great job.

Blake Sartini

Management

Thank you, Howard.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Mr. Sartini, there appears to be no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to you for any closing remarks.

Blake Sartini

Management

Thank you. Thank you again for joining us. We look forward to updating everyone on our continued progress as we report our third quarter results in November. Thank you, again.

Operator

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, this does concludes today’s conference. We appreciate your participation.