Earnings Labs

Good Times Restaurants Inc. (GTIM)

Q1 2022 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 3, 2022

$1.30

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Good Times Restaurants, Inc. Fiscal 2022, First Quarter Earnings Call. By now, everyone should have access to the company's earnings release, which is available in the investors section of the company's website. As a reminder, a part of today's discussion will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are also subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect and therefore investors should not place undue reliance on them, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements to reflect the events or circumstances that might arise after this call. Such risks and uncertainties include among other things, the market price of the company's stock prevailing from time-to-time, the nature of other investment opportunities presented to the company, the company's financial performance and its cash flows from operations, general economic conditions, which could adversely affect the company's results of operations and cash flows. These risks also increase such factors and the impact of the pandemic on our results of operations, financial condition, and prospects which may vary depending on the duration and extent of the pandemic and the impact of federal, state, and local governments or actions, and customer behavior in response to the pandemic, the impact in duration of staffing constraints at our restaurants, the uncertain nature of current restaurant development plans, and the ability to implement those plans and integrate new restaurants, delays in developing and opening new restaurants because of weather, local permitting or other reasons, increased competition, cost increases or shortages in raw food products, and other matters discussed under the Risk Factor section of the Good Times annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 28th, 2021, filed with the SEC and other filings with the SEC. Lastly, during today's call, the company will discuss non - GAAP measures which they believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered an isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP and reconciliation to comparable GAAP measures available in our earnings release. And now I would like to turn the call over to Ryan. Please go ahead, sir.

Ryan Zink

Management

Thank you, Selena. And thank you all for joining us on the call today. As saline mentioned, you should have access to our earnings release and quarterly ten Q filings. I wanted to begin today by discussing our progress on hiring a leader for our Good Times concept to follow Scott LeFever, who has led the brands operations nearly since its inception. An individual named Don Stack joined the company on January 3rd and has been going through a tailored on-boarding and orientation plan to expose him to all aspects of the Good Times brand and provide for a seamless leadership transition. Don brings with him a combination of both limited service and full-service leadership experience, which will bring a fresh perspective to the Good Times concept. Most recently, Don has been a regional manager of Firebirds International, where he supervised the market exceeding $30 million in revenue. And prior to his tenure with Firebirds, Don was the Vice President of Operations for the parent company, overseeing a 93 restaurant portfolio of restaurants, including the Fox & Hound sports bar concept. Don and I have worked together at prior restaurant concepts, including Fox & Hound, and share a vision for delivery for developing our restaurant leaders into shrewd operators and business people. Don officially will take the reins on Monday as Senior Vice President of Operations for Good Times. Scott has generously offered to remain with us through March 31st to be a resource for me and for Don, and to provide any assistance needed, in creating a truly effective transition. Additionally, we continue to advance our search for leader for the finance and accounting organization to add to our team. Our results for this quarter demonstrate what others in the industry have discussed. Namely the impact of the high…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Amar Sheth, with Bellwood Partners please proceed?

Amar Sheth

Analyst

I hope you're well you for good management and talks inflationary environment. I guess my question was really more of a medium-term question in terms of, how you guys are thinking about unit growth and the balance between maintaining kind of your strong capital position to be able to grow Bad Daddy's

Ryan Zink

Management

Sure. Thanks for the compliments. I think as I've discussed on prior calls, part of our position relative to managing the capital of the enterprises, we were not interested in taking on large loads of debt for development, and we're primarily interested in developing new restaurants out of operating cash flow. Certainly the current inflationary environment has posed some challenges there but we're still generating significant cash flow, and I think what that means for future growth is still moderate growth. I think we had originally anticipated a couple of restaurants this year with potential acceleration next year. I do think there is the opportunity for us to open more than two restaurants net in fiscal 2023, although we're not providing official guidance on that. A lot will depend upon the operating environment between now and then, pipeline development, as well as just general market conditions. But I think the cash flow that we would generate would enable us to grow at mid-single-digits without compromising our capital position.

Amar Sheth

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And then I did have a follow-up, I guess.

Ryan Zink

Management

Sure.

Amar Sheth

Analyst

I just thought on the Good Times brand, there with some reporting in in the past about a potential M&A pathway with the Good Times brand. Are you guys considering that again in the future?

Ryan Zink

Management

We at this time are -- yeah we are this time are happy with the performance of both of our brands, and are in a position where our desire is to continue to operate and manage both of them.

Amar Sheth

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Sheth. [Operator Instruction] The next question comes from Brian London. Please proceed.

Brian London

Analyst

Just a quick complement. I appreciate that you guys are keeping a conservative capital structure. I like to see the old -- the staying away from debt and a strong balance sheet. I visited some restaurants out in Colorado, the Good Times one I just had a general question. It reminded me a little bit of Dairy Queen. Now I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts on maybe different platforms like expanding it in a smaller footprint-type way. Just general curiosity.

Ryan Zink

Management

Yes, so I think our product line, I'd say I can understand where you'd see some similarities there between those 2 concepts. I think our brand position really revolves around, I'd say more of a premium product than Dairy Queen. We use all natural beef, all-natural chicken, and we take a lot of pride in that. Now that being said, I think our facilities and we have a couple of different footprints and I'm not sure which restaurant you may have visited. Some of them have, approximately 8 of them have dining rooms, and the rest are a version of a double drive-through or potentially single drive-through format that are very small, anywhere from 850 to call it maybe 1,100 square feet. And so the actual box that the Good Times concept goes in can be very, very flexible. The constraints around the drive-through concept are more around kind of permitting land acquisition and the ability to stack the right number of cars in that footprint. That said, I think our facilities, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, tend to have some deferred maintenance, particularly around signage and exterior maintenance and we're working to remedy that and reinvesting some capital in those to better align the physical plant with the premium nature of the actual product we serve. And we think that by doing that we're going to, again, that's part of our plan to not just generate long-term sales and value through unit growth, but through reinvesting in the existing assets and driving organic sales growth in our existing store base.

Brian London

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Ryan Zink

Management

You're welcome. Thank you for the questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you Mr. London. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'll pass the conference back to Ryan Zink for closing remarks.

Ryan Zink

Management

Thank you again, Selena. Though not as strong as last year's operating results, we're pleased with the results of this first quarter of fiscal 2022. In spite of the very challenging cost environment that we currently face. I want to give a shout out to our operations teams as they continue to provide exceptional hospitality and service, and in general run great restaurants. Also, thank you again to our entire team that executes both of our brands, including the restaurant operations teams, our support center staff, and the great leaders that we have throughout our organization. With that, we will conclude today's call. I thank you all for joining us today.