Earnings Labs

The Marcus Corporation (MCS)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 21, 2011

$19.22

+0.29%

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

-0.30%

1 Week

-3.57%

1 Month

-18.43%

vs S&P

-2.25%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Marcus Corporation Fourth Quarter Earnings conference call. My name is Dana and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Joining us today are Greg Marcus, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Doug Neis, Chief Financial Officer of The Marcus Corporation. At this time, I would like to turn the program over to Mr. Neis for his opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Doug Neis

Analyst

Thank you, and welcome to our fiscal 2011 fourth quarter conference call. As usual, I do need to begin by stating that we plan on making a number of forward-looking statements on our call today. Our forward-looking statements could include but not be limited to statements about our future revenues and earnings expectations, our future RevPAR, occupancy rates, and room rate expectations for our hotels and resorts division, our expectations about the quality, quantity and audience appeal of film products expected to be made available to us in the future, our expectations about the future trends of the business group and leisure travel industry, and in our markets, our expectations and plans regarding growth in the number and type of our properties and facilities, expectations regarding various non-operating line items on our earnings statements, and our expectations regarding future capital expenditures. Of course, our actual results could differ materially from those projected or suggested by our forward-looking statements. Factors, risks and uncertainties which could impact our ability to achieve our expectations are included in the Risk Factors section of our 10-K and 10-Q filings which can be obtained from the SEC or the Company. We post all Regulation G disclosures when applicable on our website at www.marcuscorp.com. So that behind us, let’s talk about our fiscal 2011 fourth quarter and year-end results. I’m certainly pleased with the fourth quarter results that we reported this morning with Marcus Theaters rebounding from a very tough third quarter to leave the way for a solid 15% increase in overall net earnings compared to last year. And when we look at our year-end results, well our theaters overall has difficult year compared to the record results in the prior two years. We’re able to partially offset that with very strong year-over-year improvement from our…

Greg Marcus

Analyst

Thanks Doug. I’ll begin my remarks today with our Theater Division. When we were last together I was trying to explain why we had just completed one of the more disappointing fiscal third quarters in recent memory clearly. The results of that poor holiday and early winter film season had a significant negative impact on our overall fiscal 2011 results that we report today. But in business where hopes bring eternal every single Friday with the latest Hollywood film release, I’m pleased it’s the day I can put those fourth and third quarter results behind us. And talk to you after a strong fourth quarter and good start to our new fiscal year. Once again film product has proven to be the most important driver of our results. And the list of fourth quarter films and early fiscal 2012, first quarter films that we mentioned in our press release have brought smiles back to our hard working theater division staff. Granted those are tired smiles right now as it has been a very busy week for our staff. Thanks to a record breaking midnight shows and weekend box office totals from our favorite wizard Harry Porter, plus plenty of hot weather to encourage our customers to escape the heat in their favorite Marcus Theater. I am sure the rest of fiscal 2012, we’ll still have a shares of high and lows but it is nice to end last year on a high note to begin the New Year with a strong start. We still have several additional films this summer that could do well for us and we are encouraged by the number of releases currently scheduled for our upcoming fall second quarter. So since Doug has already gone overall the fourth quarter and year-end numbers with you, I’d like…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And we’ll go first to David Loeb with R W. Baird. Please go ahead. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: Good morning gentlemen.

Greg Marcus

Analyst

Good morning David. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: I just have a couple. Greg, I appreciate your candor about looking for investment opportunities and how uncertain that is. It’s something that was mentioned a couple of times in press release, particularly in the hotel division, and also in the summary. Are you looking to acquire whole ownership or are you looking to invest slivers to run the management platform and how would you describe that acquisition hunt and what are you seeing out there as opportunities?

Greg Marcus

Analyst

Yes. I said it jokily but yes David, we can acquire properties. We have the balance sheet capacity to do that. We can put sliver equity to work, the way I view it is as our job is to maximize three [ph] in the hotel division, we got to maximize the cash flow coming in. We need to maximize the assets that we have, and we need to maximize the intellectual property if it comes from being an owner as developer and operator that we’ve accumulated through our 50 years in the business. So to that end, if we’re going to buy something with sliver equity we can do that or buy it to own it or buy as with other investors. There is multiple opportunities that we’re pursuing. My goal is to just maximize all three of those paths. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: It’s a pretty competitive market for acquisitions particularly in perhaps the top 10 markets since you’re focused more on markets 10 through 50?

Greg Marcus

Analyst

I would say so, but we look at stuff in the top 10 markets, when we see them but you’re right, they are competitive. And that should always – prices are quite strong or priced for not making many mistakes or the asset quality isn’t great, I think you’re seeing that we all see that there is been a lot of holding on and frankly I can’t in a way fault the lenders for holding on that. I think they probably have the right strategy for themselves, I prefer that they didn’t invested buy [ph] but I’ve seen the stats, you know them I think I’ve read new research that percentage of the high quality assets that have been bought by the – it hasn’t bought by the lease with their currency has been pretty significant. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: Yes, for sure. And as you look in the theater division for acquisition activities, would you say that this is a time in the cycle that is good for those kind of opportunistic acquisitions or is this really a time when owners are more likely to hold on and ride out what could be good times for at least the next several months?

Greg Marcus

Analyst

Well, until this lasts with the Harry Porter I might say, yes mostly but you get a (inaudible) like Harry Porter, and it makes people a lot more comfortable. I think that we are – this is one and the cycle in the theater business, if you could explain it to me I would love to know, I mean they are really tough to predict because it’s so product driven. There is a macro environment that I think that we see and we talked about it. It’s interesting as we’ve seen leisure business pickup and people are traveling for leisure, computer games haven’t been as robust as they were when the economy was going the way it was so it is (inaudible) from a macro perspective. But that we look again its broad thing, it’s for transitions, businesses and transition. It’s for – there may be potential opportunities where people don’t have the ability to finance additional deployment and that its coming, its coming fast, you were in the last major operator to put it out there, there is probably one other significant one but its otherwise been everybody in the past is done. So and make no mistake about it, I mean you need to have financial capacity to do it. It’s not just on the backs of the studios. So there potentially could be opportunities there as we look to it, but I can’t give you any predictions. We just keep hanging around the ribbons about the best I can say. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: Yes, and eventually they will come to you. And have you look at those investment opportunities in the return potential for them. How does that compare to looking at investing in your stock at the current level?

Doug Neis

Analyst

I expected that question David and but its heck of a question and we’ve been wrestling with ourselves. In the recent time (inaudible) we’ve been dealing with. And I think – we take a pretty conservative approach in terms of once we have a pretty good idea of how our quarter is shaping up, how our year was shaping up. I stay out of the market. So we’ve had kind of this watch as our stock has performed certainly at levels that we think are attractive. On the other hand, we just shared with your some pretty ambitious capital goals and some capital plan including all that that the corners [ph] project in Brookfield and when all said done in $100 million. And so we’ve – and we feel good about the opportunities that are in front of us in both of those divisions plus with that project. So we think we have some very attractive ways to invest our funds and I guarantee you, we’ll constantly have that internal discussion with among ourselves and with our Board and watch to our stock prices but right now we look at all the capital plans ahead of us. We’re excited about those. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: And given that context Doug, how do you look at the dividend, are you considering dividend increase as another opportunity to look for shareholders or do you see more benefit from continuing this investment term?

Doug Neis

Analyst

Yes, well and certainly that’s another topic that literally every quarter we have a discussion about that with our Board. And we’ve kept this dividend as we’ve gone through this last couple of tough years in the hotel business, we’ve held the dividend firm. Its yielding an 3% plus range right now, and as you know, there have been times when we’ve looked, we’ve done, we did the special dividend a handful of years ago and so yes, we do view dividend policy as another way of potentially providing value to our shareholders and it’s in an exact same discussion that we have when we’re talking about share repurchases and the capital. We’ve invested but all three of them into the pot and we talk about it every quarter. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: That makes perfect sense. I’ll come back in the queue to ask some additional questions (inaudible). Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We’ll pause for a moment. And your next question is from the line of Mike Rindos from Rodman & Renshaw. Please go ahead. Mike Rindos – Rodman & Renshaw: Hi guys.

Greg Marcus

Analyst

Hi Mike, how you’re doing. Mike Rindos – Rodman & Renshaw: Doing great, Greg you made an interesting comment about before about the theater owners and their upgrade to digital cinema and there is a financial resources on the part of the theater owners to make that happen it’s not just on the back of the studios. Do you think we’re coming into a period here where the smaller theater chains who may not be able to fund this upgrade, might be looking to sell some theaters and might that be part of your acquisition strategy to capitalize on that front?

Greg Marcus

Analyst

Yes, that was why I was implying, we’ll have to see, we don’t know yet, the heat is not been turned up yet because it’s still a film. So but I just was reading the news, I can’t pay the details with but my (inaudible) technical or something just happened this week or there is a big signal that film is really going by the way side. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. We’re not going to wake up and still going tomorrow. But there is still lot of screens out there that’s doing this film. It’s going away. And so people are going to have to make the change. And some will even want their investment in it and some theaters are going to probably go away at it, it’s not our situation, we’ve been always been very good about maintaining the quality of our circuit and calling out the stuff that doesn’t, that’s absolute. Quite interestingly we had a conversation – I was having a conversation today with my wife and we’re talking about the first – we still own the first theater that my grandfather ever developed, at the Ripon, Wisconsin. She said what about the next one? I said I couldn’t tell you two through probably 20. We don’t have those, have the original because it’s important and make a statement about it as a company but the business we don’t – we continued to make sure that we’re on the right place with our assets. Mike Rindos – Rodman & Renshaw: Okay. Additionally could you give us some further color on booking trends for the hotel through this summer?

Doug Neis

Analyst

Summer is looking very good to us right now, Mike. As we mentioned in the prepared remarks that advanced booking pace and I think I mentioned this actually in last quarter, we were ahead – when I last checked we were ahead for every month in this coming new fiscal year that we’re in, fiscal ‘012, its possibly we’ve overtaken that one, now I haven’t asked. And so the pace itself where it occurs by. It’s all relative and that it’s still not back to where it was in a pre-recession times and that’s evident by some of the –couple of numbers that Greg shared with you. But yes, overall the pace is continuing to improve. And one of the things that we’re still noticing, the group business is that when a conference occurs or that events happens and Greg used to send three of us to it, now two of us go, I mean that’s seem being refused with lots of companies, making those kinds of decisions. So certainly the size, there was a time when we might fill up Grand Geneva with four groups. Today, if you go there, you might see 10, 12 names on the Board. And so I probably get there. And so it’s just – we’re just dealing with it and this is a different environment but overall pace is improving. Summer is prime time for us simply in our markets and we’re pretty encouraged by how it’s going so far. Mike Rindos – Rodman & Renshaw: Okay, great. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is a follow-up question from David Loeb, R W. Baird. Please go ahead. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: Thanks. On the hotel side, can you talk a little bit about where do you see rate growth potential? Do you have more groups in the mix other than the fourth quarter comparison of course? Do you have more group in the mix that allows you to raise trending rates a bit. Is it more likely to be just less discount than in the mix. How do you see that going forward over the next couple of quarters?

Doug Neis

Analyst

Really both David, the trends in that individual business travelers, so I mean if you find to provide business into the two groups, a group business and then in the individual business traveler that particular segment has been particularly strong in some area [ph]. So a lot of our corporate business, lot of it has been quite strong. Now those tend to be – a lot of those tend to be at negotiated rates, contractual rates and so those don’t – those rates don’t just change overnight, I mean we do one year deals, two deals, and every one of them is different, some of them are dollar amounts, some of them are might be percentage tied to our bar rate might happen to be. So while it’s not an easy answer, the fact is that the trend of the individual business traveler is actually been may be the strongest right now and in order to get us the rest of the way, the rest is primarily with Greg alluded to in terms of that share shift where we just leisure customer sell very strong but very price sensitive and yes, by getting the compression, by getting more of the group business booked into the property and then supplementing with this individual business traveler, it does allows us to provide less rooms. And we don’t have to be more picky and that have to offer as many rooms to the discount channels. And that’s how we see one of the major ways of getting it up.

Greg Marcus

Analyst

And there are other issues, when you’re in with the consumer has got smarter, I haven’t asked the guy, lately what’s going on but in terms of this one point, but one of the things that we saw happening when things started going in sideways was, as we got into the discount channels, even our group and our negotiating corporate, they would say – they would book around it, they would ignore it because if that was a higher rate than they could see on an Expedia or Hotels.com. They would just book around the table already. So it’s one more in those channels it has to lead negative way to the other channels of our business. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: That makes a lot of sense. On the theater side, you’ve got some big movies this summer clearly with Harry Porter and Captain America and few others. What’s the tradeoff for those kinds of blockbusters and the film cost versus the volume variance that helps your margins. I assume those are pretty high cost films for you?

Doug Neis

Analyst

Yes, they tend to be. It’s something that we really are vigilant about. It’s been a challenge because Hollywood is the hurt animal in the cage and they need to try and find out as these sell through a DVD market is disappearing on and is evidenced by even Netflix had a recent move sort of sent a signal that the DVD is going on the way of the dinosaur that we – I am telling it’s going to happen tomorrow, but it is happening. And so their margins have been impacted. They’ve built their model on DVD selling business that doesn’t exist. So they are looking for ways to get money. So there is that constant pressure, but the other side of it is this is a very important window for the whole business except the value of the film. It gets people talking about it and as I’ve said before on any given weekend, they can get 30 million people off their couches and into a movie theater, that’s something that people like to talk about on Monday morning. They’re not going to talk about how many people sat in your couch all weekend and watched something. They’re going to talk about people got up and left. And so it makes it a special environment and special window that’s very important. So we need to earn a return on the investment and the studious know that. And so there is quality accretive tension that apparently fits those numbers but yes, the film prices go up but then we have – but we see other, volume increases coming in for too. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: No, that’s actually really helpful. And finally on some of the initiatives within the theaters like the digital which of course is I guess a small increase in operating costs rather to capital but also on your investments in the food and beverage options and the like. What kind of consumer reaction are you getting and what kind of return expectations do you have for those cost increases or capital spending?

Greg Marcus

Analyst

I think we’re getting very good consumer reaction, and the truth is we’re still in little bit in R&D as we figure it out but there is Zaffiro’s that we did in theater really has guided. If we do these, we do some – one of those one question surveys which says how much would you refer us to a friend or colleague and we score off the charts in Zaffiro’s. It really is been very impressive how much people really like the product. And the Big Screen Bistro’s have been very well received. And so we can – we want to thing to draw them and simply – but we got a gap and we expect the same return on our capital that we would in really, anything we would really do (inaudible). And we think it will as we work to in sort of as we flushed up the concepts and learn from them. We constantly keep learning, I mean in HotZone [ph] Zaffiro’s taking its time to learn how to maximize that box, we’ve got to delivery, we’ve added a The Dessert program, we’ve added all sorts of try to built – we built the lunch business. So it’s interesting because they are not traditional restaurant locations. So for us the challenges is to go out and get people to come there, but we do a significant amount of business that’s not even slightly related. We have further opportunity to get theater customers better.

Doug Neis

Analyst

And you also in your question David mentioned the digital and from a digital perspective, we’ve first of all to this one time to get this deal done because we were again very concerned about the economics. We didn’t want this to hurt us, one of the reasons why we wanted someone else’s money making this investment and so we weren’t tying up our capital on a project that wouldn’t have a traditional return than we could just compare to some of these things – F&B [ph] things, that we’re just talking about. We will see improved, some improved operating cost on labor costs on the other hand we will see increased maintenance cost. And the real wildcard about digital in terms of a return perspective probably is the alternative programming. The 3-D would be certainly you have to have digital first for you can do more 3-D. So it certainly give us a platform to really do some more 3-D, but the alternate programming is probably real wildcard that it did, we can’t pro forma, we don’t know exactly where that’s headed but certainly a lot in our industry believe, one of them that there will be greater content available to us, more content available to us as a result of everyone going digital. And so that could be the return element of that particular relatively small investment in our part as you know. David Loeb – Robert W. Baird & Co: Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

At this time it appears there are no other questions. I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. Neis for any additional or closing comments.

Doug Neis

Analyst

Thank you. I certainly want to thank everybody once again for joining us today. We would look forward to talking to you once again in September, just a couple of months from now when we release our fiscal 2012 first quarter results. Thank you and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

That concludes today’s call. You may disconnect your lines at any time. Enjoy your day.