Timothy Wilmott
Analyst · Stifel, Nicolaus
Thank you, Joe, and good morning to all who have joined us for our first quarter 2017 earnings conference call. With me here in our offices in Pennsylvania are our General Counsel, Carl Sottosanti; our Senior Vice President of Public Affairs, Eric Schippers; Penn's Treasurer, Justin Sebastiano; our Chief Financial Officer, B.J. Fair; and Chief Operating Officer, Jay Snowden. I'd like to begin by just characterizing our first quarter operating performance as very, very solid. I'm pleased to report that we exceeded our original guidance for the first quarter, EBITDA guidance by $17 million. And even our updated guidance by $4 million. That is exclusive of any cash-settled stock-based compensation charges. I'm also very pleased with the performance out in our operations. We continue to improve our EBITDA margins year-over-year. We increased it by 40 basis points. Just a little bit under 2 years ago, we got into new businesses, Penn Interactive Ventures and the VGT business in Illinois Prairie State Gaming. And through a number of tuck-in acquisitions over the past couple of years, we continue to show significant year-over-year growth in those 2 new business lines. Speaking of tuck-in acquisitions, I'm also pleased to report that late in the first quarter of this year, we announced a $44 million acquisition for 2 properties in Tunica, Mississippi, Bally's and Resorts, that we're getting at a very attractive multiple pre-synergy, it's under a 4 and we do expect synergies to take that number even lower. And the good news is we've made great progress with the Mississippi regulators, and we expect to close that transaction next Monday, May 1.
I'd also like to highlight out in Las Vegas, Nevada, where we are with Tropicana. We are completing our Phase 1 $40 million capital program since we purchased the property just under 2 years ago. This summer, we're opening up Robert Irvine's Public House, an upscale tavern with 260 seats plus another quick service food concept, and I do want to reiterate that we are going to evaluate the impact of these new offerings before we commit any further capital to Tropicana Las Vegas, and we're very excited about having these 2 new offerings opening up in the third quarter of this year.
I'd like to summarize our current performance and where we are at this time, as we are into the second quarter of 2017. And our message of being a company that's generating a lot of strong cash flow is evident in our first quarter performance. We were able to delever, return capital to our shareholders and make smart accretive tuck-in acquisitions. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jay to give some perspective on property performance and some specific insights into Charles Town Jamul and what we're seeing with Las Vegas trends.