Eric Langan
Analyst · Argand Capital. Please go ahead
Thank you, Gary. Good afternoon, everyone. Please turn to Slide 4. Second quarter results continue to show strong growth. We generated record revenues of $37.4 million, up 14% year-over-year. GAAP EPS was a loss of $0.28 but keep in mind this includes the accrual for the recently announced New York Fair Labor Standard Act legal settlement. Excluding that and some other items, non-GAAP EPS was $0.50 per share, that's up from $0.47 per share in the first quarter, and it's up 11% year-over-year. The quarter continued to see improved core operating margins in both our night clubs and Bombshells restaurant/bar segment. We saw another solid increase in adjusted EBITDA which reflects our cash generating power. Monthly [ph] report that we are making progress sort of expanding distribution of our robust energy drink. We have spent $1.9 million buying shares in the open market in the first half of fiscal 2015. To-date, we have brought back about 2% of the shares that were outstanding at the end of the last fiscal year. Please turn to Slide 5. As a result we continue to be ontrack for a strong fiscal 2015, halfway through the year, total revenues are $75 million, that's up 19%. Non-GAAP EPS is $0.96, that's up 23% and adjusted EBITDA is $20 million, that's also up about 23%. Please turn to Slide 6. Revenue growth was driven by higher traffic and a net addition of two units. New clubs and restaurants added $4.4 million, that includes the full quarter of Rick's Cabaret Odessa and a nearly full quarter of Down in Texas Saloon in Austin. It also reflects three Bombshells opened over the past years, they are only two Bombshells in the year ago quarter. Same store sales were up more than 2%. As favorable as the quarter was, growth was held back to some degree by bad weather in March, particularly for two weekends in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where we 11 locations, and our two Manhattan clubs also had very difficult comparisons to a year ago when we had the pro-football championship player here in New York City for the first time. Please turn to Slide 7. For the purpose of this discussion, we are going to using our non-GAAP operating margin calculation; this excludes the accrual and some other items. In the second quarter we maintained our 25% of non-GAAP margin that we saw in the first quarter, this is lower than a year ago but you will see from the slide that the second quarter of 2014 had a particularly high operating margin. In addition, the 25% level we experienced in the first two quarters of this fiscal year is greater than three out of the last four quarters. This reflects higher revenues, elimination of unprofitable adult clubs, and the growing performance of Bombshells. In terms of our expenses, I'd like to note a few items. Cost of goods was a little higher as a percentage of revenues, primarily due to more restaurant food sales. Insurance declined due to our new contract, rent plus interest which is how we measure our cost of occupancy fell, that's due to the significant reduction of debt in the fiscal 2014 fourth quarter. The year ago quarter also included temporary higher rent at Rick's Cabaret in New York. The FLSA accrual totaled $10.3 million pretax or $0.65 per share net of tax. This represents our best estimate at the present time of the total cost of the settlement what we announced April 1. As a result of this settlement, legal cost were up year-over-year. Please turn to Slide 8, in addition to the higher non-GAAP earnings, our second quarter performance resulted in more than 11% year-over-year increase in adjusted EBITDA to more than $10 million. Please turn to Slide 9, our balance sheet remains solid. Compared to the end of the first quarter, assets and long term debt increased a little, that's primarily due to the Down in Texas acquisition offset by paying off the last of our Tootsie's debt. At 14%, Tootsie's was our most expensive debt. Paying it off should free up approximately $4 million in cash on an annualized basis. The change in equity reflects the Fair Labor Standard Act accrual, partially offset by the core profits. As I mentioned on the last quarters call, we continue to obtain new financing and refinancing from commercial banks at attractive rates ranging from 5% to 6%. This is significant for three reasons; in the past it was difficult for us to get any commercial bank financing at all, thus we had to pay on debt in most cases exceeded the 5% to 6% range. We are finding we are able to use unencumbered real estate value to collaterize these bank loans. Please turn to Slide 10, looking at our new location schedule in the second quarter we've added Down in Texas and the third quarter we acquired the Seville Club in Minneapolis as previously announced. Please turn to Slide 11, our Nightclub segment consisted of 38 adult clubs and two night clubs in the second quarter. We had another good period in the business; revenues were up more than 2% close to $32 million. Unit count declined slightly due to previously announced closing of underperforming units. Reported operating income declined due to their FLSA accrual. Excluding that adjusted operating income increased 8%. In addition, margin expanded to 32.6% of revenues from 30.9%. As I mentioned, we issued a quite Club in Minneapolis, this is another good solid club that would expand our presence in an existing market. The Seville Club expands our share of the attractive Minneapolis market, enables us to own three of the top locations. Subsidiaries there already own Rick's Cabaret Minneapolis and the Downtown Cabaret, two of our top revenue generating clubs. We anticipate Seville will be accretive to earnings as was Down in Texas. I will talk more about club acquisitions within the context of our capital allocation strategy in a few minutes. Please turn to Slide 12, we are very proud to report Bombshells' second quarter as a segment. Revenues increased more than three-fold to $5 million. This reflects the five units we have today versus two in the year ago quarter. Overall, our target continues to be an average of 60,000 per week per store, or a little more than $3 million annually. Looking at operating margins, that expanded to close to 12% in the second quarter, that's up from 9% in the previous quarter and about breakeven in the year ago quarter. As revenues continue to build and training costs subside, we intend to anticipate continued margin expansion. As I noted in previous call, Bombshell's having created unsolicited interest in franchising. Please turn to Slide 13, we are making progress towards expanding distribution of our robust energy drink. There are four recent developments; one, we launched a distribution program in Florida in April with Southern Wine & Spirits. Southern is the country's largest wine and spirits distributor and operates in 35 states. Two, we are negotiating a manufacturing agreement to significantly lower the cost of product, as we mentioned before we currently import robust from the UK. Three, robust is in the process of launching a fourth flavor, pineapple; this has been requested as a mixer by our on premise bar customers. Remember robust target markets are bars and restaurants, not mass market per say. Four, we reached an exclusive agreement with Legends at Toyota Stadium in Dallas to serve robust. Toyota Stadium is the home of FC Dallas which has been growing in popularity. We continue to believe in the robust opportunity, this is particularly so in light of the fact that distributors are losing Red Bull and Monster Energy Drink. Please turn to Slide 14, because of our confidence in the business as well as the significant undervaluation of our shares we have continued to buy back stock in the open market. For the first six months of the year we have spent $1.9 million to buy back more than 190,000 shares of stock. We have close to $7 million in remaining Board authorization. We will continue to focus cash flow on buying back shares. RCI has generated approximately $15 million of free cash flow for the year for the past few years. At operating cash flow less maintenance CapEx and patent tax excluding onetime items, this represents about 13% free cash flow at our current market capital before any upside from organic growth, this is significantly above the after-tax yields on any of our debt and we think it is a compelling value. By buying back our only shares, shareholders get to own more of the assets that we already know in light without any additional risk. Based on that it perfectly makes sense to buy back shares until we reached a higher $15 a per share which represents about 10% free cash flow yield. I want to emphasize we are not abandoning future acquisitions of restaurants, however to justify doing anything new returns treated value must be significantly above or we can get from simply buying back our own shares. As market conditions dictate however, there may be times when we deviate from this capital allocation plan as we deemed appropriate. Please turn to Slide 15, as we anticipated in the last conference call, the second quarter was a record revenue generating quarter. The third quarter is typically a lower revenue quarter than the first and second but we do believe it will show improvement over the year ago quarter and we continue to have a favorable outlook for fiscal 2015 as a whole due to our improved portfolio over adult clubs and Bombshells growth. We showed the May weather fight, May 2 at about half of our units, been an excellent turnout in each of those locations. Rick's Cabaret in New York will celebrate its 10-year anniversary later this year, and this year RCI is celebrating its 20 Anniversary as a publicly traded company. We are very proud of our track record of two decades of innovation in the adult club segment of the hospitality industry. Speaking on behalf of RCI's management and that of our consideration, I'd like to thank our loyal shareholders for their support. With that, let's open the line for questions. Operator?