Earnings Labs

RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc. (RICK)

Q2 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, May 10, 2016

$25.18

-1.81%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to RCI Hospitality Holdings Fiscal 2016 Second Quarter Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Gary Fishman who handles Investor Relations for RCI.

Gary Fishman

Analyst

Please turn to Slide 2. Thank you, everybody and thank you Denise. I wanted to remind everybody of our Safe Harbor statement; it’s posted at the beginning of our conference call presentation. It reminds you that you may hear or see forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. I urge you to read it. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated. We disclaim any obligation, to update information disclosed in this call as a result of developments which occur afterwards. Please turn to Slide 3. I also direct you to the explanation of non-GAAP and adjusted EBITDA measurements that we use and that are included in our presentation and news release. Finally, I’d like to invite everyone in the New York City Area to join us at Rick's Cabaret in New York tonight at 6 o’clock to meet management to get a firsthand look at one of our flagship clubs. Rick's Cabaret New York is located at 50 West 33rd Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, around the corner from the Empire State Building. If you haven’t RSVP ready, ask for me at the door. Now I am pleased to introduce Eric Langan, President and CEO of RCI Hospitality.

Eric Langan

Analyst · Merriman Capital

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Please turn to Slide 4. We're pleased the company closed its fiscal second quarter results better than our original expectations. We are in $0.54 per share on a GAAP basis. That contained a $1.75 million benefit from tax credits. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding non-recurring items we are in $0.40 per share. That compares to $0.30 in the prior quarter. We're comparing results on a sequential basis in some places of our presentation today. As most of you know the second quarter of 2015 was a record in terms of revenues and profits on a non-GAAP basis after that performance declined. As you see from this quarter's results however, we are back on track and clearly moving in the right direction. Turning to free cash flow, that came in at a strong $6.4 million for the quarter, our second best quarter ever for free cash flow. For the first six months of this fiscal year free cash flow was $10.3 million. We are also pleased to announce the latest results of our share buyback program. We continue to buy back stock in the second quarter and in April. As of the end of April, we bought back more than 284,000 shares since the end of the first quarter and this week we announced the Board authorized an additional $5 million for buying back shares. Please turn to Slide 5. To use our free cash flow most effectively we're committed to capital allocation policy. We’ve updated this slide for our current slightly lower share count and the reduction of convertible debt. Our strategy is providing good guidance on whether to buy shares, buy a new club, open a new restaurant or pay down debt. In recent years we have consistently generated annual free cash flow of…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And the first question will be from Andrew Desilva of Merriman Capital. Please go ahead. Q – Andrew Desilva: Good afternoon, everyone. Just a couple quick questions. First off as far as your marketing spend goes, were the full cost reductions that have been discussed on previous calls were they realized in the quarter and then related to that marketing, are you seeing that spend that you transitioned to is translating in a way that is meeting your initial thoughts?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Merriman Capital

I think that most of it is yes. We may actually have a little marketing increase for the two new clubs that we're opening. But we're very happy with our switch to our new strategy and we're seeing some pretty positive results from it as you can see from the results this quarter. And I think that we'll continue -- we're going to keep monitoring as fairly new, we're starting to push into some other locations and hopefully we will continue to see the growth.

Andrew Desilva

Analyst · Merriman Capital

Great. And then as far as big spenders go, have you seen any transition from that from the last quarter. Is that increasing or staying fairly stable on a quarter-over-quarter basis?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Merriman Capital

It's definitely up in the second quarter from the first quarter. Of course it's too early to really tell. April was very good. It was too early to tell how May is going to play out. Always after income taxes are paid, we see a slight slowdown. Usually we see the bounce back in the second week of May. So this week and coming up will be very critical. We'll be watching and see how things go.

Andrew Desilva

Analyst · Merriman Capital

Great. Great. And then as far as legal expense, obviously a lot of the large overhangs they're gone at this point. Is this quarter fairly indicative of what we should expect going forward? And then also have you found out or received any notification on a settlement that's related to the dispute related to the construction of that one Bombshell that you had to close down a few quarters ago?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Merriman Capital

Right, I’ll answer the Bombshells' question first. That's ongoing litigation. We have not discussed settlement at all in that case. We're basically on a trial schedule. We'll see how that progress. I'm sorry what was the first part of the question.

Andrew Desilva

Analyst · Merriman Capital

I know legal expenses fairly are they kind of where you expect them to be on a go-forward basis now that some of the larger issues have passed?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Merriman Capital

Yeah, I think give or take, for the next couple quarters give or take $100,000 will probably going to be pretty close.

Andrew Desilva

Analyst · Merriman Capital

Okay. Fantastic. And then there is last question related to franchising. Has there been any progress that you can discuss. Last time you said you had a potential in San Diego for up to four or five restaurants. Maybe elaborate on that?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Merriman Capital

We’re working with those groups that we talked in the past, but we're very excited about going to the national restaurant franchise convention in Dallas this weekend. We'll be there Saturday and Sunday. We actually have a booth set up. All of our stuff spend up. We're ready to go and we're very excited to get out there and actually start talking to some restaurant operators. So hope we'll have a much better update by the next conference call and get some great leads at this convention.

Andrew Desilva

Analyst · Merriman Capital

Great. Thank you so much and good luck on the quarter.

Eric Langan

Analyst · Merriman Capital

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question will be from Adam Mikkelsen of Cooper Capital. Please go ahead.

Adam Mikkelsen

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Hey Eric.

Eric Langan

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Hey Adam. How are you doing?

Adam Mikkelsen

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Good. Good. How are you?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Good.

Adam Mikkelsen

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Just a couple of questions. The proceeds from these real estate sales, how much are you expecting there?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

We're working with some of the brokers now just off the top of my head, I haven't really -- like I said, we're just really going through the process of it now; probably somewhere around $7 million to $9 million.

Adam Mikkelsen

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Wow and how many properties do you sell it? A – Eric Langan: Probably four or five, we just sold a smaller lot for one hundred some thousand that we had purchased for additional parking that we don't need any more. We've got another parking lot that we're probably going to look at and some vacant buildings that we own. And we're still discussing whether or not we're going to sell some of our leased properties. We have some properties that we own that we lease to other individuals and we're going to decide if the lease payments meet our capital allocation strategy versus selling the property and redeploying the capital could we do better than the current leases. So there's some work we're still doing on those. So hopefully in the next quarter you'll get a better idea. We should have everything decided in and have changed the status of those assets to our current assets for sale.

Adam Mikkelsen

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

And I know you try to wrap this up, this fiscal year?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

I'm sorry. I think most of them probably fell at 2017. The brokers we're talking to tell us that typical it's going to take about six to nine months on commercial properties right now.

Adam Mikkelsen

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Okay. Okay.

Eric Langan

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

And we could get lucky on a couple and they get sell quicker. I’m just going by with brokers that we've started to talking to and getting the stuff listed with are telling us.

Adam Mikkelsen

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Okay. Hey and just one more question, with you guys effectively out of the market for buying new clubs, what are you seeing out there in terms of things being often up to you, what’s the market doing and when you back in the market, has things changed over the past couple of years?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

I haven’t really heard about a lot of clubs trading hands in the last couple years. I would say we're out of the market. We're just not paying what we’re paying before because it doesn’t meet or capital allocation strategy. What we're looking as something comes up that will fall into the -- fall into our math, we’ll make it happen. Otherwise I think we'll just sit on the sidelines and wait, eventually the prices will come to us or we’ll be able to may be move towards those prices if our stock is performing.

Adam Mikkelsen

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Yeah, okay. Very good. Thanks nice quarter.

Eric Langan

Analyst · Cooper Capital. Please go ahead

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our next question will come from John Rolfe of Argand Capital. Please go ahead.

John Rolfe

Analyst · Argand Capital. Please go ahead

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Just one quick question, wondering if there has been any progress in terms of distribution for robust? I think it's been a couple of quarters since you gave us an update on that and I think originally you were hoping in the back half of this year to maybe get to the point where you had national distribution on that. So just wanted to see is there has been any movement? Thanks.

Eric Langan

Analyst · Argand Capital. Please go ahead

Sure. We’re working. We’ve launched in Minnesota now with Southern. We’ve talking with Southern to launch in a few more states. We’ve also picked up some other beer distributors and other distributors now. Right now I think that the second half is really still our best idea to figure out where we’re at with Robust. They bag in a box product is out. It's doing well on its launch. So hopefully in the next few months we'll start seeing increased sales of bag in a box and we'll evaluate from there. We’re going to evaluate Robust as we move forward. Basically I've give him a deadline on our capital allocation strategy. They're going to have to meet our strategy for investment on go forward basis and if we're not there by certain time. Then we'll be able to look at how we're going to adjust the strategy at that point.

John Rolfe

Analyst · Argand Capital. Please go ahead

Okay. Okay great thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will be from Chris Brown of Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open.

Chris Brown

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

Sorry, good afternoon Eric good quarter. I just had a question for you on the employment tax credit that $1.75 million, I am sorry, joining the call I was a bit late, that is -- is that a several years catch-up payments and that is basically a one-time item or is there any chance of you capturing more tax credits subsequently?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

It’s a onetime credit that of amount. We will continue to get a much smaller amount year-over-year. This is, I think we were able to capture five years with this part going back with the current year plus four years back is what we were able to capture and we’ll be able to take that credit on a going forward basis, but it will be obviously about one fifth or less of that amount depending on coming new hirers we have in a year and stuff. I’m not exactly sure 100% how the credit works, but I know what we have to do with basically job creation and part of the tax credit. Like I said I've got -- our accounts are going to figure that out. They notice that when we were doing reviews of all the different possibility and stuff based on hey, I think we've been missing this and let’s see what it is and we started doing the math on it and there was a couple years that were very significant and some of the years were smaller. So all in all, it was a nice overall deal for us and it will be a small amount going forward.

Chris Brown

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

Okay. Great and some of the software in terms of the accounting systems you talked about upgrading, is that -- can you quantify, is that a large materially expense we should be looking at or what the range of extra expense there?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

400,000 we've already expended, 300,000 is the actual software training and setup cost and then about $100,000 in actual equipment and servers to operate and run the software and then approximately another $300,000 will go into programming, training our staff and what not. Our goal is go live by January 1 and the reason we chose January instead of the fiscal year October 1 is due to payroll. Payroll is a method in order to change in October would have been probably another couple $100,000 to convert all the payroll data. So it's cheaper and probably smoother and easier if we convert everything in January 1 and so that we'll do. We're not going to really be into our new office building until sometime in September anyway. So we're going to kind of be working between both offices for a little while and so make the transition easier to move and get all the training done. We'll be able to do all the accounting our current office and do all the training at the new office space is the initial plan I believe. Now it's subject to change as we get closer and move forward. We're in a really beginning stages of it, but we're very excited about it because it will link all of our POS systems. It will take basically all the manual entries that we do now that are subject to any kind of human error and require massive amounts of review time where all become automated. All the reconciliation of our banking, all that type of stuff will all be automated. We should be able to do all of our positive pay for all of our checking accounts, which will help with any type of fraud, it's an amazing transition when you go from a lower level of accounting software to be able to step up into a mass, and as far as scalability, we'll be able to add the clubs unlimited basically at this point once we get the new software.

Chris Brown

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

Okay. Great. I know you guys use 35% as your tax rate in our non-GAAP EPS, which historically I guess has been pretty close to your actual tax rate. For the back half of this year, do you anticipate kind of a normalized 35% GAAP tax rate or are there any special tax items you think will swing that one way or the other?

Eric Langan

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

Phil, that's a question for you. What do you think?

Phillip Marshall

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

Well, the tax credit will help. It will help lower that rate somewhat. I don't know exactly what it will be, but we'll have it calculated, but it will lower.

Eric Langan

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

But roughly I think 35% is a good approximate number for modeling.

Phillip Marshall

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

I would say for modeling we're talking lower than -- that the net tax credits we're talking will be at least -- the net will be at least $350,000.

Chris Brown

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

Okay. Okay. So maybe some more tailwind in Q3 and Q4 to look forward to. Fantastic, all right. Thanks a lot.

Eric Langan

Analyst · Aristides Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Brown your line is open

You're welcome. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And at this time, I am showing no additional questions. I would like to hand the conference back to Gary Fishman for his closing remarks.

Gary Fishman

Analyst

Thank you, everybody for listening. Thank you, Eric. Please turn to Slide 19. Here is our reporting calendar for the rest of fiscal 2016. Tonight as I mentioned earlier we have Meet Management at Ricks Cabaret New York from 6 to 8 o’clock. Tomorrow we have a series of 101 meetings with institutional investors in the New York City. The week of June 6, we'll be meeting with institutional investors in Dallas. Anybody interested please give us a call. In July, we report our third quarter club and restaurant sales and we're now looking at August 4 as a possible day for announcing third quarter results before the 23rd Annual Gentlemen's Club Expo that's being held in New Orleans. There is couple of more items in the calendar, but I don't think that's relevant. On behalf of Eric, the company and our subsidiaries, thank you and good night and as always please visit one of our clubs or restaurants. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.