Eric Langan
Analyst · Merriman Capital. Please proceed with your question
Hi Gary. Good afternoon, everyone. Please turn to Slide 4. Results in our third quarter continue to improve. Revenues increased 1.5% year-over-year, that’s the first quarterly increase this fiscal year. EPS came in ahead of expectations at $0.27 which included an additional $1 million tax reserve. This compares with $0.78 last year which included the big gain on the Texas paper tax settlement. More significantly, on a like for like non-GAAP basis, EPS was $0.34 or nearly 10% year-over-year increase. We achieved our third quarter ’16 performance through improvements at existing units and the previously announced elimination of underperforming units. Free cash flow performed well. At $6.4 million, it was up close to 50% over last year. As of the nine months, we have generated free cash flow of $16.7 million, exceeding the low end of our most recent targets. As a result, we are revising our free cash flow target upwards for the second time this year to $19 million to $21 million. We continue to buy back shares. We bought back more than 100,000 shares, returning $1.1 million to shareholders. As of the nine months, we have bought back more than $600,000 shares returning $5.8 million to shareholders. This makes fiscal 2016 buy back the largest annual buy back ever for us. And this leads the Board of Directors to declare the fourth quarter cash dividend of $0.03 per common share. Please turn to Slide 5, for those of you new to RCI we are guided by our capital allocation policy. We’ve updated this slide for our slightly lower share count due to buybacks, the pay down of convertible debt and an increase in our free cash flow run rate to approximately $18 million. Using this as a base, we’ve calculated the after tax yield of buying back our own shares. For example, at 10 to 11 per share where the stock has traded reasonably, buying back shares generates an after tax yield to free cash flow of 16% to 18%. We consider this yield risk free since we are buying our own assets which we know very well. Based on that to adjust for risk we will require return of about twice that, so we decided to buy or open a new unit. For example at $10 to $11 per share, if we decided to buy or open a new unit, we would want to have a return of about 33% to 36%. To be clear, this doesn’t mean we will no longer buy clubs or open new restaurants, but at this time the opportunity has to be exceptional and fit our capital allocation model. Conversely if a unit is under performing in line with our capital allocation policy and efforts to improve that has not worked, we will take action to free up as much invested capital as possible for a more profitable use. After paying down our cost of debt it is only in the $21 to $22 range that it makes sense on a cash adjusted basis to pay down our remaining 13% debt at an accelerated rate simply with no prepayment penalty. Again, this doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do so at this time, it's just that there has to be a very compelling reason for us to do so, having said that, we’re always looking for ways to refinancing our high interest debt at lower rates. Please turn to Slide 6, this slide gives you a SAS report on our share buyback program. As you can see, we have bought back a significant amount every quarter this fiscal year. As for the nine months, we have greatly outpaced what we did last year and in prior years. As of June 30, 2016, we had $5.8 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization. We bought fewer shares in the third quarter than in previous quarters this year. So I’d like to address that. Buying back shares is a long-term strategy for us. We have not changed our policy. When buying shares however, we want to maximize the use of our cash. We do not want to change the stock price. As a result we may buy more shares in some quarters than others. For example in the third quarter there was a big increase in the stock price. We paused our buying once the trading activity began to settle, we resumed our purchases. In line with our buyback policy going forward we are generally going to make repurchase announcements when we announce quarterly and annual results. This is opposed to announcing them in our quarterly sales news releases and then providing another update when we announce quarterly results. We might make an exception for example if we’re having meetings with investors or making presentations and we believe is appropriate to issue an update. But in general we report just four times a year rather than eight year on pace to do so. Please turn to Slide 7. Revenues continued their sequential improvement. As you can see, total revenues have gone from being down 2.1% year-over-year in the first quarter to being 1.5% in the third quarter. Same store sales have gone from being down 6.3%, posting small increase year-over-year. Sales were up nicely in April and then fell off in May due to heavy rains in Texas, and then rebounded in June. You should note we’ve had two fewer units this year relative to the year ago quarter. In addition, two clubs are going to remodeling or reformatting open midway through the third quarter. Please turn to Slide 8, here is an analysis of our revenues by product line. The top table presents our total results for this fiscal year. The bottom table shows the year-over-year change. As you can see, we maintained our quarterly increase in beverages throughout the year, both clubs and restaurants. With regard to high margin service revenues, we have meaningfully reduced the year-over-year decline. As for food, we have virtually eliminated the quarterly decline we saw at the beginning of the year as our newer Bombshells have come back from their typical post opening fall off. Please turn to Slide 9. Operating margin is continuing to move in the right direction. As you can see, non-GAAP operating margin has risen throughout the fiscal year. After being down 3 percentage points in the first quarter, it is now up close to 2 percentage points in the third quarter. The improvement largely reflects two factors; the increase in sales in particular high margin service revenues and beverage and reduced cost as a percentage of revenues. We want to provide little more detail on taxes. Our effective tax rate this quarter was 43% compared to 35.5% a year ago. This quarter included $1 million reserve established to pay for New York City and state income taxes. In turn there was parcel offset of that of the benefit of $250,000 in lines of credits not previously claims which we discussed last quarter. Please turn to Slide 10. As anticipated, occupancy costs continued to fall in the third quarter. This is one of our largest fixed costs. During the third quarter it declined to 8.1% of revenues as compared to 8.4% in the first quarter of the fiscal year and a year ago quarter. This was primarily due to a full quarter net benefit of the Rick Cabaret New York real-estate acquisition in mid-January. The long use of finance the acquisition increased interest cost as a percentage of revenue, but the saving and ramp were even greater. Occupancy costs as a percentage of revenue should continue to decline due to revenue growth, anticipated refinancing which should help reduce average interest paid on debt and principal pay down. Please turn to Slide 11. This was a good quarter for our cash generating power. Adjusted EBITDA increased close to 7% year over year and free cash flow increased close to 48% year over year to 6.1 million. We calculate free cash flow as operating cash flow less maintenance CapEx. As a result as I mentioned earlier we are raising our fiscal '16 free cash flow target to $19 million to $20 million from $16 million to $19 million. You should note the fourth quarter is typically one of our smaller quarters for cash generation. You will also note that cash in our balance sheet was higher at $10.5 million versus $9.1 million at the end of March. Our practice is to have $6 million to $10 million on the balance sheet at the end of every quarter, so this is nothing more than being at a higher end of that range. Please turn to Slide 12. Here are our nightclub segment results. Sales of $28.3 million were just under the year ago quarter with 38 units in operation compared to 40. Non-GAAP operating income was $9.3 million compared to $9.1 million. As a result non-GAAP operating margins expanded to 32.9% of sales compared to 31.8%, we believe this continues to demonstrate the approved model we've been working on to expand margins. That should benefit as our sales continue to grow. Please turn to Slide 13. Here are our Bombshell segment results. Record sales of $5 million were up 13% compared to the $4.4 million in the year ago quarter with five units in operation in both periods. Operating income was a record $905,000 compared to $370,000. Operating margin was up strongly to a record 18.1% of sales compared to 8.3%. As I mentioned earlier we are seeing the benefit of growing sales from new units after they have worked through the typical fall off after their grand opening. As a result not only are sales growing but margins as well. There are lot of other things that we're doing to grow the business. Our newly redesigned menu and new menu items have been a contributing factor, our new menu recently won Printing Industries of America award for graphic excellence both on a regional and national levels. That put them in competition against major restaurant chains such as Chili's and brands owned by Landry's and Garden. With regard to franchising we are now in the process of putting together franchise marketing sales team. Please turn to Slide 14. We want to give you an update on our debt. During the third quarter we continued to significantly reduce our convertible debt. This has an average weighted rate of 8.3%, at June 30th, we had an outstanding balance of $1.6 million, following a $450,000 cash payment in July the current balance now stands at $1.15 million. We plan to pay off the remaining amount in the fiscal first quarter of 2017. This will eliminate all the possible dilutions from this issue. The only new debt was drawing down 1.6 million on our bank construction loan for our new corporate headquarters. Construction remains on schedule for moving in during the first quarter of fiscal 2017. We continue to work on refinancing two commercial mortgages as part of this transaction we are now looking at rolling over commercial mortgage of $6.2 million at 7.2% and paying off $2.5 million of unsecured debt at 13%. That's a little less than what we had originally anticipated. But nonetheless on a combined basis this refinancing and debt pay down would meaningfully reduce our interest expense. We also have some real estate that is no longer needed and hope to complete their sales in fiscal 2017. Proceeds would be used to buy back stock, finance growth, or pay down debt. Please turn to Slide 15. Here we’ve updated our long-term debt slide. There are few things this quarter I’d like to point out. Compared to March 31st we saw small reductions in balances and rates in total long-term debt. Debt secured by subsidiary stock, the Texas patron tax settlement, debt secured by other assets and a major decline in convertible debt. The only area of debt that went up was debt secured by real estate, but less than $1 million and the rate declined there too. The percentage of long-term debt backed by real estate is now 70% versus 64% six months ago, making our debt position even more secure. The average weighted rate on all of our long term debt has now fallen to 7.53%. Please turn to Slide 16. Here we’ve updated the debt maturity schedules. As we explained last quarter this was intended to show three key elements to our debt management. One, we plan for regular amount currently in $7 million range for amortizations to be paid annually out of cash flow. Two, a good portion of our debt maturing over the next five years is related to real-estate amortizations of our real estate balloons. We plan to refinance all non-amortized debt. Three, any non-realty balloons will be paid out of cash flow or otherwise refinanced. For example, the new refinancing I discussed on Slide 14. The new refinancing will eliminate all balloons in fiscal 2017. And we’ll also eliminate $2.5 million of the 2018 non-realty balloons. We anticipate refinancing the remaining 2018 balloon debt during 2017. Please turn to Slide 17. To wrap up, on our first quarter call, we told you we’re off to a good start with plans for margin and EPS growth and free cash flow generation this year. On our second quarter call, we told you that we’re moving in the right directions. With this call, you can clearly see we continued improvements in our results now on a year-over-year basis reflecting the ongoing information of our new model. This should enable us to close favorable year-over-year comparisons in the fourth quarter. Consequently we believe we are on track to achieve our fiscal 2016 goals and possibly exceed them with regard to free cash flow. For revenues that means we expect the fourth quarter to be up slightly. For margins, that means improvement for the year and an increase in GAAP EPS. For free cash flow, that means reaching our new targets. Looking ahead to fiscal 2017, we’re very encouraged. We’ll have the full year benefit of the reopened clubs. We’ll also have the new club in New York as well as new Bombshells in northwest Houston. We’re pushing the opening out of quarter, no major issues just the timing of the few final things. In addition, we believe we’ll benefit from a strong sports line up. The NBA is not [indiscernible] a game in Charlotte as originally scheduled. However, in the first quarter the Minnesota Vikings will be returning to new stadium in downtown Minneapolis where we own three major clubs. In the second quarter, the super bowl will be held in Houston where we will have seven locations, both clubs and Bombshells. In addition, mixed marshal art events are coming to Madison Square Garden for the first time. These events based on their location we anticipate could add significant incremental [technical difficulty] margin sales. With our capital allocation policy, improved operating per, continued share buyback, dividend and contributions for our investment banking and Investor Relations teams, we hope to see further recognition of our shares in the market. The stock is up more than 4% from our last call, more than 5% year -to-date and 38% from our year low of 760 on February 9, 2016. We believe this is a good indication that our strategy is working. We've had productive meetings with institutional investors in New York in May and Dallas in June, but we're there is still more work to do and we're dedicated to making it happens. Speaking on behalf of all of RCIs management and that our subsidiaries, I'd like to thank our loyal shareholders for their support. With that, let's open the line for questions. Operator?