Eric Langan
Analyst · Frank Camma with Sidoti. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Gary. Thank you for joining us today. If you please turn to slide three. As I mentioned on our last call, I wanted to use the occasion of our first quarter sales report to hold a follow-up call, so investors that couldn’t make the fourth quarter call on such short notice to fully participate in this one. I also wanted to hold a meat management at Rick’s Cabaret, New York. A number of new investors have asked to meet with me and tour the club. Now, let’s turn to today’s news. This morning, we announced total club and restaurant sales for the first quarter ended December 31st of $43.4 million, that’s up 6.5% year-over-year. It was also a record quarter and the 11th quarter in a row of same-store sales growth. Fiscal 2019 is off to a good start. Nightclubs experienced solid same-store sales in what is seasonally our strongest quarter. Bombshells same-store sales, while still down from a year ago, improved on a sequential quarterly basis, and all new club acquisitions and restaurants performed well. We continue to be on track for our fiscal 2019 target for free cash flow of $26 million. I’d also like to note, last week, we announced our Board of Directors increased our stock buyback authorization by $10 million. That gave us a total authorization of $12.7 million as of January 3rd. Based on our market cap and as of yesterday, $12.7 million represents more than 6% of the Company that we can buyback with this authorization. Please turn to slide four. The data on this slide does not include non-core operations that are included in Nightclubs segments when we report complete first quarter results. Same-store sales totaled $35.3 million, up 4.3% or $1.5 million. This reflected effective marketing, management and appeal, combined with a good economy. The same-store sales trend was fairly consistent throughout the year -- or throughout the quarter. While we are always pleased to see that, we are particularly pleased with our 3 Minneapolis clubs that demonstrated nice year-over-year same-store sales growth. They were up against tough comps from the first quarter of fiscal 2018 when the Vikings returned at our new stadium in downtown Minneapolis. While we won’t have the Pro Championship Football game in Minneapolis as we did in the second quarter last year, we will have the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final 4 there in the fiscal third quarter. New store sales added $1.9 million in the quarter. By order of magnitude, this came from 8 weeks of the Blush Gentlemen’s Club and Sports Bar acquisition in Pittsburgh. 8 weeks on the VIP Gentlemen’s Club acquisition in Chicago and a full quarter of Kappa Men’s Club in Central Illinois, which we acquired in May of 2018. All three of these acquisitions are performing well and in particular Pittsburgh and Chicago, which will be rebranded Rick’s Cabaret this month. Summing up, total Nightclubs sales were $37.4 million, an increase of 7% compared to the year-ago quarter. Please turn to slide five. Bombshells same-store sales totaled $4.6 million, which was down $1.2 million. This reflected in part tough year-over-year comps due to extra business generated in October of 2017 when the Houston Astros won their way through the playoffs and the World Series. While we're always disappointed with same-store sales are down, the important thing is that Bombshells is moving in the right direction. The year-over-year decline in same-store sales for the quarter improved from the preceding quarter, with December achieving the best performance in the last six months. There was a big sequential improvement with Bombshells Fuqua and an improvement in Bombshell 290, both in Houston. New store sales added $1.4 million. By order of magnitude, this reflected a full quarter of Bombshells in Pearland and 12 days of Bombshells on I-10, both are performing very well. While it is still early with I-10, Pearland since its opening has been running at a rate comfortably in excess of $4 million a year. To sum up, total Bombshells sales were $6 million, an increase of 3.2% compared to last year. I'm looking forward to continued Bombshells same-store sales improvement. We had both the Texans and the Cowboys in the playoffs last Saturday. The Cowboys won, so they'll have another game this weekend. And then, we're looking forward to the Pro Championship Football game. All that will definitely help Bombshells. March Madness plus the warmer weather should help our patio business. Our Bombshells team is also developing promotional activities that will help us pick up in the spring. The Highway 290 construction that affects our Bombshells there should be finished, which we continue to be on schedule with the three Bombshells in construction. And they will open over the course of the next six months or so. That will give us more exposure in the markets. As the year goes on, I think we're going to see Bombshells right back where we want them. Please turn to slide 6 and 7. These are our capital allocation strategy and financial goals slides. There's nothing new from the December 31st slides. As I said on our last call, with a stock yielding a free cash flow run rate of 13% or more, we are more focused on using available cash to buy back shares versus acquiring clubs or developing new restaurants, unless of course there's compelling rationale to do otherwise. Having said that, this is a unique time in the gentlemen's club industry. So, we will still keep an eye open for the right acquisitions when and where appropriate and assuming they meet our corporate objectives. We will complete the three Bombshells in development, giving us a total of 10 locations. Then we will spend time to assess where we are. We want to ensure we are performing in line with our expectations. We then want to look at the market and the growth trends and we want to gauge the return on our strategy of owning and developing the real estate ourselves. We anticipate the last two non-income producing former club property should be leased, sold or under contract in this quarter. We also have two parcels of excess Bombshells land under contract to be sold and expect them to close this quarter. As for our stock price, while we are not happy with the decline, we believe the price will reward long-term holders as we buy shares when it's yielding over 10% and expand when it's not, in line with our capital allocation strategy. Thanks to all of our investors for supporting us and our staff and management for doing a great job. It's truly appreciated. Operator, let's start the Q&A.