Good morning, everyone, and welcome to The Marcus Corporation First Quarter Earnings Call. My name is Ruby, and I will be your moderator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Joining us today are Greg Marcus, President and Chief Executive Officer; Doug Neis, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Chad Paris, Corporate Controller and Treasurer of The Marcus Corporation. At this time, I'd like to turn the program over to Mr. Neis for his opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to our fiscal 2022 first quarter conference call. As usual, I do need to begin by stating that we plan to make a number of forward-looking statements on our call today, all of which we intend to qualify for the safe harbors from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Our forward-looking statements may generally be identified by our use of words such as we believe, anticipate, expect or words of similar import. Our forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties, which could impact our ability to achieve our expectations identified in our forward-looking statements, are included under the heading Forward-Looking Statements in the press release we issued this morning announcing our fiscal 2022 first quarter results and in the Risk Factors section of our fiscal 2021 annual report on Form 10-K, which you can access on the SEC's website. We'll also post all Regulation G disclosures when applicable on our website at www.marcuscorp.com. The forward-looking statements made during this conference call are only made as of the date of this conference call, and we disclaim any obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. In addition, we routinely post news releases and other information regarding developments at our company that impact our investors, customers, vendors and other shareholders. You can look to our website, www.marcuscorp.com, as an important source of information regarding our company. We also refer you to the disclosures that we provided in today's earnings press release regarding the use of adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure used in evaluating our performance…

Thanks, Doug. We continue to experience increased per capita spending by our customers in our theater division. Our average admission price increased by 6.4% during the first quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to last year and increased by 18% compared to fiscal 2019. Continued strong customer demand for our large-format premium screens was the primary driver of this overall increase in our average admission price as well as more new films compared to last year, when a limited supply of new films resulted in a higher mix of legacy library titles shown at discounted ticket prices. Meanwhile, our average concession and food and beverage revenues per person at our comparable theaters increased by 5.7% during the first quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to last year and has increased by 36.1% compared to fiscal 2019. We believe our industry-leading mix of nontraditional food and beverage options, the mix of films, shorter lines at the concession stand, the emphasis we are placing on encouraging guests to purchase their concessions and food and beverage ahead of time, either online or using our mobile app, on top of what we believe to be pent-up demand for a return to normal, likely continues to contribute to our increased per capita revenues. As a significant number of theaters in both our circuit and the industry as a whole were closed during large portions of the first quarter last year, we believe a comparison of our results to prepandemic results in fiscal 2019 may be the best way to compare our performance to the industry this quarter. When you compare our first quarter fiscal 2022 admission revenues to fiscal 2019, our admission revenues were down 39.4% during this quarter, including the pro forma impact of the Movie Tavern acquisition, which was part of our results for 2…

Thanks, Chad. We entered the quarter expecting it to be our most challenging of the year, facing our normal seasonal headwinds during the winter months in hotels, uncertainty as the Omicron variant ran its course and a limited new film or lease calendar. I'm pleased to report that we navigated these challenges to deliver results that outperformed the industry and continued our trend of significant year-over-year improvement in both businesses as the recovery from the impact of the pandemic continue. More importantly, we exited the quarter with exciting momentum in both businesses as we head into the spring and summer. As you know, we view the world through a long-term lens. Our recovery path is not a straight line, and our rate of improvement will vary from quarter-to-quarter, but we continue to make consistent progress. It's particularly gratifying to see our team shifting their focus from navigating through a pandemic to accelerating our recovery and looking ahead to once again growing our businesses in the future. The first quarter that we're reporting today is yet another step in our recovery, and we're pleased to be sharing these results with you. So let me start my divisional remarks with our hotel division. Chad shared some of the numbers with you, including comparisons to our prepandemic fiscal 2019 numbers and the fact that the data indicates that we once again outperformed both the industry and our competitive sets this quarter. Chad mentioned it earlier, but it bears repeating, total revenues for the division were over 91% of 2019 levels for the quarter after adjusting for the Saint Kate. The composition of the revenue is different than it was 3 years ago, with higher ADR, lower occupancies and a different mix of customers. There is more recovery still in front of us, but…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Mike Hickey of Benchmark Company.

Greg, Doug, Chad, congrats guys on a strong quarter in a difficult market. Doug, good luck, man. It's been great. We're going to miss you.

Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate that. Right back at you.

We appreciate you. Yes. Welcome, Chad. So first question from me, I guess, at CinemaCon, one of the -- no doubt a lot of compelling products and some big budget movies coming out. Obviously, attendance is going to reflect that. So when you look at the total scope of film, primarily sort of wide releases, it looks like we're still at a disconnect in terms of the volume of wide releases where we were prepandemic. So just sort of curious of your thoughts on how the industry closes that gap and whether or not you think some of the OTT providers that are creating experiences that would be great in theater, namely Amazon, Netflix and Apple, can start to sort of get product into your theaters, especially on sort of a more agreeable film window that's sort of selling at 45 days. I have a follow-up.

Mike, look, you're exactly right. We are not back to where we were from a content perspective yet. And look, it's one of those things where it's really -- I think there's a bit of a lag time that were -- that you bump into in this business from someone even if they plan to change their mind. The -- and I think there's been -- it's been great to see some minds changing. I think we all know there was this [indiscernible]. Streaming is the -- isn't going to be all [indiscernible] of everything. We never understood it. I think if you've been listening to our calls long enough, you would know that we've said that we can't see that actually making sense. And I think that, that is being born out. Streaming is here, I mean, but as I've said a million times, streaming -- the real battle is streaming versus linear TV. Yes, it is competitive because the more product being pumped into the home, the more competitive it is for the TV business. But at the end of the day, the theater is a differentiated experience. And so I'm being repetitive, but I think it's important to repeat that whole thing. But if you look at movies put into production, there's a great stat I saw recently. And you would see that in 2019 or -- sorry, 2020, production just slowed down, too. I think the pandemic really weighs -- just slowed down a lot of production. One of the things we're bumping into right now is in addition to that is the postproduction houses are really busy. They face the same labor issues as everybody else, and they're running behind. And so as we said in a bunch of times, this is going to be -- this is not a straight line path. It's the road will be little bumpy from time to time. But the trend and as -- I guess I learned from our industry that trend is your friend, the trend is really positive. Everybody is talking and saying, "You know what, we understand that the film is better. It performs better on streaming. It performs better in all the markets when it opens up in theatrical." And we heard -- that's what we heard the studio is saying. We're seeing it being written about. And so that bodes well on the business because we do provide that unique experience, that ability to spotlight and highlight a film. And we see production has moved back up again, just generally film production in general. I don't know where, but the number ultimately shakes out for all of us, but I think we're going to move in a positive direction.

Greg, do you want to touch on Netflix, Amazon, Apple or your thoughts on that?

Look, we're in -- we talk to all these guys. We're in discussions with them. We're trying to figure out how to work with their models. And I don't have anything to report today on the phone call. But yes, we're talking to them. And we continue to think -- and look, we've been testing different ideas. Different exhibitors have tried some different things due to pandemic. I guess the best I can think of it is to say that, as been reported in the press, we are open to playing their films. We believe we -- one of the statistics is a great statistic that the people -- I don't know they talked about it enough, is that the number of people who go to the -- that there's a huge overlap between people that go to the movies and people who stream content. That is a -- that's a very big group. And so because consumers of media just tend to be big consumers of media. And so we -- that's where we make the cases and look at -- we're not competitive in a way. We're complementary. And when we're working, these guys -- I think there's -- and look, they -- I think they're going to -- at the end of the day, they're going to want to maximize the revenue from their IP because they are in this very competitive segment. It's getting more competitive in the streaming business every day. And so they -- and it's expensive. And so they got to get that money back, and there's multiple ways to get that money back. And I think all too often, people treat their content. They said that certain people talk about content like it's a widget or it's a screwdriver. Now I'm sorry,…

Love the passion, man. It's great. Second question from me on -- I mean it's -- obviously, we've got some uncertainty here, economic and otherwise. I see that in the markets this morning. But clearly, you're confident here, and your business, you're bouncing back strong. Product is coming back on cash flow. I think you're sort of flattish for the quarter but sort of 3 quarters in a row of flat to up, and you look back prepandemic, you lost $11 million in free cash flow in the first quarter, so you're way higher than that. So all that being said, how do you think about potentially reinstating your dividend? And how would you approach that? I'm guessing you're sort of inching to it, but I guess just given your confidence and your cash flows, the dividend was such a nice piece to your return profile. And I think, obviously, the market is somewhat rewarding capital return here on value stocks.

Yes, that's a really good question, Mike, and I will certainly confirm that we're having lots of discussions about that. We have been really, for most of our entire history, a dividend-paying stock. And we certainly anticipate returning to being a dividend-paying stock. We're watching -- considering the timing very carefully, I mean, we've got several puts and takes to think about regarding that. But that certainly -- so I can't sit here today on this call and tell you which quarter that might, in turn, become a reality. But it is on our radar. We expect to return to being -- paying dividend. I can say with certainty that when we do first return, it won't be at the same levels that we left when we -- when the pandemic hit. We still have some restrictions that we're operating under with our bank agreements until we get back to our old covenants. We're on our way back to getting back to our old covenants, and so that comes into the consideration and all this. But it does allow us to start paying a dividend. It's just won't be at a level that you saw previously initially. And then hopefully, we'll be able to, as things normalize, continue to focus on that. It's an important part of who we are, and I would expect that it will be in the future as well.

Our next question is from Eric Wold of B. Riley Securities.

Great working you, Doug, over the years. Definitely, it's hard to see you go. A couple of questions. I guess, one, obviously, a lot of the focus on inflationary pressures, wages, labor, has been the case for a while. What have you seen over the past, maybe, 12 months or even more recent in terms of how price sensitive consumers have been, both in the theaters and in your hotels? I mean do you expect still continued ability to completely cover increased costs through price? Is there a risk that may not be the case? Where have you seen some pushback, if at all, from your moves around that?

We have -- each business is different. I think that we've seen -- we have seen a fair amount of elasticity. I mean as we're reporting, our rates on the hotel side -- some might say the hotel side, our rates -- really in both areas. But our rates on the hotel side have been very, very aggressive like the rest of the hotel world. The -- and so we've been able to manage that. I don't -- we will continue to react to the market as we can and test the waters and continue to work the price there. The theater side, we've been able to selectively -- we're being tactical with what we do there. Mainly because of that, we're trying to rebuild the business and bring people back to the theaters, and they're a little -- they're not as far on the curve as the hotels are. So with that, we're being more selective. But that doesn't mean we're not doing it. But it just means that -- I can tell you right now, the guy's on [20]. They're sitting at around [20 to 24]. So that's where the theater has it. They're sitting around. Rolando and his team are sitting around trying to figure out how to manage that labor as tightly as they can manage it. And yet at the same time, they are taking selective price increases where they can. Again, it's just not -- that's [one across the board], but we -- like, for example, like on a Tuesday, we've instituted $1 charge -- upcharge for our PLFs or our premium large-format screens, and we didn't have one in the past, for those who aren't members of our loyalty club. It's technical things like that, that we're doing. We are not doing things…

Got it. And then second question, what are your views on kind of the acquisition environment on the theater side right now? Obviously, we've seen some moves by some of the competitors. Are you seeing anything that fits your criteria? Do you think you would get increased inventory and potential targets as funding sources change? Have some of the acquisitions that have been done not checked all the box? And I guess trying to see how attractive are you in the environment and how could that change maybe over the next 12 months in your favor.

We have -- there has not been a lot of activity. And we've seen -- we saw a small transaction just recently. We've not [asked] at the market. We saw it in the market that was announced. But it was a pretty, really relatively small transaction. We'll look at anything. At the end of the day, we're going back to the core precepts of our balance sheet needs to be in great shape. It's a business where scale is helpful, but it's not paramount. And so we are -- I still don't have anything to tell you. The activity is pretty quiet. There's not much happening yet. But as you know, Eric, we could see that, that environment change as the business stabilizes and continues to stabilize then maybe people will say, okay, now I know where it is. I've written this out, and it's time to sail off in the sunset. And we will -- we can potentially be available. We'll have to look at it as it comes about.

Our next question is from Jim Goss of Barrington Research.

And I will also begin offering congratulations to Doug. It's been great to be able to work with you for many years, and you're a fine executive and a fine human being. Chad, you've got a tough act to follow, so good luck to you, too. I would actually like to start with exclusive theatrical window comment. Are there any holdouts notably? Or I think most of the major studios have conformed to a 45-day type exclusive window, haven't they?

I can't think of anybody who hasn't -- I mean we don't have -- we don't have -- we don't discuss strict the conversations we're having with people. But I -- most everybody got a window because I think they know. I kind of explained this before. So like doesn't -- why do you want to create an unlimited number of seats on the first day? You want to talk about the [indiscernible] laws of supply and demand. Why would you want to on day 1 create an unlimited -- basically an unlimited inventory? The whole concept of windowing is selling the same thing to the same person over and over again. And you're growing your highest per capita channels first. And all you do is destroy that. And when you go to that situation, and again going back to now and to maximize your -- the value of your IP and the revenue coming off your IP, is counterproductive. But I've always said, and I guess if anybody from Apple is listening, they can come back and tell me I'm wrong, but it was never lost on me that on day 1, when Apple would release a new iPhone, just historically, and you go back to the -- when they were just -- really, the earlier years, people were lined up around the building. I find it hard to believe that how many iPhones they would sell on day 1. And yet they created that demand. They restricted the supply, and it worked so beautifully to their advantage. We should all take a lesson than that.

Right. With the issues Netflix has faced lately, have -- has there been any change in the tone of conversation with it in terms of potentially introducing having some sort of window? I think Mike was bringing this up before. But also, I'm wondering, if you were to do a theatrical window for some of the streaming content, would it be day-and-date? Or would there be any chance that you have at least a week or a few days of exclusivity in that?

Look, I'm not going to get into what we discuss with the different distributors. And so we've never done that in the past, and so we're not really going to go through that now. We're open to whatever -- we're open to different models. We tested different things. We think what's best for us and for everybody is to have some sort of window. It helps to [map]. Again, we think it's counterproductive. Day-and-date doesn't seem to work very well, but we're open to any of these good ideas.

Okay. And I know you've said in the past some time that certain of the films tend to play in your markets better than others. Are there any of the major releases coming up that you think will be particularly good or bad in the Marcus Midwestern-type markets?

I can't think of anything that's going to be particularly challenging in our markets. I can think like we performed very well on family films. So we'll tend to overperform there. So I think like Lightyear will be one where we could overperform. The -- I'm trying to think off the top of my head of any of the new stuff that's -- the stuff that's -- I don't see stuff that I think would naturally underperform on. I don't know, Doug, can you think about anything off top of your head? Or Chad?

The odd couple for us is that, as you said, we indicate -- we performed very well on the family films. We also tend to perform pretty well on horror and kind of the scary stuff. And so I'm trying to think, and there's a few pictures coming out that might kind of fit that category as well, and so -- but as I was kind of mentally thinking about the slate, I'd echo what Greg said. There's nothing jumping out at me that, in turn, says, oh, this is a bad mix for us. I mean I don't -- or that's an unusual mix for us. So I don't think it's material.

Okay. And on the hotel side, I know business travel has lagged somewhat. Are there any additional specials you're trying to provide for leisure travels combining stays with food and beverage or anything like that to make the most out of that opportunity?

It's not one where I think we have to do much discounting. Look, we do that where you -- when we -- during softer times, you're going to see us packaging golf in Lake Geneva with our resort. We will do it selectively where we have quieter periods to drive some demand, but we haven't had to do too much of it because, knock on some wood, the leisure traveler has been bound to force.

Okay. Last thing, the Searchlight relationship. Is there any way to -- you might frame out what sort of broader expectations we -- you should have in terms of frequency of investment opportunities you can get out of that relationship? I know it's going to be very uneven, but is there anything you might say that my point is in that direction?

I wish I could give you the frequency number, Jim. I really don't have one. Look, we are actively looking for things to do and for transactions to do with our investment partners. But I mean, look, at the end of the day, the thing that we do is we were about -- we're about quality, not quantity. I mean we don't have -- we're not trying to just put money out for putting-our-money-out's sake for the sake of putting out money. We want to make sure our investors do well. And we're certainly going to go do our best. You make mistakes occasionally? Yes, I wish we were perfect, but we're not perfect. But we want to find -- so we're going to be careful and be thoughtful about what we do. And the transaction market at our end hasn't been crazily robust. It's been -- there's stuff happening, but it hasn't been -- but we're actively looking for stuff. And we have the capital available to do it with our partners and when it becomes so.

Our next question is from Andrew Shapiro of Lawndale Capital Management.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can, Andrew.

So first off, Doug, congratulations on a retirement well deserved. It's been more than a decade, I think, we've engaged with you, and I really enjoyed that over the years and look forward to continued discussions with you on the industry, et cetera, and maybe having you on one of the boards that we do stuff with in the future. I think it would be great.

Thank you very much, Andrew.

With respect to some of the comments that were made, I agree with your comments that big event premier, the red carpet and box office run success drives the streaming's popularity. And you also spoke of the uniqueness of studio IP. Now that IP and promotion cost studios hundreds of millions of dollars. And at the point that when that IP streams, it has to be de-encrypted to be seen. And it's at that point when there's a perfect high-quality pirated versions emerge. Can you comment on what you have heard from the studios, your private discussions at CinemaCon and just what you know in general about the impact of the increased piracy that studios have experienced during this COVID period and day-and-date period of putting up their IP that way? I mean we have heard that like Matrix 4 was like one of the most pirated movies of all time within 4 days. Are you -- have you heard and seen things like that? And what's the takeaway on all this?

Andrew, that is a great question. And I'm not saying it's a great question to stall because that's usually what people do. No, that's simply a great question, and your cue reminded me of some I didn't talk about with day-and-date because, yes, piracy is a gigantic problem. And yes, they're talking about it, and they know about it. And yes, the minute you create that, you put it on, you stream it digitally, you create the opportunity for that pristine copy as opposed to the guy with the camcorder in a theater, which -- where somebody maybe is walking in front of the thing, and it's not in focus all the time, and it's just clearly not like being able to grab that pristine copy. And they are seeing it the minute they put it on a PVOD or streaming anytime they go digitally into the home. And it's been -- every film just sees a gigantic pop when they do that. And they know that it's really a negative. So it's just another reason to, again, grab as much revenue as you can from theatrical first and then move it in near ancillary markets. So thank you for that great question.

Did you get -- have you gotten feedback from studio execs that in recognition of this, I mean, just proved to be a really big change in hit and impacted their models such that that's one of the motivators, not only for them to return to exclusive windows but, in a sense, they've learned their lesson and they probably won't be leaving those exclusive windows so quickly?

I can't say that I've had those -- no, I might not have them anyway because it would be -- our theater team might be having them more directly than I'm having them. But I know -- but look, it's -- we know the MPAA is focused on piracy. They talked about it. That's what Charlie Rivkin, his speech -- a big topic in his speech was the problems of piracy and how they're working to try to fight it. But it's like radar detectors with the police, I think. I hate to say it. It's unfortunate. There are people who are -- it's hard to stop them, but they want to steal. It's really hard to stop them from stealing.

Our next question is from Ryan Hamilton of Morgan Dempsey Capital Management.

Ryan, so we're on the top of the hour. So give us your best shot. Give us your best one.

Yes, I know. I'm at the end of the line here, so most of my questions have most probably been answered. Just real quick on price increases you talked about on the theater side. Any comments on the concessions, food beverage? Any comments on price increases on the food and beverage side?

Price increases. I'm sorry. I didn't quite [indiscernible].

Yes, price increases.

I basically would echo what Greg said earlier about -- and the context was primarily in the admission pricing when he's answering it, but it's the same approach on the concession side, too. It is very tactical. I mean we have taken some selected increases. We're -- just like we're seeing the labor cost challenges, we're seeing some rising costs in our cost of product. And so we're trying to be smart and tactical about any price increases that we take. We're no different. I mean you go to any restaurant or anywhere else, go to a ball game, you're going to see those same prices going up. We have the unique challenge of -- as Greg indicated, we're trying to rebuild the business as well. So we want to be careful and smart about it. But it's another issue that our team is watching and working very carefully on.

So I'll follow up with the call later. Doug, congrats on a successful career. Fantastic working with you over the years.

Thank you, Ryan.

At this time, it appears there are no other questions. I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Neis for any additional or closing comments.

Thank you very much. I want to thank everybody for joining us here today and Greg and all of you that are on the call as well. Thank you for your kind words. I personally would like to thank everyone listening to the call for your interest and support of The Marcus Corporation over the years and certainly during my time here with Marcus. I am particularly grateful for the relationships I've built with many of you during that time -- my time here. It has been an honor and privilege to work for such an amazing company and an incredible family for over 36 years. So while I look forward to this next stage of my life, I will most definitely miss all of you and my second family here at Marcus. Greg and Chad will look forward to talking to you once again in early August when we release our fiscal 2022 second quarter results. Until then, thank you, and have a great day.

That concludes today's call. You may disconnect your line at any time.