Earnings Labs

Dave & Buster's Entertainment, Inc. (PLAY)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, Jun 8, 2015

$11.69

-8.03%

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Transcript

Jay Tobin

Management

Thank you, [Renee] and thank you all for joining us to the Dave & Buster's Entertainment Inc. quarterly conference call. On the call today are Steve King, Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Jenkins, Chief Financial Officer. After comments from both Mr. King and Mr. Jenkins, we'll open the call for your questions. This call is being recorded on behalf of the Company and is copyrighted. Before we begin our discussion of the Company's results, I'd like to call your attention to the fact that in our remarks and in our responses to your questions, certain items may be discussed which are not based entirely on historical facts any such items should be considered forward-looking statements relating to future events within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated. Information on the various risk factors and uncertainties have been published in our filings with the SEC which are available on our website at daveandbusters.com, under the Investor Relations section. In addition, our remarks today will include references to adjusted EBITDA, store-level EBITDA and pro forma net income, which are financial measures that are not defined under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Investors should review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP results containing our earnings announcement released this afternoon which is also available on our website. Now I’m going to turn the call over to Steve.

Steve King

Management

Thank you, Jay and good afternoon everyone. We appreciate your participation in today’s call and your continued interest in Dave & Buster’s. As our earnings release demonstrates we begin the new fiscal year from the position of strength, which together with other factors that Brain will address shortly has enabled us to increase our annual guidance, specifically we set new standard of excellence for adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margins with record results for the first quarter. We also delivered healthy gains in our top line through a combination of comparable store sales increases and contributions from the more recently opened stores in our non-comp locations. Comp store sales rose 9.9% against a 4.9% increase in the prior year and we continue to expand outperformance relative to Knapp-Track with an over 900 basis point differential over the affected 13 week period. We’ve now outperformed this industry’s benchmark for the last 12 consecutive quarters. On a two year basis we accelerated comp store sales in the first quarter to about 14.5% compared with the 11% in the third and fourth quarters of last year. The overall comparable store sales increase in the first quarter consisted if gains across day-parts, days of the week, weekends and geographies. In our estimation our positioning as the first choice for fun to eat, drink, play and watch, while enabling guests to customize their experience is clearly resonating. Diving deeper into our comparable store sales gain you’ll note that walking sales, which are the most indicative of our core demographic appeal where our primary growth driver with 10.5% increase, while our special events business which helps expand our brand awareness grew at a very healthy 4%. It’s also worthwhile to note that our 2014 class of eight stores and in fact our non-comparable stores collectively are performing…

Brian Jenkins

Management

Thank you, Steve and good afternoon. Before I review our first quarter financials and update our annual outlook I wanted to discuss two recent events of interest that will impact our pro forma earnings guidance for 2015. First, we recently closed on a new $500 million senior credit facility consisting of $150 million term loan A and $350 million revolver. It has a five year term and bears a more favorable interest rate compared to our previous facility and by utilizing $389 million of proceeds from the new facility and approximately $45 million of cash we refinanced the entire $430 million balance outstanding on our previous term loan B and also paid related interest and expenses. Although we will incur a pre-tax, non-cash slide off of debt issuance cost from the previous facility of approximately $6.8 million in the second quarter of 2015 we will save in excess of $9 million in annualized interest expense based on current LIBOR rates, thereby meaningfully enhancing our net income and free cash flow. Also we priced the secondary public offering of 8.5 million shares of common stock by our existing shareholders at a price to the public of 31.5 per share. Additionally, the underwriters exercised an option to purchase an additional 1.275 million shares of common stock at the offering price. The selling shareholders received all the proceeds from the sale of these shares, which closed on June 2. Now turning to our first quarter results, total revenues increased 14.3% to $222.7 million up from a $194.8 million in the prior year. Revenues from our comparable stores increase 9.9% to $190.4 million up from a $173.3 million while revenues from our non-comparable stores increased 51.5% to $31.5 million up from $22.7 million in the prior year. Now recall that a store does not…

Steve King

Management

Thank you, Brian. As Brian mentioned, we're on track to open the 7 to 8 new stores this year and we've opened 4 so far. Although we have been seeing some results from both the large format and small format stores based on our 2014 and 2013 openings. Our new term pipeline for 2015 is weighted towards larger-sized stores, also I would like to add that at particular location it could go either, way we've been erring on the side of building the larger stores opposed to the smaller stores, so all these stores with the exception of one of the 7 to 8, will, are or will be the large-store format. As Brian mentioned in the first quarter itself we opened Pelham, New York which is in Westchester County North of New York City and Euless Texas outside of Dallas. Early in the second quarter we open in Kentwood, Michigan which is near Grand Rapids and Woburn, Massachusetts outside of Boston. We have previously guided to 3 or 4 more store opening this year and two of these are under construction. Our next opening will be in the third quarter in a [Dinner][ph] which is outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. And the other store under construction is in Friends a suburb of Friendswood, a suburb of Houston Texas. We also have the one location that Brian mentioned in Buffalo, New York at the end of the year which is not included in that 7 to 8 store or new store guidance that we talked about previously. So looking ahead we have great visibility in terms of development with 13 signed leases for stores that open in 2016 and thereafter. So really to sum things up, we enjoyed a great start to 2015 and are energized and excited as to what the full year holds for us at Dave & Buster's. So we're now ready to take some questions. Operator, could you please open the line for questions?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We will go first to Sharon Zackfia with William Blair.

Sharon Zackfia

Analyst

Couple of questions, I guess, more recently with all of the rain in Houston and broadly in Texas, could you give us any update on how that may or may not impact your business and then secondarily, relating to the World Cup and I don't know that was a tremendous driver of your business last year, but maybe did you give us any inside on that?

Steve King

Management

In the past, we talked a little bit about the World Cup, I mean there were a few days that were significant for us in terms of that, but I wouldn't call it overall a significant driver to the second quarter of last year and then as it relates to Houston and Texas, specifically, we just pulled some analysis again last week and we're just not seeing anything, whether it because of oil or rain or whatnot that's negatively impacting Texas at this point.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the Nicole Miller with Piper Jaffray.

Nicole Miller

Analyst · Piper Jaffray.

Thanks. When you think about the box office being relatively strong this summer and if that continues into the fall, what opportunities and/or challenges does that present to your business?

Steve King

Management

In the past, we try to correlate box office proceeds and big box office blockbusters with whether or not that positively or negatively impacts our business and we're really just never been able to draw that correlation. So, I think that -- and a part of that is because, for all the stores that we have, that are adjacent to or near movies were having blockbuster probably helps the overall traffic and helps with people deciding to have dinner, whatever, before a movie, there is no stores that are further away that probably get some sort of negative impact from that. So, net-to-net, as we’ve measured it in the past, it’s really not been a significant factor and aren’t really seeing anything right now.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Andy Barish with Jefferies.

Andy Barish

Analyst · Jefferies.

The Pacquiao call out and why you don't think it was significant, I guess, because there was already a Saturday night or something and then, what do you think caused the -- an acceleration on the two year comps, you're running 11 and the first quarter, accelerated up to the mid-teens. So, what would you point to on that front?

Steve King

Management

So first on the call out, I think that, mostly you probably read the fact that Pacquiao/ Mayweather fight was one of the single biggest pay-per-view event -- home event of all time and I think what happened there was that, it ended up influencing the walk-in part of our business, the part that we actually went out to attract people for -- to sell tickets to and we had the fight on in some of our showrooms and our private events space and whatnot, that was very well intended and we sold out in a lot of places. But at the same time, I think it's a net that big an event that is -- kind of happens from a national perspective, was a negative -- with a negative for the overall for walk-in, particularly on that night, so as [Dave] described he was in our -- [Dave] story’s said, he went into the -- he went into the showroom and it was -- everybody was cheering and although it wasn’t that great a fight, probably not sure what they were cheering about. But anyway, but the midways were empty, so I think. It's negatively impacted us that way and so net-net it was an okay day for us, it was a positive day but it wasn't some sort of massively better day than the average of what we had for the overall quarter. As it relates to the acceleration of our comp store sales, we've been running the same playbook, we're ran approximately the same number of points on a year-over-year basis, we ran the same number of weeks on a year-over-year basis, I’m talking about marketing now. We ran some similar strategies to what we had run on year-over-year basis. Although I did elude to the fact that we did a couple of things to -- change up the medium mix to more specifically address our younger audience and did that on a Comedy Network and in the past we've heard as talk about doing that Nickelodeon as well and we think that's an effective way for us to reach that younger audience with a very specific message that's actually cut -- a spot that’s cut for them, and we think there is some benefit from that but I think overall I'd point back to strength to the brand and what we think that we've done over the last several years in order to do, make it more contemporary and that's about investing in the physical plans adding exports games, game for every year, in addition to the food and beverage that we've been rolling out. So I think again back to the underlines strength of the brands seems to be continuing to build momentum.

Andy Barish

Analyst · Jefferies.

And then just one quick follow up on the e-ticket initiative with half the stores, how’s that flowing through in terms of labor savings, you've expected and can you update us in terms of what you think that will be annualized?

Steve King

Management

So in the past, it was really a play on the paper ticker card more or less then on the labor. We think there will be some ancillary labor benefit, but we spend about $3 million a year on tickets themselves, and we think this option rate continues to drift up it’s about 80% right now, when we’re first starting the more mature stores are up around 85% to 90%. We think we’re going to be able to save the vast majority of that kind of $3 million in paper ticket cost and then some additional labor savings, but we’ve kind of bet that we think we’ll stay back $3 million a year from that initiative and as I mentioned we’re about half way through right now, so we would expect to be at that run rate by the end of the second quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We move next to Brian Vaccaro with Raymond James.

Brian Vaccaro

Analyst

Good evening. Just a couple of questions on the margin lines if I could, on the food cost line Brian can you remind us how much you’re contracted for the remainder of the year and why you expect that inflation to tick up to 4 to 5 or 4 to 4.5 range you mentioned for the year on the cost inflation.

Brian Jenkins

Management

I think we’ve indicated on our Q4 call that we were seeing pressure on beef and poultry and those are really the two really significant areas that are driving us to that 4% to 5% range of pressures we expect there. We do expect they need to increase to be less so in the back half of year we’ll start to rollover a little bit higher pricing in the back part of the year, but first part most of the pressure is coming from meat and poultry at this point, improved situation on the seafood side and on oils and dressings but all in all it’s a net increase year-over-year.

Brian Vaccaro

Analyst

Okay. I think you said pricing year-on-year on the food side was 2.9% and if you were to take no additional pricing, can you remind us the quarterly cadence on your pricing and how should we think about it for the year, are we going to be in that 2.5 to 3 range or maybe let a little bit slow off?

Brian Jenkins

Management

Yes, I mean we took a little more pricing this year. In the first quarter our effective tax -- effective price increased on food is about 2.9% and that’s the culmination of really three increases that we did an increase in February and then we have some increases that are working for us from the prior year. I think we’re going to probably be, for the full year net 2.5% to 3%, we had indicated because we see this pressure on the commodity side that we’re going to probably be a little more aggressive than typically what’s been about 2% on food for us and we’ll probably shooting for closer to 2.5 to 3 for the full year on the food side.

Brian Vaccaro

Analyst

Okay.

Brian Jenkins

Management

Which means we don’t really expect to totally offset food cost overall, but we do have as I’ve mentioned before we’ve got the amusements out of the house and we were then 10 basis points to the prior year in this first quarter and we’re going to continue to try to manage our margins in that 80% range, which I think we’ve been very effective at for really a long period of time.

Brian Vaccaro

Analyst

Yes, you have been certainly, e-ticket savings that Steve eluded to earlier will play a key part in that. One last quick one for me, just on the G&A line obviously incentive comp is up for obvious reasons, but can you just give us a little help on how you think about pro forma G&A for the year, including stock based comp.?

Brian Jenkins

Management

Yes, our G&A for the quarter is like $12.8 million, were up 2.4. We did have some increased cost related to the secondary offerings that -- if you look at our pro forma statements you’ll see that number was about $700,000. It was little bit higher than that kind of levels from prior year. In addition to that we had higher stock based comp, higher bounces due to really the outperformance we had in Q1 and some additional legal cost. So I think we’re -- on the last call I indicated kind of $44 million to $45 million kind of range I believe on G&A. We’re thinking the numbers is probably 48 to 49 right now and part of that has to do with very strong performance we’ve had in terms of EBITDA results as well as some of the transaction cost. In our press release I think you saw we had about $1.4 million of expected transaction cost for the year. So if you think about kind of $48 million to $49 million, was about $1.4 million secondary costs rolling through that number. So if you want to kind of pro forma that out, however you want to think about that. But it is impacting the overall number for the year and then we’re anticipating a little higher legal, but 48 to 49 is pretty good range.

Brian Vaccaro

Analyst

Okay, grate. Thanks. Steve, question for you, I was curious if you had mentioned or if you had mentioned the amusement and other comp for the quarter?

Steve King

Management

Yeah. It was 12.9% amusement and other comp -- it was the strongest category for us followed by beverage at 8.2% and I think food was [indiscernible].

Brian Jenkins

Management

Okay Great. That’s helpful. And then just turning to also following up in margins, look the other store operating expenses was quite a bit more favorable than the expected. Just curious as anything to call out there, that might be some timing issues or anything maybe perhaps related to the e-ticket side, kind of contribute to that?

Brian Jenkins

Management

No, I mean, we had a 180 basis point margin improvement and it's largely related to more leveraging of essentially flat marketing cost and a leveraging of this, what I talked facility related cost which is occupancy, utilities, those what you think. So between the two of those it's roughly a 130 basis points just on that. So, both of those were running through the line you just mentioned -- other store operating expenses. So, very nice leveraging when we get this close to 10% comp store sales. Labor as you see was essentially flat and we are at much higher incentive comp in the quarter at the store level because of the performance and that sort of offset some of the ROE savings. But all-in-all a great margin quarter for us.

Brian Jenkins

Management

Okay great. That makes sense. And I guess my last question for more on -- top down basically just you had given updated guidance in terms of comp for the full year and just extrapolating that out based on what first quarter to date was, first quarter actuals were, it looks like it might be just a little bit slower than we had expected. Is there anything in terms of pricing that -- you had mentioned the 2.5 to 3; is there anything that you could attribute to maybe a little bit of slow down or anything related to that change there?

Steve King

Management

No. I mean, I don’t think we were trying to message or signal a slowdown other than we're going to start rolling over tougher and tougher comps through the remainder other balance of the year. So, we go from the roughly 5% to 6% and then we go to almost 9% and then over 10% for the fourth quarter, so, I think we're just taking that into account, we’re looking at what we're guiding to the full year comp store sales performance.

Brian Jenkins

Management

Now, in the back half of the balance year of Q2 through Q4 of last year was over an 8% comp, 8.3 to extrapolate 4 to 5 guidance. That's sort of a 3 plus BOI at the top end of that range, but we’re rolling over an 8.3 balance-a-year comp. So we've got some pretty strong comps back part of the year.

Brian Jenkins

Management

Yeah. I understand that. I was just curious also may be part of the question was, if you had the ability to take less price later in the year, that you might have been expecting that as well?

Steve King

Management

That’s really not the intent at this point, I mean our intent would be to, as Brian said, try to offset a little more of the food cost pressure that we’re seeing by taking roughly that 2.5 or 3 on the food side. We’ve said consistently that a couple of percent in beverage and essentially we don’t take much price on the amusements side. We're really rely on trying to drive more consumption at the kiosk, that initial purchase to drive the sales.

Brian Jenkins

Management

And just -- I may have confused some folks. Just to be clear, the food price -- effective food price for the quarter was 2.9. It was about a 1.5 on beverage and zero on amusements. So, what that does is gives us an effective price increase blended at like 1.1% of the [9.9][ph]. So, clearly the strength we have is driven by traffic next year. There is a win-win effective price overall.

Brian Jenkins

Management

Alright thanks guys and congrats on the quarter.

Steve King

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Sharon Zackfia with William Blair.

Sharon Zackfia

Analyst · William Blair.

Hi. So, I had a quick follow-up question. I think if you've include EPS guidance from your net income guidance; you kind raised somewhere around the order of to $0.13 to $0.15 for the year and just curious, because I think you beat consensus by roughly a dime in the first quarter and the interest savings you make there would be more than enough to get it higher than $0.13 to $0.15. Is there some other offsetting cost that you are factoring into the full year? How did you think about the updated guidance?

Brian Jenkins

Management

Well, I think, we are -- our arrange right now implied in the net income and share counts that we’ve provided, it is basically $0.99 to a $1.5. So, and we have guided $0.84 at $0.92, so at the high end, it's about a $0.13 increased.

Steve King

Management

We had taken some of the first quarter performance into account when we guided the last time.

Sharon Zackfia

Analyst · William Blair.

Okay it's perfect.

Steve King

Management

We knew that we were going to outperform what -- allows the initial guidance, so we again sort of took up some that flack in our guidance when we guided after than our fourth quarter result it should be.

Sharon Zackfia

Analyst · William Blair.

Okay that helps a lot. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Brian Vaccaro with Raymond James.

Raymond James

Analyst · Raymond James.

Just one quick follow-up for me, in the past you've been helpful on giving us a sense of the quarter-to-day trend just wondering if you’d be willing to give us, with May behind us now, kind of an update on what you're seeing, obviously you've talked about Texas but maybe a little bit more granularity there will be helpful? Thank you.

Steve King

Management

We have a lot less of the quarter behind us than what we've had at year end when we had like 9.5 weeks or so under our belt, now we just finished our fifth week. We're comfortable that the trends we're seeing so far in the second quarters support the revised full year guidance, but we're not going to be specifically guiding quarters at these calls.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. Mr. King, I would like to turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Steve King

Management

Thank you very much again for your continued interest in Dave & Buster's. We'll be at conferences over the next couple of days and next several weeks and hope to see some of you there, and if not, we will talk to you on our September call when we'll be announcing our second quarter results. Thank you very much. Bye.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's presentation. We thank you for your participation.