Earnings Labs

Advanced Drainage Systems, Inc. (WMS)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Sun, May 6, 2012

$145.55

-2.58%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the WMS Industries fiscal 2012 third quarter conference call. During the presentation all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards you will be invited to participate in the question-and-answer session. As a reminder today's conference on April 30, 2012 is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Bill Pfund, Vice President of Investor Relations for WMS Industries. Please go ahead sir.

Bill Pfund

President

Thank you, operator. Before beginning the review of our financial results and operating progress, I'd like to remind everybody that our call today contains forward-looking statements concerning the outlook for WMS and future business conditions. These statements are based on currently available information and involve certain risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements depending on the factors described under Item 1 business and Item IA risk factors in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2011 and in our more recent press releases and reports filed with the SEC. The forward-looking statements made on this call and webcast, the archived version of the webcast, and in any transcripts of this call are only made as of this date, April 30, 2012. This afternoon, Brian Gamache, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will provide an overview of recent milestones and of the third quarter results followed by Scott Schweinfurth, our CFO and Orrin Edidin, WMS' President and then we will open the call up for your questions. Now, let me turn the call over to Brian.

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Thanks, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. WMS' fiscal third quarter results demonstrate further operating progress and quarterly sequential improvements in financial results. For the March 2012 quarter WMS generated total revenue of $176 million compared to a $193 million a year ago. Our revenues increased 9% or $14 million on a quarterly sequential basis. With a significantly improved gross profit margins and continued cost containment our operating margin grew sequentially to 18% and was about flat with the March 2011 quarter on less revenue. As a result both operating income and diluted earnings per share increased almost 50% on a quarterly sequential basis from the December 2011 quarter, with EPS excluding the $0.02 per share second quarter benefit of litigation settlement going from $0.27 per share to $0.40 per diluted share. And cash flow confirms our operating progress as cash flow generated from operating activities is up 6% for the nine months for the comparable period a year ago. Our fiscal third quarter operating results reflect ongoing progress consistent with the sequential goals we set earlier this fiscal year. But investors should also note several key milestones that occurred during the quarter. We believe these milestones highlight the meaningful ongoing progress we are making with our strategies to build a foundation for steady and sustainable long-term growth. These include, our quarter end installed participation base increased by more than 100 units or 1% from the December 31, 2011 quarter reversing the trend of the past seven quarters and our average revenue per day also increased. Our new CLUE themed wide area progressive game was launched in the March quarter at numerous Caesar Entertainment properties in Nevada and Atlantic City, New Jersey with open order for now over 2100 units and five new participation games expected to receive their regulatory approvals…

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

Thanks Brian and good afternoon everyone. I will briefly add perspective to our financial performance and trends. For the March 2012 quarter we generated revenue from the sale of 5993 new gaming machines of which 4598 units were in the US and Canada. We recognized revenue on 759 of the 957 for new casinos that shipped in the December 2011 quarter. After several years of declining shipments for new casino openings it's highly encouraging for our industry to realize growth from this element of market expansion. For WMS gaming machine sales for new casino openings and expansions in the US and Canada totaled approximately 1800 units more than double the number of units shipped a year ago and includes among other shipments to the Ohio Properties and Maryland Live. As previously stated our floor share for new casino openings this year is expected to be in the high teens. New replacements units were approximately 2800 units in the US and Canada representing a 600 unit quarterly sequential improvement and just 200 units below a year ago. Internationally we sold 1395 new units comprising 23% of total global unit shipments compared with 2338 units or 39% of total units a year ago principally reflecting lower shipments in the sluggish European market along with lower unit shipments in the Mexican and Australian markets both of which had provided significant sales activities during the last two years. It's encouraging that we received approval recently for the sale of our Bluebird xD cabinet and the number of new games themes in New South Wales, Australia. The average selling price was $15,233 compared with $16,325 in the December 2011 quarter reflecting a higher mix of lower price video lottery terminals, the impact from higher discounts on large volume orders, fewer premium for sale units and…

Orrin Edidin

President

Thanks Scott. Our focus during the March quarter was to build on the operating progress established during the preceding two quarters with particular emphasis on reversing the erosion in our participation business. As you can see, we achieved this goal by successfully growing our installed footprint by more than 100 units over the modest improvement in average daily revenue. Also noteworthy is that much of this increase was represented by new wider progressive games and new games on a proprietary adapted gaming platform and as a result our installed footprint of coining games was only modestly below the all time high achieved a year ago. As with the December quarter and following the break in the [lock jam] of new product approvals that began in September we continue to aggressively refresh our installed participation base in the March quarter to convert that portion which should become sale and reach the end of its lifecycle. Cumulatively, in the December and March quarters we updated about a third of our installed base. Despite this high level of product refreshes which were somewhat attributable to needed catch-up, our open orders remained strong in nearly 2100 units. This demonstrates the excellent customer interest in our latest participation offerings. To put this in perspective, our open orders represent about 1.5 to 2.25 of a normal rate of installations. With several of our latest new products generating strong results from our customers, the first CLUE game and latest games for some of our more established series such as the Wizard of Oz, Journey to Oz and Epic Monopoly games, and two new mechanical reel versions of The Lord of the Rings Games coupled with the strength of our existing base of participation games, we're confident that the unusually high number of refreshes in the last several…

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Thanks Orrin. We are making solid progress in restoring WMS' growth momentum and our priorities for the near term and into fiscal ‘13 remain crystal clear. First, growing our installed participation product base and improve our daily average revenue by developing and introducing innovative player appealing games in new form factors with particular emphasis on increasing the mix of (inaudible) progressive units and our proprietary adaptive gaming technology units. Second, garner increased ship share in our global product sales business by developing differentiated high earning games, game content and products for our customers worldwide coupled with world class customer service. We placed an extraordinary emphasis on creating value for our customers. The performance we reported today along with our other milestones clearly indicate that customers value, the innovation and strength of our product pipeline. Throughout the organization, WMS is committed to and strongly positioned to serve customers with innovative, high performing gaming products enabled by advanced technologies that are redefining our industry. Third, maintain our industry leading investment in research development and other organic growth initiatives at levels relative to revenue that are above our competitive set. We believe that effective R&D remains the key to our long-term growth and as such I am really energized by this year's upcoming G2E event for WMS. With a full complement of innovation and gaming content, also new licenses and an exciting new platforms and form factors in our participation product and product sale businesses I believe we will demonstrate to the customers a depth and breadth of new offerings that will be among the best of my 12 year tenure at WMS. And fourth aggressively pursue ongoing improvements in our continuous improvement efforts. Despite the significant improvement that had been achieved by the WMS team of last several years, we expect further progress. We believe these initiatives will deliver greater cost efficiencies and effectively in our supply chain and provide an organizational structure that will enable WMS to earn higher products sale, gross margins helping us reach our long-term operating margin goal. By concentrating on growing our revenues and improving our margins, our efforts should then also result in increasingly operating cash flows and strong returns on capital. This in turn will enable us to continue to fund our wider array of ongoing potential growth initiatives in the future. In the significant growth opportunities presented by the convergence of online and LAN based gaming for our existing customers. So the full complement of online wagering, mobile, casual and social gaming capabilities. Our extensive research indicates that this future gaming content conversions will present significant growth potential for both our customers and WMS. Our commitment to build a full complement of products, services and gaming solutions will enable WMS to work with our customers to monetize the attractive growth opportunities. Now we will be pleased to take your questions. Operator?

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from the line Carlo Santarelli with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Carlo Santarelli

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead

Brian, I just had two bigger picture questions and then Scott I had just one follow up. Brian could you talk a little bit about the domestic environment what you are seeing in ASPs, obviously down sequentially down year-over-year. Could you talk a little bit bigger picture about that and then if you wouldn’t mind, just qualitatively walking us through what you are seeing in the international space as well on the product sales side?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Sure. Two separate issues. I will deal with the ASP question first Carl. I think there our ASPs year-over-year as we mentioned on the call, we are down due to a mix issue. It didn’t have as many premium for sale products, the VLT units, new large orders that were more competitive than normal orders and then just the competitive market pressures in general. I would think that from a modeling standpoint, you probably want to use the last three quarters or so as a more typical ASP price going forward. I think given the competitive pressures, you are not going see us have great pricing leverage in the next two to three quarters. But I think it will be a more normalized run rate going forward, Carl the $16000 range. But we are, there is no question. There is competitive pressures out there unlike we have ever seen before. And as far as international, there were four jurisdictions that we really haven’t done a lot of business with, this year that we have done. Mexico, I would say that that market is now stabilized. It is certainly not a growth market as it was in the lot of previous couple of years. Australia, Singapore and Switzerland are all undergoing national standards. In Europe, the European market is very similar to the US market which is very challenged economically right now. So I think internationally it is more of a timing issue as anything. Australia, Singapore and Switzerland will be resolved from an OS standpoint in the next couple of quarters, but I think the international risk is challenged as well right now.

Carlo Santarelli

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead

Scott, I just had one question. If you look at the end of period installed base after the fiscal 2Q as well as end of the period installed base after the fiscal 3Q your average installed base for this quarter was obviously meaningfully below both. Could you talk a little bit of may be the timing in the period and obviously some others late orders came on and did you have some product offer a good period of the fiscal 3Q. I assume that's the case but may be could you walk us through how that calculation turns out?

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

Yeah sure we started the quarter with 9282 units in the installed base and during the first half of the quarter, the installed base shrank from that number and then in the last half of the quarter with new approvals on new games particularly the Clue game that got approved in March. We were able to accelerate installs of product at that point. So we ended the quarter with 9389. So the 9115 is just merely an average taking the installed base at the end of each day in the quarter and dividing it by the number of days in the quarter.

Brian Gamache

Chairman

As Scott mentioned Carl we touched about 20% of our installed base during quarter which was a huge number for us and yet our backlog went up quarter over quarter. I think our backlog last quarter was 1900 units. It's now nearly 2100 units and during that timeframe we've touched a lot of products. So we continue to get our gaming operations business back in order and I believe that as we mentioned this is the most prolific stable of products we ever launched in any one quarter. This is Q4 and I think heading into Q1 of fiscal 2013 we are going to be back in business here and it's going to, we are going to have some tailwind for once.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Steven Kent with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Steven Kent

Analyst · Steven Kent with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead

Can you just talk a little bit about the average selling price decline in the quarter, did you ship any of the Maryland units. If you exclude the VLTs in each quarter what were the average selling prices. Just some discussion about that and then also can you talk about your tax rate this quarter? It looks like it's about $0.01 - $0.015 or so. Is that the tax rate we should be using for the balance of this fiscal year?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Let me deal with the ASP question first Steve. We are backwards $1100 year-over-year and as I said earlier I don't believe that's going to be the case in Q4 and Q1. I believe that it was a set of circumstances here that were a little bit unique. We did ship games in Ohio and we did ship games in Maryland. We are not going to break those out for competitive reasons. But any time you go backwards of $1100 and your margin goes 320 basis points you are obviously doing some pretty good work. Our supply chain guys are breaking their backs right now to get us best of class margins and in fact we just recently eclipsed in Q3 60% on our Bluebird2 and Bluebird2e product which has been an internal milestone of ours for quite sometime. So we will continue to make great progress there and as we get to a more normalized environment I believe you will see our margins be best of class.

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

And then Steve on the tax rate yes they were us some discrete tax items in the quarter that should not be recurring. So the tax rate should be in a sort of more normal 36% to 37% in the first quarter. Now that's all a subject to find some miracle, the R&D tax gets pushed through Congress and signed by the President by June 30, that would have a positive benefit, but we don’t think that is likely to happen.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Joe Greff of JPMorgan. Please proceed.

Joe Greff

Analyst · Joe Greff of JPMorgan. Please proceed

Hi, guys first question on the ASP, Brian and in the first question you mentioned ASPs look a the last three quarters or anything look at the last three quarters as an average for what we should be looking at ASPs going forward.

Brian Gamache

Chairman

That’s probably a good benchmark Joe. I think the last three quarters we look at that average of those three timeframes will give you a good benchmark going forward.

Joe Greff

Analyst · Joe Greff of JPMorgan. Please proceed

The quarter over quarter you know backlog in game ops, that’s great. How do you think about cannibalization or net additions to the installed base going forward from here. Should we see it better than where it has been historically or if you can answer that and then I have one follow up.

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

I think any time you can put two out and take one back it’s a good trade. We’ve not been there because as I mentioned in the past couple of calls, there was such a pent up demand for our refreshes. I think that going forward we will get back to that 241 trading cycle but we are not there yet. I think that Q4 probably, the first point we can start making some progress there on accretive footprint. All of our products aren’t meant to compete with one another. We have different little segments we are going after in this participation floor, Joe. So I think you are going to start to see some meaningful impacts in these new product launches in Q4 and Q1.

Joe Greff

Analyst · Joe Greff of JPMorgan. Please proceed

Okay. Great, and then Scott, I think you mentioned earlier anybody quite grasp the details of it. With regard to your fiscal 4Q, revenue guidance, they are a little bit lower than what you talked about a few months ago. Can you drill that on what drove that place? I think you said slower adoption but you can clarify with those details or that would be great. Thank you.

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

Yeah. Just I would say, we were at 13, let’s say a quicker uptake on some of the new products out there. We have had great success in getting game conversions out of the floor and by having those game conversions out in the high performance of those games, that’s always a good metric and indicator for future game sales. That’s just taking us, I would say longer.

Orrin Edidin

President

That’s the one thing we missed calling it here Joe, is we thought it was going to be a three quarter turnaround, because of the capital issues, we have three different series of product, the Colossal Reels, Power Spins, and G+Deluxe 5x4 spinning streak, and they are doing all phenomenally well and unfortunately can’t get them up fast enough because of the capital constraints. So this will take a little bit more time when we gave guidance back in August but we are on track. We are making the traction that we had expected we make. It just take a little bit longer than we had hoped and I think that when you see the continued progress in Q4, you’ll see why we are so excited.

Joe Greff

Analyst · Joe Greff of JPMorgan. Please proceed

Okay and then one final question, Scott, CapEx for the fiscal Q4 that’s up sequentially and up a little bit year over year on aggregate basis. Can you help us provide details there?

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

I am sorry. Are you asking about Q3 or Q4?

Joe Greff

Analyst · Joe Greff of JPMorgan. Please proceed

The June quarter.

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

June quarter? Yeah, it is likely that CapEx in gaming occupations is going to be at or a little above what it was in Q3 as we now get to the point as we are incrementing the installed base, that means we are going to have to put more capital out to grow that installed base and then on the PPNE side, that too is likely to be at or little above what it was in the March quarter as we sort of getting towards finishing off two large projects we have been working on.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Strawn with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Mark Strawn

Analyst · Mark Strawn with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead

One question on game ops yields. Just trying to get a sense of how we should expect the yields on sales, the trend going forward. It looks like the year-over-year decline has accelerated a little bit but is there anything that’s changed on pricing or should we expect as you get more games on the floor those yields should start to improve?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

I think that’s exactly the case, Mark. I think one of the things is, we have had Wizard of Oz out there for a number of years now and that game is held up extraordinarily well and the onus is on us now to create a follow-on Wizard of Oz which we think we have in one of these games we’re launching this quarter and that will hopefully make up to that shortfall. But yes, the more these new games you get it out there, the popularity of those launches will certainly make up for any shortfall or declines.

Mark Strawn

Analyst · Mark Strawn with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead

And has anything changed in the way that you say pricing that new iteration and Wizard of Oz or is it still in the same general ballpark?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Same general ballpark. The other thing is we've had great success with some of our more fixed lease products in the last year and so its really a mix of business issue there as well but you will see the up tick in Q4 as we have been expecting all year.

Operator

Operator

And next question comes from the line of Harry Curtis with Nomura.

Harry Curtis

Analyst · Harry Curtis with Nomura

Brian, a quick question on the decline in ASPs. It seems like a ubiquitous question. But what gives you confidence that if Konami, for example has been undercut by say $500 to a $1000 a machine that they are not going to lower their prices just to maintain their competitive pricing edge and creating a negative cash gain there.

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Call me old fashion, Harry, but I still believe the content matters. And if we put the content out there as its earning today, we don't have to worry about ASP. It will take care of itself. ASP only becomes a problem when you are living on a content that's not performing as we expect ours too. So I think that going forward you are going to continue to see us be at compatible pricing. I wouldn't use the word aggressive but we are going to be competitive. I think there was some good prudent decisions we made in Q3 that allowed us to get more share by being more aggressive than normal but I think that these are the competitive realities that we are in right now and at the end of the day, the fact that one of the analysts had a 22% ship share for the quarter. I think that's pretty good given that we've been through and how we are wrapping back up. I would expect this to get back to a more mid-20s here in fiscal 2013 based on the performance of our content and we are very excited. We wish G2 were here next week to be honest with you.

Harry Curtis

Analyst · Harry Curtis with Nomura

So is it safe to say that you just don't think that ASPs is going to leak much more if at all?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

No I think it's going to as I said before, it's probably going to stay in that $16,000 range for a period of time and before the business becomes stabilized and then I think you will see it go from there at some point in time. But right now when you look at our margins, we are able to reduce our prices and increase our margins. That's a really good trend and continue to have that kind of success in our supply chain, we are going to continue to try to leverage that.

Harry Curtis

Analyst · Harry Curtis with Nomura

Okay and my second question was really trying to get a sense of your body language for product sales in 2013, you mentioned that 2012 benefited from some strong new openings and that there would be two more openings in Ohio plus larger shipments to VLTs, but the VLT markets tend to be lower ASP markets and so is that kind of a subtle way of saying and then you also mentioned perhaps a higher mix of lease games. Is that a subtle way of saying that 2013 could be a difficult comp year as far as product sale revenues.

Brian Gamache

Chairman

No, I don't think we said that Harry. I think it's too early for us to give any directional guidance. We are still in the process of creating our three-year plan and our annual budget for the board and I think we will have more to comment on that in August. But again I think that the market is sequentially better than it was a year ago, but it's still somewhat challenged and we are going to continue to fight hard, we are going to continue to innovate and I think when you see the products we are going to bring to G2E, new platforms, new form factors you know new licenses you are going to see us coming with both guns ablaze. So we are not out of woods yet but it's better than it was.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Wieczynski with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead.

Steven Wieczynski

Analyst · Steve Wieczynski with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead

So I can do this right and you add back kind of $800 kind of ASP and you get to that 16,000 range and that would essentially take your product margins up to kind of the 53% to 53.5% range is that a pretty good you know kind of indicator going forward and you know how much higher can you get those margins if you there is really not going to be a much more on the price side?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

I think that's directionally a pretty good area to focus on Steve. The whole thing will depend on our mix of business as it usually does. We have several you know premium for sale products coming out in fiscal 13 that we hope will drive ASP. We have some different kind of form factors that we are going to be bringing to market that hopefully will drive some ASP, but you know given this competitive marketplace you know we are very sensitive to our pricing right now and I would rather focus on the margin aspects on the supply chain excellence than on the ASP area. But we will make up whatever we can make up in the ASP category we will make it up and through a continuous improvement.

Steven Wieczynski

Analyst · Steve Wieczynski with Stifel Nicolaus. Please go ahead

And then Scott, in the quarter did you ship to two Ohio properties or just one in the quarter?

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

Both of the Ohio casino properties, yes

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Joel Simkins with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Joel Simkins

Analyst · Joel Simkins with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

A couple of quick questions; Brian, obviously, we've spoken in the past about a video poker; we did talk earlier on the call about some optimism for this segment. Can you just give us a sense of what we can expect and what would sort of be a success for you guys in the next year or two in the segment?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

I think if you looked at the video poker, we've got somewhere in the 5% to 10% of the installed base out there in the next couple of years Joel, that would be a huge home-run for us. Poker is a market that is you have to have a lot of patience and you have to have some good product, because the poker players are very kind of predictable, they like what they play and they're used to playing a certain product. So to get them to switch brands, and get them to give you the trial, it's not going to happen overnight. So we're not good for a grand-slam here, we're just looking for a good single or double and that would be very accretive to our share.

Joel Simkins

Analyst · Joel Simkins with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead

And in terms of your social gaming interactive business, obviously, you've got Jackpotparty.com now; you've got this Lucky Cruise game and then it looks like it has ramped quite a bit, and then today you recently announced this Groupe Partouche deal. When do you guys think you'll need to be able to grow or when will you breakout this business in terms of some more color on or operating metrics etcetera?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Well, we're doing a lot of things under the radar here Joel, and we get asked a lot of questions about when are we going to have more color on that? And I believe that we'll probably give the Street more color and guidance on interactive business sometime between now and the end of Q4. There is a lot of things, very exciting things that are being developed here organically and inorganically and we’re anxious to share that with you, but we believe this is a very important part of our business going forward. We were the first ones in our industry to have the online gaming in a legalized jurisdiction given the fact that we're doing this B2B model with Partouche is a very exciting announcement as well. So there is a lot of things that we want to clarify and share with you in the months ahead.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Bill Lerner with Union Gaming. Please go ahead.

Bill Lerner

Analyst · Bill Lerner with Union Gaming. Please go ahead

A couple of questions or a few questions; one, for the Bluebird2e, what's the ASP premium relative to Bluebird2, I guess probably the way of asking and then I have a couple of follow-ups?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

We don't break that out Bill, but its margin neutral, if that gives you any help.

Bill Lerner

Analyst · Bill Lerner with Union Gaming. Please go ahead

So it's about driving demand?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Yeah exactly. This is a hybrid product between our, we view the Bluebird2e Bill, as a hybrid between our Bluebird2 and our Bluebird3 so to speak, that's down the road.

Bill Lerner

Analyst · Bill Lerner with Union Gaming. Please go ahead

And then what maybe for Scott, what percent, Brian, you called it backlog or open orders, but what percentage of your open orders generally convert to revenue and generally over what timeframe; is it the majority or is it all?

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

Yeah, substantially all of them because these are orders that customers have signed up for and I'll say a bit rare for customers to cancel an order once they've signed it; if they want to get that order out on the floors as (inaudible) as they can.

Brian Gamache

Chairman

And I think as far as we consider Bill, a 100 units installed per week is a good velocity that's when we're really clicking and we have it’s actually more than that during Q3. So we're starting to get that footprint really where we wanted to be and going into Q1, we should have a dramatic reset of expectations going forward.

Bill Lerner

Analyst · Bill Lerner with Union Gaming. Please go ahead

So it's less than six months or less it sounds like?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

I would say it's really two to three quarters, yes.

Bill Lerner

Analyst · Bill Lerner with Union Gaming. Please go ahead

And guys last one; Brian, maybe you could talk about this, in terms of rate of change in your business, obviously there is a lot of focus for obvious reasons on sequential improvement. But Brian when you look at the metrics that you are focused on internally, whatever they are, whether it's external improved product approvals, whether it's how well you are budgeting relative to how well you were in prior months or quarters. How does sort of April look relative to January across all the metrics that Brian that you particularly care about?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

April I think is, typically we see our Q4 ramping up to be our seasonally busiest quarter of the year; it goes Q4, Q3, Q2, Q1, and so I think the month of April is a little bit softer than we would like in our gaming operations business; but, that doesn't mean it's not a huge difference; it's just slightly off of what our forecast was, but our order book is building dramatically; so that kind of offsets that. As far as our gaming approvals and so forth, everything that we are bringing out in the quarter is on time and on target. So from that perspective, I look at that very carefully. As far as our game development, you know it used to take us about 15 to 18 months to get the game to the pipeline from conception to final approval. We are now less than the six months and that's taken a lot of working hard, process improvement, deliverables in our product development folks to make those kind of improvement. So we are able to do things quicker and more nimbly and our expenses are less year-over-year. So we are driving a lot of things that haven't really made the radar yet from an operational perspective, but I think we’ve done a really good work on.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Dennis Forst with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Dennis Forst

Analyst · Dennis Forst with KeyBanc. Please go ahead

Yes, I wanted to ask about launches for the June and September quarters; Brian you had just a second ago mentioned that everything is on time. Can you give us the names of some of the new product that's going to be in the pipeline over the next six months?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Sure, our Q4 Dennis we’ve got Aladdin, Super Team, Gone With The Wind, Monster Jackpots, Life of Luxury-2, and Wizard of Oz, Great and Powerful. So we have some significant strength coming into this quarter. Now again, as Scott mentioned earlier, it's not going to all be in from day one. It kind of evolves over about a two month period when we get these things launched properly, but it will triple into Q1 and you'll see some impact here particularly in the month of May and June of these games hitting the floor.

Dennis Forst

Analyst · Dennis Forst with KeyBanc. Please go ahead

And then my other question was about VLT sales; where were some of the major properties or markets where you did significant VLT sales during the quarter just finished?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

We sent some to Maryland in the quarter and that's the biggest component.

Dennis Forst

Analyst · Dennis Forst with KeyBanc. Please go ahead

And anything else significant in the quarter from?

Scott Schweinfurth

CFO

No, minor here and there; nothing significant that we would compare to Maryland.

Operator

Operator

And our last question comes from the line of Todd Eilers with ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Todd Eilers

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead

Just two questions, first on the gaming ops, off the I guess 107 net adds at the end of the quarter, can you just give us a sense for how much of that was related to new openings or new properties versus maybe the existing footprint? And then also can you give us a sense for which brand kind of drove the increase in the quarter, was it Epic Monopoly or CLUE just be helpful to kind of give a sense for maybe what drove the growth there?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

On your second question on the game themes, yes it was CLUE which got its first approval right at the beginning of March and then we got a second one closer to the end of March and that was an element of the increase. Second, I would say was Epic Monopoly, which we had received initial approval for in the December quarter and as demand built we fulfilled that demand. And then third we came out with two new mechanical reel games for our Lord of the Ring series and that too helped drive demand there. And Todd I don't have in front of me what related to specific new casino openings, but certainly the Ohio properties and Maryland Live didn't open during that quarter and I just don't recollect what…

Brian Gamache

Chairman

I think it's mostly existing casinos.

Brian Gamache

Chairman

I think that's a fair estimate.

Todd Eilers

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead

And then just last question on new opening sales, you had mentioned Maryland VLTs in the quarter and I know Maryland Live I guess is opening in two phases. Can you give us a sense; did you shipped all of that order in the quarter or should we still expect more of that to come with the second phase? And then second question related to that I guess is you had mentioned you shipped 759 of the 957 previously shipped games last quarter that you didn't recognize revenue on. Do you expect to recognize the balance of that in 4Q?

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Yes, for related to Maryland we shipped the preponderance of the games for that opening in the March quarter. And relative to the units that we still have yet to recognize revenue on our belief is we will be able to recognize revenue on those in the fourth quarter.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time; I would now turn the call back to you.

Brian Gamache

Chairman

Thank you for joining us this afternoon. As you can tell from our comments we're encouraged by the success of our latest products and the efficiencies being realized from our reorganization and realignment actions. We look forward to updating you on our next call in early August regarding our ongoing progress and the opportunities to grow in fiscal ‘13. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen that does conclude your conference for today. We do thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.