Golden Entertainment, Inc. (GDEN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Golden Entertainment First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Now I'd like to turn the conference over to James Adams, the company's Vice President of Corporate Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. On the call today is Blake Sartini, the company's Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Charles Protell, the company's President and Chief Financial Officer. On this call, we will make forward-looking statements under the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated in these statements. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or otherwise. During the call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures when talking about our performance. You can find the reconciliation of GAAP financial measures in our press release, which is available on our website. We will start the call with Charles reviewing the details of the first quarter results and a business update. Following that, Blake and Charles will take your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Charles.

Thanks, James. Our first quarter year-over-year results were in line with our expectations and primarily impacted by not having last year's Super Bowl in Las Vegas which was mainly felt at the STRAT. Outside of the Super Bowl impact on the STRAT, our business in Q1 was healthy with EBITDA from our other casinos up year-over-year and EBITDA from our taverns stabilizing. As we look forward, April continues to demonstrate stable operating trends and May is off to a strong start. Currently, we are not seeing the dislocation in our business that seems to be reflected in our public valuation. Now for some context on our property performance in the first quarter. The STRAT experienced declining occupancy and spend, primarily in February, resulting in a $3 million EBITDA headwind from last year's Super Bowl. Occupancy was down 5% for the quarter, but down 13% in February, which obviously led to lower Gaming, f&B and other revenues for the property. However, in April, our hotel revenue is up on both higher occupancy and rate, which is driving improved EBITDA heading into Q2. Looking forward through May, STRAT occupancy is pacing up 6% over last year at attractive rates and June is showing strength as well. Currently, Q2 is looking better than last year for the property, but without direct convention bookings at the STRAT, we have limited visibility beyond the next few months. In Laughlin, we increased EBITDA by reducing expenses and focusing on more profitable concerts at our smaller entertainment venue. We also targeted weekend promotional activities for driving customers as well as continue to promote our midweek bingo for local guests, which allowed us to maintain our leading market share in Laughlin. For Nevada locals casinos, our revenue was flat to prior year, with EBITDA up 2% and largely driven by operational efficiencies across payroll and other expenses. We see consistent performance out of our locals casinos with EBITDA margins at 46% for the second straight quarter. We actually see increasing strength in our locals business in April. So this segment is off to a strong start in Q2. In our taverns, revenue and EBITDA were down slightly year-over-year, but on a sequential basis, EBITDA continued to increase over Q4 as we achieved improved performance from our newest taverns and lowered operating expenses. We have seen an uptick in promotional activity in the tavern market from smaller private operators, which we do not view as sustainable but it may have some impact on Q2 performance for our taverns as we maintain a more disciplined reinvestment strategy. Moving on to our capital structure. We ended the quarter with just over $400 million of debt outstanding, $50 million of cash and $225 million of remaining availability under our revolving credit facility. Our low net leverage at 2.4x EBITDA and liquidity profile will enable us to withstand any potential impact to our business from the macro environment and allow us to continue to reinvest in our own assets, pay dividends and opportunistically acquire more of our own stock. In Q1, we had a short open window to buy stock, [ but ] still used $7.6 million of our buyback authorization to repurchase 274,000 shares. Since the start of 2024, we have repurchased 3.2 million shares totaling almost $100 million and paid out $35 million in dividends. We have $92 million remaining on our current buyback authorization, which we will use opportunistically throughout the year. We have evaluated the limited M&A opportunities currently in the market and given the dislocation in our share price, there is no better use for our capital than repurchasing our own equity at these levels. Our business has remained resilient and is improving despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment. Having a focused portfolio of branded taverns, casinos with owned real estate and low leverage, positions us well to withstand any potential short-term fluctuations in consumer demand and to benefit from the favorable long-term economic trends in Nevada. That concludes our prepared remarks. Blake and I are now available for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Barry Jonas with Truist Securities.

I wanted to want to start with the STRAT. I appreciate some of the comments in the opening remarks. Can you maybe just give a little color now about what the booking window is, how it's been trending as of late and also maybe talk about what your OTA mix is now and how you're sort of moving towards that targeted 50% mix?

Yes. So as Charles mentioned in his prepared comments, we don't have much - without our traditional banquet space, our window is probably much shorter than others. For April, May, it looks very, very good. looks very strong, pacing on a trending basis better than Q1. It's hard for us to predict really outside of June. I think Charles mentioned June was looking strong also. But we are seeing -- I think in addition, I think it's important to point out, we're seeing casino revenues and operational margins also trend in the right direction at the STRAT. So overall, the property is trending well. And outside of the next 90 days, it's hard for us really to provide any solid guidance.

Yes. And I'd also just add to that, I mean different than others, because as Blake said, we don't have that group space, our booking window has always been relatively short compared to some of our peers. So we'll typically see 25% to 30% of the occupancy materialize within a 7-day period. And that's been fairly consistent for us. So we haven't seen a lot of change in terms of the shortening booking window from our perspective. But again, we've always been shorter than others.

On the OTA -- on your second part of the question on the OTA percentage, I think we're running approximately 65% now. and it's trending downward as well. We are doing a much better job through our casino marketing programs and direct bookings, and producing a lot more personal information for people checking in, putting systems in place that allow us to speak with them directly, which had been a bit spotty in the past. So we are trending at 65%, give or take right now trending in the right direction. We're very bullish on [ us ] being able to get to that 50% level.

Got it. And then if I could sneak 1 more in. I think as well the comments about share repurchases taking priority in the current environment makes a lot of sense. But can you maybe expand more on the M&A environment, both on the buy side as well as sell side of what you've discussed before? Just curious how much the macro is impacting those discussions or opportunities?

Well, yes, I think the short answer is quite a bit. I mean, when you have this much value dislocation in a short period of time, you're resetting expectations and you're uncertain about what the future looks like. So that obviously puts a damper on just strategic M&A discussions. And from a financing perspective, I think certainly us and others headed into this year, anticipating interest rates to be lower than where they are at this point in time. So we'll see how that plays out over the course of the year, but that obviously has a direct impact on the ability to pay and ability to finance transactions.

And your next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies.

Charles, I wanted to go back to your commentary about the tavern business and smaller operators. By definition, a smaller operator or to shouldn't make that much of a difference. So there must be -- I'm guessing, more of a trend among the smaller guys? And is it true than that other larger operators are not participating in the competition? A little more [ meat ] on that would be helpful.

Yes. I mean, keep it -- we're the largest operator of taverns in Nevada. Most of that is in Southern Nevada and Las Vegas. If you think about restricted licenses that we operate, there's probably around 400 or so in Southern Nevada. And again, we're the largest, but we're a smaller portion of that. So what we see, and we've lost some visibility on this once we divested the route that serviced these locations, and we see increased promotional activity, not so much necessarily at chain-store locations, but on competing bar type locations from private operators. And what we've seen in the past over many years is in that mode, you were really just chasing more dollars over the same customer wallet. And so I think that we haven't seen that behavior in the casinos and in the local casinos. I think there's probably a little bit more sophistication there and a little bit more experience. I think the turnover in ownership with smaller private tavern operators is a lot more frequent than what you see in casinos, and it's a lot less institutionalized in terms of ownership and sophistication. So those are people chasing business. We've seen it before in the past. We think we're going to stick with our strategy. And we've already, by the way, we've seen that mitigate a bit as we get into April and May. But you -- there's really no way for us to govern what other people aren't doing in the market as we were somewhat able to at least provide some guidance when we own the route to others on best practices for tavern marketing.

Yes. I might just add. It's a good question. You're right. Typically, these smaller operators, 1 or 2 would not impact our 72 or 73 chain franchise. I -- in the past, I have seen that these marketing trends are typically not sustainable even for the smaller guys. To Charles' point, the short-term chase dollars, but back to Charles' prepared comments with our disciplined approach, we're now 3 quarters in a row of trend of -- EBITDA trend upward. We've gotten our arms around and I think we can get a little more detail if you're interested on our newer taverns that are now that are now performing significantly better than our prior call. So we are confident our size and our disciplined approach will overcome these short-term trends that some of these independent operators may be trying, but we know are not sustainable.

Understood. And if I can just go a little further from your unique purview, given that you have that tavern business, is there anything we can point to or discuss with respect to how consumers are behaving and across the valley over the last, call it, 65 days or so.

Yes. I think as we define our taverns as hyperlocal, if you will. Our -- other than 401(k) exposure, our demographic in the taverns really is not invested in the market, so to speak, from a broader perspective. They are more in tune with commodity prices, mortgage rates, wealth effect of equity in their homes. And so it's been, as I mentioned in the past, the most resilient part of our business, in the last 65 days, and particularly since Liberation Day or when the turmoil began in the market. Our most -- for the most part, our customers have seen right through that as they're not really exposed to the broader market. We are seeing trends, as we mentioned in our prior calls of similar amounts of gaming days but less gaming investments, so to speak. So there has been a pullback a little bit in terms of people coming in as frequently, but maybe not spending as much. But generally speaking to your question, I don't believe the broader market has a long-term impact on our tavern customer.

And your next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie Group.

Blake, Charles. I wanted to revisit the point Charles, you were making about the M&A search and the decision to buy back stock. So just on that, I know you talked a lot about this last quarter or maybe even the quarter prior. But since you did a comprehensive search, is this something that you would maybe revisit throughout the year? Or are you just kind of keeping the lines open. What would -- what do you think would bring more portfolios or assets to the market? Do you think it's fairly static right now? Or this is something that could change as we progress through the year.

Yes. Thanks, Chad. Look, I think we're in a wait-and-see type of moment for the market, particularly around M&A. I think if you look at assets that have been marketed recently, single assets, opcos, subscale single assets or larger type of opcos. Those have been in the opportunities that have been presented in one way shape in a shape or form. I think those -- with relatively high price expectations in relation to the quality of those assets and the opportunities that they present. So when you put that in the backdrop against buying EBITDA for wholly owned gaming assets that we know in markets that we like at 7x EBITDA or less that obviously leads to -- we should just be buying our own business with excess capital. Does that change over time? Maybe, but I don't see that in the near term. I think there's still going to be potential dislocation. And so we are a -- we've been a big buyer of our stock at prices that are higher than we're trading at right now. We're going to be a buyer of our stock at these levels. For more larger scale M&A, I mean, again, I think you're going to have to wait and see how things play out on the macro side. And within the sector, I still believe the sector should be consolidating. I think that opportunities may present themselves in the future that are attractive to us and good fits for us, but there's nothing out there that's worth in our mind, changing strategy from repurchasing our own stock as a focus, investing in our own assets, showing off the operations and distributing capital to shareholders in the form of dividends.

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And then back on the STRAT, I guess a 2-parter here. One, can you talk about exposure to Canada or any other market where we're seeing weakness in terms of inbound enplanements. And then secondly, any update just in terms of how citywide in events at the Sphere, Allegheny, et cetera, look beyond the period that you talked about in your near-term window.

Yes, Chad, in regards to Canada, we -- STRAT is really not exposed to a material amount of international business, primarily flying and driving, Southern California, Arizona and so on. So we -- I would say it's immaterial to discuss what we would may be feeling at the STRAT from that perspective. Citywides -- citywide seemed to be booking pretty well. Obviously, as you know, when the city fills up, we do better. But Charles, do you have...

Yes. No. It just goes back, Chad, to the same visibility question. So anything that's coming in, if you look at things like EDC and May, like that is big for us given our location relative to where that is held. Those things, we're looking great. we just don't have that visibility to get past June, we may only -- we'll have less than maybe 10% on the books for the property as you get into July. So again, tougher for us to sell. But if you look in the near term, and we're looking at May and we're looking at June. Like I said, we're up 6 points in occupancy in May year-over-year. June strong for us as well on a relative basis to last year. So -- but we'll see. I mean, obviously, things are changing pretty quickly in the market. But for right now, our business feels very solid to improving as we head into Q2.

A couple of other quick data points, Chad. This may not be a great segue, but at the STRAT. We just signed a nationally recognized food beverage concept that should open in the STRAT sometime during the fourth quarter or first of next year, which is a positive given in the context of controlling our own destiny there. And we're beginning to receive rev share from Atomic Golf that continues to ramp next to us. We've begun receiving quarterly checks on a rev share, which is pretty significant this year. So the property in the context of what we can control, we feel very good about going forward.

And your next question comes from the line of Zachary Silverberg with Wells Fargo.

And just 1 on the local segment. You guys saw some strong margins, 46% for the second straight quarter, increasing strength in April. Can you talk about the operational efficiencies there? And are there any other levers to pull moving forward where we could potentially see margins stable or potentially growing moving forward?

Yes. I think from a local perspective, we've really done a great job rightsizing labor within these properties, particularly on the food and beverage outlets, streamlining menus, and getting some efficiencies in the hotel, quite frankly, we've made some capital investments there. I'd say also, we've experienced declining costs on the utility side that has been contributing to margins. So we feel pretty good about where that is. And look, the spend from our guests has remained strong. So our assets, our local assets, we only have 2 local casinos, but they're fairly significant within the portfolio, and they have a very loyal local following that plays there frequently, and we've seen very little impact from the macro conditions on that customer.

Got you. And maybe back to capital allocation. How are you guys thinking about CapEx spend, maybe either maintenance or potentially more growthy spend given the uncertain economic outlook and/or a potential increase in input costs?

Yes. I'd say for us, we're pretty well insulated from any type of tariff exposure. From a procurement perspective, if you look at linens and those types of things, we've already kind of source that away from Asia and into India and Pakistan in terms of [ that sourcing ]. So we don't have a lot of exposure from a tariff perspective. On the CapEx side of things, maintenance CapEx, the portfolio runs around $30 million to $35 million as it sits right now today, we do have 2 taverns that we intend to open this year. It has previously been signed. And so we obviously intend to do that. We think they're in great locations. They'll be additive to the portfolio. And those are about $3 million each. But beyond that, we have no major investments that are planned. And again, that goes back to we think the best capital allocation at this point is in buying our own stock.

Yes. I would just add in terms of growth, I mentioned the nationally recognized food and beverage concept, we are negotiating a lot of third-party investment in our facilities which allows us for growth type amenities without using our capital as well as we have, as you know, a lot of excess real estate surrounding all of our casinos. And we continue to dial in on potential synergistic uses with third parties for those pieces -- for those parcels as well.

And your next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens JMP.

I know we're talking about some pretty short-term impacts. But in recent weeks, have you seen the driving traffic into Laughlin or STRAT improve just given the gas prices have moved lower or historically. Does that potentially point to a forward-looking tailwind?

Yes, I think it does. I mean, what it does, it really helps discretionary spending, right? So it's offsetting some of those other inflationary pressures, particularly in the local market. A big driver when you see gas prices come down a little bit. You'd see a little bit of that spend in the taverns as well. From a Laughlin perspective, what's driving business there, more of the events that we put on, on the weekend. So us being able to have more frequent smaller events has been a more profitable exercise for us than having a lot of large-scale concerts, in the Laughlin Event Center. So we're leading market share down there right now. It's viewed as a more cost-effective entertainment destination than Vegas for a lot of people driving it for the Inland Empire. And so whether that tank of gas for them was $35 or $45, they're still going to come and see Jason Aldean or Alabama or whatever is going on down there in the market at that time.

Great. And following up on the M&A discussion. It's been a few years of you guys just being a smaller-sized company after the divestitures of Distributed Gaming in Maryland. Now that you've settled in and run that business, do you feel that if you continue as an independent company, you would look to add more scale back to the business?

I think it all depends, right? It depends on value, quite frankly, in either direction of the M&A discussion. So I think -- for us, we feel like we definitely have built a platform here over a long period of time that we could add assets to accretively from an operational perspective. We just need to find assets in the right value zone that you could add accretively to do that. And like I said, we've done a lot of work. We've talked a few quarters about looking at opportunities. And I think at this point in time, those are not out there that are attractive to us. So we are no longer looking at that. We are looking at buying our own stock and investing in the business as we move throughout this year.

And your next question comes from the line of John DeCree with CBRE.

Charles, Blake. Maybe to ask the capital allocation question a little differently. Given where your stock is, how cheap it is and your commitment to buying back stock, and where the balance sheet is, have you considered perhaps leaning into the repurchase a little bit more, given your balance sheet capacity, I guess, i.e., use a little bit of leverage that you probably use for M&A anyway. But given how attractive your stock is. So your thoughts on maybe being more aggressive there, a tender or something to that effect and then a follow-up on the STRAT operations.

Yes. I mean, look, I think we will be aggressive in buying the stock. We use liquidity to do that. We obviously have a lot of capacity on a revolver. You could see there's over $200 million of availability. I do think tenders, and this is anecdotal and a bit personal opinion. I have not seen those work so well within the gaming space. I think that you get a better sustained not only support for the stock, but value for shareholders to the extent that you were buying back the shares over time. Now those could be meaningful buybacks per quarter. I mean you could see we bought back -- if we look over last year, we were buying at the clip of 1 million shares a quarter, which would make us effectively the largest shareholder of our own stock, right, as a company within those 9 months. So I think that institutional, of course, like -- that's not it. But I think that institutional, of course Mike. I think [ that's not enough ]. But I think that, that is -- that's how I see that rolling out. I would not expect immediacy of some tender. Now that said, that's given kind of where we're sitting right now, but there's some massive market dislocation, our business remains quite stable. And again, in our mind, the trends in our business are not reflective of our valuation and the recent gyrations in our stock. So if I can't see how it happened, but if we're moving lower, maybe we change our tune on that.

Fair enough. I appreciate that. I'd agree with the valuation as well. And so fundamentally, I wanted to ask about the STRAT and your ability to yield up hotel room rate there, pretty good occupancy in the 1Q outside of February, which is a tough comp. And then I think you said up in April at attractive rates. And so when you look forward, what's the key to driving higher room rate at the STRAT. Is that just getting occupancy back? Or do you need to price off of the Strip, so continue to see your peers further south on the Strip drive rate? And kind of what are your levers to pull to kind of get room rate back up?

I think it's a combination of a couple of things. I think, obviously, we have to have some tailwind from the city as the city -- as Charles mentioned, EDC and citywide promotions that we do tremendous with -- helps significantly. As I mentioned in my earlier comments, we are internally doing a much better job of being able to gather information from our guests that allow us a more direct line for direct bookings and things like that. So we see our OTA trends going down. That in 2 ways is going to increase revenue. One, potentially in rate. Two, certainly in casino revenue. So that benefits the property either way, it really boils down to compression midweek. I mean midweek is really where -- weekends, we're solid. We're great. We yield rate significantly effectively on the weekends. But midweek, without a lot of citywide driven traffic, we, to your point, we take our lead off of kind of the South strip guys and where they're going with their rate. And we -- with our newer casino, newer rooms, newer F&B, Atomic Golf, all the things we're building there service-wise, I think we're surpassing a lot of our peers on the service score side. We -- the midweek is where we need focus and we need a little help from the city on that side.

Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, that concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.