Century Casinos Inc /Co/ Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call. We would like to remind you that we will be discussing forward-looking information, which involves risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. We provide a discussion of the risk factors in our SEC filings and encourage you to review these filings. Throughout our call, we'll refer to several non-GAAP financial measures, including, but not limited to, adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations of our non-GAAP measures to the appropriate GAAP measures can be found in our news releases and SEC filings available in the Investors section of our website at cnty.com. I'll now provide an overview of the first quarter 2021 results as well as our outlook for this and next year. After that, my co-CEO, Erwin Haitzmann, and our CFO, Margaret Stapleton, will join me for a Q&A session. For the quarter, we delivered net revenue of $136 million, an increase of 25% over Q1 of last year. The increase came from the additions of the Nugget in Nevada and Rocky Gap in Maryland, as well as good performances of our Canadian operations, offset by extremely bad weather, a weaker retail customer, construction disruption at a few properties, and the temporary closures of 3 casinos in Poland. Adjusted EBITDA was $21 million, down 18% from last year. The U.S. operations were flat and Canada was up, but Poland and the Corporate segment were down. So it was a rather challenging start to the new year. While we knew our performance was comping to a strong first quarter of '23, the results were also impacted by severe winter weather. As you've heard from others in regional casinos, January was essentially wiped out because of weather. And because most of our casinos are located outside of major cities in destination areas such as Rocky Gap, Mountaineer, Century City, or Cripple Creek and Caruthersville, our customers need to drive half an hour, an hour, or more outside of city lights and urban streets. You can imagine the dramatic impact winter storms with unsafe driving conditions have on this situation. In addition to the January weather, we faced several other transitory issues as well. Three of our casinos in Poland were closed for some or all of the quarter; 2 reopened towards the end of the quarter. And the third one, the largest of the 3, will reopen in Q3. So from about August on, we will have all 8 casinos in full operation again. Also, our increased spend on capital projects throughout our properties caused construction disruption at most of our casinos. And finally, remember, we acquired Nugget and Rocky Gap just about 12 months ago, meaning we are still early in the process of managing everything as one cohesive portfolio. But to really get a good picture about what was going on in the quarter, we need to take the weather impact in January out of the equation and look at February and March. And what we see is that, beyond January, gaming volumes from our core customers actually grew. In addition, operating margins in February and March were better than in Q4 of last year, and they were very close to the margin of Q3 of last year, which is typically a very good quarter. So there's no working trend or anything like that. I mean, all of the substantial declines happened in January. February and March were quite normal. In fact, March showed signs of real strength at our properties. Take Nevada, the slot revenue in the Reno-Sparks Nugget was down 3%, but slot revenue at our Nugget grew 9%. In Colorado, same-casino backlog were up 3%. Our casino was up 7%. In Cripple Creek, the market was up 2%. We were up 6%. And while Missouri slot revenue was down 1% in March, we were up 2%. Very encouraging signs as we move into the second quarter. Looking at the segment results for Q1, we start with the Midwest, which includes our Colorado-Missouri operations. Revenue for the segment was flat year-over-year. EBITDA was down 9%. That's not bad at all considering the January weather as well as construction disruption at both Missouri properties and also considering that Cripple Creek was totally closed for 2 full days in March because of a heavy snowstorm. In Cripple Creek, a competing property opened directly across the street from us with 300 hotel rooms, which certainly increases the market. And as anticipated, we continue to benefit from our proximity to their location. As mentioned in March, we outgrew the market. And April is up double digits as well. In Missouri, revenue from retail play was up 6%. Both the number of trips as well as the spend per trip increased. Retail play was softer, mostly because of the weather in general and disruption from construction at both properties. But in March, Cape Girardeau bounced back and set the new all-time record for table game revenue, the highest since inception. And I'm happy to report that the strong performance continued into April, which posted the third highest table games revenue in that property's history. Last month, on April 4, we opened our new hotel, The Riverview, at Century Casino Cape Girardeau, transforming the property into a full resort destination, offering gaming, dining, conferences, concerts, and events. And it's off to a great start, better than we expected. Total project costs were $31 million. We funded that with cash on hand. In Caruthersville, construction of the new permanent land-based casino hotel is progressing according to budget and schedule. We plan to open at the end of this year. That new property will have a total of 74 hotel rooms, 12 gaming tables, and over 600 slot machines, which is a 20% increase in gaming positions compared to the old Riverwalk and a 50% increase in gaming positions compared to our current interim casino. The way we think about it is this: it's a significantly enhanced facility moving from an on-river boat and a small temporary location to the dry side of the levy, a brand-new land-based casino with a hotel, convenient parking, and convenient food and beverage amenities, and a much better environment overall. The new property will provide significant operational efficiencies. It will be much more convenient for our customers, and it will certainly increase our catchment area. We expect a good uplift on the overall performance from that property, both revenue and EBITDA. The project is fully funded by VICI at an 8% cap rate. Our East segment includes the Mountaineer Resort in West Virginia and the newly acquired Rocky Gap Casino Resort in Maryland. Because of that new acquisition, revenue for the segment was up 44%, EBITDA was up 23%. In January, both properties suffered a lot under the bad weather and unsafe driving conditions as they are both destination resorts with many customers having to drive 2 or 3 hours to get to our casinos. So, not surprisingly, the number of trips declined significantly, but the spend per trip was up a bit. At Mountaineer, available hotel rooms, hours of operation for casino and food outlets are still limited as a result of continued staffing challenges. However, it will get much better next month in June with many holders returning and allowing us to improve and expand our offerings. We will enhance our entertainment offerings throughout the year to further diversify our portfolio, giving our guests more reasons to choose us for their entertainment. Rocky Gap enters its busy season now in early May. We anticipate rebounding travel and capture of pent-up travel demand throughout the summer. Great amenities, such as our newly constructed swimming beach, in addition to continued enhancements of menus, will allow the property to maximize wallet share. Within renewed marketing efforts in the major feeder markets, we expect to attract more affluent customers and grow the overall database.

Thank you, Jeff. Great question. Let me answer that. I think a very important aspect when looking at the Maryland statistics is that they are really not giving you the typical and correct picture. Due to our location, if you look at the map, we are at the very west of Maryland. And you have to keep in mind that almost 60% of our customers are coming from the southwestern Pennsylvania area. So it's those customers in those areas that we really have to look at in order to get a good insight into the comparisons. And when doing that, we see that our regional peers in that area have also seen weakness. In particular for Maryland, in addition to the weakness caused by weather, we also had, in Q1, integration challenges in connection with the replacement of the slot accounting and loyalty system. But that's behind us as well. Our roadmap going forward is that we hopefully get through the integration challenges at Rocky Gap. We are diligently working on analyzing the customer behavior and the marketing data. We see good progress already. And with the good changes that Peter mentioned before with the swimming beach and the improvements of the restaurants, we feel very positive that we are on the right track.

Maybe starting off on the acquired Rocky Gap property, if we just look at the East results during Q1 and sort of contrast that against some of the data reported by the Maryland regulator, it seems to me that, even after the weather wrapped up, there's perhaps still some underperformance relative to what that asset did under legacy ownership and even more so relative to sort of trends during Q4. I guess, first of all, am I correct in that analysis? And second off, I guess, what do you attribute that to? And sort of what do you see as the roadmap on ramping that property back up to kind of how you underwrote it?

Whenever we take over a new casino, we analyze what the previous operator has been doing, and then we compare that with our approach. And typically, we see what we think is opportunity. And we then start a, hopefully, intelligent trial-and-error chain, trying out various new approaches in marketing with small subgroups of the various subdivisions of our customers and test them for whether they work or not. And this optimization process works. But obviously, that may take a little while. So not always are the first things we try successful. But as I say, with the chain of hopefully better and better approaches, we then are able to optimize what has been the strategy before into our modified new strategy.

I want to focus on the consumer aspect. In Reno, you mentioned that the high-end consumer market is performing well, while the lower and even mid-tier markets are showing signs of weakness or remaining weak. We've heard similar feedback from some of your competitors in the southern part of the state regarding the mid-tier market. Is that mid-tier customer segment experiencing further decline? Is this trend continuing into April? Any insights on this would be appreciated.

This is Erwin again. In the early part of Q2, we are noticing an increase in local play at the Nugget. It's important to also consider the radius of our reach. We are aiming to attract customers from the greater Sacramento area, who typically visit on weekends. We observe that these customers, who travel from farther away, usually spend more. However, in terms of retail, especially within a 25 to 50-mile radius, we are still seeing some weakness and will need to monitor how this evolves.

Peter, Erwin, I wanted to start with the Riverview opening. Can you provide more details on the progress towards the 25% return? I know you mentioned that everything is on track, but could you share any additional metrics regarding new sign-ups or hotel rates? It's still early, and the summer is likely to be a peak season, so any further insights into your progress would be helpful.

Chad, it's a bit early to provide detailed insights. However, the customers who visit are extremely enthusiastic and appreciate the completed offerings at Cape Girardeau, which now has everything needed for a charming country resort. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and the quality is exceptional. We believe we offer the highest quality experience for an overnight stay, both in terms of hotel room standards and the various activities available in the evening and morning.

Well, thank you, everybody. We appreciate you joining our call today. We will talk again after the second quarter. Until then, thank you very much. Goodbye.

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.