Earnings Call Transcript - CZR Q1 2023

Brian Agnew, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance, Treasury and Investor Relations

Thank you, Josh, and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Welcome to our conference call to discuss our first quarter 2023 earnings. This afternoon, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period ended March 31, 2023. A copy of the press release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website at investor.caesars.com. Joining me on the call today are Tom Reeg, our Chief Executive Officer; Anthony Carano, our President and Chief Operating Officer; Bret Yunker, our Chief Financial Officer; and Eric Hession, President, Caesars Sports & Online Gaming. Before I turn the call over to Anthony, I would like to remind you that during today's conference call, we may make certain forward-looking statements about the company's performance. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore, one should not place undue reliance on them. Forward-looking statements are also subject to the inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed. For additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in our forward-looking statements. You should refer to the cautionary statements contained in our press release, as well as the risk factors contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Caesars Entertainment undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after today's call. Also during today's call, the company may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. The GAAP financial measures most directly comparable to each non-GAAP financial measure discussed and the reconciliation of the differences between each non-GAAP financial measure and the comparable GAAP financial measure can be found on the company's website at investor.caesars.com by selecting the press release regarding the company's 2023 first quarter financial results.

Anthony Carano, President and Chief Operating Officer

Thank you, Brian, and good afternoon to everyone on the call. We had a strong start to 2023 in the first quarter. Our Las Vegas segment delivered a Q1 EBITDA and EBITDA margin record and our regional segment reported a strong quarter, excluding weather disruptions in Northern Nevada. In addition, our Digital segment was nearly breakeven, despite launching sports betting in two states during the quarter. Trends in Las Vegas remained strong during Q1, delivering 24% revenue growth and 33% EBITDA growth versus last year. Excluding real rent payments, Las Vegas generated $544 million of adjusted EBITDA with a margin of 48%, up 300 basis points versus last year. Occupancy during Q1 was 95% versus 83% the prior year. Strong occupancy and ADRs led to record cash hotel revenues and food and beverage results. Our Group and Convention segment also delivered an all-time EBITDA record in Q1 and represented 21% of occupied rooms during the quarter, setting a new quarterly record for convention mix. Our forward outlook for the Group and Convention segment remains exceptionally strong, driven by a continued combination of increasing room nights, higher ADRs, and strong banquet revenues. In our Regional segment, we delivered 2% revenue growth and a 2% decline in adjusted EBITDA versus last year. As Tom will discuss in more detail, our Regional segment was negatively impacted by severe winter weather in Northern Nevada. However, trends outside of Northern Nevada remained strong during the quarter, delivering EBITDA growth year-over-year. We remain encouraged by the early returns we're seeing on recently completed capital projects, including the expansion and the rebrand of Horseshoe, Indianapolis, the expansion and rebrand of Harrah's Pompano Beach, and the new land-based Horseshoe Lake Charles. The success of these projects gives us further confidence in the return potential of our ongoing growth projects. We remain on track to open a temporary facility in Danville, Virginia on May 15th and in Columbus, Nebraska by the end of Q2. Our expansion at Harrah's Hoosier Park is slated to open in Q3 this year. The majority of our CapEx spend in Atlantic City is nearing completion and we're looking forward to launching our new entertainment offerings THE HOOK by Spiegelworld this summer. Work on our $430 million expansion in New Orleans continues and is slated to be completed towards the end of 2024. Finally, we announced yesterday that we are transforming the former Jubilee Tower at Horseshoe, Las Vegas into the new Versailles Tower at Paris, Las Vegas. This $100 million rebrand and upgrade is included in our 2023 CapEx plans and slated to be completed this year. We're off to a great start in '23 and I want to thank all of our team members for their hard work in this first quarter. Our results are a reflection of their dedication to delivering exceptional guest service and experiences. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Eric for some insights on the first quarter in our Digital segment.

Eric Hession, President, Caesars Sports & Online Gaming

Thanks, Anthony. During the first quarter of 2023, we delivered a dramatic improvement in the performance of our Digital segment versus the prior year. Our business nearly broke even during the quarter on $238 million of net revenues versus a $554 million EBITDA loss last year, which was impacted by significant brand-related spending and state launches in New York and Louisiana. Our performance this quarter clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of our targeted promotional investment within our existing customer base as well as customers located in the new states that we launched this quarter, Ohio and Massachusetts. I'm pleased with the progress we have delivered over the last 12 months. Our net revenues continue to increase significantly as we launch new states, grow and retain our existing customer base, and continue to deliver exciting product improvements. On that front, we will be executing three significant tech enhancements to our platform during the remainder of the year. First, starting early in the third quarter, we will be launching a new standalone iCasino app. This exciting addition to our product offering will allow us to drive better customer engagement through a dedicated application with a focus on increased game content, which will include new proprietary offerings and improved marketing capabilities. Second, we expect to begin testing our in-house player account management system later this year, which will ultimately lead to a shared wallet that we anticipate rolling out in 2024. Finally, we expect to migrate all of our operations in Nevada to our Liberty tech stack ahead of the 2023 football season. From an EBITDA perspective, our net revenues are now at a scale where we are able to roughly break even and cover the costs of our proprietary technology. We expect that our year-over-year net revenues will continue to grow each quarter. Given the effectiveness of our expense management plan, we will drive extremely high flow-through on each incremental dollar. From an expansion standpoint, after our most recent launches in Q1, we now offer sports betting in 30 North American jurisdictions, 22 of which we offer mobile wagering. Additionally, we offer iCasino in five jurisdictions. I'll now pass the call over to Bret for some additional comments.

Bret Yunker, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Eric. Given the outstanding progress being made in our Digital segment, which is now fully self-funded, we have the ability to sweep all brick-and-mortar cash flow toward debt reduction. Today, we announced that we fully repaid the 8% $400 million Forum Convention Center loan due 2025, resulting in $32 million of annual interest expense savings and enhanced free cash flow. Our capex plans for 2023 remain unchanged, with the planned spend of $800 million, including $500 million for growth and $300 million for maintenance. Leverage on a traditional and rent-adjusted basis continues to decline as we repay debt and grow EBITDA, with traditional net leverage just over 4 times and rent-adjusted leverage just over 5 times. We continue to target the third consecutive year of $1 billion of permanent debt reduction. With that, I'll turn it over to Tom.

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Bret, and thank you all for being here today. To dive deeper into the numbers, Vegas was very close to setting a quarterly record; it achieved an all-time quarterly record for Q1 EBITDA and margin, along with a 21% record for group business mix, compared to about 14% before the Caesars merger. The extraordinary demand in Vegas continues month after month, and the average customer spending in our properties is also increasing. We're attracting higher dollar group business along with banquet services, replacing our least profitable customers. This creates a positive cycle in Vegas. The second quarter tends to be our toughest comparison since it set a record last year with nearly $1.50 billion in brick-and-mortar EBITDA, but we feel confident about the business in April and the rest of this quarter in Vegas. Looking ahead with the group business scheduled, we announced a $100 million project to transform the Bally's Jubilee Tower into the Versailles Tower in Paris, which will be connected to the property by a physical bridge. Paris has significantly enhanced as we revamped the casino floor and introduced several high-end dining options, including Nobu, the Bedford, and Vanderpump. Room rates and non-gaming spending per room at Paris are much higher than at Horseshoe, making this a project we believe will deliver high returns and is currently in the design phase, set to begin soon. Regarding regional performance, the Tahoe area in Northern Nevada received an impressive 720 inches of snow, or 60 feet, during the quarter. Unfortunately, many of those storms occurred on weekends when we typically have higher traffic, resulting in about $20 million less EBITDA due to the weather impact. If we account for that, regional EBITDA and margin would have experienced slight increases. We have several exciting projects underway that I will discuss in more detail later. In the Digital segment, we reported a loss of approximately $3.5 million, which stemmed from our launches in Massachusetts and Ohio, along with a Super Bowl that didn’t perform well for us considering the scoring. If any of these three factors were absent from the quarter, we would have seen positive results. As we stand today, we are profitable year-to-date in Digital. I mentioned last quarter that we expect to achieve positive EBITDA for 2023, and I can confirm we are already on track for that, with expectations exceeding what we initially announced just 90 days prior. A common topic in Digital discussions with investors is our non-Nevada business, and I want to clarify that over 80% of our Digital operations are outside of Nevada. We remain on target to achieve a 50% return on the $1.1 billion in cumulative losses incurred during our business launch, which I still expect to materialize as a 2025 event, with hopes of reaching that level by late Q4 of 2024. As we discuss the business from a longer-term viewpoint, I want to highlight this without providing direct guidance. When we took control of Caesars, our brick-and-mortar properties were generating $2.9 billion in trailing EBITDA. Currently, the LTM EBITDA for Vegas alone stands slightly above $2.1 billion, while regional EBITDA is just under $2 billion. After factoring in managed and corporate segments, we are around $4 billion in EBITDA from the same assets that previously delivered $2.9 billion before the merger. We have about $2.4 billion in operating costs, including cash outflows for rent, cash interest, and maintenance CapEx, leading to around $750 of free cash flow per share based on 250 million shares outstanding. The Digital business is currently breaking even and expected to trend positive soon. We anticipate substantial incremental EBITDA growth from our brick-and-mortar establishments, along with projects like the Lake Charles expansion that opened in December, which we project will yield over 30% returns, aligning similarly with the Hoosier Park expansion. Our New Orleans project, estimated at over $400 million, is scheduled to go live before the Super Bowl in ‘25, with completion targeted for late '24. Thus, we are optimistic about the potential in that area.

Carlo Santarelli, Analyst

Hey, Tom. Everybody, thank you for the remarks. Tom, when you talked about being positive year-to-date in digital and for the year, from today's perspective, do you expect to remain positive through the year? Will we see a 3Q that likely incorporates some spending ahead of the NFL season, and then obviously harvesting that in the fourth quarter?

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

Yes, 3Q is probably a coin flip as to whether we are slightly positive or slightly negative as you alluded to. There's a lot of pre-football season spend, and you only have about three NFL weeks to work against that. However, I would also tell you that if you had asked me the same question 90 days ago, we continue to beat our internal expectations, so I’m cautiously optimistic that we could have seen our last negative quarter.

Carlo Santarelli, Analyst

Great, thank you. As it pertains to Las Vegas, obviously, the second quarter is a tougher comparison with larger groups that were meaningful in the 2Q last year. As you think about the second half of this year, as well as into next year, do you get the sense from your mix shift and your group pace, coupled with the observations on the casino floor that you are able to shrug off what might be a challenging comparison in 2Q and resume growth in the back half of the year?

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

Yes, I think that's a great way to put it. We would be very pleased if we match last year's second quarter. We remain exceedingly strong. If you look at the next 90 days of our occupancy forecast, which is what we've got the most confidence in, at any given point, you’re still looking at mid-90s occupancy on the strip at healthy rates. You won't see the same utilities situation in the second quarter that we did last year, and then, in the third and fourth quarters, you have the Formula One, which we think will be a significant boost to that quarter. So I’d say something similar to last quarter, last year's second quarter, and then likely growth in the second half is a good forecast.

Carlo Santarelli, Analyst

Great. Thank you. Just one follow-up along those lines. As you look towards bookings, especially with leisure transient, are you seeing anything across the market from a promotional perspective that has changed?

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

Nothing material enough to impact us that we would want to discuss. It depends on various markets and who our competitors are. Some have remained disciplined, while others have not. One of the statements I can make confidently is that Caesars used to be the bad actor in many of these markets and isn’t anymore, so we feel very good about the current environment.

Joe Greff, Analyst

Good afternoon, guys. Starting with Las Vegas, Tom. The 21% of occupied rooms in Q1 relating to the group segment is a significant jump—good to see. How does group look for the rest of this year with group pace and group room nights up in aggregate for Q2 through Q4?

Bret Yunker, Chief Financial Officer

Joe, all the KPIs in the group and convention business are up this year at last year's levels in 2019. So both rooms, ADRs, and banquet revenues are pacing ahead for the rest of the year. We expect the group business to have another record year in 2023.

Joe Greff, Analyst

Great, thank you. Regarding Digital, Tom, you've mentioned that your outlook is favorable over the last 90 days. Considering some of the changes you've implemented, how much of that is due to a rationalized cost structure and the scale benefits in OSB? And how much pertains to iCasino and other ongoing projects?

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

Those are the chief drivers of the changes. The main factor has been what we've done on the promo and branding side; promo as a percent of handle for the quarter was around 1.25%, which is dramatically lower than what our peers are achieving. Our cost of acquisition has come down considerably, with Ohio as a new launch state showing EBITDA profitability in March—that's month three post-launch. We feel confident in how we're running the business and our positioning.

Steven Wieczynski, Analyst

Yes. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Tom, can I put you back on your soapbox for a minute? I want to get your opinion on a question we get a lot from investors. They seem to want to know if this will be the best that Vegas has ever been, especially as we move through 2023's strong event calendar. Could you opine on why that might not be the case?

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

Yes, I think Las Vegas has done a fantastic job of continually adding events, such as sports franchises and Formula One, bringing in significantly more valuable customers. Occupancy rates are quite high, and the average customer is improving. The demand for our location is exceedingly strong and has been for a generation. I see no reason that this trend needs to stop or would stop. This market has been exceptional for the 30 years I've been involved, continually adding reasons for people to visit, increasing capacity and improving average customer quality. We're ensuring we have the best experiences, and we're working hard with others in the market to continue to expand. With this in mind, when we took over Caesars, the assets we own today were generating $2.9 billion of trailing EBITDA, and as of now, our Vegas business LTM EBITDA is a little over $2.1 billion. Think about where that could lead us in three years; we've set a clear path for managing costs and expanding revenue. By reconciling our expectations with today's trends, we expect to see strong momentum through the next periods, including $1 billion in permanent debt reduction for three consecutive years.

David Katz, Analyst

Hi, afternoon everyone. Thanks for taking my question. With the recent tower project announcement, I'd like to discuss the future of the Strip. There's a general consensus on the positive outlook you've laid out, but with competitors entering the market as well, how do you see that impacting the Strip dynamics and your strategy?

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

This is a unique project, as it can be absorbed into a property that yields higher room rates and spending. We can see substantial returns from this investment due to improved product offerings. We will also enhance our food and beverage presence and look for additional ROI without needing substantial capital beyond our historical spending. We believe in our ability to leverage these opportunities for growth and satisfaction. We're keen on implementing these projects to maintain and enhance our strong market position.

Shaun Kelley, Analyst

Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to run a corporate finance question by you. Given the $12.50 free cash flow prediction translating to about a 28% yield, could you discuss when it might be appropriate to shift strategies from paying down debt to perhaps buying back stock?

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

That's an important question, Shaun. While we want to maintain our focus on deleveraging, we recognize that there will be a point where it makes sense to return capital as part of that free cash flow narrative. I would project this possibility around 2024—at a stage where we see our leverage in a comfortable zone while maintaining an opportunity to grow our investors' returns.

John DeCree, Analyst

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Can you provide more clarity on the planned product enhancements with the iGaming app? What will these adjustments enable specifically to generate incremental revenue?

Eric Hession, President, Caesars Sports & Online Gaming

Certainly. Currently, our app directs customers towards the Sportsbook first, making it challenging for casino customers who primarily seek slots to find their preferred games. The new app will allow those customers direct access, enhancing their experience. This will also provide improved marketing capabilities and instant access to game content that will increase engagement. By focusing on casino games up front, we hope to attract more of our core customers who traditionally favor slots, translating to increased revenues.

David Katz, Analyst

With respect to the Las Vegas Strip, do you see the 3-legged stool for digital growth becoming stronger in the coming years, and can you provide visibility into how this could impact total rewards?

Tom Reeg, Chief Executive Officer

The digital performance and its connection with our total rewards program is critical. Previously, we estimated about $200 million generated externally through the digital segment contributing to brick-and-mortar efforts, and now, it's clear this figure has surpassed and is showing continued growth. We recognize the significance of this relationship as we enhance both traditional and digital businesses. With that, I'm going to let everybody go. Thanks for your time and attention. We'll talk to you next quarter.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.