FULL HOUSE RESORTS (FLL) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Executive Summary

Q4 revenue rose 21.5% year over year to $73.0M, driven by American Place ramp (+27.5% revenue YoY) and Chamonix completion, while Adjusted EBITDA increased 42% to $10.4M; diluted EPS was $(0.35) versus $(0.36) YoY.
Midwest & South segment grew revenue 12.1% and Adjusted Segment EBITDA 46.3% YoY, with American Place delivering $28.5M revenue and $6.7M Adjusted Property EBITDA in the quarter.
West segment revenue rose 87.2% YoY with Chamonix fully opened, but early operational inefficiencies and snowy weather reduced segment EBITDA to $(3.2)M; management is refocusing on profitability and installed a new GM.
Liquidity: $40.2M cash; debt consists of $450.0M senior secured notes due 2028 (callable at 102.063% of par) and $27.0M drawn on revolver; revolver maturity extended to Jan 1, 2027.
Catalysts: Illinois Supreme Court ruling clears path for financing and breaking ground on permanent American Place (~$325M project; management expects no equity financing), plus operational improvements at Chamonix and database marketing upgrades; Street estimate comparisons were unavailable in this session.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

American Place continued strong ramp: Q4 revenue +27.5% YoY to $28.5M; Adjusted Property EBITDA +71.9% to $6.7M, reflecting service quality and market share gains; recognized in Chicago Tribune Top Workplaces.
Consolidated Q4 Adjusted EBITDA +42% YoY to $10.4M; Midwest & South segment Adjusted Segment EBITDA +46.3% YoY to $10.5M on American Place strength.
Strategic progress: Illinois Supreme Court decision confirms Waukegan license, enabling financing for permanent American Place; management reiterated “no equity” plan and confidence in debt market solutions.
Quote: “We are very intent on doing this without any issuance of equity whatsoever… We think we can do this all in the debt markets on very favorable terms.”

What Went Wrong

West segment operating losses as Chamonix ramps: Q4 West Adjusted Segment EBITDA fell to $(3.2)M despite revenue growth, citing opening inefficiencies and snowy weather.
Elevated interest expense weighing on EPS: Q4 net interest expense rose to $10.9M from $6.7M YoY, contributing to diluted loss per share of $(0.35).
Contracted Sports Wagering revenue down due to fewer active skins; although Q4 Adjusted Segment EBITDA benefited from a $1.2M recovery settlement, run-rate visibility remains limited with partners exiting CO/IN in 2025.

View the full earnings report

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Full House Resorts Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Lewis Fanger, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. As always, before we begin, we remind you that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements that we're making under the Safe Harbor provision of federal security laws. I'd also like to remind you that the company's actual results could differ materially from the anticipated results in these forward-looking statements. Please see today's press release under the caption "Forward-looking Statements" for the discussion of risks that may affect our results. Also, we may make reference to non-GAAP measures such as adjusted EBITDA or reconciliation of those measures.

Please see our website as well as various press releases of the issue. Lastly, we're also broadcasting this conference call at fullhouseresorts.com, where you can find today's earnings release as well as all of our SEC filings. With that said, are you ready to go, Dan?

Dan Lee (CEO)

Okay. Lewis tells me to be briefer than usual because people want more time for questions. We had a lot of things going on. American Place, I'll start with that. It had another strong quarter. The revenues were up strongly every quarter of the year. Fourth quarter revenues are up 27%. Overall, it was up 42% for the year. EBITDA was up 60%. It just continues to mature as it has since shortly after it opened.

More important than the numbers sometimes, the Chicago Tribune does a survey of the best employers in the Chicago area. I'm proud to say that we were on the list, and we were the only casino on the list in Chicagoland, and that's important. We have, for a casino, relatively low turnover. We have great employees. We're providing great service, and that's the key to a great business.

Equally important, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Gaming Commission, endorsing their selection of us for the Waukegan license, basically. That puts it behind us. They had earlier lost in federal court as well. That opens the door to going and getting the financing to build the permanent. Right now, we're doing very, very well. We're one of the better-performing casinos in the state, despite the fact that we're essentially in a tent.

It's like a sprung structure. It's the sort of structure that your municipality uses to store salt for the winter. It's not really a full-on casino. Although we've dressed it up pretty well to make it look as good as we could. Our commitment to the state is to build a permanent one, which will cost about $325 million going forward in the next phase.

It was difficult to do that when there was a lawsuit out there questioning whether we had the license. That has been resolved. We are dealing with our bankers now on the best way to finance this. The one thing we are quite sure of is there will be no equity involved at these prices; that would be giving it away. We are very intent on doing this without any issuance of equity whatsoever. We also do not believe that we need to do a REIT or sell any assets. We think we can do this all in the debt markets on very favorable terms. If you look at other deals done recently in the debt markets, they are being done at very favorable rates. Other casino deals, and there have been some pretty big ones.

The REITs are always an opportunity for us, but at the end of the day, it's pretty expensive capital that you can't unwind anywhere down the road. I think some of our competition's finding that out. We have not done any of the REIT, OpCo, PropCo deals yet, and we don't think we have to. We hope to get the financing together in the next several months. We intend to break ground later this year. We actually could start construction without the financing, at least initially, because in the first few months of construction, there's not a lot of money being spent. It's just bulldozers moving things around. We want to get started later this year. We're allowed to operate the temporary until August of 2027. There isn't a date by which we have to open the permanent.

As a practical matter, we have 500 employees, and we have a state and municipality who are relying on our tax revenues, and we want to transition smoothly from the temporary into the permanent. We are targeting to be ready in August of 2027. If we did need an extension, we'd probably get it. We did once before. It requires going through legislature, but I do not think we are going to need an extension.

I think we can make that deadline. The outlook for the permanent is actually very good. There is a very good comparable. The Hard Rock folks operate a casino in Rockford, Illinois, which is owned by an investor group. They operated in a temporary for a couple of years, and they moved into a permanent facility a little bit down the road from the temporary. They did that at the beginning of September.

Their revenues since then have been double what they were before. Rockford is a city of about 450,000 people. We're the only casino in Lake County, which is about 1 million people. Our revenues are bigger than theirs. Our temporary does more revenues than their temporary did. I think our permanent will do more revenues than their permanent is doing. They saw a doubling of their revenues when they went from the temporary into the permanent. Frankly, if your revenues double, your income probably triples. There are two similar places in Virginia where temporary casinos have been recently replaced with permanent. Both of those are also doing very well. There are quite a few comparables out there that bode well for us. There's another way of looking at it that we've done.

If you take the average win per slot and average win per table in the state and exclude Rivers, which is in a very demographically rich area, if you just take the average of all the other casinos and apply it to the number of slots and tables that we'll have in our permanent, if we only do the average—and there's lots of arguments why we might do more than average because we have pretty good demographics around us as well—if we only do the average, it would be about $200 million in revenue. If you had normal margins on that, it'd be close to $100 million in EBITDA. That's just casino revenue. I'm saying EBITDA into casino revenue would be a pretty high margin.

If you include food and beverage revenue, the revenues would be higher, but there's not much margin in food and beverage, and sometimes it lost. That is why you see overall margins on a casino in the region are usually more like 30%, not 50%. If you just do it on casino revenues, it's close to 50%. That is American Place. It's doing well, and we're getting ready for the next phase there. In Colorado, we completed Chamonix finally in October. Actually, not quite completed.

There's one parking lot that we need the ground to thaw before we can finish it. It's kind of an important parking lot. Otherwise, the place is done. We had a grand opening in early November, which is coming right into the slowest time of the year. Despite all of that, revenues were up strongly in the year.

Revenues were up very strongly in the fourth quarter as well, more than double. Of course, the facility is much more spectacular than what we had before. Now, expenses are also up quite a bit, and that's not surprising because now we're operating a full-on resort casino, and the revenues are not yet where we expect them to be. Income has been scant. In fact, it lost a little bit of money in the fourth quarter. Going forward, I expect the revenues to continue to climb, both because it's maturing, just like American Place did.

The expenses should not climb, and income should be pretty good starting this year and grow from there. I'm still very convinced it'll make $50 million a year at some point. If you look at what the casinos in Black Hawk make, that's actually very reasonable.

Monarch is making north of $100 million a year. Ameristar is somewhere in that ballpark. The Jacobs Casino does very well. I think he's only got about 50 rooms, and he makes something like $50 million a year. Isle of Capri makes something like $50 million a year. They are appealing to Denver, which is 4 million people. We're equal distance to the south side of Denver as Black Hawk is, and that's probably a million people. We are much closer to the million people who live in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. It is a demographically rich area.

We're head and shoulders nicer than the competition and larger than the competition in Cripple Creek. I expect we doubled our market share this year, and I think we will grow the market and eventually evolve into having a strong market share of a growing market.

This is not dissimilar to other places we've opened. I remember Beau Rivage in Mississippi when we opened. It was a little bit of a slow opening, and then eventually caught on, and it's dominated the Mississippi Gulf Coast now for 20-odd years, more than 20 years. L'Auberge in Lake Charles, same thing. First several months, we had some bugs to get out of it, and then it kicked in, and 20 years later, it's making $100 million a year.

Even Bellagio didn't get to $500 million a year of income in the first year. It took a few years. The same here. Now, we have also made some management changes. I came to realize that some of our management team was perhaps a little over their heads. We hired Brandon Leeson as our new GM. He starts on Monday.

He started out at the Rama Casino in Toronto. He's originally from Canada, although he now has a dual passport. And he worked at the Rama Casino, worked his way up, and then he worked for the Ontario Lottery, regulating slot machines in Ontario. So he knows slot machines very well. Quite a few years ago, came to Black Hawk, ran the Isle in Black Hawk, and then ran Bally's in Black Hawk, the three casinos there that Bally's has. He's had a couple of stints, including recently, where he worked for companies offering database management of marketing lists.

He kind of knows the marketing side and the data side and the casino machine sides and so on. For example, when he was at Bally's, he worked on the Bally's has three licenses in Black Hawk the same way we have three licenses in Cripple Creek.

Historically, the Gaming Commission said, "You can do that, and it reduces your gaming taxes because it's a progressive tax rate. But the TITO tickets from one aren't good in another." That creates confusion for customers when they go in from Chamonix into Bronco Billy's. Their TITO ticket doesn't work when all the you're now on a different color carpet, basically. While at Bally's, he worked with the slot system company. That slot system was, I think, IGT, if I recall, and modified it in a way that satisfied the regulators.

Today, Bally's doesn't have that issue. A TITO ticket from one Bally's casino can be used at a different one, even though one of their casinos is actually across the street from their other two. He did this two years ago. We were like, "This should make an important improvement." It's not.

It's an important improvement. Is it huge? No, it's not huge, but it's an important improvement. I just hold it out there as an example of the sort of creative stuff he's done in the past that we're looking forward to having him work with us in analyzing this and running this better. We also have a new HR director. We have a new hotel director. We have a new IT director. We have a new corporate VP of advertising who's deeply involved with Chamonix.

We are throwing a lot of new talent at the property, and I'm confident that that's going to make a big difference. 10, 20, and 30 years from now, this property is going to be a solid business. In Indiana, we're in Rising Sun, Indiana. When that casino first opened, it made $50 million a year.

It was the only casino in the entire region. Over the last 30 years, other casinos have opened that are newer and closer to where people live, whether it is in Shelbyville, cutting off people from Indianapolis or downtown Cincinnati in Ohio and Miami Valley in Ohio, and now the Churchill stuff in Kentucky. Everywhere you look, we have competition. That property's income has trended down to where it is just $4 million-$5 million a year. We went to the legislature seeking to move it. The bill did not get out of the Senate, but the Senate did pass a study bill that calls for the Gaming Commission to have an independent study on what the benefits for the state might be of allowing underperforming licenses to relocate and where they might relocate.

Now, we were proposing New Haven and still are, which is a suburb of Fort Wayne. We would build a pretty significant place there. If you look at a map, the other obvious place is the city of Indianapolis, which is 2 million people and has no casino. I suspect that that study will focus on those and maybe elsewhere in the state. What is clear is that study commission needs House approval. We think it'll probably get that in the next two weeks. Why would you not study the issue? It doesn't mean it's going to happen, but at least you have studies so you're operating with some background. There are some precedents. We are the lowest performing license in the state at this point by a pretty wide mark.

I think the next lower casino does twice what we do, and that's the one in French Lick. They get all sorts of historic tax credits because they're in a historic hotel. Difficult for them to move. There used to be two other casinos that were similar to us in annual revenues, and that was the former Trump Casino and the Barden Casino on the water in Gary. They had gone bankrupt at one point, and they were barely in business. The legislature approved relocating those. One of them moved to Interstate 80, still in Gary, but it's the Hard Rock in Gary, and it's now the number one producing casino in the state. The revenues and the jobs went way up when they relocated it.

The other one ended up in Terre Haute, which is the Churchill property, and it's doing very well as well, both in revenues and jobs and investment. There are precedents. In Indiana, people are hesitant to have an expansion of gaming. They do not want additional licenses, if you will. There are a history of relocating licenses, which is better for the state. The state originally put the licenses at the borders to try to draw business from Illinois and Ohio and Kentucky, but now those states all have their own casinos. The best locations have changed. I have said several times this might take two or three legislative sessions before it happens.

I do think it has a reasonable chance of happening, although when you're dealing with state legislatures, I think it was Mark Twain said, "Nobody is safe on the legislature's session," so it's hard to predict. We know it's a good thing for the state, and we hope that rationality prevails, and that would be a good investment opportunity for us. Meanwhile, we continue to make good money in Rising Sun. Not a lot of money, but some. We have a new general manager there, Jeff Michie, who Lewis and I worked with years ago at Pinnacle. Jeff had been involved with a much bigger tribal casino down in Arizona. His wife and his new grandchildren live quite close to us in Rising Sun, and he wanted to come back to the region.

We have a guy who's very, very qualified now in charge of Rising Star. Frankly, he'd be very qualified to help move the license if we are allowed to do so at some point. He replaced Angie, who had run it for a few years. John Ferrucci had been running Silver Slipper since it opened 20 years ago. He retired. She moved down there. She had worked there originally, and we had promoted her to Finance Director at Rising Star and then General Manager at Rising Star. She did very well in a challenging market. She's been back down at the Silver Slipper now for several weeks and has lots of new ideas. I'm confident that the Silver Slipper is going to see improved results in the months ahead.

Meanwhile, at Lake Tahoe, where we are on a short-term lease to run the casino at the Hyatt Tahoe, but it's been extended many, many times, I hope that will continue to be the case. The property is owned by Larry Ellison, and he's moving ahead with refurbishing it. The first phase of that is the stuff along the beachfront. Frankly, that stuff was built 50 years ago and didn't really make use of the special real estate that it is. It's a lot of beachfront on Lake Tahoe, which is very, very valuable. What exists there today is a big restaurant and some meeting rooms and banquet rooms and some villa suites that have gotten pretty dated and a surface parking lot. He has plans to fix up that part or replace that part of the property.

Our casino is in the main building, which is across the street, and that's not being affected by the refurbishment currently. I think he has plans later to come back and refurbish that. We may be impacted some by the refurbishment because some of our customers like to stay in those villas. Long term, this already special property will probably be much more special under him, and we hope to continue to be part of it. That is Lake Tahoe. In Fallon, as I think you know, we sold it. It's a two-part deal. The real estate of it closed several months ago. We're waiting for the buyers to get their license. They've been licensed before in Nevada. They're pretty prominent people.

We expect them to be licensed in the next few weeks, at which point we close the rest of the deal, and they take over the management of it. That is Fallon. Did I miss anything?

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

I got nothing left, Dan. Let's do some Q&A.

Dan Lee (CEO)

I got it all. Okay. We're happy to take questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon, guys. I want to start with kind of a higher-level question. I mean, given the challenges you've had at Chamonix thus far, I guess, has that changed your plans for American Place, whether it be the design, the gaming floor, the size, amenities, or even the overall minimum guaranteed spend that you guys have committed to there?

Dan Lee (CEO)

No, not at all. I mean, the guaranteed minimum spend, if I recall correctly, and Alex is on the line and correct me, I think it's $500 million, of which we've already spent $175 million. And some of that is the temporary, but big parts of it, like the $50 million license fee, the storm sewers and parking lots and so on that are being used for the temporary are also part of the permanent, and $20 million of slot machines. So we're already kind of into it. Actually, it's the opposite. When you go to the property that Hard Rock built in Rockford, they did a good job. They really did a good job. They have the same sort of license we have, the same number of gaming positions and so on.

They spend in the ballpark of $300 million, which is what our going forward spend is in the next phase. I have kind of gone to town looking at that. I will have a different theme than showing Lady Gaga's underwear behind plexiglass, but that is the Hard Rock theme, and it works for them. We have also spent some time over at Durango Station, where I think Stations did a really good job, and it is very successful. That was $700 million. We do not have that sort of budget. It was funny. We were over there yesterday, and Lewis was freaking out because I brought with me a laser pointer that I am pointing all over the place to measure different parts of their casino for our design.

If anybody noticed it, it looked like there was a sniper in the room, and Lewis was afraid we were going to get kicked out. There is stuff they did there very well that we hope to borrow, recognizing that we have a smaller budget and a smaller place than Durango. It is a little more of a, let's say, the theme of Durango and the size of the Hard Rock. Recognize this is a very different place than Chamonix. Chamonix is an hour from most of our customers up in the mountains at 10,000 feet on the backside of Pikes Peak. You need a hotel. People need to stay overnight. Not everybody, but a lot of people. You need other amenities to get them up there. A big spa and different restaurants and parking garage and all that.

In Waukegan, we're in the middle of a million people. I mean, we're literally in the middle of a million people. Lake County is most of that. It's 750,000, if I remember correctly. One of the wealthier counties in the country with Lake Bluff and Lake Forest and Libertyville and so on. In Waukegan, it's much more like Durango Station, which is a local's casino. I mean, they have a little hotel there, but it's really a local's casino. That's what we're doing there. Whereas in Cripple Creek, it's kind of like a half-sized version of L'Auberge. When we built L'Auberge in Lake Charles, the customers are coming from Houston. That's two hours away. We had to have stuff to get people there.

We built a hotel that initially had 700 rooms, later got expanded to 1,000 rooms, and a golf course and all that stuff. It was more of a smallish destination resort, a small version of what Las Vegas is, really. That is what Chamonix is. It is a different market and requires a different place. When you look at what you build in Waukegan, there is one other one I would mention on the south side of Chicago, which is a much more saturated market than the north side of Chicago. The Wind Creek Casino opened, and they have a hotel. If you back out their hotel, they also spend about $300 million. We think that is kind of the sweet spot. Again, the same number of gaming positions as we have. They have grown the market pretty nicely.

Now, because it's more saturated, they have had some impact on the casinos in northern Indiana and also a little bit of an impact on Joliet and maybe a little bit on Bally's Downtown because the south side gaming per capita is quite a bit higher than on the north side. We are a less saturated market. I don't think we have much impact, and we haven't had much impact on Rivers or Potawatomi, who are our competitors on the north side. It is a good example. If you build a good product in a market, you'll grow the market.

Frankly, in a place like Waukegan, you build a place, and people drive by and say, "Well, look at that." In a place like Cripple Creek, nobody drives by and says, "Hey, look at that." You have to tell people that you're there, and that takes a marketing campaign.

We had some coming up to the grand opening, which was on November 3rd or 4th. Ad rates were very expensive because of the national political campaign. We actually were not on the air in the month of October. We were on the air for a little while, and then you run into Christmas, and it is not really a good use of money to be advertising during the Christmas season. We kind of backed off again, and now we are up again. Our task is to tell people we exist. They are not going to see it from driving by. It is a little slower ramp-up than you would get in a market like Waukegan, but it will get there. I mean, it is the same sort of thing when The Mirage opened in Las Vegas.

They had to tell everybody in LA there was a new hotel in Las Vegas, and it was not like the other ones. That is our task.

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

It's actually been pretty encouraging as well because when we look at maps of where customers are coming from, we've been doing heat maps of Denver. I will tell you, Denver has lit up pretty nicely. We always talk about the roughly million people that are in the feeder market between Colorado Springs and some of those surrounding cities. The southern suburbs of Denver were always meant to be gravy for us and to help further supplement the plan. What is looking pretty bright for us is that market is quite excited to go and visit the property. Colorado Springs still has, to Dan's point, we didn't have a big awareness campaign throughout almost all of 2024 for us. We managed to get a 160% increase in revenue year-over-year despite the fact that we weren't running ads.

I know it's hard. Most of you know I had your job at one time. You're always judged and focused by one quarter, one year. When you're in my position, I tend to look further out. I get calls from my mom, who's 95 years old, and it seems like all her mahjong playing partners own our stock. She'll call me and say, "You know, your stock was down $0.10 today. Why was that?" I'm like, "Well, mom, I didn't even know that, and I'm focused on where the stock will be in 2030." Over the holidays, I sat and just played with a rough model myself, which I like to do sometimes now. I just played with the model and said, "Okay, I'm pretty sure we're going to get to $50 million a year in Chamonix by 2030.

That could be 2025, but give us until 2030. I think we can get there." I said, "By then, we will have operated the permanent American Place for two and a half years, and it could be $100 million." I plugged that in. I said, "Let's suppose Angie gets the Silver Slipper from $13 million to like $20 million," which is what it did two years ago. I think that's entirely possible. I said, "If we get to move to New Haven with Rising Star and we invest in the first phase, I think it's $350 million in the first phase. The whole investment's like $500 million eventually. The later phases will be built out of cash flow.

Let's say it gets reasonable return on investment. I worked into, "Okay, we produce a lot of cash flow, and let's assume we borrow the rest." I threw in, I think, a 9% interest rate to be kind of conservative. I said, "You know, we get out there, and you got to have an exit to a model like this, right? The easiest thing is to assume you sell the company at year-end 2030." That doesn't say we will. At some point by then, maybe somebody else is running the company, and I'm retired or something. When you model it, you have to kind of assume something like that. I said, "Let's assume the company sold for like nine times cash flow," which would not be a high multiple.

Hi, Dan. Hi, Lewis. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe two on Chamonix. The first, curious if you could give us a little color on kind of what you're seeing on the casino floor. We looked at the state reports, the same ones everyone else gets. It looks like we could see the slot market growing nicely at Chamonix, but less so on the table side. Curious what you're seeing and what your expectations are for table volumes, slot volumes for the upcoming spring season.

Dan Lee (CEO)

We're actually 100%, more than 100% sometimes of the growth in the entire state. The growth should be more than it is. Tables has been one of our weak points. We have a new Director of Table Games. We have a new Director of Casino Operations. I forgot to mention, actually. We had a Director of Casino Operations in Rising Sun who did a great job. Earlier in his career, he had been in Colorado. We relocated him, and he's been there two months. There's stuff like we have not offered baccarat. In fact, nobody in Cripple Creek offers baccarat. As I speak, we have two baccarat tables sitting on our loading dock, and dealers going through dealer school to learn how to deal it. Baccarat is a pretty significant game in Black Hawk.

Our table limits are lower than they are at our competition in Black Hawk. I am willing to let the table limits go up, but I want to make sure that we have experienced supervision and experienced dealers and that we are doing so intelligently. We are trying to buttress that. We are trying to hire more dealers. We do not have enough dealers. We are running our own dealer school at the moment.

There is a lot of stuff focusing on tables. Part of the reason we made the management changes we made was to help focus more on tables because our table game should be maybe 20% of our revenues, and it is less than 10%. That is a strong area of growth for us. We are about to put in new carpet and handicap ramps within Bronco Billy's.

Right now, it's pretty jarring when you go from Chamonix into Bronco Billy's. Bronco Billy's has probably half our slot machines, maybe at least half. We're trying to improve that transition. There are quite a few customers who actually prefer the brick walls and kind of Western theme of Bronco Billy's. Of course, the slot machines in Chamonix do much better. We're trying to pull that down. We're improving our food and beverage offerings, changing the menus, changing the marketing. We had a kind of a temporary restaurant that when we opened, we didn't have the high-end restaurant done yet. We turned the small meeting room space into what was supposed to be a temporary restaurant. We couldn't get enough waiters. I said they could run it as a buffet. They ran it as a buffet all year.

Small volume buffets lose a lot of money. We lost $1,500,000 on that buffet. When I finally figured out how ridiculous it was, it was part of the reason for all these changes. We were charging $45, and the cost of the crab alone was $11 a cover. Prime rib was $10 a cover. The pastries were $9 a cover. The linens were being leased from a wedding supply linen company. That was $10 a cover. Before you bought the salmon and the chicken and paid for the payroll, we were upside down. We were spending $100 a cover and charging $45 a cover. That is just stupid. We will not do stupid things like that anymore. I am sure Brandon, who is a very analytical young man, I think he is mid-40s, experienced man.

He'll make sure that we put a number on this. When you operate one too many restaurants, it affects every restaurant. On a Saturday, that would do 150 covers. By eliminating that little buffet, first off, it frees up our small meeting room space to help book meetings. Second, we may lose 20 or 30 covers to the casinos across the street, which are doing well because of us, and that's fine. The other 120 covers are split among our 980 Prime and our home cafe and our Mexican restaurant.

There is an Italian restaurant that we hope to finish out this year in Bronco Billy's. By moving those covers into the other restaurants, the other restaurants will have better profit numbers. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit like that for Brandon and the rest of us to wake up to.

I think if you look at the annual run rate of corporate in 2025, it's pretty similar to 2024. It's like $6 million. There were some over-accruals that got reversed in the fourth quarter, so that fourth quarter looked unusual.

Chad Beynon (US Director of Research and Head of Gaming and Leisure)

Yep. Perfect. Thank you both. Appreciate it.

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Thanks, Dan. You're hired as CFO.

Hey, Dan, we have time for maybe one or two questions depending on how quickly you get through these. Let's take at least one more.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Ricardo Chinchilla with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Ricardo Chinchilla (Director)

Hey, guys. Thank you so much for taking my question. I was hoping we could dig a little bit more on the ramp-up here at Chamonix. Can you guys provide a little bit of color on January? I know that it stalled because of the water. I know that you guys have been playing a little bit to modeling, so maybe you guys can help me out a little bit. I have you guys increasing your OpEx, likely on the fourth quarter based on my math. Can you give us an idea of, with your proposed savings and now that you guys have a new manager that's going to focus on cost savings, what's the right OpEx per day to run that property and perhaps a little bit more of gaming volumes?

Dan Lee (CEO)

Look, it's hard to look at it on a month-to-month basis and different things are affecting, or even on a quarterly basis, but if your target is $50 million in 2030, we ought to be able to get to $10 million or $15 million of EBITDA this year. Now it's summer seasonal, so a lot of that will be the third quarter. From there, it goes $20 million, $30 million, $40 million the next few years, and that's how you get to $50 million.

That's as good a guess as anybody. There are some areas where we probably have too many employees, and there are other areas where we have too few. We don't have enough dealers, I already alluded to. We don't have enough masseuses. We have seven treatment rooms and two other rooms we can use, so really nine treatment rooms. We have two masseuses.

On weekends, they're totally filled. We could fill probably seven masseuses on weekends. It's a popular thing. We charge $130 or $150 for a treatment, and the massage therapist gets $20 or $30. It's a nice profit center. We need more masseuses. We're trying to find them. We have a salon where people can get manicures, pedicures, and get their hair cut or colored. It's a beautiful salon. We have one or two salon therapists. We probably need a dozen, and we are trying to find them. That also is a profit center, but it's also a marketing tool because if a woman can use her slot points to get her hair cut and she likes her hair cut, she's going to come back every month to get her hair cut using her slot points. That's the marketing tool.

There are a lot of tasks for Brandon and the rest of us to refine this place. It pains me to go back there and see our salon ready for action, and we do not have employees in it yet. We cannot find, we will find those employees, even if people who cut hair, they work on kind of a different sort of commission basis. I am willing to give them much better commissions than they get in Woodland Park or Colorado Springs.

We need to do that. I am even willing to guarantee them pay because if we guarantee that they are going to have six women getting their hair cut a day, to pick a number, then we turn around to the marketing people and say, "Okay, we just bought six haircuts today, so go find some of your best customers and offer them a haircut.

That's how you jump-start that business. The management team we're putting together is going to be doing a lot of stuff like that. When you say, "What will the earnings be in the first quarter?" We're not going to make much in the first quarter. The faster we can make some of the changes I'm detailing, the faster we can get to that. I'm pretty sure we can get to $10 million-$15 million this year.

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Then the bottom line would be up more than that because if you're up 10% in revenue, you might be up 20% in income.

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

You did have some—there are little pockets of weather depending on where you look, Andrew. I'll tell you this. Outside of the weather pockets, the customer is actually still pretty robust, if maybe that's the other angle of your question. It does, especially in Colorado and especially in Waukegan, we're seeing a very good, robust customer. I would tell you we would expect that as well because those are two under-penetrated markets. We expect them to be a little more robust anyway.

Dan Lee (CEO)

There are two little things we're doing that help the numbers. Our larger restaurant was, or one of our large restaurants was somewhat underutilized. We have set it up and are using it for entertainment events. We bring in comedians and inexpensive entertainment to be in front of 300 people. That has worked pretty well at driving business when we do it. We will probably do more of that. We are also adding a small poker room. Now, in poker, you get a rake, so it's not a lot of money. It was a pretty slow corner of the casino. We said, "Let's put in a poker room." We have one. Our competition has poker.

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Coming soon. Yeah.

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Thanks, Andrew.

Hey, Dan, you want to just wrap it up real quick?

Dan Lee (CEO)

No, I think we've covered it. Thank everybody for your support and hang in there with us. We're going to have a great five years here.

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

All right. Thank you, guys.

Operator (participant)

Okay. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Full House Resorts - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

What Went Wrong

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Operator (participant)

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Ryan Sigdahl (Senior Research Analyst)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Operator (participant)

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Jordan Bender (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Operator (participant)

John DeCree (Head of Institutional Investor Research and Senior Equity Analyst)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

John DeCree (Head of Institutional Investor Research and Senior Equity Analyst)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Operator (participant)

Chad Beynon (US Director of Research and Head of Gaming and Leisure)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Chad Beynon (US Director of Research and Head of Gaming and Leisure)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Chad Beynon (US Director of Research and Head of Gaming and Leisure)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Operator (participant)

Ricardo Chinchilla (Director)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Ricardo Chinchilla (Director)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Ricardo Chinchilla (Director)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Ricardo Chinchilla (Director)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Operator (participant)

Andrew Walker (Portfolio Manager)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Andrew Walker (Portfolio Manager)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Lewis Fanger (CFO)

Dan Lee (CEO)

Andrew Walker (Portfolio Manager)