Lucky Strike Entertainment Corporation - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 FY2025 revenue was $300.1M (-1.8% y/y) with Same Store Revenue down 6.2%; Adjusted EBITDA was $98.8M (32.9% margin) and GAAP net income was $28.3M.
• Against external estimates, EPS of $0.10 modestly beat by $0.01 while revenue missed by ~$15.9M; S&P Global consensus was unavailable due to API limits, so comparisons use public sources noted below.
• Management reiterated FY2025 guidance in Q2 (Revenue $1.23–$1.28B; Adj. EBITDA margin 32–34%), declared a $0.055 dividend, and disclosed $56M of buybacks (5.1M shares) through Jan 31, 2025.
• Strategic cadence: new center openings and the Boomer’s acquisition continued; corporate events softness and calendar shifts weighed on comps, but leagues and retail walk‑in remained resilient per management.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Opened four new Lucky Strike centers (two Denver, Beverly Hills, Ladera Ranch); Beverly Hills and Ladera Ranch each generated >$1M revenue in first 30 days, underscoring product-market fit. “They represent an evolution of our best-in-class product that underscores our position as leaders in consumer entertainment” — CEO Thomas Shannon.
  • Continued portfolio expansion: acquired one bowling location, six FECs and one water park in the quarter; total locations 364 as of Feb 5, 2025.
  • Cost/earnings quality: Adjusted EBITDA of $98.8M with 32.9% margin; GAAP net income of $28.3M vs. a loss in prior year quarter, aided by lower earnout liability revaluation y/y.

• What Went Wrong

  • Same Store Revenue fell 6.2% y/y; corporate events paused amid election uncertainty; Thanksgiving timing shortened the holiday events window; New Year’s Eve shifted to Q3 this year vs. Q2 last year, pressuring comps.
  • Revenue declined 1.8% y/y to $300.1M, missing third-party consensus by ~$15.9M (S&P Global unavailable; see public estimate sources).
  • Sequentially, subsequent Q3 delivered only modest top-line growth (+0.7% y/y) and lower Adjusted EBITDA vs. prior year, indicating continued macro/event headwinds into spring.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning and welcome, everyone, to the Lucky Strike Entertainment Q2 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Bobby Lavan, CFO of Lucky Strike Entertainment. Please go ahead.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Good morning to everyone on the call. This is Bobby Lavan, Lucky Strike's Chief Financial Officer. Welcome to our conference call to discuss Lucky Strike's second quarter 2025 earnings. Today, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period ended December 29, 2024. A copy of the press release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Joining me on the call today are Thomas Shannon, our founder and Chief Executive, and Lev Ekster, our President. I'd 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 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. Lucky Strike Entertainment undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements that 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 in 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. I'll now turn the call over to Tom.

Thomas Shannon (Founder and CEO)

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I am Thomas Shannon, founder and CEO of Lucky Strike Entertainment. Last week, we celebrated our 28th anniversary, beginning with one bowling alley in Union Square, New York, and undergoing a few name changes along the way. Lucky Strike Entertainment reflects our commitments to being a world-class entertainment platform. Our company has navigated through turmoil and disruption on multiple occasions. We were the closest bowling center to Ground Zero on 9/11. Half of our events' revenue disappeared during the Great Financial Crisis. Even though it seems like a distant memory, we're still experiencing the lingering effects of COVID-19, during which we shut down and quickly rebuilt to where we are today. Six months ago, we reported double-digit growth and mid-single-digit savings for our sales, while our peers were down by double digits.

However, this most recent quarter came with heightened macroeconomic uncertainty. We began the quarter with the corporate events business on hold due to concerns over the election outcome. Compounding this, Thanksgiving fell a week later this year, shortening the critical corporate events holiday schedule by about a third. And finally, New Year's Eve fell in our next quarter versus being in the second quarter last year. Our sticky league business continues to grow, and retail walk-in customer traffic has been steady despite headlines of the weak consumer. So how did we respond to all of this noise? As we always have, we optimized payroll to reflect the uncertain environment, resulting in a double-digit reduction in payroll hours across many of our centers. We tightened capital expenditures, driving down spending by 33% year over year in this quarter.

Boomers and our two water parks received new offerings that will help improve our earnings this coming summer. We're investing in incremental marketing channels and improving our corporate events operating structure to bring in new business. We leaned into improving food attachment with our new menu, implementing a selling culture among the staff, and adding technologies in-center to drive efficiencies and wallet share. We rolled out dynamic pricing and added hot new games for our arcade business. Food and amusements grew faster than the rest of our business lines. Despite top-line pressure, the underlying performance of the different business lines gives me confidence in our long-term operating leverage, and the core product we have built is better than ever. During this quarter, we opened four new Lucky Strike centers: two in Denver, one in Beverly Hills, and one in Ladera Ranch, California.

Lucky Strike Beverly Hills and Lucky Strike Ladera Ranch each generated over $1 million in revenue within their first 30 days of operation, a new record. You can view these four new properties' images in our investor deck, and I encourage you to do so. They represent an evolution of our best-in-class product that underscores our position as visionaries and leaders in consumer entertainment. We also began the rebranding of centers to Lucky Strike, with four centers changed to date and the rollout ramping up. We currently have 21 Lucky Strike centers and will end the year near 75. Our ability to consistently grow despite the challenges we have faced over the past 28 years is a testament to our resilience and the endurance of the business model we have built. Thank you for your support. I will now turn it over to Lev Ekster.

Lev Ekster (President)

Thanks, Tom. As Tom described, there was a lot of noise this past quarter due to calendar shifts and macroeconomic uncertainty, which especially affected our corporate events business. But our job as operators is to focus on the things that we can control, which is why I'm pleased to report on the progress we made on our operating initiatives during the quarter. As you know, we launched the new retail F&B menu last quarter, which has been well received by our customers. Our KPI of food and beverage revenue attachment to bowling revenue grew to $0.80, up from $0.76 the year prior. We continue to lean into our improved F&B offerings at our locations to drive increased average check size and guest satisfaction. Our net promoter score was 74 in the quarter, up from 72 the year prior.

We saw improved scores driven by the enhanced food experience as we rolled out the new food menu to our retail business. A new menu is now being introduced into our events business across all locations by the spring, the first change to the events menu in 10 years. We expect this new menu to reinvigorate this channel and drive uptake the next few quarters. In the quarter, we also rolled out handheld tablets for our servers. It is still early days, but we've already noticed signs of efficiencies from the technology, as seen in our payroll and benefits costs being down 9% year over year. The tablets should allow our servers to cover more lanes and grow check averages through upsell prompts.

Lastly, the team was focused on decreasing the EBITDA loss we've been running at the PBA and managed to cut that in half going into this newly launched season. We expect these results to continue to improve as we work closely with the newly hired UTA agency to bring on new sponsors. Now, let me hand it over to Bobby to review the quarter's financial performance. Bobby?

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Thanks, Lev. In the second quarter of 2025, we generated total revenue of $300.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of $98.8 million, compared to the last year of $305.7 million and adjusted EBITDA of $103.1 million. Our total revenue growth was -1.8%, and same-store comp was -6.2%. The quarter had one less week of holiday events due to the late Thanksgiving year over year and New Year's pushed into the third quarter. The quarter had one less week of holiday events, and that push was about a 300 basis point headwind for the quarter. Our retail business was flat, league business up small single digits, and events business down mid-single digits in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $98.8 million. We right-sized costs in the quarter to reflect the uncertain macro environment and saw a tailwind from labor, F&B costs, and repairs and maintenance.

Same-store sales were a $19 million drag that would float to the bottom line. We limited negative operating leverage through cost efficiencies, and we expect to maintain those cost levels as revenue improves, driving operating leverage. We earned $3 million EBITDA from new centers, and Boomers and Raging Waves were a $2 million drag in the quarter. The investments we are making in Boomers and Raging Waves more than doubled our total addressable market and smoothed out seasonality of our business. Raging Waves generated $9 million of EBITDA from June to August last summer, and Boomers should generate similar to that over this summer. We have seen and will see over the rest of the fiscal year bumpiness in revenue. The benefit we expected to get from school winter break being pushed from the third week of December, second week of January, was offset by wildfires in LA.

In addition, January, February, and March are very important months for our business. We continue to focus on F&B and amusement initiatives, and we expect to see a good lift in the spring and summer from Boomers and Raging Waves. Overall, with the current macro uncertainty, we are taking a cautious view of our guidance for the rest of the year, but we still expect to be within our full-year guidance range for the fiscal 2025, as we reiterated in our earnings release this morning. In the quarter, we spent $53 million in capital expenditures. Gross CapEx was $19 million, new build CapEx was $8 million, and maintenance was $12 million. We spent $9 million purchasing incremental land at Raging Waves that flows through the capital expenditures line. CapEx is down $30 million year to date from the previous year.

Our liquidity at the end of the quarter was $397 million, with nothing drawn on a revolver and $81 million of cash. Net debt was $1.2 billion, and bank credit facility net leverage ratio was 2.9x. Thank you for your time, and we look forward to seeing you at one of our new facilities in the coming months. Operator, can we now open the line up to questions?

Operator (participant)

This time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, to press Star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. I'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. And your first question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, you've got Zach on for Matt. Tom or Bobby, to start, can you maybe elaborate on the heightened macroeconomic uncertainty you cited and maybe just discuss what you're seeing at walk-in retail versus corporate events and any lead indicators of historical demand you're focused on today?

Lev Ekster (President)

Hey, I'll take this. This is Lev. So, Zach, I think everyone is seeing what's playing out in the macroeconomic environment right now. When you look at the political environment, there's just a lot of uncertainty. And I think the trade down with the consumer is real right now. The consumer is kind of in this wait-and-see mode. Some people are holding up. They're not going to take that maybe European vacation. We likely will be the beneficiary of that trade down. But you also see that trade down in the flight from premium alcohol, for example. And so when you look at our results, food performed really well, but there's definitely some detachment with alcohol. Alcohol sales didn't perform as well as our food sales did. And we're seeing the consumer just elect to not make that premium alcohol purchase.

In response to that, the team's working on various promotions to drive more foot traffic and late-night business to counteract that. But I think there is a flight to value right now, and we plan to be the beneficiary of that.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Just to add to that, offline events, which is really kind of corporate events and office parties, which is a big driver in December. In October, we saw a lot of sort of what I would say election uncertainty. When we got to December, while people who had planned six months out, they had booked their parties. When we got to December, sort of the last-minute parties, they didn't happen. From our perspective, events, or what we call offline events, is 25% of our business in the second quarter, but it drops down to about 13% of our business the rest of the year, and so we really saw a lot of uncertainty on the corporate event side, but we've seen good retail traffic, particularly as sort of the trade down plays out.

Got it. I appreciate it. And then maybe just as a follow-up, kind of following the latest pricing increase you cited last quarter with the new F&B menus, I was just wondering if you could maybe break down the composition of same-center sales between traffic and ticket this quarter, and then maybe any initiatives in place moving forward to kind of drive the embedded acceleration in the back half. Thanks.

Yes. Yeah, I mean, traffic was really the comp that was on the event side versus the retail side. Traffic was flat. Ultimately, the price increases were offset by detachment on the alcohol side. So we're seeing F&B up. We're seeing traffic sort of down on events, flat on retail. And events is just a bigger portion of the business at this point in the second quarter. So ultimately, it weighed on the comp. Thanks, Zach. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Wieczynski with Stifel Financial Corp. Steven, please go ahead.

Steven Wieczynski (Managing Director)

Yeah, hey, guys. Good morning. So Bobby, just kind of staying on that last topic there, I mean, as we think about the next two quarters, how should we be thinking about same-store sales to kind of get you guys into your guidance range? And I guess what I'm trying to figure out is there's clearly a tailwind now with New Year's being pushed into the third quarter, but it seems like there's some headwinds as well, whether that's the economy or California, given the fires. Not sure if you're seeing an impact there. Just trying to see how we should be thinking about the next two quarters. And then maybe elaborate a little bit more about, I think you said in your prepared remarks, you're looking at your guidance range. I think you said the word cautiously and just trying to understand a little bit more what that means.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. So let's talk about the fires for a second. So the fires were sort of a $5 million hit. The direct fire impact was we had three centers that were down for a while. But generally, we saw a significant pullback in corporate events in January. So January is going to be small down. We expect sort of the rest of the year to be up, but we're cautious on that. So from our perspective, we can make our guidance on EBITDA because we've effectively managed payroll costs, which is our single biggest cost. We've spent $300 million. The revenue is going to continue to be a little uncertain. But ultimately, that events business becomes less important as we go throughout the year. And then you get into the summer months, and we'll have a revised summer pass, an optimized summer pass.

We're going to have Boomers, which Boomers in the second quarter did about $6 million of revenue. In the fourth quarter, it does $15 million plus. The Raging Waves, which were expanding their season. And so managing through sort of this macro uncertainty on the revenue, we're going to be a little bit more cautious, but our ability to sort of hit our EBITDA targets is something we feel a lot more confident on.

Steven Wieczynski (Managing Director)

Okay. Gotcha. Thanks for that, Bobby. And then, Tom, maybe a question for you and a little bit of a bigger picture question. But I mean, we continue to get asked by investors, what makes Lucky Strike different than other entertainment options? And what I mean by that is obviously the Dave & Buster's, the Topgolfs of the world are struggling, and it seems you guys are just going to continuously get lumped in with them, whether that's fair, whether that's not fair. So how would you combat that narrative and kind of show the investment community that you guys are, in fact, different from those other entertainment options?

Lev Ekster (President)

I'll take that. This is Lev. So Lucky Strike Entertainment is just a very special concept. We don't even consider it to be exactly the same as our Bowlero concept. So right now, as we mentioned, we're actively working to convert Bowlero locations to Lucky Strikes. We've done four in the last four weeks with one additional this week. When we convert these locations, it's not just a sign change. This is a training for the staff. It's a totally different level of hospitality. In some cases, in cold weather environments, you're going to find a coat check to be included with your experience. We've never offered that before. The menus are completely different, as you know. The training of how to sell the menu is completely different. The design of the interiors is getting revamped.

When you look at a property like Beverly Hills that we opened last month in early December, that property only has 22 lanes. It did $1 million in revenue its first month. And just think about those kind of results. You can only achieve that with a special property. And by the way, we opened Ladera Ranch a week and a half later, also did $1 million in its first month. So what I would invite the investment community to do is visit some of these properties, see it for yourself, walk the spaces, look at the environments that we've created from the decor to the layouts to our game rooms. I'm very closely tied to the amusements business, very passionate about it, our company. I think we do amusements better than anyone in the business. We started as a bowling company.

Bowling is still king for us, but I think today we do amusements better than anyone. When you visit some of our redemption stores in these locations at Ladera Ranch, at Beverly Hills, at Northfield that we recently opened called the Prize Hall, it's stunning, and I think the product speaks for itself. I think the results speak for themselves as well.

Steven Wieczynski (Managing Director)

That's good color. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thanks. Your next question comes from the line of Jason Tilchen with Canaccord Genuity. Jason, please go ahead.

Jason Tilchen (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. Good afternoon. Good morning, and thanks for taking the questions. I guess just following up on one of the comments Lev just made, you talked about how in this rebranding, it's not just sort of changing the signs, but also some of those other improvements. In terms of sort of where you guys stand in the overall portfolio and refreshing centers and sort of putting in those upgrades like amusements and things like that, just wondering if you can give a little bit of an update on where that stands overall in relation to sort of the rebranding progress and that marker that you put out of 75 centers that'll be under the Lucky Strike brand at the end of this fiscal year. Thanks.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. So the rebrand process has started. We've changed the name at Mar Vista, San Marcos, Atlantic Station, and Houston. And we're going to get a few done a week starting now. The internal part of the change is happening as well. So changing the name at. My history always gets you kind of like a 10%-15% bump in retail traffic year one. The question is, how do you maintain it? Right? And to maintain it means that we've got coat checks in cold weather geos. We've upgraded the amusements. We've upgraded the food. We've upgraded. We go from paper boats to china dishes. There's a lot of different elements to just improving the experience, and that is happening.

Ultimately, I think that this is going to be a big tailwind for the business in that if you look at Chelsea Piers, Times Square, these are two beautiful bowling centers, two biggest bowling centers in the world, and they haven't really been that refreshed in 10 years. In the world where we rebrand them Lucky Strike, we add that coat check, we upgrade the amusements, we upgrade the plateware, we upgrade the food. It's just going to bring it to a different level. This goes to Steve's question, which is what is the differentiator between us and kind of some of our competitors. We are a premium product. People, when they walk into a Lucky Strike, they have an amazing experience. So they pay a little extra, sure, right?

But it's a premium experience, and ultimately, people want to come back, and we're building a brand that people can really get by.

Lev Ekster (President)

I just want to build on the question that you asked, which was, I think, the volume of these conversions. And I think we've really perfected the process of these over these first four. We're doing one, as I mentioned, this week as well. So the team has gotten the hang of this process because there are a lot of touchpoints outside and inside the locations. You're going to start to see that ramp up as we get into the summer months when we have a little bit more availability in the locations to make these conversions. So I think that 75 figure is very realistic. What's also really interesting when Bobby talks about the tailwind this provides, as that number of Lucky's increases, this week we'll be at 23.

As that volume of locations increases, it's also going to open up the opportunity for us to invest more marketing dollars, right, because we can spread that around more locations. And we haven't really done meaningful brand awareness, brand-building marketing for the Lucky Strike brand. But with 50, 75, 100 of these locations, we can really invest into that now.

Jason Tilchen (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. That's really helpful overview there. Just one other follow-up. I think in the prepared remarks, it might have been Bobby who mentioned you're working on improving the corporate event operating structure. I'm just wondering if there's anything else you can share in terms of those plans.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

I know a lot to come, but we really want to focus on a lot of food tastings. So if you go back to sort of the ethos of the business Tom built in 1997 with Bowlmor, is we had these beautiful events. We had these beautiful food, and people, we would have parties where all the event coordinators in a market would kind of come in. We let them bowl. We let them play arcade, and we would serve them this premium food product. That really stopped with COVID. We really stopped really engaging sort of the customers in selling them the product.

I think that that's something we're going to bring back pretty quickly with the way that our F&B portfolio has really been upgraded in the past few years, is you're going to see a lot of sort of pop-up events where we invite in sort of all the sales coordinators or the event coordinators of different companies in their markets and say, "Isn't this a great product? Why don't you come in and bring your office?" That's something that really was lost with COVID. When we talk about kind of the lingering effects of COVID, I think that selling part of the business is something we really want to lean into.

Operator (participant)

Thank you very much. And your next question comes from the line of Michael Kupinski with Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Michael Kupinski (Director of Research and Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you. And thanks for taking my questions. I just have a couple of quick ones here. I just wanted to see if you can add a little bit more color on the margins in the second half. I know seasonally you have better margins in the back half. You were trending a little lower than I expected the first half. Can you talk a little bit about where that margin pickup might be coming from? Maybe gauge it, whether it's Boomers and Raging Waves, or how much is going to come from the shift in New Year's Eve into the quarter? And are there other dynamics at play in the third quarter and the second half?

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. So I think there's a few kind of core things. So in the first quarter, you did not see much, if any, benefit from payroll costs being down. In the second quarter, in the comp, we had $10 million of payroll costs down. That's sort of your single biggest driver. F&B, we did change over our food partner on October 1. So we saw a few million dollars of F&B savings in the quarter on the comp. You're going to see that play through the third and the fourth quarter. Additionally, in the third quarter, you'll see a $55 million-$65 million lift over the second quarter. And so there's just a lot of incremental operating leverage that happened in the third quarter. And that is something that's really playing out, particularly as Boomers, which this last quarter was $6 million of revenue minus $1 million of EBITDA.

In the fourth quarter, we'll be $15 million of revenue and $5 million of EBITDA, right? And so ultimately, that negative operating leverage that we're going to have in the second and third quarter as we invest in more of these summer businesses will get pushed into the fourth and first quarter.

Michael Kupinski (Director of Research and Senior Research Analyst)

Gotcha. Thanks for the color. And then how much of your food and beverage is coming from the sales of alcohol and premium liquors? I know that liquor sales industry-wide are down 7%-8%, and whether that be from macroeconomic issues or simply that consumers are shifting beverage patterns possibly due to healthcare risk. I was just wondering. I know that the younger demographic is moving to mocktails. And can you talk a little bit about whether or not you think liquor sales will come back, or do you think that there might be a need to retool the offerings that you have there?

Lev Ekster (President)

Yeah. So just to clarify, alcohol did still outperform bowling, and overall, food outperformed. It was just that, excuse me, F&B outperformed. Food was just way more pronounced. And I think that has a lot to do with the new menu, the new focus on selling the new menu. I think the guest reception to the new menu across our properties has been phenomenal. I mentioned our NPS score was up. I think that's correlated to that as well, going from 72 to 74. But I don't know if it's a permanent shift away from premium alcohol. We did notice that alcohol lagged compared to food. Now, fortunately, we also offer mocktails at our locations, and we'll continue to lean into that. But again, we're not going to sit on our hands and try to find out if it's permanent or not.

So I mentioned the team is going to be launching food and beverage promotions later this quarter, and it's going to have a focus on driving that stronger nighttime traffic with these value-led offerings. So until the consumer comes back and chooses to upgrade their beverage choices, we're going to lean into promotions and traffic-generating activities to see if we can drive alcohol sales as strongly as we've been able to do with our food.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

We historically have not really done happy hours. There's obviously one competitor in the market who has or one restaurant competitor in the market that has done exceptionally well, and that was really through a lot of marketing and a lot of sort of specials. We think that our locations are very primed for that. It's something we've historically not done, and getting that traffic in 4:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M. for happy hour, it's going to be incremental to the business.

Michael Kupinski (Director of Research and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you. That's all I have.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Swartz with Truist Securities. Mike, please go ahead.

Mike Swartz (Director of Equity Research)

Hey, good morning. Bobby, maybe just touch on some of the labor efficiencies. I'm just trying to understand maybe the mechanism by which you're deriving that. And as we think about the year ahead and, I guess, the push to lift comps, I mean, is there any risk that by removing that labor, you kind of penalize your ability to grow comps?

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

So great question. So huge initiative that has been sort of a core partnership between myself and Lev in that we really want to optimize payroll in the centers, right? And so using data, we've looked at historically what the company did was post-September when leagues floored, we ramped up staffing into the holidays, right? And so it's like staffing went from September into December in a straight line. And the business wasn't really there to justify it in the September-October timeframe. And so we slowed that down. Now, some inside baseball, have we probably cut a little too much of the F&B revenue-facing labor? Yes, but we think that there's some opportunity to continue to optimize. We found that we're relying a little bit too much on the kiosk midweek versus having that server when you've got a league that's on 40-50 lanes.

A server can really justify itself. But this is sort of a lot of the tinkering that Tom has talked about in that we're tinkering with our labor. We think that it was good before. We're making it better. And ultimately, we're going to optimize labor in every center by hour, by day, based on very defined revenue forecasts. And so ultimately, if adding labor is accretive, we'll do it. If removing labor is accretive, we'll do it. And Lev was really the leader of this. So why don't you give some comments?

Lev Ekster (President)

Yeah. Look, I think we've proven that we can operate efficiently during a time when we have to. But like everything else at this company, we're going to continue to fine-tune and add it back where it's justified. I want you to also consider other initiatives that we've rolled out, and we're going to continue to optimize server tablets. So server tablets are going to allow a server that historically maybe covered four lanes. Now they can cover maybe eight to 10 lanes and do it more effectively and get food into the kitchen faster and still provide better guest service and also increase their check sizes because of the prompts on the tablet. So it's not just crude labor operating. It's also adding technology into the equation that will allow us to be more efficient with our labor.

Mike Swartz (Director of Equity Research)

Okay, and just the second question, and I know you guys aren't the poster children for tariff risks, but is there anything to think of just in terms of some of the prizes or sourcing or anything of that nature where there might be some risk?

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

So we buy about $15 million of amusements merch. Half of that is domestic. Half of that's coming from China. So we have $1 million of risk on amusements merch. I think that as it relates to the global supply chain, there's probably a few more million from China tariffs. We don't have much exposure other than on input costs from Canada, Mexico. But really, I'm more concerned about tariffs from a consumer perspective. Right now, we're seeing softness on events. We're seeing flatness on consumers. And we're getting the benefit of the trade down on top of we're going to have this very optimized summer pass coming. But tariffs really hit sort of that consumer sentiment. That's what keeps me up at night, is that from a tariff perspective. Not the onesies and twosies on inputs. Those are never great.

But ultimately, I am more concerned about what that would do from a macro perspective.

Mike Swartz (Director of Equity Research)

Thanks, Bobby.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Handler with Roth Capital. Eric, please go ahead.

Eric Handler (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. I assume your corporate events staff has a database of all the people who have booked parties with you in the past. As they proactively talk to these corporates, are they getting a sense is this a permanent shift, or is this something that the corporates view as, hey, it's just a temporary situation?

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

It's a balance. So I would say there is corporate austerity going on out there. When we look at sort of the IAAPA data, the IAAPA data says that 60% of corporates were expecting to cut spend in the December quarter, and that's really what we saw. Ultimately, like everything, we're going to optimize as much as we can, but it appears we're going to be optimizing from a lower level to go up. But we've worked through this in the past. As Tom said, we saw 50% of our events just disappear during GFC. We're going to have to up our game. So it's nice that we really haven't done these F&B tastings. The menu is awesome. I would put our menu against any of our competitors any day.

Ultimately, when we get those event coordinators at the big companies and they come in and they have to choose between us and one of our competitors, sure, maybe they're doing 20%-30% less business, but they'll give us more business. That's something that we've proven in the past we can do, and it's just part of the consolidation that's coming out of COVID.

Eric Handler (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, and then, Bobby, I know you're saying you're taking a more cautious view with revenue. As you look at the situation now, do you still think that we're in a positive same-store comp environment for the year?

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

I think there's a lot of innings left in this game. With February, March in front of me, it's hard to really project that at this point. But again, we'll come in flattish up, down a little bit. It's not going to be dramatic one way or the other. I think ultimately, though, our focus is we are going to be positive total growth, and EBITDA will be up significantly this year.

Eric Handler (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And then one last question. So you bought some land next to Raging Waves. I assume there's some expansion plans you have there. How fast can you build there so that could this, whatever you're doing there, be ready for the upcoming summer season, or is that going to have to wait a year?

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

No. That will be a two- to three-year project. We are expanding Raging Waves right now. Raging Waves has sort of a peak capacity of 6,000 to 7,000. We're putting in some changes this year that should increase that a little bit, but also, one of the big changes this year is we're building out an event pavilion, and so ultimately, events is something that we haven't really done inside that Raging Waves, and so that will add to sort of not necessarily peak capacity, but it will add to capacity during the week where we bring in corporates and local schools and things like that, but in two years, you'll see us adding flags. As it relates to the incremental land, that's a two- to three-year project.

Eric Handler (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Jeremy Hamblin with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Jeremy, please go ahead.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks. I wanted to follow up here just to make sure I understood your kind of expectations on same-store sales trends. So it sounds like January was down, maybe low single digit, several puts and takes there. I think you said $5 million impact from the wildfires, which we would assume is maybe 400 basis points or so, maybe 500 of impact to total comp in the month. But in terms of thinking about the comment that you're going to expect to be flattish, plus or minus a little bit here for the year, are you still thinking that the March quarter is a positive comp? You're lapping clearly a tougher compare in the June quarter, but just wanted to see expectations here for near term.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. I'm less focused on the comp. I mean, total growth in the third quarter will be up. Again, as we said, it's a little uncertain at this point. So we feel good about total growth, particularly with Beverly Hills, Ladera Ranch, Boomers. We've got a few acquisitions that will come in in the quarter. And so ultimately, we continue to be focused on total growth, but our confidence on total growth for the year is high.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Okay. Let's come back to the Lucky Strike conversions, right? So you're excited about what you're seeing there. I think you indicated that typically you're getting a 10%-15% lift in the business when you complete those. Can you just walk us through the timing that it takes from kind of initial work on getting the remodels and the rebrandings done? How much does that cost on average? How long does it take to complete?

Lev Ekster (President)

So it really varies by location, by market. A component of that, as you can imagine, is the permitting that it takes or that it requires to change the exterior signage. Had it not been for that, we'd probably do these a lot faster. But that's usually the prerequisite. And then depending on the location, the size, the amount of touch points in the location, anywhere where you would see a Bowlero is changing. A lot of the elements, seating, the games, that stuff changes as well. So the cost really varies by location, as does the timing. And so we have our list of focus properties, that list of 75 that we want to do this year. And you just see almost on a daily basis the locations changing order based on who's coming online faster.

So what I also wanted to mention is what happens in parallel to these conversions is a full marketing plan. So again, it's not just the sign change. It's everything that happens outside the location, inside the location, physically with the staff, with the hospitality. Then there's also a full marketing support plan that piggybacks on all of these. And that plan also varies from a dollars perspective based on the location and what the revenue there is that we can justify investing marketing in.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. I would just add, I think the thing that's the most exciting about the Lucky Strike rebrand is we'll spend $10 million-$12 million this year on marketing. That is half of what the company spent pre-COVID. And we've directed a lot of dollars to performance marketing. Online continues to crush it. And that has been proven to be a very good trade. But as these Lucky Strikes roll out, our ability to go spend 50-100 grand per center to reopen the property, that's how you get sort of that reintroduction to the events community, to the consumer community, to the birthday community. And so ultimately, we really view the rebrand as a North Star to kind of really bring the brand back out and drive that reintroduction to the market. And it's something, frankly, we haven't done since pre-COVID.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Just one more from me. So you guys have talked about mobile ordering, improving speed, efficiency. I wanted to just get an update on where you stand in kind of completing the rollout of that and kind of how it's measuring versus expectation.

Lev Ekster (President)

So today, we piloted successfully the handheld server tablets at 30 of our locations. We expect that to be at 100 by the end of the quarter. And it's not just rolling them out and leaving it there, right? Every day, there's learnings from the utilization of these tablets where we're speaking to the associates using them. We're adding modifiers. We're improving the flow on the tablets. We're improving the prompts, the functionality, the reception of these tablets. These are big buildings that you have to cover. And as I mentioned in the recording, these are early innings of a new technology. And we're going to continue to tinker and fine-tune it until it's across our entire organization. But that'll be this year. And the efficiencies, I think, we're going to pick up.

The benefits are really immense when you, again, consider just how much more coverage a single server can have with a tablet in their hand instead of running back and forth to a POS station when they take orders and sending that food into the kitchen faster and getting hot food to the lanes faster and giving their customer an opportunity to order on during their bowling session. So if we can improve the guest satisfaction, we're also serving better food, as you know. We're getting it to the consumer faster. They have more time to order additional items, a dessert item, a second drink, another app. All of this is going to really increase our F&B attachment. And that's really the name of the game for us.

Thomas Shannon (Founder and CEO)

Got it. Thanks for taking our questions. Best wishes.

Operator (participant)

Again, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Ian Zaffino (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Hi, Grace. Thank you very much. I just wanted to drill down on the buyback kind of decision there. Maybe also, Bobby, can you give us kind of a discussion about what cash flow is going to look like for the rest of the year, how you're thinking about deploying that in buybacks versus leveraging or whatever else you want to do as far as acquisitions? So any color you could kind of give there would be helpful. Thanks.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. We try to balance our buyback with cash generated from operations. We are balancing. These are our sort of December to March. We're generating $30 million-$40 million of free cash flow a month. And so we tie sort of the buyback to that. We're very focused on analyzing our different voids that exist on deployment of capital. And right now, the best investments for us effectively are M&A, rebrand, and buying back our stock. So those are sort of kind of the key initiatives. We'll continue to sort of deploy capital in that way. Ultimately, deleveraging is sort of a core focus for mine. But deleveraging doesn't happen in a quarter. It happens over a few years. And that's something that I'm very committed to getting that net adjusted leverage below five times in the next 24 months.

Ian Zaffino (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Okay. So are we going to be free cash flow positive for the year backing out CapEx? I'm just thinking about okay. Okay. Thank you. And then on the Lucky side or just the business in general, I know a lot of the effort and a lot of the focus recently has been on, I call it premiumizing, some of the product, larger ones when that's across the old FEC arena. How does that then square with, I guess, some of the trade down you're seeing or kind of lack of the premium purchases? Because it seems like you're kind of going in the opposite direction. So how are you kind of mitigating that? And how are you thinking about that from a business planning perspective going forward? Thanks.

Lev Ekster (President)

When we say premium in terms of our food menu, we're not saying we're serving caviar and lobster on the menu. We're saying premium product in the sense of quality. So I mentioned there's a flight to value. When people see the menu and the quality of the product, right, better ingredients, better recipes, more trending items that the consumer is eating today, that's what we mean. We're not going to filet mignon. So I think maybe it's just a matter of the linguistics. But in terms of you order a well vodka or a Grey Goose, that's what we're seeing on the alcohol side, but not on the food side. And I don't think our menus are premium in that sense. It's premium in the sense that we're offering items that the consumer is eating today. They're popular. The quality is much better.

The presentation of the product is much better. In terms of the plating, the plates where the menus are much nicer. That's what we're talking about when we say we have a premium food product now.

Ian Zaffino (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

There's no further question at this time. This concludes the meeting. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.