Lucky Strike Entertainment Corporation - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 FY2025 revenue increased 0.7% year over year to $339.9M, while Same Store Revenue fell 5.6%; net income was $13.3M and Adjusted EBITDA was $117.3M.
• Results missed Wall Street consensus: revenue $339.9M vs $358.3M consensus (Miss), EPS $0.051 vs $0.231 consensus (Miss), EBITDA $117.3M vs $137.2M consensus (Miss). Values with asterisks are from S&P Global consensus; see Estimates Context for details.*
• Management suspended guidance amid macro uncertainty; capex down ~20% YTD, with continued share repurchases ($47M for 4.5M shares) and a $0.055 dividend declared.
• CEO highlighted corporate events softness in tech-aligned markets (California/Seattle) but cited pockets of strength (Boston, New Jersey, Miami) and strong momentum into summer with the Summer Season Pass program; the pass surpassed 200,000 members and $10.3M in sales by mid-June (waterparks: 32,000 passes; $3.2M).

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Food sales grew by high-single digits; Retail and Leagues remained stable, supporting total revenue growth despite event softness.
• Regional resilience: management noted recent positive comps in Boston, New Jersey, and Miami, indicating localized demand strength.
• Summer Season Pass momentum provides traffic and mix benefits into Q4; >200,000 members and >$10.3M sales to date, plus waterparks sold 32,000 passes for >$3.2M.

What Went Wrong

• Corporate events headwinds drove Same Store Revenue down 5.6% YoY; the weakness was most pronounced in tech-aligned markets (California, Seattle).
• Profitability compressed: net income fell to $13.3M from $23.8M YoY; Adjusted EBITDA declined to $117.3M from $122.8M; Adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 34.5% from 36.4%.
• Cost pressure and higher interest burden: location operating costs increased YoY to $92.6M; interest expense remained elevated at $49.4M in the quarter.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

My name is Leslie, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone. Thank you for standing by. My name is Leslie, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Lucky Strike Entertainment third quarter 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. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Bobby Lavan. 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 third quarter 2025 earnings. Today, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period ended March 30, 2025. 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 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 cautionary statements contained in our press release, as well as the risk factors contained in the company's filings with the SEC. Lucky Strike 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 those 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, Chairman, and CEO)

Good morning. I am Thomas Shannon, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Lucky Strike Entertainment. Last quarter, we spoke about the resilience that defines our team and our brands, how we navigate volatility with focus and versatility. This past quarter, that same turbulence persisted, but so did our momentum. In fact, we've been actively calibrating our business to not just withstand the uncertainty, but to thrive in it. Our total revenue rose 0.7% for the quarter, a modest increase that masks meaningful gains in our retail, online, and league segments. While layoffs and corporate austerity, particularly in the tech sector, have impacted our offline, mostly corporate business on the West Coast, we see this as a transitory headwind. We felt this since summer, but brighter skies are ahead. As we lap those declines in the coming months, we expect the picture to shift.

Meanwhile, we are filling available lane capacity by growing our leagues business, which is already up low single digits and continues a multi-year growth trajectory. The league business is sticky, high-frequency, loyal, and managed correctly, high-margin. Corporate events have been hit by macro uncertainty, but we're already seeing signs of rebound. Our Boston, Miami, and New Jersey sales groups all comped positive in April, and several more sales groups are close to flat. With sales-driving initiatives coming online ahead of our peak season in September, we're positioned for a strong comeback. In Southern California, the lingering impact of January's devastating fires continues to weigh on our business there. More broadly, layoffs and corporate caution have created headwinds since summer 2024. Here's what's changing. Consumers are turning towards local, high-value entertainment. As air travel softens, we're ideally positioned to meet demand for convenient and memorable out-of-home experiences.

In a clear indication of that, early sales of our summer season passes are already up 200+% year over year. That tells us where the consumer mindset is, and it's encouraging. For the first time, we're entering summer with large water parks in Destin and Panama City Beach, Florida, our flagship 54-acre Raging Waves water park in Illinois, six Boomers-branded parks in California and Boca Raton, Florida, and our newest family entertainment center, Adventure Park in Visalia, California. Whether it rains or shines, we are becoming more hedged to the climate. Lucky Strike is on track to deliver positive growth this fiscal year, continuing our remarkable streak of consistent revenue gains over the last 12 years. Alongside that growth, our team has adeptly adjusted our cost structure to increase operating leverage. Despite some lumpiness, we've delivered 4%-5% average annualized same-store sales growth since 2013.

Our new builds, four properties launched between September and December of 2024, are exceeding expectations, delivering nearly $8 million in revenue and $4 million in EBITDA. These results prove the power of our model and the strength of our team's execution. As we invest in our water parks, family entertainment centers, and upgraded bowling experiences, we expect to not only maintain our industry-leading performance, but to accelerate it. With that, I'll hand it over to Lucky Strike's President, Lev Ekster, to walk you through the exciting organic initiatives ahead. Lev?

Lev Ekster (President)

Thank you, [Tom]. We launched the presale of our popular summer season pass in early March, and the response has been incredible. With one week of the presale remaining before redemption begins, we're already approaching 100,000 passes sold. In a time of macroeconomic uncertainty, consumers are clearly gravitating towards high-value offerings, and our summer season pass delivers just that. It is set to drive meaningful traffic to our centers during what is typically a seasonally softer period. When these guests arrive, they'll be met with our refreshed food and beverage experience and a lineup of exciting limited-time summer offerings, which will continue to drive strong results. In Q3, comparable food sales rose 1%, with total food sales up 8% year over year. With increased summer traffic, we are confident that this momentum will continue as our revamped food initiatives gain even more traction and attachment.

I also want to share an exciting update on the PBA, which just achieved a 103% year-over-year increase in viewership for this past Sunday's telecast of its first round of playoffs. Last week, we announced a multi-year media rights agreement with our new broadcast partner, CW. Starting next season, CW will be featuring 10 PBA events on consecutive Sundays, which our fans are thrilled about. We will soon announce additional partners that will increase the distribution of our events across broadcast and streaming. These media rights partnerships, combined with a growing roster of sponsors, will strengthen the PBA's financial footing. We are now well-positioned to unlock its full potential in the years ahead. Now I will hand it over to Bobby to review the financial results.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Thank you, Lev. In the third quarter of 2025, we delivered total revenue of $339.9 million and adjusted EBITDA of $117.3 million. This compares to $337.7 million in revenue and $122.8 million in adjusted EBITDA. While total revenue grew modestly by 0.7%, same-store sales declined by 5.6%. Breaking down the performance by segment, our retail business remained steady, our league operations experienced low single-digit growth, and our events business faced high single-digit decline. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came in at $117.3 million, with same-store sales acting as a $19 million headwind for the bot[Tom] line. Offsetting that were improvements in comp payroll to the tune of $8 million and reductions in repair and maintenance, supplies, and services costs coming in around $3 million. Boomers and Raging Waves represented a $2 million drag in the quarter.

However, we anticipate this will reverse in the next two quarters as we move into the peak summer season. For context, Raging Waves generated $9 million in EBITDA last summer, and we expect Boomers to perform similarly for this summer. Geographically, California, which accounts for 21% of our total sales, contributed nearly 50% of the same-store sales decline. This was primarily due to broad-based softness in the Los Angeles market and double-digit declines in the corporate events segment. However, as we cycle past tougher comparisons, we expect improved performance starting this summer. We also continue to invest in growth through acquisitions. In April, we acquired Shipwreck Island in Panama City Beach, Florida, for $30 million. We are excited about the long-term potential this property adds to our portfolio.

During the quarter, we deployed $25 million in capital expenditures, $14 million for growth initiatives, $1 million for new builds, and $12 million for maintenance. Additionally, we invested $9 million to acquire incremental land at Raging Waves. Excluding this land purchase, CapEx year-to-date is down $40 million compared to last year. Our liquidity position remains strong at $391 million, with $79 million in cash and no borrowings on our revolver. Net debt stands at $1.2 billion, and our bank credit facility net leverage ratio is 2.9. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to welcoming you to one of our new or expanded venues this summer. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Matthew Boss (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Maybe, [Tom], could you elaborate on what you're seeing from walk-in versus corporate trends over the course of the quarter, maybe what you've seen in April and early May? If we just take a step back and we think about economic uncertainty today relative to historical, what behaviors are you seeing today that maybe is influenced by using times of the past, thinking about your business model and how maybe historically it remains more resilient?

Thomas Shannon (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Hey, Matt. I'll answer the second part of the question. I'll give the first part to Bobby. Yeah, we've seen this cycle before where in the face of macro headwinds like we're seeing now, companies pull back on entertainment. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal last weekend about how not only are the layoffs pretty significant in Silicon Valley, but they've done things like eliminating most travel. They've eliminated corporate events, everything that's really discretionary related to employees. I mean, we see this. We saw this in 2008. We saw this in COVID. We saw this after 2001. It is entirely predictable. The good news is that it's relatively transitory. Just like corporate America, I think, has been shocked by the macro news of the last couple of months, things can turn very quickly in the other direction too.

We are, I don't want to say levered to the corporate event business, but it's a significant part of our business. We do $300 million a year in events. Not all of that is corporate. Some of it is birthday party, but we have a higher beta when it comes to corporate events than a lot of our competitors. We outperform in good times, and we have our headwinds in challenging times. As Bobby said in his comments, more than half of our same-store sales decline on a comp basis was because of California, which is 21% of our revenue. That is almost entirely corporate. I expect this to come back fairly quickly by the third calendar quarter of this year, if not the fourth. I don't view this in any way as an enduring trend, but it is what we're dealing with now.

Now, the flip side is the other parts of the business have been surprisingly strong. Let me give it to Bobby to give you the specifics about performance of the league business and our retail walk-in business.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Hey, Matt. So the retail business is flat. The league business is up low single digits. It really is this offline corporate business, which is heavily concentrated between sort of November and March. That business is down a good double digits. When we think about sort of the trends, we talked about the trends in January where January was down three. The fires in Los Angeles impact us. February was down 10%. I think that the industry as a whole was impacted by weather. In February, the macro was at sort of its peak of uncertainty. It's gotten better since. March got better. March was similar to January. April is getting better. I looked at sort of our numbers the past few days. We're positive the past few days. I'm very excited about as we get into sort of May, June, where the summer season pass is outperforming right now.

It's looking about double of where it was last year. We go into this period where corporate events go from 20+% of our business to single digits. I think that at the end of the day, the retail trends are fine. We want to continue to see a lift coming driven by food. The league trends are great, and we're leaning into leagues. One thing that Lev should just talk about is the events business does hold lanes across our 14,000 lanes. If you have an expectation that your events business is going to come in, you don't necessarily bring in the stickier, lower per-cap lane league. That's something that we're really kind of leaning into. Ultimately, the trends are getting better.

As [Tom] said, when corporate turns or when corporate at least starts to comp, that's when the whole business will turn as well.

Matthew Boss (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Maybe just to follow up, Bobby, areas of expense flexibility near-term that you have and maybe relative to that, how you're prioritizing multi-year initiatives and if you see potential for M&A opportunity that might arise out of all of this disruption.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. So we've dropped comp payroll sort of $8 million+ a quarter. You see it's less significant in our March quarter. You'll see a much bigger benefit when we get to the June and September quarter. We've dropped R&M, supplies and services. That's about $3 million a quarter. Again, the bigger, higher revenue periods are going to have more negative and positive operating leverage. You'll see the benefit of that in the June quarter, September quarter. On M&A, we did a $30 million deal in April. We got a firm sheet to close in 30 days. We bought a water park with land at near a six-seven times multiple. We think once we operate, it will be even lower. Prices are coming down. Activity is up. Everyone is very concerned, continued to be concerned about the macro.

I would expect to see a very active summer from us.

Matthew Boss (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Best of luck.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Wieczynski with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Steve Wieczynski (Managing Director)

Yeah. Hey, guys. Good morning. Bobby or [Tom], I really want to ask about what happened relative to if we go back to your last call, which was early February versus where we kind of sit today. I guess what I'm trying to get is I think you guys were expecting positive same-store sales in the third quarter versus the negative 5.5% or 6%, whatever was reported. What we're trying to do here is trying to figure out and bridge kind of what happened over the last, call it, eight weeks of the quarter to have those same-store sales move so much against you guys. Obviously, you called out corporate. I'm just trying to understand, was it really all corporate, or was it something else that kind of caught you guys off guard?

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. I mean, on that call, we were very cautious about revenue. I would tell you that the corporate business got dramatically worse in February and March. That business, California had the fires in Los Angeles, and ultimately, the corporate business across California just kept getting worse. Now, it's bot[Tom]ed, and we get to sort of an easier comp starting in July. Ultimately, that business was 20% of the business in the quarter.

Steve Wieczynski (Managing Director)

Okay. Understood. In terms of the decision to remove guidance, look, obviously, we fully understand that decision given the uncertainty that's kind of out there in the marketplace. As we kind of move, I guess what I think is somewhat confusing here is with your fiscal end ending in June, which is about seven weeks away, is the decision to remove that, is that basically coming from the uncertainty that kind of caught you off guard in February, in March? I'm not sure if I'm asking this question very well, just trying to understand a little bit more about that decision. Also, the decision now to continue to buy back shares versus reducing debt in this uncertain environment, maybe a little bit of color around free cash at this point as well.

Thomas Shannon (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

This is [Tom]. I think Bobby said in the guidance that he was much more comfortable talking to giving guidance on the expense side than on the revenue side. We pulled out, for example, in the last month, we were down by 90,000 hours year over year on a same-store basis. We have been very, very aggressive on the expense side, and that is why despite being down, I think the number was $18 million or $19 million on a comp basis in the quarter, we made up most of that on the EBITDA basis. There are things that are within our control largely, like expenses. There are things that are somewhat in our control, like upselling when people walk in, increasing the per-cap league business. We are being much more proactive on the sales side with corporate events.

For example, we've mandated a return to the office for our salesforce that takes effect fully by June 30, but probably half the salespeople are already back in the offices where they haven't been since 2020. We're doing walk-throughs and tastings and other things. We're being very proactive on every front, but there are certain things that are out of our control. If Silicon Valley decides, as they have in past downturns, that they're going to suspend all corporate activity, and that's millions and millions of dollars of business that we had in a prior year, you can't make that up. Conversely, when their sentiment changes, we get as much of it as we can. We have a relatively, we're a very short-cycle business. A lot of the retail buying decisions are made same day or a day or two before.

The corporate business may stretch out for two or three weeks, but rarely does it stretch out much more. I think it's difficult for a business like us to give meaningful guidance because, again, it's so short-cycle. We have no insight into what's going to happen a month from now. I would say that the sentiment among management is that we're pretty pleased with the quarter based on how it could have gone. When you look at all the sort of exogenous factors that happened, if we weren't as proactive as we were, I think EBITDA could have been down meaningfully, as you see with our competitors. If you take our main competitor, sort of that people perceive as our main competitor in the space, I won't mention them by name, but when they have a revenue downturn, their EBITDA craters.

We had a revenue downturn, and our EBITDA was modestly down. I think that's a function of really good expense control, but it's also a function of us making money in the business lines where we can. There are certain things that we just are along for the ride on. If, again, the West Coast fires and companies say, "We can't have parties in Southern California because it sends the wrong tone to the people who've lost their houses, and the tech industry is laying off, so they're not having parties," it is very hard for us to guide meaningfully months out when we don't have any visibility into that at all. Now, one thing we do have visibility into is things like our summer season pass, which last summer we did $8.5 million. We are up 200% in the presale, which is meaningful dollars.

That'll be a meaningful impact on the business in a positive way. We have additionally the impact of two water parks that will be open this summer that were not open last year: Big Kahunas in Destin, Florida, and Shipwreck Island in Panama City Beach. These should be very meaningful EBITDA contributors. We have seven family entertainment centers that are, again, outdoor, good-weather properties. Six of them are in California. One is in Boca Raton, Florida. From our perspective, there are a lot of very positive things happening. At some point, again, we lap the corporate downturn that we started to see in the third and fourth calendar quarters of 2024. We remain very positive. To give specific guidance, I think, is a fool's errand because it is just impossible to do given the short-cycle nature of our business.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Steve, when I think about the next seven, eight weeks, we have, round numbers, $200 million of revenue over the next eight weeks. You heard on the previous question, the comp is whipping right now, down 3%, down 10%, down 3%, getting better from there. From our perspective, you could not sort of drive a truck through sort of the volatility right now. It is very important for us to be honest with our stakeholders about when we are confident on which direction the business is going in the short term and the long term. In the short term, the volatility is too high. I think that we are evaluating throughout the summer. Does the volatility come down? Are there better KPIs that we can give the street so they can focus on the performance of our business?

Ultimately, I still have $200 million of revenue to go over the next eight weeks, and that sort of variability is still very high. We are excited about, as [Tom] said, season pass. We are very excited about corporate being less of the business this summer. Ultimately, the volatility continues to be very high i22n the market.

Steve Wieczynski (Managing Director)

Okay. Gotcha. That's great color. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Tilchen with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is now open.

Jason Tilchen (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. I'm wondering if you could share a little bit more on how the rebranding initiative's gone, the performance of those centers that have already seen that rebranding compared to ones that haven't. I think you mentioned in the prepared remarks and in the press release the desire to sort of, given the heightened macro backdrop, take a little bit more disciplined approach to capital investments, how that balances with the sort of previously announced plans to sort of accelerate the pace of those rebrandings over the coming months.

Lev Ekster (President)

This is Lev. Since the start of the calendar year, we've performed 15 rebrands of Bolero's to Lucky Strike's. We're still committed to doing the same number, specifically because the cost of these rebrands is actually pretty modest, right? There are some size changes, but really, it's what Lucky Strike is versus Bolero. That's a much better menu, more hospitality, different playlist in the centers. It's just a different environment. You can establish that pretty cost-efficiently, which we've done. When we do these rebrands, we see a resurgence and excitement from the consumer base in that market. We see increased foot traffic. These are accompanied by almost open houses to reintroduce the community to this new concept, Lucky Strike. We're going to continue to do these.

I think the goal is still 75 by the end of the calendar year, but the cost in dollars is pretty modest. The benefit is noticeable. What's also important about these is it increases our volume of Lucky Strike's. Then when we start thinking about our future marketing plans, we can really start investing more dollars into promoting this brand on a national scale because we're going to have the center count to justify those costs.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Yeah. I think it's really important to focus in on the point in Lev's comments. Our comp was -5.6%. Our food comp was positive. And our total food was up high single digits. The consumer is responding to the rebrand. Consumers are responding to the food initiative. We are pulling back on non-high-returning CapEx. The rebrand of the Lucky Strike are the highest return we see in the market right now.

Jason Tilchen (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

That's really helpful. Just one quick follow-up there. I think you mentioned sort of total food up high single digit, and then food and bev, I think, was up maybe 1% from the prepared remarks. That would imply sort of continued softness on the bev side of things. Any additional color you can share on sort of the rollout of tablets and things like that and how those have had a benefit and impact on sales trends in centers? Thanks.

Lev Ekster (President)

Yeah. I'll take this one. Look, I don't think you can't make the argument there's some societal changes with alcohol consumption, but it's not going to deter us. We're expanding our zero-fruit cocktail program to over 100 locations this summer. We're working on a really exciting national craft lemonade launch this summer. We're going to connect that to our summer season pass where our premium passholders are going to get discounts on that new product. Food is a really, really big tailwind for us right now. On previous calls, I spoke about the innovation to our menu. We've accomplished that. We see food growing. We see costs coming down. That's a function of rolling out CrunchTime and doing better inventory management. That's a function of rolling out tablets. We're going to soon see 100 of our locations on the server tablets.

But also, we're going to continue to innovate. We have new featured menu items coming for our premium menus, really exciting items like our chopped chicken Caesar wrap, Chipotle honey chicken bowls, strawberry poppy salads. These are not menu items you would historically expect to see in a bowling alley. We're no longer a bowling alley, right? We're a location-based entertainment business. Lucky Strike allows us to introduce this type of menu to the consumer, and they're responding. That's why you see food outperforming. We're going to put the same level of focus on alcohol, zero-proof lemonade programs. We're going to do what we can control, and that's to innovate, launch better products, roll out these better menus. I think the results are going to continue to follow.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

The tablets are driving an increase on per check 7%. It is working. We are leaning into food while we wait for the corporate business to come back.

Jason Tilchen (Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Handler of Roth Capital. Please go ahead.

Eric Handler (Managing Director, and Senior Research Analyst)

[audio distortion]

Lev Ekster (President)

Eric, is that you or is that an operator? Operator?

Operator (participant)

I'm sorry. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Kapinski of Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Michael Kupinski (Director of Research)

Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. Quick one. I'm kind of trying to understand the cutbacks in corporate events. Is it due to short-term concerns, or are there more broad longer-term economic concerns specific to Silicon Valley? For instance, a number of companies that I follow also have indicated that business, particularly corporate business, seems to be floating around the tariff issues. They saw weakness around Liberation Day, but then they saw some improvements come back as some of those concerns subsided. I was just wondering in terms of your corporate events business, and you're seeing some improvements. I was just wondering, do you have any thoughts if it is really related to more of the tariff issues and how businesses are trying to react to the prospects and the economic fallout around that?

Thomas Shannon (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

I think it is. Look, it's different by market. In April, for example, we have about 25 sales groups around the country. A handful of those groups actually comped positive. A number of them were flat, and the ones in the West Coast were down significantly. The difference on a comp basis between the East Coast and the West Coast in the last period was 20 percentage points year over year. The tech industry tends to be the first to sort of react to negative news in the macro environment, and other people tend to be less impacted by it. I do not think this is a long-term trend. I think this strikes me very much as it did in 2008, where people really pulled back very quickly. There are other industries that will fill in the gap.

As I mentioned before, we're returning all of our event salespeople to the office. We've been effectively naked in terms of not having people in office since the pandemic. It didn't really matter because corporate activity was so robust that work from home actually worked. When the environment changes, we realized that most of our cus[Tom]ers had zero contact with our salespeople or, in many cases, with our venues before they were booking an event. They were essentially looking online at pictures of us and pictures of our competitors and had no way of really being able to understand the qualitative differences between the two. Our locations are overwhelmingly best in class, and our food is excellent. What we're doing now is whenever we get an inquiry, we are encouraging people to come in and see the property and to eat the food.

That is working. We're seeing an uptick in conversion rate among people who are doing that, a meaningful uptick, I should say. We are very proactively leaning into how to address this. As Bobby said, the corporate business as a percentage of revenue declines over the summer. It will, by its very nature, become less important for a while. By the time we get back to the fourth calendar quarter of this year, I think a lot of the noise in the market will have abated. The impact of the tariffs is really meaningful. I'll give you an example for us. We had a number of leases we were negotiating that were predicated on a construction cost of a certain amount that we knew we had paid in recent months to build new centers.

We anticipated that the cost of construction could go up by 20% or 30% as a function of higher material costs, but also less labor availability, and thus much more expensive labor related to construction. We canceled. We stopped moving forward on eight of those leases, which represents about $100 million of capital spent. I think that we are one of many, many, many companies who are viewing the world in the same way. The impact of the tariffs is hard to predict, but overwhelmingly, the impact is negative, whether it's revenue uncertainty given the macro backdrop and increase in costs that you can't necessarily predict or budget for. I think the impact of tariffs right now on corporate sentiment is very, very pronounced.

The earnings you've seen recently were by companies that were not really affected by that because they had orders that were fulfilled in the last quarter that were not impacted by the tariffs. I guarantee you that the activity for most people right now is dramatically slower as a result of the tariffs. The issue could go away just as quickly as it came, right? The sentiment could change just as quickly as it went negative. I am not in the betting game, so I do not know when that will happen. None of these negative exogenous shocks last for very long. The economy always reverts back to the mean. Sentiment always reverts back to the mean. Whether that is two months or four months or six months, I do not view this as a permanent impairment of our business.

Michael Kupinski (Director of Research)

Great. Thank you for that color. I greatly appreciate it. That's all I have.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from the line of Mike Swartz with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Mike Schwartz (Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good morning. Maybe just wanted to touch on some of the water parks and family entertainment centers. As this is a growing part of the portfolio, I know it's still small in the context of 300+ locations. Can you give us a sense or maybe frame for us the annual contribution from these businesses now and maybe how to think about the seasonality in totality?

Lev Ekster (President)

Yeah. So on the water park side, we're really going to see revenue pretty much from June to August. We have a little bit of revenue April, May. Really, it's June to August. Right now, we have three water parks that will contribute $30 million+ of revenue between June and August. Then you have the Boomers/FEC business. That's another $30 million of revenue that is throughout the year, but 50%+ of it happens between June and September when school is out. From my perspective, we're highly confident in strong growth this quarter, strong growth next quarter because we just have these businesses flowing in. We'll continue to do that. Again, the comp on the bowling side is one thing, but the inorganic growth that we get on these businesses. In Boomers, we bought for $26.5 million.

It's going to do $10 million+ of EBITDA, going to higher than that. The flow through on that business is very similar to the rest of our businesses. Overall, we can get good 30s, if not low 40s, EBITDA margins.

Mike Schwartz (Research Analyst)

Okay. That's helpful. [Tom], I think you made the comment of during periods of uncertainty, consumers turned to local entertainment to a greater degree. I think you kind of mentioned the success of the season pass this year. Are there any other data points that kind of give you the confidence that we are starting to see that happen?

Thomas Shannon (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

It is not just the bowling summer season pass. We are also seeing it in the water park season pass sales. Raging Waves, which is our flagship 54-acre park in Illinois, is up more than 100% in season pass sales at this point. I think a combination of people wanting to stay local, but I think we have really done a very good job now of marketing these and getting the pricing right. There is a lot going on behind the scenes here. Management has been extremely proactive on every front. We are building a world-class marketing function. We have been hiring and training a new cohort of salespeople. We have been rationalizing the activities of the salespeople to focus on things that they had not focused on previously. You are starting to see it in these indicators.

I think the data Bobby provided about how much we were impacted by a very small part of the country in the first quarter should be indicative that the consumer is pretty healthy and is spending money on these activities. If we hadn't historically been so strong in the corporate party business, and we'd probably be comping positive now, that would not be a good thing, by the way, because being exposed to the corporate party business is a very, very net positive part of our business, very profitable one, but a more volatile one. What we're seeing in terms of walk-in of the retail business is effectively flat. One thing that I think it's important to understand is that the company, on average, has increased same-store sales about 5% since 2013. Even now, we're up 25% on a same-store basis versus 2019.

When you see a negative comp, right, it's a negative comp after enormous growth. Our average unit volume went from $2.1 million to about $3.3 million in the last five years. There is a little bit coming off, right, as a sort of natural function, I would say, or a pause in the growth, but the trend line remains intact. From our perspective, having been doing this for 28 years, there are ebbs and flows in the natural business cycle, but there are a lot of positives here. Positives being that we've taken a lot of cost out of the business that we lived with for a long time that we realized we didn't need to live with. Capital efficiency, being down $40 million in R&M, is significant.

Paring back our capital expenditures on new builds to only those deals that are really in the center of the bullseye from a revenue, expected revenue, and cost perspective. Then doing really attractive M&A, as Bobby mentioned, Boomers for $26.5 million. Ultimately, we see that business producing more than $15 million of EBITDA. We are buying assets on a forward basis, including land, at around five times EBITDA. We feel really good about where things are. Someone asked earlier why we were buying back stock if the intention, if maybe we should be focused on delevering. The reality is that our attention will shift from stock buybacks to delevering. If anything, I wish we had more float, frankly. We probably bought back too much stock, but that's something that can be dealt with.

Yes, I think over time, our goal, the goal of the board, is to start to delever the business. We'll probably do that by growing EBITDA against a constant level of debt.

Operator (participant)

Your last question comes from the line of Jeremy Hamblin with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is now open.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking the questions this morning. I wanted to focus actually on SG&A spend. As you saw very modest growth here in the March quarter, you saw a pretty significant uptick in the total SG&A costs. I wanted to just get an understanding. I know you've talked about in the past some flexibility to really dial down your spend if the market conditions warranted. Obviously, uncertainty, I think, is probably going to be around not just for a couple of months, but probably for an extended period of time. How should we be thinking about your SG&A spend here, given that you've got a change in the dynamic where you now have water parks, you have Boomers, businesses that you have to operate and spend money on during the summer months?

How should we be thinking about your SG&A cost structure here year over year in the June quarter and then as we look ahead into the back half of calendar 2026?

Lev Ekster (President)

Yeah. Let me just address one complicated technical dynamic that happened in the quarter. SG&A had a $5 million charge, non-cash charge related to Brett retiring from the company. We had to take a charge related to that. It was non-cash. I expect SG&A to be down. It was down last quarter. It would have been down ex this charge that is more of an accounting dynamic than operational. We have taken an axe to SG&A costs. Our priority is to grow revenue while maintaining SG&A flat down. That is sort of the formula of the business, and that is how you should look at it.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And then just following up on that, as we look to, again, kind of into fiscal 2026 and the commentary around you're probably not going to be quite as aggressive on new deal flow, is the expectation that as you focus on kind of higher return remodels and so forth in the Lucky Strike brand, what type of cost now are you expecting with that? Again, I know you mentioned that there's a little bit of increase in costs around tariffs, but how should we be thinking about that? And then whether or not kind of the employee market remains robust or whether or not there are some kind of comments out there in the pure-play restaurant sector that the employee supply is a little bit tighter than it had been?

Lev Ekster (President)

Yeah. The way I would look at my cost structure is I have $400 million of payroll. Payroll is always going to have a little bit of cost of living adjustment in it, right? Some sort of inflationary factor. We have another $600 million of non-payroll-related expenses. We're going to bring those down. Even in a tariff environment, there's still a lot of just opportunities to sort of bring costs down, drive efficiencies. We're building a procurement organization. We're partnering with our vendors for scale. We're no longer buying things like couches one at a time. Now we're buying 1,000 at a time. That's sort of the core reason for the Lucky Strike rebrand is we're really focused on having a single brand we can get behind, and that drives efficiencies across your cost structure.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for the call. Best wishes.

Operator (participant)

That will conclude our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Bobby Lavan for closing remarks.

Bobby Lavan (CFO)

Thanks, everyone. We'll be on the road for the next few months and look forward to seeing you. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.