Dave & Buster's Entertainment - Q4 2023

Transcript

Speaker 10

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Operator (participant)

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Dave & Buster's Entertainment, Inc Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year End 2022 conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, after which your line will be muted, and you will get back into the queue. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Cory Hatton, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Cory Hatton (VP of Investor Relations and Treasurer)

Thank you, operator, and welcome to everyone on the line. Leading today's call will be Chris Morris, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Quartieri, our Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. This call is being recorded on behalf of Dave & Buster's Entertainment, Inc and is copyrighted. Before we begin the discussion on our company's fourth quarter and fiscal year end 2022 results, I'd like to call your attention to the fact that in our remarks and our responses to questions, certain items may be discussed which are not entirely based on historical fact. Any of these items should be considered forward-looking statements relating to future events within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated.

Information on the various risk factors and uncertainties have been published in our filings with the SEC, which are available on our website. In addition, our remarks today will include references to financial measures that are not defined under generally accepted accounting principles. Investors should review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measure contained in our earnings announcement released this afternoon, which is also available on our website. Also, pro forma financials, including Main Event for the trailing four quarters ended January 29th, 2023, are available at the bottom of the Events and Presentation section of our IR website. Now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Morris (CEO)

Thank you, Cory. Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for joining our call today. We are pleased to report another strong quarter of financial results to mark our fiscal year-end, driven by strong comparable walk-in sales growth and the tailwind of our special events business continuing its recovery toward pre-pandemic norms. As a testament to this strength, as well as the confidence we have in our future growth initiatives, our board authorized a share repurchase program of $100 million. Fresh off the hills of our annual general managers conference, our exceptional operators and support center employees are motivated and energized to deliver on our goals we've set for the business in 2023 and beyond to realize our full potential. We look forward to sharing our progress with you throughout the course of the year as we continue to drive value creation for our stakeholders.

On our last call, we discussed our three current focus areas. One, effectively managing the merger integration. Two, managing sales and profitability in the near term to offset the ongoing inflationary pressure in our business. Three, long-term strategic planning. I'm pleased to report we have made meaningful progress in all three areas. Starting with our merger integration, our team has continued their exceptional work on this important focus area. We have now implemented all the initiatives necessary to achieve $25 million of annualized cost synergies, exceeding our original target by $5 million. We are extremely pleased that we were able to achieve these synergies and do so ahead of schedule. Next, our teams have continued to work on mitigating inflationary pressures with thoughtful pricing and increased operating efficiencies.

We rolled out the first phase of this work, which enabled us to expand store operating margins to 30% in the fourth quarter, a 50 basis point improvement versus the prior year, and a 230 basis point improvement versus 2019, despite the current inflationary environment. We are now on to the next phase of work focused on elevating the guest experience through removing complexity in our operations, primarily back-of-house, and bringing greater focus to peak management. A significant portion of our sales in a given week are generated during busy weekend hours. It's paramount we have the right people in the right place at the right time during these peak hours to consistently deliver the guest experience and optimize the revenue opportunity during peak.

We have worked closely with our operating team to develop the right staffing model, reporting tools, and management approach to maximize throughput during peak time. In addition, we are in the process of developing in-shift reporting and server scorecards to provide our operators with real-time information to make real-time adjustments and in-the-moment coaching as needed throughout a shift. These tools are just the beginning of the changes we will be making over the long run to unlock a new hospitality model for our business. Our commitment to the guest experience and unwavering focus on supporting our operators will be one of our greatest competitive advantages as we grow this business into the future. In addition to the work on cost controls and operational execution, we are very pleased with the top line momentum throughout our portfolio.

As indicated by our fourth quarter results, driven by strong walk-in growth and special events trending to pre-pandemic levels, guests continue to visit and spend at healthy rates. Our fourth quarter marketing calendar included our fall football program featuring Super Bowl winning tight end Travis Kelce, highlighting the second to none sports watch experience at Dave & Buster's in a modern and relevant way during the most viewed sports season in America. In November, we returned to a guest favorite Eat & Play Combo. This offer scores high on value, uniqueness, and visit intent, especially with our core guests. This was followed with localized World Cup programming in key select markets. We are creating further awareness of our watch product offering with our current spring basketball campaign that tipped off with the NCAA basketball tournament and will extend well into the NBA playoffs.

To amp up the value and appeal, this week we launched the $29.99 Slam Dunk Deal, a $20 Power Card and choice of entree from our watch menu. In addition to above store media, we are more aggressively leveraging D&B Rewards and our growing loyalty database of 4.5 million members to efficiently communicate with our guests across all occasions. We are building out our data and digital innovation capabilities to drive relevancy, media efficiency, and tech enabled hospitality with the Dave & Buster's brand. Focusing on special events, we are encouraged by the continued momentum of our special events business, which initially lagged a rebound of walk-in business coming out of the pandemic. In preparation for spring graduation season, we have made significant improvements to our Dave & Buster's website, which is already making a difference in special events lead generation revenue since launch.

This coupled with executing structural changes in our special event sales teams is yielding advanced bookings for the Q1 period that are ahead of 2019. All of this gives us confidence that this business will continue to grow above and beyond pre-pandemic levels. We then focus on finalizing our long-term strategic plan that will further cement our company as the undeniable leader in location-based entertainment and drive meaningful shareholder value. Our strategic re-review and ongoing consumer research have reinforced our belief that there is significant upside in this business through an improved focus in several key areas. While we allocate time to executing these long-term initiatives with a strict focus on ROI, we will never lose sight of maintaining operational efficiencies in the near term. Today, I'll walk you through some of the key elements of our plan.

On May 16th, we will host our Virtual Investor Day, where we will provide you with more detail around our plan and give you an opportunity to hear directly from the rest of our senior management team. Our long term plan includes five key strategic points. First, drive brand relevancy. With 90% brand awareness, the Dave & Buster's brand is well known and held in high regard by the consumer. However, as the category has grown and evolved, the D&B brand needs to be focused more than ever on articulating its relevancy. Second, reimagine the guest experience. We know that we are only as good as the experiences we create in our stores all over the country. We intend to revolutionize the way we deliver on the guest experience through developing and implementing relevant guest facing technology to enable a one of a kind guest experience.

Lead through innovation. Our founders, David Corriveau and Buster Corley, created this business 40 years ago with a spirit of innovation and a desire to do things differently. Today, we operate in a growing, robust category with consumers having many different dining and entertainment choices. We will continue to lead in this category through building a culture of innovation, not only in entertainment, but throughout all areas of the business. Reimage assets through strategic remodels. It's been several years since we last updated our brand image through the design of our facilities. Over the next several years, we intend to remodel our fleet to better position our brand for long-term sustainable growth. Our remodel program will involve more than just a new image.

In addition to a fresh new look on the outside and inside of our stores, our plan is to make certain adjustments for improved operational execution, guest engagement and hospitality, and an expanded entertainment product offering. Keep in mind, these are just plans at this stage. As we move forward, we will follow a test and learn model to ensure we are maximizing return on capital opportunity through this program. Fifth, global expansion of our footprint. We will continue to grow the business anchored in strategic planning and operational execution. Successfully develop the Dave & Buster's brand and Main Event brand to new heights domestically and globally. Our team has already made meaningful progress on all five of these points and is laser focused on continuing this progress in 2023.

We look forward to sharing more details with you during our Virtual Investor Day on May 16th. In closing, we are extremely excited about the future of this organization. We have two industry leading brands in Dave & Buster's and Main Event. These brands have exceptional business models, strong assets, and are led by a talented and passionate group of operators. We have a clear line of sight on the strategic opportunities ahead for this business and a world class management team with a proven track record of superior execution. We continue to believe there is tremendous upside potential for this company and our stakeholders. We are working diligently to realize that potential. With that, let me turn the call over to Mike for a review of our fourth quarter and fiscal year results. Mike?

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

Thanks, Chris. We're pleased with the financial results for the fourth quarter. We've generated record revenue of $564 million and produced a record $138 million of adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter. Aligning with guidance provided by the SEC, you will notice in our release that we changed our definition of adjusted EBITDA. We generally believe adjusted EBITDA should reflect the normalized earnings power of the business. As a result, in addition to certain one-time non-recurring and non-cash items, our definition of adjusted EBITDA historically excluded pre-opening expenses because pre-opening expenses were not associated with the earnings of the existing base of stores. While we still believe exclusion of pre-opening expenses from adjusted EBITDA reflects the true normalized earnings power of the existing base of stores, for certain regulatory reasons, we will no longer be adding it back to adjusted EBITDA.

Please note that we have added credit adjusted EBITDA to our disclosures, along with the appropriate reconciliations, to provide readers with the relevant measure for our compliance with our debt covenants. credit adjusted EBITDA includes the add back of pre-opening expenses along with other items as defined in our credit agreement. Under our new definition, we've produced a 24.5% adjusted EBITDA margin in the fourth quarter, which represents an increase of 300 basis points above 2019. For comparability, under our prior definition, which included the add back of pre-opening expenses, adjusted EBITDA margin would have been 25.2% for the quarter, a 280 basis points above 2019 levels. As Chris mentioned, we have successfully achieved our annual synergy target of $25 million from the combination with Main Event.

While we completed this ahead of schedule, we remain laser focused on driving operational excellence, continuous improvement, and additional cost savings, all of which are ingrained in what we do every day at Dave & Buster's. With regards to pro forma comparable store sales figures, I'd like to direct you to our supplemental schedule titled March 2023 Supplemental Pro Forma Financial Data posted in the Events and Presentation section of our IR website. I'd like to highlight the strong comp sales figures in the fourth quarter of 19% comp versus 2021, and 14.1% comp versus 2019 on a consolidated basis. Our special event business continues its recovery toward pre-pandemic levels, with pro forma combined comps down 6.4% this quarter versus 2019, with the expectation that this will move positive in 2023.

Along with the recovery of our special events business, food and beverage represents an increasing mix of our total revenue, increasing to 36.1% of revenue in Q4 2022 versus 34.1% on a pro forma basis versus Q4 2021. We generated $143.5 million in operating cash flow during the fourth quarter, contributing to an ending cash balance of $182 million, for total liquidity of over $672 million when combined with the $491 million available on our $500 million dollar revolving credit facility. We ended the quarter with net total leverage ratio of 1.9x. We feel very comfortable deploying cash under our board approved $100 million dollar share repurchase authorization with our current liquidity and leverage profile.

Turning to capital spending, we invested a total of $70.2 million in capital additions and opened one new Main Event in Beaumont, Texas during the quarter. We plan to open four new stores during the first quarter of fiscal 2023. To date, we have opened one new Dave & Buster's branded store in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and two Main Event branded stores, one in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the other in Tucson, Arizona. We'll be opening one additional Main Event location in Lexington, Kentucky later this week. We plan to open a total of 16 new stores during fiscal year 2023, including 11 Dave & Buster's and five Main Event locations, plus the relocation of our Dave & Buster's Vernon Hills store.

For the full year of fiscal 2022, we reported revenue of $2 billion, an increase of 50.6% from fiscal year 2021, and an increase of 45% from fiscal year 2019. We reported net income of $137.1 million, or $2.79 per diluted share in fiscal 2022. That compares with net income of $108.6 million or $2.21 per diluted share in fiscal 2021, and net income of $100.3 million or $2.94 per diluted share in fiscal 2019. We generated adjusted EBITDA of $480 million, an increase of 39.8% from 2022 and an increase of 66.1% from 2019. Let me provide a brief comment on our Q1 performance to date.

Overall operating performance this quarter remains strong. As you know, Q1 is up against a strong Omicron recovery that occurred in Q1 of 2022. Quarter to date, our comp store sales are roughly flat to down very low single digits relative to the same period last year, which is still up nicely versus the pre-pandemic period. To summarize, we are extremely excited about the strong execution in our business, our progress capturing synergies, the numerous growth opportunities for us to pursue, and the talent and experience of our team to drive growth despite the challenging macroeconomic environment. We remain focused on closely managing costs and capital spending to ensure we strategically unlock the maximum value of these two great brands and deliver the highest possible returns for shareholders. Operator, please open up the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Let me remind you that you are limited to one question and one follow-up question. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Andy Barish from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Andy Barish (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Can you give us a little sense just of how the fourth quarter unfolded? Obviously starting out, you know, November only up 3% with some calendar shifts and then, you know, just some color, you know, in terms of where you saw, you know, upside versus your expectations and, you know, the strength kind of continuing into the spring here.

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

Yeah, Andy. To start with, as you, as you noted, November seemed to be a little lighter than what we were expected. December played out as we were expecting, given the calendar shift, and that was some of the commentary we made on the prior call when you looked at the number of days leading up on the special event business prior to the Christmas holiday. Having the Christmas holiday on the Saturday and Sunday, provided, you know, a bit of a headwind, I would say, on a comparability perspective for December. We knew all of that would come through in early January as we turned the calendar, given the timing of the holiday, sorry, the holiday winter break for students. From that perspective, we saw great results in January.

February continued that momentum and we've been, you know, pretty much relatively flat to this very low single digit number that we've seen on the quarter to date basis through the end of last week.

Chris Morris (CEO)

The only thing I'll just add a couple of comments to that. Hey, Andy, by the way. As Mike mentioned, when we started the quarter, we communicated to the street that there was a mismatch in weeks relative to the timing of special events. The one thing I'd point out is that the fourth quarter played out with respect to that shift, the fourth quarter played out exactly the way we anticipated. At the time of the call, we had a lot of confidence in our business. We saw a lot of momentum. Even though the beginning of the quarter started off slow, you know, we could tell that it was due to those calendar shifts.

That momentum, when you look through that shift, there was pretty steady momentum throughout the entire quarter, and things did kind of pick up a little bit towards the end of the quarter. Where we sit today, it's a very similar story. There's just a lot of noise in our numbers as we're starting this quarter, just with timing of spring breaks and, you know, lapping Omicron, the return, you know, coming out of Omicron last year. There's just a lot of noise in the numbers early into Q1. Looking through all of that noise, it's, you know, we still have just tremendous confidence in this business. We're excited about the momentum that we've created. We feel very good about, you know, where we're going and our long-term strategies.

You know, we feel great about things.

Andy Barish (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for the color, Chris. One quick follow-up just on the unit opening cadence. You know, four to start the year is fantastic. How should we think about the other 12 that are to open for the rest of the year?

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

Yeah. I think when you think about it, six in the first half of the year, 10 in the back half, with four being in Q1. We'll have two planned store openings in Q2, and then the remaining 10 stores will be equally split between Q3 and Q4 at five a piece. Included in Q4, we'll also have the relocation of the Vernon Hills store.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Jeff Farmer from Gordon Haskett. Please go ahead.

Jeff Farmer (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you and good afternoon. Just a little bit of a follow-up on some of Andy's conversation, but flat to down low single-digits quarter-to-date same store sales. Sort of given what the comparisons are for the balance of the quarter, you called out some other noise. What ultimately does that mean for Q1 same store sales? Just to give you a little bit of context, Street's looking for a low 2% comp. Is that in play based on what you guys have already seen and understanding what the comparisons are for the balance of the quarter?

Chris Morris (CEO)

Well, you know, I'll take that. This is Chris. You know, as you know, we don't provide quarterly comp store sales guidance, but here's what I can tell you is, you know, there's tremendous momentum in this business, where we continue to be very pleased with, you know, what we see in our trends. We've gone through, we've looked at our sales figures to try to understand if there's anything more than just timing of spring breaks and lapping a difficult comparison. We're not seeing anything that would suggest that there's a change in a significant change in the fundamentals of this business.

You know, our best guess is where things are gonna play out is, you know, we think that when we get through this tough comparison that, you know, the business is gonna continue to perform nicely in the near term and over the long term. You know, at this point in time, it's just really hard to get a beat on it just because the sales numbers are so choppy with, you know, the tough comparisons and the shift in spring breaks. There's just a little bit of uncertainty around, you know, exactly what that baseline is going to be. Based on everything that we know and everything that we see, we still feel very good.

Jeff Farmer (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. And the follow-up is, mid-May Virtual Investor Day. What investors are looking for? You gave us the unit development guidance for 2023. It doesn't sound like there's anything beyond that you're offering today. When we get to this mid-May Investor Day, should investors be expecting to get a little bit more fulsome level or degree of sort of either shorter term or longer term guidance across units, same for sales margin structure, et cetera?

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

You know, our approach is to provide reasonable guardrails for what we're gonna call a near-term, long-term kind of view of the company. What we really wanna be accomplishing with Investor Day is to really lay out the strategy and how we view the company on a longer term basis. We realize that, I know you guys all have models. You all are desperately looking for a specific data point, but the reality of it is we have a great business that has some near-term opportunities in front of us that we are executing against, and we feel like there's tremendous opportunity on the upside on a mid to longer term basis, and that's what we wanna be able to highlight for you guys.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Chris O'Cull from Stifel. Please go ahead.

Chris O'Cull (Managing Director)

Hi. Good afternoon, guys. just as a follow-up, Mike or Chris, can you help us understand how traffic has trended in the quarter-to-date period as you kind of lap these, the more normalized comparisons? Or maybe at least give us what the check or pricing has been for this period?

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

Sure. Look, we've always kind of given the overall perspective of the company. We haven't gotten into the details of traffic versus price. We see overall strength in the business. It's relative against the Omicron comp. Things are moving in tandem. It's not that we're seeing a dramatic drop-off in traffic, say like at the lower end consumer. You know, that's, we're just not seeing that at this point in time. From our perspective, it's, you know, the business is performing. It's, you know, any, call it, weekly noise that we see is sporadic and relatively, I'm gonna say, consistent in that it's across the board and not tied to any one specific component of the business itself.

Chris O'Cull (Managing Director)

I had a question about development. I know you guys are clearly accelerating unit development here. Can you walk us through the unit economics or how they've changed today relative to maybe 2019? What I'd like to understand is, what are you targeting for average unit volumes, margin, and maybe investment costs today versus what the company was doing in, you know, 2019, 2018, something like that?

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

Yeah. I think that that type of color will be something that we'll cover at Investor Day. When we do look at just the overall business itself on the landscape around development, we don't see any diminishment in the return profile that we have today versus what we had in 2019 or what we had, you know, 10 years prior to that. Any, what I'll call inflationary concerns you would have from a construction perspective are more than offset by the inflationary pricing that you've been able to build into the market.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Andrew Strelzik from BMO. Please go ahead.

Andrew Strelzik (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon. Maybe I'll just round out some of the near term sales questions here. I'm curious if you could parse out or you're seeing any change in spend levels, either on reloads or in F&B, that maybe, or if you're not seeing that, maybe that contributes to some of your confidence. If you could just comment around that would be great.

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

Yeah. I'll try. I'll start and then I'll let Chris chime in if he wants to add anything else. The one thing we are seeing, and we've highlighted this before, is as special events become a bigger component of the business, and we are seeing that return back to 2019 levels, that piece of business skews higher to the food and beverage side of the business than it does to the amusement. We are seeing an uptick in food and beverage as a % of the overall revenues. As you know, that food and beverage revenue does have a slightly lower gross margin than amusement. Just the pure mixed shift will put a little bit of pressure on the overall margin on a status quo basis.

Given the operational team that we have in place and the things that Tony are doing, we're more than offsetting that impact in our numbers.

Andrew Strelzik (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Then, you know, maybe a bigger picture, longer term one. You talked about, some of the operational improvements that you're implementing in this next phase, potentially unlocking this new hospitality model, which is, I guess, you said more of like a longer term opportunity. Can you just describe just how you envision that playing out? I mean, what is the hospitality model in your mind look like over time? What are you trying to achieve?

Chris Morris (CEO)

Yeah, sure, Andrew, I'd be happy to do that. What I'll do is I'll give you just a general sense. I'll give you more color on how we're thinking about it, but certainly on May 16th, at, during the Investor Day, this is an area where we'll spend some considerable time on. You'll be able to. I'll touch it again on May 16th. You'll hear directly from our Chief Operating Officer, and you'll hear from our Chief Information Officer. But essentially, you know, we have our, we have very large assets, you know, so, you know, 30,000-40,000 sq ft, in some cases 50,000 sq ft. We do a considerable amount of volume in a very short period of time.

When you think about a hospitality model, you know, I think in our business, it's, we have to think about it differently than, you know, certainly differently than what a restaurant would have to. We've really challenged ourselves, you know, how do we make sure that we create an environment where we're able to manage guest flow, all that traffic through our center and all of our different venues as efficiently as possible and in a way where we're catering to the guest needs every step of the way. We intend to work closely with our operators and with our head of technology on developing, you know, proprietary tools to be able to stay engaged with the guest throughout the entire guest journey.

Again, we'll walk you through this in a lot more details. You know, this is work that we were already starting on the Main Event side that we've carried over into Dave & Buster's. It's that intersection of the human service model and the technology model where we're maniacally focused on enabling the hospitality experience. We think that there is just tremendous upside, as we develop this and we're able to stay more engaged with the guest throughout every step of that journey, then, you know, that gives us the advantage of being able to collect a tremendous amount of data on those particular guests to be able to tailorize our service approach just to meet their specific needs. So it'll help us on managing throughput. It'll help us on growing average guest check.

It'll help us on building, you know, more engagement with our guests, which should lead to more loyalty, more frequency, and an overall better enhanced experience. We have an entire plan that's kind of staged year by year on how all this is gonna unfold.

Operator (participant)

Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question comes from Brian Vaccaro from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Brian Vaccaro (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hi, thanks and good evening. Just a quick clarification on the quarter-to-date. It sounds like qualitatively you don't believe you've seen a change in behavior or that the underlying is relatively stable. Correct me if I heard that incorrectly. Does that mean that your comps versus 2019 were similar in February and March at each brand?

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

The overall trend in the business that we saw versus 2019 continues from. If there was anything, I would say, of note of any one of the two brands dramatically underperforming or over-performing that was driving the overall results, we would specifically call that out to you guys.

Brian Vaccaro (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Okay. you mentioned spring break shifts. in your view, how do those shifts impact sales, in March and April? Does that help March and hurt April, or maybe it's the other way around?

Chris Morris (CEO)

Yeah, I can take that. You know, a couple of things. I mentioned that it's really tough to get a beat on sales right now, and it's a combination of the timing of calendar mismatches as well as lapping, you know, the return to business coming out of Omicron last year. As a result, it's just created a lot of volatilities in the numbers week to week. You know, there are certain spring breaks are different all over the country, there are some markets where, you know, April is gonna benefit and March was negative. You know, once we get through that period of time, we're gonna have a much better feel for what the underlying trend is in the business. So it's just a little choppy right now.

You know, it's tough to get to the read on it, and that's the disadvantage of looking at our business over a very short period of time. You know, we'd like to keep our focus more on the longer term aspect. We've just, you know, pulled together two very strong quarters. We feel very good about, you know, our performance. We still feel very good about the underlying trends in the business. We think coming out of this period of mismatch, that, you know, we're gonna continue to grow the business. Time will tell. We'll be in a better position in our Investor Day on May 16th, because we'll be over that period of mismatch.

You know, if there's something that's material that we should be reporting, then we can use that as an opportunity to update you. Our plan as of right now, we believe, you know, that the business is gonna work its way through this mismatch, and we're gonna get back to, you know, growing the business the way that we have been. We take a lot of comfort that we continue to do really well against 2019. You know, we think that that's still a measure of health of this business, and so that gives us confidence as well.

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

I'll just add the upside. As we continue to see our special event business drive, that just provides more fuel for, I would say, any type of protection if there's a downturn from a walk-in perspective. It just provides further fuel if there's not, for the business to expand even further.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Jake Bartlett from Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Jake Bartlett (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. You know, unfortunately, I'm gonna start with another one about, you know, the first quarter trends, and I apologize for that, but I think it's important. I think one thing that you investors are looking at is April of last year was very strong. I think it was, you know, 21% comp. I think February was flat, March was up 12%. It looks like April's difficult. Then we kind of wonder where it goes from here with that difficult compare? My question is the marketing plan, you know, similar? I think April was really boosted by the Eat & Play Combo coming back, by kind of peaking the peak with advertising. Now you have the Slam Dunk Deal.

You know, should we think about what you have planned for April and what you did last year as similar so that we shouldn't see kind of, you know, it's not as difficult a compare, so to speak, as one might think otherwise?

Chris Morris (CEO)

Yeah. I think that's very fair. The structure of the deal is essentially the same structure. Eat & Play Combo, as I said in my prepared remarks, and if you've been following the company for a long period of time, you already know this. Eat & Play Combo is, you know, that steady Eddie, value-driven promotion that has worked well for the brand over time when used correctly. What we've learned, you know, not only in our own research, but going back and looking at, you know, how it's performed over the years, is that that message can. That there's a certain amount of fatigue that comes in if when the company uses that message over and over again.

The message of Eat & Play Combo is better served when we do it once a year. We still wanted to take advantage of the structure of that, combining food and entertainment for a great value. What you're seeing us do this quarter is just simply, you know, introduce that with a fresh, seasonal driven message. At the same time, leveraging the strength of the basketball season and continue to build awareness around, you know, all the great assets that we have on the watch side of our business. Which we know, again, from all of our research, that there's a big opportunity to build more awareness around that side of the business. The structure of the deal is essentially the same.

When we looked at the results last quarter, when we looked at the results in April last year of Eat & Play Combo, we actually don't see that big of a difference between how it performed in April versus how it performed in November. The business overall did much better in April, but that was also a period of time when, you know, coming out of Omicron, you know, there was a lot of pent-up demand, and we believe that really fueled our business. We don't think, you know, the promotion was as big of a driver last year. We're, you know, we're keeping an eye on it, you know, week to week. You know, we always have the ability to pivot if necessary.

As of right now, you know, that's our plan. We feel good about it. You know, again, we'll know more, you know, next time we give you an update.

Jake Bartlett (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Great. That's helpful. You know, I wanna switch to some questions on margins. You talked about, you know, inflationary pressures. Can you just tell us what the, you know, how much was food inflation, food and beverage inflation? How much was labor inflation in 2022? What are your expectations for 2023?

Mike Quartieri (CFO)

Yeah, I'll take that one. When you're looking at the... I'm gonna start with labor inflation. We are seeing some relief there. I think when you look at the hourly wages quarter sequential, they've stayed relatively flat. We feel that we've got that stabilized. Same with the commodities. We've actually seen a nice decline. When you're looking at, call it quarter sequential inflation, we went from about 17% versus 21% in Q2. 17% came down to 9% in Q3, and in Q4, we saw that come down to roughly 4%. The work that the procurement team has done, in combination with this, as well as the synergies that we were able to achieve, we've been able to get commodity inflation down.

The biggest component of the commodity inflation that we've seen relief on is really around proteins, which is really the, call it chicken, both chicken breast and chicken wings.

Operator (participant)

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Morris, Chief Executive Officer, for any closing remarks.

Chris Morris (CEO)

All right. Thank you, operator. In closing, we would like to again commend our team for the exceptional results they continue to produce at our stores across the country and for all the hard work that was done at our Dallas Support Center to integrate the Main Event business and optimize the infrastructure to support the bright future of these two phenomenal brands. Thank you all for joining. We look forward to keeping you apprised of our continued progress on growth initiatives and revealing the more details about our long-term strategic plan at our Investor Day in May. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.