Bally's Corporation (BALY)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2021

Aug 9, 2021

Speaker 1

Good morning and welcome to Bali's Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All participant lines have been placed on a listen only mode to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. I'll now turn the call over to Bobby Levin, Senior Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations, please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. By now, you should have received a copy of our Q2 earnings release, which we issued early this morning. If you haven't, the earnings release and presentation that accompany this call are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.valleys.com. With me on today's call are George Papineer, Our President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Capp, our Chief Financial Officer Craig Eaton, our General Counsel Nadi Dandania, our Senior Vice President of Strategy and Interactive. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that comments made by management And today will contain forward looking statements.

These forward looking statements include plans, expectations, estimates and projections that involve significant risks and uncertainty. These risks are discussed in the company's earnings release and SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from the results discussed in these forward looking statements. In addition, during today's call, management will refer to certain non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the schedules contained in our earnings release.

We do not provide a reconciliation of forward looking Non GAAP financial measures due to our inability to project special charges within certain expenses. Today's call is also being broadcast live on our Investors and will be available for replay shortly after the completion of this call. Prior to turning it over to George, Please note in our quarterly filing materials, we revised our reporting segments to better align with our strategic growth initiatives, primarily our focus on the high value, high growth North American Interactive business and the pending acquisition of Gamesys. As of June 30, 2020, the company now operates under 3 segments. Our East segment is comprised of 5 brick and mortar locations: Twin River Casino Hotel, Tiverton Casino Hotel, Dover Downs, Valley's Atlantic City in Tropicana, Evansville.

Our West segment includes Hard Rock Deloxie, Casino Vicksburg, Kansas City, Valley's Blackhawk, El Dorado Resort Casino, Shreveport, Dallies Lake Tahoe Casino Resort and Jumer's Casino Hotel. The other businesses consist primarily of our interactive businesses, including SportCaller, Monkey Night Sight, Vetworks, AVP and our mobile and online sports betting operations as well as Mile High. I will now turn the call over to George. Thanks,

Speaker 3

Bobby. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. During the quarter, improved consumer confidence, minimal capacity restrictions And our disciplined operating strategy all contributed to extremely strong numbers across the board. This quarter, we have safely welcomed back Many of our loyal patrons across our brick and mortar locations are confident that we will continue to benefit from rebounding demand as we approach and exceed historical operating levels across our land based portfolio. Total consolidated revenue for The second quarter was approximately $267,700,000 We also achieved record adjusted EBITDA for the 2nd consecutive quarter of approximately $83,800,000 Similar to the Q1, incremental revenues from recent acquisitions contributed to positive results.

Our destination properties have outperformed and are above historical levels, including Biloxi, Shreveport and Mont Belous. Renewed focus and expansion of table games accelerating our long term plans in Kansas City. Our Lincoln property delivered more than $25,000,000 of quarterly EBITDA despite prolonged COVID limitations, which is in line with our expectations of performance post encore impacts. Dividend continues to grow in line with our expectations. All other properties outperformed other than Atlantic City, Which turned the corner in July and should continue to perform better as the property continues its planned capital into the property.

I'm also happy to say that trends have continued in July early days in August. Our East segment recorded revenue of approximately $132,400,000 and adjusted EBITDA of $41,600,000 These increases were driven primarily by strong results at our Rhode Island properties, which combined contributed Approximately $33,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA for the Q2. Our Dover Downs property also had strong results and adjusted EBITDA of Approximately $10,000,000 for the 2nd quarter even with rent starting in June. Our West segment Recorded revenue of approximately $127,900,000 and adjusted EBITDA of $52,100,000 These increases were driven primarily by the Shreveport and Kansas City acquisitions in the second half of 2020 and contributed a combined approximately $25,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA for the 2nd quarter, Coupled with strong results at our Hard Rock Biloxi property, which contributed approximately $19,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA for the 2nd quarter. Now I'd like to provide a quick update on the brick and mortar acquisitions we completed this quarter.

On April 7th, we Fart Valley's Lake Tahoe Casino Resort, formerly known as Mapalou Resort Casino and Spa from Caesars for approximately $14,000,000 We believe this property represents a premier asset that expands our geographic reach while providing an attractive West Coast destination that Valley's will utilize to drive cross marketing visitation to Lake Tahoe. On June 3rd, we acquired Tropicana Evansville from Caesars for $140,000,000 Importantly, through this transaction, we acquired unencumbered rights to Indiana Sports Betting and iGaming Skins, which will provide us with greater access to this growing gaming market. Additionally, given the structure of the transaction, No cash outlay was required at the closing. On June 14th, we acquired Jumor's Casino and Hotel from Delaware North for $120,000,000 The transaction will also allow Valley to capitalize on lucrative sports betting opportunities by further expanding our geographic footprint into the rapidly growing Illinois gaming market. In addition, we have pending land based acquisitions, Tropicana Las Vegas Casino, which we agreed to acquire from GLPI in April of this year.

Importantly, the acquisition requires no cash outlay from Valley at closing and is expected to be accretive to Valley shareholders Long term as we expect EBITDAR on the property to be in the mid-20s after short term targeted CapEx and then grow from there. We're excited about the longer term potential and the cross market opportunities we have and will provide incremental information once we acquire the property. We continue to expect the acquisition to close in early 2022. Turning now to capital expenditures. We continue to make progress on our $40,000,000 redevelopment initiative at Valley's Kansas City Casino, which includes a physical expansion of the property that will feature national restaurant plans in addition to new amenities and retail offerings located in the expansion facility.

We also recently kicked off the property's formal rebranding by changing its name from Casino KC to Valley's Kansas City Casino, Replacing its exterior signage and implementing our new Valley Rewards player club program. Atlantic City, we continue to execute our $100,000,000 redevelopment projects, which will occur over the next 5 years. In addition to reopening the permanent FanDuel Sportsbook location within the property, we have also incorporated And planned vibrant new restaurant concepts, which we expect will contribute to the overall guest experience and drive increased visitation. As for Rhode Island, on June 11th, the governor signed into law legislation that aims to preserve and enhance Rhode Island's gaming revenue. Legislation allows for the formation of a 20 year joint venture between Vale's and IGT that will create a licensed VLT provider To supply all gaming machines to the Rhode Island division of lotteries for Bally's Twin River Casino Hotel and Timberland Casino Hotel.

As a licensed VLT provider, Valley now owns and leases 23% of the gaming floor machines to the Rhode Island division of Lotteries in exchange for 7 of net terminal income. Beginning January 1, 2023, Valley's will own at least 40% For the gaming floor machines subject to further increases based on machine efficiency in exchange for 7% of net terminal income. And we expect to spend up to $15,000,000 this year on purchasing VLTs in Rhode Island, which is immediately accretive that provides us more control over slot stores. Lastly, we kicked off this summer with the rebranding initiatives and investments In order to create a single national customer database, over the next 12 months, all of our casinos other than Hard Rock Biloxi will be rebranded Bally's, Increasing the awareness of the brand and providing the company opportunities to send local customers to our destination casinos as well as a national player database and incentive program. With that, I'll now turn it over to Adi to provide an update on our Interactive business.

Adi?

Speaker 4

Thanks, George, and good morning, everyone. Since our last call, we have significantly developed and diversified our interactive business and are very pleased with our progress today. Leveraging BetWorx proprietary technology stack, we've launched live beta versions of our Bally Bet mobile sportsbook In 2 states, beginning with Colorado on May 24th and then Iowa on June 29th. In its data stage, the BallyBet platform offers Sports betting fans not just access to betting options for all major sports, but including a variety of unique and innovative features, exclusive in app parlay games And integrated social offering. Given its beta launch, we are not supporting the launch with an advertising push at this time.

We are part of our tech team's efforts to launch markets so quickly post our June closing of Bet. Works. That being said, with the near term closing of the Gamesys acquisition, we're concentrating resources from rolling out version 1.0, Developing our 2.0 version, which combines value bet OSB with the Gamesys iGaming suite of products. Expect to see that product rolled out in early 2022, including our iGaming product in New Jersey. With respect to our strategic media partnership with Sinclair Broadcast Group, We continue to receive strong feedback on the performance of the Bally Sports RS end as well as the recently launched Bally Sports app, which represents the first phase of a major investment we're making across the digital ecosystem to drive increased engagement returns.

We were also able to further diversify our operations through the acquisition of Association of Volleyball Professionals on July 12. AVP is the premier professional beach volleyball organization and the host of the longest running domestic beach volleyball tour in the U. S. The transaction provides us with the significant opportunity to gamify and incorporate interactive content into B2BOL Evolve, which in turn will drive traffic to value and promote customer acquisition. I will now turn it over to Steve.

Steve?

Speaker 5

Adi, thank you. For the Q2, we reported an adjusted EBITDA margin of 31.3%. Excluding Atlantic City from the results, adjusted EBITDA margin would have 37.6 percent. This compares to 33.1% in the Q2 of 2019 and 35 point 4% in the Q1 of 2021, again excluding Atlantic City. Atlantic City continues to move in the right and we do not expect it to be a significant negative drag on margin going forward, although that market is highly seasonal.

With the close of BetWorx in late May, our North American Interactive business delivered approximately $6,000,000 of net revenues in the quarter with slightly negative EBITDA. We expect revenues to grow significantly quarter over quarter going forward, while at the same time, we expect Interactive EBITDA to be somewhat more negative as we invest in that business. Such investments will not be anywhere close to the levels of our peers given Adi's prior comments, and we are seeing an uptick in the Valley's brand awareness from the recent launch of Valley Sports. On the CapEx front, We expect requirements to moderately increase as a result of the properties acquired in the last 18 months. As George mentioned, We have a $40,000,000 redevelopment project underway in Kansas City, and we plan to invest $100,000,000 or so into our Atlantic City property over the next 5 years.

In addition, we estimate the total cost of our casino development project in Pennsylvania, including construction, Licensing and sports betting iGaming operations to total approximately $120,000,000 We're enthusiastic about soon commencing our Expansion and capital improvement plan at Twin River Lincoln related to our joint venture with IGT and agreement with the State of Rhode Island. We expect to use cash on hand and cash generated from operations to fund this CapEx. For the first half of this year, Capital expenditures were $36,000,000 We expect CapEx to ramp into the second half of this year with a plan to invest $90,000,000 to $100,000,000 in the second half, including $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 or perhaps more if possible at each of Valley's Atlantic City and Twin River Lincoln pursuant to our commitments in each of these states. Moving forward, our approach to maintenance and growth capital investment will continue to be focused and disciplined. Now I'd like to provide an update on our financing plans for the Gamesys acquisition.

On April 20th, we completed our public equity offering of 12,650,000 shares common stock at a price of $55 per share. Total shares issued included 1,650,000 shares in the full exercise of the green shoe by our underwriters. The proceeds from this offering, net of the underwriting discount, were $671,000,000 which we intend to use to fund the Gamesys transaction. In addition to that equity raise, we also announced the sale of a warrant To Sinclair Broadcast Group to purchase 909,000 common shares for an aggregate purchase price of $50,000,000 which will also be applied toward our combination with Gamesys. We also recently disclosed entry into a purchase agreement for the private placement of 1.5 Principal amount of senior notes due $2029 $750,000,000 in aggregate principal amount of senior notes due 2,031.

The offering is expected to close mid August, subject to customary closing conditions. All or substantially all of the net proceeds from the notes offering We'll be placed into an escrow account with 1 of the banks that have committed to finance a combination. Upon the closing of the combination, we will assume the role of issuer under the notes and certain of our subsidiaries will guarantee the notes. We also entered into agreements for approximately $1,945,000,000 of a term loan B as well as a $620,000,000 revolver. The maturity of Term Loan B is 7 years and the maturity of the revolver is 5 years.

The proceeds of the Term Loan B together with the notes mentioned earlier will be used to fund Games' acquisition and refinance our own debt. We look forward to providing further updates on the financing of this transaction on our next call as we move closer to the anticipated closing date of Gamesys. We believe the Gamesys transaction will accelerate our growth strategy to be a premier global omnichannel gaming company I look forward to working with Gamesys' seasoned management team to take our operations to the next level. We continue to expect Transaction to close in the Q4 of this year and look forward to sharing additional information on our progress. And with that, I'll turn it back over to George.

Speaker 3

Steve, thank you. So to sum it up, we are pleased to have achieved strong quarterly results while Expanding and diversifying our collection of land based and digital gaming assets. We've continued to evolve as a company And position ourselves to capitalize on favorable industry trends. We're confident that the momentum we have demonstrated in the 1st 2 quarters of 2021 and carry through to the end of the year. That concludes our prepared remarks for this morning.

I will now ask the operator to open the line for questions.

Speaker 1

If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, you may do so by pressing the pound key. We remind you to please unmute your line when introduced and if possible, We'll take our first question from Jeff Stample with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Speaker 6

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking our questions. I wanted to start on Atlantic City.

Speaker 4

You talked about

Speaker 6

it clearly taking a bit longer than expected to begin to drive growth at that property. I was hoping you'd be able to provide a bit more color here. Is it just issues with COVID-nineteen as more of a regional destination market? Rather, more underlying issues with the asset market you're working through and Steve, you touched on this a bit in the prepared remarks, but any expected timeline we should be thinking about To revert back to EBITDA positive and then the $20,000,000 long term target you previously disclosed would be helpful.

Speaker 5

Hey, Jeff. This is Steve. Listen, as George commented, that property did turn the corner in July and Strong trends are continuing into August. So there's been dramatic improvement there as our ownership is taking hold. But Let me kick it to George for any further insight.

Speaker 3

Sure. Thanks, Steve, and good morning, Jeff. Listen, thanks for your question. While the property was neglected by the previous owner, but certainly is a major focus of ours. As we said earlier, we're going to We're going to spend $100,000,000 in capital improvements over the next several years.

So we're focused on incremental improvements to our performance, which is Mainly supported by what I'll call incremental improvements to the physical property and the rebuilding of a higher end database that Users effectively pulled out pulled out over the last few years prior to the sale. Steve said, you know, we we will see profit this Q3, But we'll become much more aggressive in promoting Valley's AC probably during the Q1 of 2022. And really that's so that we could align all this aggressive marketing efforts with the physical state of the property. So by summer of next year, we'll have our rooms back online after the renovation of that as well as all our restaurant products. So we're looking forward to really getting to where we can really start promoting the property a lot more aggressive.

Speaker 6

Okay, great. Very helpful. And then switching gears here to the online business here in the U. S, if you think about some of the marketing and the development costs that's gonna To be competitive, how should we think about the timeline to inflect to EBITDA positive for the U. S?

And how deep of losses are you open to as you look to begin building out A more robust user base on the online front. You touched on this a bit in the prepared remarks, but just any further color here would be great.

Speaker 5

Yes, sure. Jeff, this is Steve again. Listen, there's a lot of focus on this side of the business, of course. And Some of our peers have said that they will invest maybe $1,000,000,000 over the next few years. But bear in mind, we already have Some of the assets that others will be investing in.

Right? We already have the back end and front end tech stacks with Betworks And Gamesys, we already have the land based database and the awareness and impressions from Sinclair and our land based casinos. Now that all said, we will still need to invest. We have a new CEO coming into the business in the coming months, and I don't want to speak for him. But right now, to kind of cut to your question, we expect to burn approximately $10,000,000 into the back half of this year, And that may well increase up to circa 10% of pretax cash flow into 2022.

Look, it's early days for us, Jeff, right on this front. So as Lee Fenton comes in, We'll put more meat on this bone for you, but that those are the expectations currently.

Speaker 6

Perfect. That's all for me. I appreciate you putting some parameters around it ahead of Lee coming in here. So very helpful. Thanks for all the color, guys.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

And we will take our next question from Barry Jonas with Truist Securities.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks and good morning guys. Maybe George, I would love to start on the land based trends Get your thoughts on whether the top line and margin trends we're seeing now feel sustainable.

Speaker 3

Barry, good morning. Listen, from a revenue perspective, my feeling is improvements over 2019 is Through the year end, we may see some retrenching during the winter months, but certainly we'll be ahead of 2019 and And we'll establish a new base from that point of business. And before and then that's when we'll start to see what I'll call kind of a More of a inflationary a historical inflationary growth pattern from a margin perspective. Listen, as a result of COVID And the forced closing and restart of our operations, we had benefit of building our business model and we're looking at improved margins for certain. We think a lot of these improvements will be sustainable and Certainly from a staffing perspective, we're going to see that.

We're able to operate a lot much more efficiently than we have historically. There's been some Offset of that is result of rate growth, wage growth, but we're certainly seeing an overriding benefit of staffing reductions. 2nd to that would be Promotions and marketing. We think as long as the competition is rational, then a lot of that margin will stick. Certainly, we've redeveloped Kind of what we do from a pure business perspective.

A good example of that would be Buffet. We're seeing a lot of companies starting To cut that out, which was historical loss leader, we're doing that as well. And we also have had opportunity from renegotiating long term contracts As well as procurement arrangements that we think will have a long tail to that. So, yeah, certainly there's going to be a good portion of this margin improvement that we're experiencing now that's going

Speaker 7

Perfect. And just a general question on your M and A pipeline. We'd love to sort of I guess how rich it is, but more so how you're balancing sort of deals like the Association of Volleyball Professionals with

Speaker 5

Barry, Steve here. Good morning. Thanks for joining us today. Listen, we have established a what we think is a disciplined and focused M and A strategy from day 1 as a public company, actually from day 1 as a private company back in 2014 with our original acquisition of Hard Rock Biloxi, but we'll continue that going forward. Look, it's always a balancing act, right, for capital allocation between Deleveraging the business to the place where we would like this business to be longer term, which by the way is approximately 4.5 times with M and A and CapEx.

So the Pennsylvania investment is part of that balance, right? ABP from Content standpoint is part of that balance. I will tell you, in 2021, this won't be any news to you, but The land based M and A opportunities have been a little quieter than they were in a during a very tumultuous, if opportunistic, a year for us in 2020. So we haven't had to forego much there yet because there hasn't been much that has interested us. But, look, it'll be balanced going forward.

And look, I will tell you, with the combination with games this year, The free cash flow profile of each of these companies, if you look historically at the numbers, Free cash flow conversion has been plusminus90% on consolidated EBITDA for each of the businesses. So it's a lot of capital to work with on a go forward basis, But we will maintain a balanced approach to it.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks so much, guys.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Gary.

Speaker 1

And we will take our next question from David Katz with Jefferies.

Speaker 8

Hi, good morning. I wanted to Just to follow-up on the interactive business with a couple of points. We obviously are starting to take a little closer attendance Around where the customer bases are coming from. Could you share any learnings that you may have acquired so far on What you consider to be your constituency and how separate it is as this market becomes a bit more competitive. We'd love to hear any initial learnings from Colorado, Indiana With that in particular, but just getting a sense that you've carved out a niche for yourselves.

Speaker 5

Well, David, hi. This is Steve Gaff here. Thanks for joining us this morning. Listen, I will tell you from an interactive perspective, it's early days. Right?

We have launched In Colorado and Iowa, on a beta test basis without advertising support, as Adi mentioned.

Speaker 2

So I'm not going to

Speaker 6

tell you we have a

Speaker 5

ton of data. Adi also mentioned that we're getting very positive feedback on the Valley Sports Awareness Through the rebranding of the Sinclair RSNs. So very early days for us, but let me take it to Adi for any or George for any Other observations at this point?

Speaker 4

Thanks, David. It's Adi, and good morning. I agree, we don't Have a lot of data, as Steve alluded to, as it relates to what we're seeing in Colorado and Iowa. What we've noticed In terms of databases we're pulling from, in Colorado, we have our physical casino database. We were able to cross sell to that.

We also had a monkey NiFi database that we were able to cross sell to. And in Iowa, we tested the broadcast TV reach that Sinclair has. And it's early days, but we're seeing good numbers in terms of impressions that are generated, and we will track conversion coming out of the TV Impressions that have been created in Iowa.

Speaker 8

Got it. And apologies. I said Indiana, I meant Iowa. It's been one of those warnings. My second question is with respect to the land based business, and I've asked this before Around whether there is any notional change toward capital spending on some of the properties On, let's say, like a Colorado set of assets, just given that the land based world has really shifted a bit coming out COVID and what you might underwrite today would be different from the last time I asked the question, probably 18 months ago.

Speaker 5

You know, David, this is David. I'll ask, maybe George can follow-up. But we've not fundamentally changed our view. We have a different operating model than some of our Appears. George talked George talked about, you know, kind of the way we inherited the Atlantic City property.

It's been a little underinvested, You might say. We don't focus on we focus on increasing our EBITDA and margins by Through a focus on customer amenities and the customer experience property by property, we're an investor in those amenities and that customer experience. And so that's an integral part of our strategy as the land based Casino experience and those databases form a foundational piece of our omnichannel strategy. We're continuing to invest, to say the least. George, how would you follow-up to that?

Speaker 3

Yes. So Steve, the only thing I'll add to that is we're gonna Continue to look for assets that we feel have upside. What I mean by upside is, Steve touched on it, we've done a good job of acquiring Assets were sub seven times pro form a, and obviously, the last year, it was even less than that. So we're certainly going to look at properties that we feel we can improve, but Also, we're going to continue to look at properties to provide access to sports betting iGaming markets as well. And So that's the first approach.

To touch on what you said about Colorado using that as an example, listen, We bought that asset. There's an opportunity for improvement of that asset. We could develop on top of parking structures. There's also adjacent land that we could develop on. Now it's really early days of Monarch reopening, but we've always had to wait and see to see if they could really grow the market, obviously, primarily from Denver As a result of our expansion and based on that, there may be opportunity there for us from a development perspective.

Speaker 8

Understood. Thanks very much.

Speaker 5

Thanks, David. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

And we will take our next question from John DeCree with CBRE. Your line is now open.

Speaker 9

Good morning, everyone. I wanted to Continue the conversation on the interactive business a little bit and realize there is a moving target, but Launched in 2 states of sports betting in beta. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of an update on your expectations for the rest of the year and into 2022 as it relates to getting live in additional states. And in addition to that, When might you consider ramping up the marketing spend and really starting to push the app in Colorado and Iowa and then subsequent states?

Speaker 5

Hey, John. Steve here. Thanks for joining us. Nice new banner you're flying for company colors there. Congratulations.

Hey, listen. Adi Adi touched on this, and I'll kick it to him in just a moment. But look, we are really enthusiastic For the combination of Gamesys in the Q4 of this year, their technology is leading edge. That's going to lead to a 2.0 version of the Valley Bet app, And that's going to be, we think, transformational. That will layer into the rollout strategy into additional states and more investment in the business, even from a marketing standpoint, as I had mentioned earlier on.

So It's very formative. We're in very formative stages, very important transactional stages as this all comes together. Adi, what comment would you have?

Speaker 4

Good morning, John. I believe, Steve, a lot of what we're focused on right now is developing the 2.0 version, which would Involve the technology stacks of both Gamesys and Betworks. So we've shifted our engineering resources away from Launching additional states with our 1.0 version to focus on the 2.0 version. In addition to this, I would like to know that Gamesys already has An iGaming product that's live in New Jersey. And what we're looking to do is develop our own version of the iGaming app And launch it later this year, early next year.

And one point to note on Gamesys' performance in New Jersey With a B2B product, as you may have seen in some of the numbers that come out for the industry, they have anywhere between 6% to 8% market share that they've had consistently. So you can imagine once we turn it into a B2C product and launch it, it would be very easy for us to ramp up and focus on developing that business further.

Speaker 9

Sorry, 20. Adi, thank you. Maybe the follow-up question, perhaps for Steve. Financing in place after last week now for Gamesys, I think shareholder votes are done. Obviously, there's a little bit of a regulatory process ahead.

You guys Talked about Q4 hopefully closing on Gamesys. I wonder if you could give us a high level update on what the milestones are from here. Investors kind of ask us what they should be paying attention to between now and closing to kind of track that progress.

Speaker 5

I'll tell you, John, it's a great question. Progress has been significant, as you mentioned, right up through last week with The raising of all of that kind of global debt, if you will, by us in both the senior Secured and senior secured credit markets. So look, all the capital is in place now, right? The equity went very well. The debt Went very well.

We will globally refi all the debt at Gamesys, all the debt at Valley's and fund the acquisition with all These various proceeds. So, really good progress there. We've been spending a lot of time as a management team and a board with Lee Fenton and His management team at Gamesys and early days, it's been it's going very well. Look, the remaining issues to close are simply Regulatory in nature and customary, I would say. We have a we're running the last of the traps in the United States regulatory markets and as well in the U.

K. But there's very good progress there. It's going well, as it usually does. These things, as you know, always take a while. 6 to 9 months, we kind of flash that early on that that is So, each regulatory milestone is very important and we focus on all of them.

Speaker 6

But I would tell you

Speaker 5

that it's going well. And we think that implied timing right now is October, November timeframe looks like our best guesstimate at this point.

Speaker 9

Great. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, everyone.

Speaker 5

Thank you, John. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

And we have no further questions on the line at this time. This does conclude today's Valley Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. You may disconnect at any time and have a wonderful day.

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