All right, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our next presentation of the day, from Topgolf Callaway. The company has long been a leader in golf equipment. It's currently number one in clubs and number two in balls. Just about three years ago, it acquired Topgolf, and its golf-themed food and entertainment venues, thereby redefining the concept of modern golf to include both on-course and off-course versions. Here to tell us all about the evolution is the company's CFO, Brian Lynch, and Topgolf CEO, Artie Starrs. Welcome, gentlemen. I believe Brian has a few slides he'd like to go through before we move to our fireside chat. And so with that, let me hand things off to Brian.
Okay. Thanks, Joe.
Than k you, Joe. I've been asked to just give a few brief minutes of overview for, in case there are some people here who are not familiar with our story. This is the. I will not read this to you. So we are Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp. We came about due to a merger in 2021 that Joe referenced with Callaway Golf Company and Topgolf. As a result of that, we are the leader in the modern golf and active lifestyle space. We essentially have three operating segments. We have the Topgolf segment, and Topgolf is the one of the fastest-growing brands in the U.S. And if you're not familiar with it, I would encourage you to go. There's one right here in Orlando. If you go, you'll learn a lot about it and get a better appreciation for it.
It's difficult to understand and explain in words if you don't see it. And I also guarantee you'll have fun. It's, it's the entertainment piece of our the golf entertainment piece of our business. The other segment is the golf equipment, which many people know of from 'cause Callaway Golf has been around since 1982. We are the leader in golf equipment. And for our segment, that primarily is golf clubs and golf balls. We, we are number one in drivers, fairway woods, irons, number two in golf ball. I mean, we are a clear leader in technology in this space, and we've been around, again, for 40, 40 years or so. So, people are generally familiar with that, but that is, was the bread and butter of the Callaway Golf business at the time.
We also have the active lifestyle space, which is we also sort of put together through acquisitions. We acquired the TravisMathew brand in 2017. We acquired the Jack Wolfskin brand in 2019. We have Callaway apparel that we do some through ourselves internationally, and then we also license it in the US. Last but not least, we have OGIO, which does the backpacks, luggage, any type of sports or performance gear storage that there is. Now, having all these together is definitely synergistic. If you look at Topgolf, it is the funnel for many new entrants coming into the game of golf, the golf equipment space.
We'll go through some stats in a minute, but the off-course golf, which is not your traditional golf that you think of when growing up or playing on course, but this is off-course golf, is largely Topgolf. That is probably 80%-85% of the whole space. And it drives a lot of people to the sport and to the golf equipment space. So there are a lot of synergies. Now, the first couple of years after the merger, we were just, it was a big acquisition for us. So we were trying to make sure we were integrating the parts that needed to be integrated. We were making sure that we had both businesses running well. And now it's time to go after. We've already started, but we're now to get more fine point about going after synergies.
We're developing a consumer data platform. Topgolf has over 30 million unique visitors a year. Well, those people we have direct access to, and we're developing the platform needed to go after them. We can do targeted cross-marketing and cross-promotions. There's retail opportunities at Topgolf as well. You'll begin to see more presence of the Callaway brand in the venues, either through fitting bays, through fittings, co-branded product, and just selling some of our product in their retail, the retail portion of the venues. There's also other product opportunities. You'll see beginning of this year where you'll have the opportunity in all the venues to upgrade to Callaway Golf. Topgolf has its own clubs, and they take a beating. So they're designed a little less for performance and a little bit more for wear and tear.
But if you want to hit the actual Callaway product that we sell in the stores, you'll have the opportunity to upgrade to those. And then, of course, we leverage our relationships among, they have endorsers. We have endorsers. TravisMathew has endorsers, golf celebrities, Instagram people, which is beyond me. But there's a lot of opportunity to cross-brand. And you might see someone playing on course or one of our tour pros but also sporting a TravisMathew shirt or have the Topgolf logo on the sleeve. So there's a lot of really good synergies having the three brands like that. And this is what I was talking about earlier, that the off-course business is now bigger than the on-course business, and it's growing. You know, there's now over 45 million golfers together.
Some of those people will say, "Why don't golf, but I Topgolf?" It's creating its own, its own vernacular. But they're both growing. The total on-course golfers is 40-45 million. That's up 9% year-over-year. 26 million Americans play almost 27 million Americans played golf on course, which is larger than it historically had been. It's increased the last few years, including up 1 million year-over-year. So I think that takes away a little bit. I think people were concerned after COVID that this was just, golf would revert back to its, its normal mean, and we're just not seeing that. And to the contrary, it's growing. And Topgolf's a large part of that. They are funneling a lot of these people to the sport.
10% of current green grass golfers, which is what your traditional golf which refer to as traditional golf, they say they got their interest in golf from Topgolf. I mean, Topgolf is very is a very non-intimidating way to get introduced to golf. Before that, if you didn't have parents who belong to their country club or something, it could be intimidating. Golf does have a lot of rules. You know, do I where do I drop the bags? Do I just drop them at their bag drop? Does someone pick them up? Do I have to tip them? Do I have to can I wear shorts? Do I have to wear a collar? I mean, there's just a lot of rules and then not even counting all the oops, sorry. Not even counting all the rules around golf itself.
But Topgolf, you don't have to know anything. 50% of the people who go there have never played golf before at all. And they go, and they have a great time. And then they go again and have a great time. Then you hit a few good shots, and next thing you know, you want to go try real golf. So it's, it's really been a, a great funnel, and it does not show any signs of slowing down. Topgolf is, as you can see, Topgolf is now the largest segment by revenue and even by EBITDA. So it's, it's become a very big part of the company. We, we are diversified, and we have different businesses who have some overlapping consumers, some different consumers. So if there's a slowdown in one, the others have a good chance to offset it.
So we definitely benefit from the diversification. You can see in the last three years, we've had a 17% revenue CAGR and a 16% adjusted EBITDA CAGR. So overall, it's a unique and compelling investment opportunity. It's proven. I think we've proven Topgolf is not a fad. I think we've proven that golf is not reverting. And I think we show that we've had strength across all of our different segments. We talked about, I talked about this a little bit. We have unmatched scale and reach to the consumer. Again, with Topgolf having 30 million unique consumers every year, there's a lot of opportunity to, to, to reach out to them for us. So that gives us a distinct competitive advantage in the golf equipment space. Now, we just covered diversification.
One thing we don't talk about enough is that there are high barriers to entry here. There is a moat around some of these businesses. For Topgolf, it's the fact that it takes a lot of venues to become really profitable and to make money at this. So you have to be able to withstand a lot of early investment. These are expensive. We acquired Topgolf at the right point in their growth curve. We were fortunate. They had already done a lot of the heavy lifting, had gone through a lot of the pain, and we bought them just as they were about to really start to take off. In fact, just two years after we acquired them, they're already cash flow positive.
That that's probably a year ahead of where we said we'd be at the time of the merger and put in our S-4. In the golf equipment space, there's also a lot of barriers to entry. There, the top four golf companies in the U.S., us and the three others. I won't say their names. But they we have over 80% collectively, 80% market share. And there's a lot of other challenges if you want to join the golf equipment space. There's a lot of patents and intellectual property rights that the big four have. You know, there's, if you look at a golf ball, a lot of the golf balls look the same, but there's over 2,000 golf ball patents. So if you want to come out with a new golf ball, you have to sort of weave a minefield trying to develop one.
There's also just the realities of it. The whole golf equipment space has moved more toward customization product. If someone goes and gets fitted on a weekend, they want to play it next weekend. They're excited. They want their product by Friday. Well, you only the larger ones have the scale that can really do that, on a regional basis. Last, we're positioned for, for growth. The more mature business, the golf equipment space, it will continue to grow at a measured, measured pace, but it also generates good cash flow. Topgolf is a growth engine for us, and now they're cash flow positive. Whenever you take growth plus cash flow, that's just something that doesn't go out of style. This is just a beauty shop page just showing some of our. I'm going to sit down in a minute. Let Joe ask some questions.
But this shows some of our new products, and they are outstanding this year. The AI on the golf clubs, AIs, industrial design, just the way it looks is outstanding. We make the best ball in golf now. And I don't expect you to trust me for that, but go out and try it yourself. I think you'll have a good shot at being convinced. And then there's a couple of pictures of Topgolf just if you haven't been to one. But I can assure you I encourage you to go try it out. You'll enjoy it. So all I had for the quick overview if you want to.
Thank you, Brian. I appreciate that. I guess my first question you touched on this a little bit, but the sport of golf, you could argue it's as popular as it's ever been.
And I think if you asked people 2 or 3 years ago, we would have seen some sort of aversion or reset, and yet we set a record for rounds played in the United States last year. So, it sounds like you guys are not expecting any reset in terms of golf's popularity or participation, and they're at a new level, and we can grow off of this. Is that a fair assessment going forward?
That is. Golf has remained very strong. I mean, it was funny when not funny, but when COVID first hit, we had some analysts calling us saying, "Hey, have you ever modeled 0 revenue?" Like, "Wait, why would I do that?" "No, I've never modeled 0 revenue." And it was, but we were nervous.
Our biggest customer, Dick's, was shutting its doors, and we, we actually went out and raised money just in case. We did a convertible note offering and raised some money, so we'd have some as a contingency. But then a month or two months later, golf opened up. It was the only sport you could go do. Everything was shut down except they allowed people to go out and play golf because it was outdoors. You could keep your distance. And golf took off, and it brought a lot of new entrants into the space. And that's continued because, as you know of you who are golfers out there, no, it's an addictive sport. Once you hit a well-struck golf shot, you want to come back for more. And so, yes, it's growing. Rounds played last year, we're up 4%. The participation's increased.
The number of new entrants, younger, skewed younger, skewed more to women, more ethnic. I mean, it's been. It's really has some good momentum behind it. And we're. I think we're past the point where we can say there's going to be a reversion.
Got it. We'll definitely come back to Artie in a second, since Topgolf is now the majority of your EBITDA. But I did want to stay on the golf equipment business for a second. Sales were flat last year. I know you guys were lapping a little bit of a tough comparison in terms of the pipeline fill. You're looking for low- to mid-single-digit growth this year. Maybe help us understand what's driving that growth in 2024.
Sure. I do like how you characterize a $100 million channel fill as a little headwind.
But it really goes back to 2021. This was just noise coming out of COVID where in 2021, there was supply chain disruption, and people couldn't get golf equipment. And therefore, the retail inventory levels at retail were very, very low. So in 2022, we benefited from an $80 million-$100 million, we estimate, channel fill-in that really helped sales in 2022. So being able to lap that in 2023, we were very proud of. That was a huge tailwind, headwind facing 2023. And on a currency-neutral basis, we were just up a hair, but you could call it essentially flat. And losing my mic. Okay. But anyway, so we were very proud that we were able to lap that in 2023. Now, we finished the year as number one in drivers, fairway woods, irons. We have good momentum behind us.
The industry has good momentum. We talked about how it's been growing. That's been growing. Participation's been growing. We're, we're heading in with a lot of momentum, finishing number 1 in clubs, number 2 in balls. Our product this year is outstanding. From tour player to low handicap to high handicap, we're getting great reviews on the, the clubs from everyone. I think that's going to do extremely well. We fully expect to gain market share. One of the biggest news this year is our new launch of our golf ball. It is now the, the best ball in golf. I, I know you expect me to say that, but I'm asking you to believe me. I'm asking you to go out and try it because you will see it is truly the best ball now.
So we have a lot behind us, Joe, and we're, we're very excited about it.
Great. Just to shift over to Artie, corporate events piece of your business surged in 2022, obviously created a very difficult comparison. Last year, got another tough comp here in Q1. You've also talked about trying to improve same venue sales outside your peak weekend period. So with that in mind, can you walk us through some of the, the initiatives that you're working on to reaccelerate that growth and same venue sales?
Sure. So, I've been at the business about almost three years. And the, you know, the first thing I would say is we have done a phenomenal job at simplifying our business model. And I think it shows up in the margins and in the comp growth that we've had.
Digital is the primary sort of legacy gap that we've had that we've now put in place. We've talked about what we call Pi, our proprietary inventory engine, on earnings calls a lot. And what that basically is, is it's a system that allows us to take reservations and efficiently utilize the bay. Think of a hotel not having a reservation system. That's where we were. So our number one consumer pain point was wait times, and we solved that with PI. The three things that are going to drive comp this year, number one, value. Most businesses like ours, if you look across the spectrum, we'll mix, oh, 15%-25% in terms of the percentage of tickets, the percentage of consumers that come in with some sort of value message. We run mid-single digits today.
So massive opportunity in our model to drive the early week occasion with more value. We launched value, in a meaningful way in Q4, and we've seen that, you know, that mix, incrementally tick up. Number two is just continued digital expansion broadly. When I started, our digital mix was between 15%-20%. I think we reported, last year, we're in the mid- to high-30s. That number's going to at least 60. You know, we have a much more engaged audience. We can promote more things to the value that I talked about. Having a big a larger digital presence, with our consumers because the reservation is now relevant, is going to be, you know, significant. Then the third thing is just, you know, when I used to work at Yum! Brands, we used to call it philosophy through the core.
Like, what are the core things that we do every single day, why people come to Topgolf, and making them better and better. The last two years have largely been around simplification, making sure that our food and beverage menu is easy to operate, making sure the reservation system is up and running so people can get in easily. In the second quarter, you're going to start seeing some innovation on the core from us. So a new golf club, a non-conforming golf club that anybody can hit. It's not the Ai Smoke beautiful industrial design driver that Brian walked you through, but something that your kid is going to be like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to take a picture of this and put it on social media." That's what, you know, that's what our brand at Topgolf is about. We have a new game.
If any of you have been to Topgolf or your kids have gone, they probably talk about our Angry Birds game. We have a new internally developed game that's coming out that's for everybody. Every single square inch of our outfield will score with the new club. And then you'll start seeing more external IP from us. So velocity through the core is, you know, I think a core thing that you'll see from us going forward.
Got it. And just if you think about all the growth drivers this year moving forward, what's the right steady state or mature state, same venue sales growth for this business?
Yeah, I think we've publicly said, you know, low single digits. You know, last year, if you take the 80% of our business, that is the consumer or the one and two bay business, we were up 4%.
So we feel very good about that, you know, about that target.
Got it. In terms of your EBITDA margins as well, it's improved nicely over the past couple of years from the mid-teens to the high teens on a segment basis. What's driving the margin improvement, and how much more runway do you have there?
Yeah, I'll break it down into two buckets. I think, you know, in the venues, which is a big part of it. In 2019, our venue margins were 29%. This past year, they were just over 34%. We publicly stated, you know, 35% is the near-term target. If we don't do better than that over time, I probably won't be here. So, you know, the 35% is the is the current target. And, you know, I don't want to, I mean, I want to keep this like really simple.
It's just blocking and tackling and understanding how to operate the box better. Number one, having reservations has allowed us to be more predictive on the labor that we need. So when you were running a business where you didn't know how many people were going to come in on a Friday and Saturday night, you know, back to this hotel, for example, if you didn't know how many people were going to be here this week, you wouldn't know how to staff. We now have close to half of our business is on reservations, so we can now staff properly. We put in a new labor model. We'll be rolling out a new labor model over the next couple of years continuously, just continue to optimize on what a sort of digital-centric reservation business looks like. And then the benefits of scale.
So half of our portfolio is less than five years old. We've doubled in size in the last five years. So you can imagine beverage contract, supplier contract, maintenance agreements, security agreements, everything across the board, that drives margin inside the box. We're now getting the benefits of scale and the benefits of scale of being a part of Callaway.
Now, in terms of the addressable market, the original plan was to get 200 venues in the U.S. We're at 250. Is that still the right number?
Yeah, 250 venues in the U.S., you know, are owned and operated, is what we look at. And then we, you know, we see the potential for 250 venues outside the U.S. as well.
And you originally planned on opening 10 a year. That went to 11. And then this year, a little bit lower than 11.
So maybe talk to me why that is and why you're confident you can get back on that cadence in the next month?
Yeah, so last year we opened 11, actually 8 in the fourth quarter, and 2 on the same day, which was a big accomplishment for our company. This year, we're going to open 7. The pipeline's very strong. You know, Brian and I, you know, and Chip, we all spoke, you know, back half of last year through many conversations with you all. We just decided to temper, and make sure that we're driving the free cash flow commitments that, you know, we put forward. I think as Brian referenced, you know, we're a year ahead of that plan. But we'll be back in the 10, you know, 10 plus and 25 and beyond.
I'll tell you, the pipeline is extremely strong. We continue to see outstanding returns across all size venues and all size markets that we're going into. So, you know, looking at, you know, later this year, we'll be opening in Raleigh-Durham. In Durham, technically in March, we have our second venue in Los Angeles, just six miles from downtown LA in Montebello in May. We've got venues later this year in San Francisco and Burlingame, just outside, you know, just south of, of the airport. We've got oh my gosh, I'm forgetting where the rest of them are, but we got, you know, a few more in the fourth quarter.
You know, people have asked this. Have you guys sort of cherry-picked for lack of a better term, the best locations first, or do you still have a lot of good locations in the pipeline?
Yeah, I get this question a lot. I, you know, I personally stand on every site before we greenlight it. So we have a world-class real estate team that's scouring the country, you know, every, every day, every week. When we greenlight a building and, you know, bring it to Brian and sort of our internal investment committee, I, you know, I stand on the site. What I'd say is, absolutely not have we cherry-picked. We certainly, like you would, when you see the best opportunities, you do, you know, you do go after those more quickly. That said, we're, because of reservations, because of our new formats, so we have a format that we call a hybrid, which is not something we had two years ago.
Hybrid is basically a two-story, you know, T-line, so multiple story, which is what people love about Topgolf, but it's a one-story building. So we were able to take a bunch of cost out of the overall design. That building would have cost, oh, probably 15%-20% more, in the traditional design, but we've optimized it for a market. So, you know, to hit your question head-on, we might have looked at a market like Mobile, Alabama, three years ago. And I wouldn't be able to stand on the site and say, "Okay, we can underwrite this with certainty to the 20% ROI, 50% plus cash on cash, sub-2.5-year cash payback, or 2~2.5-year cash payback." I wouldn't have been able to do that. I now have a design to do it.
So I now have a design with conviction, open in Boise, open in Mobile, open in Lafayette, where it's open to a universe of return opportunities that we maybe didn't have as much clarity on 2-3 years ago. So yes, in a lot of the big markets, we probably found a lot of the, you know, the best and biggest sites. Real estate will change. There's demolition going on. So it's always evolving. But we have a new mousetrap for a lot of these markets that we didn't have previously. So our returns, I mean, to be transparent, if anything, are getting better. And you know, we've seen that in the last 2 vintages.
Got it. As Brian mentioned, these venues are not cheap. So you partner with several REITs for the majority of the funding.
Can you talk about why you chose that that structure and maybe the relationship you have today with your REIT partners?
Yeah, so, we get a lot of questions, obviously, on on cap rates and how and why we finance. Certainly, we look at our cost of capital, you know, on the balance sheet and term debt against what we're seeing, from real estate partners. We have an extremely competitive environment for, you know, our sort of venue credit, if you want to call it that. You know, five years ago, there was probably four to six partners that did the majority of our deals. Now, if you looked at our deals, there's 10 to 12 partners over a two-year period, that would be looking at, you know, financing Topgolf's. And they do they've done well. You know, they've done well in financing, Topgolf.
The reason why our cap rates, I think, have been very steady, is one, our economics continue to get better and better. So if you're a local developer, if you're a publicly traded REIT, if you're a, you know, a local equity fund raising funds to finance, you know, a venue that you might be in your hometown, you're seeing a brand in Topgolf that's getting bigger and better every quarter, every year. And we see a lot of repeat clients. I'm not aware of anyone who has financed a Topgolf that hasn't wanted to finance another one, is probably the easiest way to put it. And also being a part of Topgolf Callaway Brands has also improved sort of the scale and, you know, the overall credit of the company.
So we've been able to, you know, effectively defy gravity in terms of our cost of funding for venues. And I think, you know, I'm not I'm not here to predict what interest rates are going to do. But the fact that we've been able to be very steady and in many deals actually below that we were where we were the prior year, I'm super optimistic that our cost of funding, you know, we have we have upside there.
We're still ample supply of capital.
Ample supply of capital.
And if rates come down, how does that impact?
I I think it's a positive.
Maybe last question in the three or four minutes we've got left for you, Brian. I wanted to talk about, you know, your capital allocation priorities, maybe for for 2024 and beyond.
Sure. We we get a lot of questions on this.
Our primary priority is to invest back in our business. We want to ensure that we remain the number one in the golf equipment space. A lot of technology goes into our products, which is why we are number one. So we'll invest back in there. The other investment we have is investing back in our business: the Topgolf venues. They're very, as already mentioned, very good returns. And it's a great way to deploy our capital. Beyond that, we would want to maintain some prudence in our balance sheet and make sure that we maintain reasonable amounts of leverage. Now, for us, if you look at all-in debt on our balance sheet, you would say we were 3.8 times at the end of the year. But that's not how we look at it.
Well, for us, if you take the REIT debt, that is essentially just REIT payments. And it's really akin to rent. And so if you treat that like rent and adjust EBITDA accordingly, our REIT adjusted leverage ratio is 1.9 times at year-end, which is very manageable. So we feel good about where we are. We did mention during our last earnings call that if we continue to be on plan, we'll start paying back our Term Loan B this year. And so that'll help also with leverage, but we'll keep balancing those two. Beyond that, we'll look for or take advantage of, be opportunistic with regard to investments that present themselves. A good example of that would be the BigShots acquisition that we bought this year. They were the second largest or only other really organized competitor in the Topgolf space.
And we were able to acquire them essentially for about what one venue might cost, in addition to some other benefits we obtained with Invited, strengthening our relationship with them. They're the largest golf course operator in the country. And we were able to enter into some agreements that strengthened that relationship with them. So those are good examples of investing in the modern golf space. And then lastly would be returning capital to shareholders. During 2023, we repurchased a little over $50 million of our common stock. We've typically had a practice of trying to offset any dilution from employee equity awards or tour player awards, those types of things, just make sure there's no dilution from those. And then also just being opportunistic on the stock price.
Is there a leverage ratio that you're targeting?
Well, we're comfortable where we are now.
It depends on how you want to look at it. But I think if you look at the way we look at it, the REIT adjusted one, below two times is very comfortable.
Got it. Well, great. Brian, Artie, thank you. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, Joe.
I hope everybody enjoys the rest of the conference. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Joe.