Full House Resorts, Inc. (FLL)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Aug 2, 2022

Moderator

Good day, and welcome to the Full House Resorts second quarter earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Lewis Fanger, Chief Financial Officer of Full House Resorts. You may begin.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter earnings call. As always, before we begin, we remind you that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements that we're making under the safe harbor provision of federal securities laws. I would also like to remind you that the company's actual results could differ materially from the anticipated results in these forward-looking statements.

Please see today's press release under the caption Forward-Looking Statements for the discussion of risks that may affect our results. Also, we may make reference to non-GAAP measures such as adjusted EBITDA. For a reconciliation of those measures, please see our website as well as the various press releases that we issue. We're broadcasting this conference call at fullhouseresorts.com, where you can find today's earnings release as well as all of our SEC filings.

Lastly, we did include a small handful of pictures as well of our projects with some update photos. You should be able to see that directly through the press release. You certainly can see them through our website via the press release or the SEC filing. With that said, we're ready to go, Dan.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Okay. Well, I guess the main things I'd address everybody's attention to is really the headlines. That's that we have these two big projects. They're both coming along. They're taking a lot of our attention and time. By the time we talk at the end of the next quarter, we should be in the process of opening in Waukegan.

It'll be right about the time we report third quarter earnings, I think, in the fourth quarter. A year from now, we will be opening Chamonix. They're very important. Each of them is probably going to contribute more in earnings than all of our existing five casinos combined. That's the important part of the company. Second, we're sitting on about $300 million in cash.

Between our cash on hand and our credit facilities and what we earned, we're very confident that we have more than enough money to finish construction of these two projects. I keep hearing these rumors that we're somehow going to raise money, and we have no need to raise money. We certainly don't wanna issue stock at these prices, and we don't wanna go to the debt market in these conditions. We have no need for it. We can complete all of these.

We will need to raise money eventually to build the permanent one in Waukegan, but that's two years away. We have a standby credit facility with a major investment company that I think we can do it on better terms than that. If the bond market was bad, we could always turn to that. We don't need money. Our debt is essentially all fixed rate at this point, not just essentially. I don't think we have any floating rate debt in the company.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

We have not.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

$100. What interest rates are doing, what the bond market is doing is pretty irrelevant to us these days. Obviously, we'd like the bonds to trade better, be better for the bond investors, but it doesn't really have any impact on the company. We did reach a nice agreement with Circa Sports, where they paid us $5 million market access fee, and we will get a percentage of their revenues from operating in Illinois with a floor of $5 million a year once they can be up and operating, which will be once we get the temporary casino open in Illinois. That was a nice plus that came up in the quarter.

The quarter itself fell behind last year's results, but that's largely because there were the big stimulus checks last year. That augmented resorts at all of our casinos and I think just about every casino in the country. Our results were actually decent, but just not compared to last year. In Colorado, we're pretty ripped up with construction at the moment. That also didn't help.

The main thing in the year-to-year comparisons was just the difficult comparison with the second quarter of last year. At the back of the financials, we added some pictures. The first one is off the roof of the SpringHill Suites that's next door to us. This is the Sprung structure in Waukegan.

As you can see, the end of it is starting to be enclosed, as is the other end. It's just about done. I think this is literally from yesterday. Inside that Sprung structure is one and a half football fields. When it opens in the fourth quarter, it'll have 1,000 slot machines, 50 table games and two significant restaurants that seat about 500 people. We've also ordered a diner that will be attached to it, which will seat another 150 people or so. We may not be able to get enough dealers to have all 50 table games open, and it's also possible the slot companies don't give us all 1,000 slot machines.

We've heard from other people, both new casinos, to anticipate that if you order 1,000 machines, you might only end up with 800. That's probably just fine because when we first open, we can use the space to have places for people to sign up for players club and so on. If we get all 1,000 slot machines, that'd be great. We're open with what we get, and it's not the slot machines that gamble, it's the people that gamble. In a few months, we think we'll be quite busy at this place, and it'd be very important.

I wanted to include a map, but we couldn't put that in the press release without getting the rights from Google for Google Maps or whatever the map source is, and that was a little complicated. I'd encourage anybody to pull it up yourselves. The site is at a place called Fountain Place. It's an old shopping mall.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Fountain Square.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Fountain Square. It's an old shopping mall, and it's 30 acres plus 10 that we acquired. There's 30 that we leased from the city, and 10 we acquired. If you look at that Sprung structure to the left, you'll see kind of a grassy area. That's where the permanent casino goes. The dirt area out in front will all be parking lots for the temporary and eventually parking lots for the permanent.

There is some stuff we're doing now. It's not major stuff, but there's some stuff we're doing now that is benefiting the permanent. For example, as we pave all this area, we have to put in some infrastructure to deal with storm water when it rains and so on, and that's really for the permanent, but it has to go in now.

You can see in the distance a hotel, I forget which one that is, but right in our ballpark, there's a SpringHill Suites, a TownePlace Suites, a Courtyard Hotel, a Sonesta Hotel, a Sonesta Suites Hotel, and a Hampton Inn. We're kind of surrounded by hotels, which is why in our first phase, we don't actually have a hotel other than 20 high roller suites with little boutique hotel for high rollers. In the temporary, we will not have any hotel rooms of course. It's about getting the slot machines open and running here as quickly as possible. If you look at a map, you'll see that we are in the center of Lake County. I mean, it's called Waukegan, but it's Waukegan is the county seat for Lake County, which has about 700,000 people. It's one of the wealthier counties in the whole country.

I believe it's the second wealthiest county in the state of Illinois. We will be the only casino there. There are some towns in Lake County, including Waukegan, that have slot machines in bars. You can have up to six per bar. The ones in Waukegan do actually quite well, which I think bodes well for us because if you go and look at what they are, it's usually just a dingy little bar with two slot machines in the back, and yet they're doing pretty well. I think that bodes well for us.

We will be, you know, even the temporary casino, which on the outside is pretty unimpressive, on the inside, we do have quite a bit of decor going in so that we tend to be a positive surprise to people when they go in. You know, our competition is the Rivers Casino, which does huge numbers, like $500 million-$600 million a year.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

$500 million?

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Yeah. It's pretty nice, but they are on two levels, multiple rooms. They're kind of squeezed on a pretty small footprint, and yet they do extremely well. We're one big flat floor, which is usually what the customers prefer. If you go up to Milwaukee to our north, the Potawatomi have a pretty decent tribal casino.

It's also different rooms, multiple levels. If you go beyond those two, pretty much all the other competition anywhere near us are old riverboats that are 25 years old with low ceilings and multiple decks. Even our temporary casino compares pretty well with the competition, and our permanent casino will be head and shoulders above the competition. That's that.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Before you move on, Dan.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Yeah.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

I just wanna make two quick points. One is Dan is right about our location and not being a riverboat, but what is quite nice is we're one of the few casinos that are located right off a major freeway. You can see our site right from the freeway. If you compare that to the two big ones that I know of, one would be Rivers Casino Des Plaines that makes $500 million a year in gaming revenue, as Dan mentioned. The other is a relatively new one. It's the Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana in Gary, Indiana. That opened in May 2021. That's doing almost $400 million a year in gaming revenue.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

It's a big flat floor right off the freeway.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

That's exactly right. That freeway location is quite key. Go ahead, Dan.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Yeah. The other thing is, if you pull up a population density map, you'll see, you know, obviously the suburbs of Chicago are very densely populated. To our north, it gets less densely populated, and to our west, it gets less densely populated. We're kind of at the north end of the most densely populated suburbs.

We think more of our customers come from the south than from the north. It's a long gap between us and Rockford, where the temporary Hard Rock Casino is operating, and there's talk about the tribal casino out that way. Doesn't have much impact on us. We're between the two main freeways that run north-south in this area.

In fact, the commuting train lines come out of Chicago and go north, and they fork about 10 miles south of us. The one fork goes up along the coast through Lake Forest and Lake Bluff and Waukegan and on up to Milwaukee. The left fork goes out through Libertyville and kind of angles northwest, and we're in the middle of the fork.

Not surprisingly, the population tends to live along those train lines, even though I think most people today don't commute into Chicago, but historically they did. The population centers tended to follow those train lines, and this is a great location relative to where everybody lives. The next pictures are of Chamonix. This is a complex building on a complex site in a complicated town. We are between Bennett Avenue and one behind us, Carr.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Carr.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Carr Avenue. Carr is quite a bit higher than Bennett. On the one picture, you'll see our parking garage with a crane in front of it, and the hotel rooms are just starting to go up above that. That's on Carr. This picture is taken from 60 ft above the lowest part of our site. Yet it's all laid out in such a way that the customers will not perceive all of this. You go into the parking garage, you take an elevator down, you walk out in the casino. The second picture shows the front of it because it's taller on the front than it is in the back because Bennett is lower than Carr. You can see it's coming together.

To the right of the crane, on the picture that shows the front, that taller building with the big windows in it, that's the casino. It ends up with big arched windows with sheer curtains where those openings are. To the left is the specialty restaurant, the spa, and the swimming pool go on that structure, and obviously, hotel rooms and the hotel lobby on the center.

That building has now topped out. You can see in that picture to the right, the parking garage, and the other picture shows the back of that parking garage. There's three levels of rooms that go on top of the parking garage, and the first level is just about done, and then they'll start doing the second level.

If you go to the rendering of what it looks like when it's done, you can see how there's essentially three buildings. The main one is the one in the middle, and that anchors the casino and has the spa and the restaurant. Behind it has meeting room space, which has been framed now and so on.

To the right is the parking garage and three levels of rooms on top of that, so that's really a second tower, if you will. In the back, there's a third tower, and that's just starting to come up now. It's quite impressive when you're there in person. It's actually hard to get a good picture of it 'cause it kind of sprawls.

It's a historic district, so we couldn't do a 30-story high-rise like has been done in Black Hawk. We get to a significant size by sprawling out. In Waukegan, we're pretty excited by the results of what we see around, whether it's the VLTs that operate in Lake County in a far inferior experience than what we're gonna provide, or the competition or even the Hard Rock in Gary, as Lewis mentioned. You know, Chicago is still an underserved market, and Lake County is a very underserved market 'cause it has no casino. We think we'll do very well there.

In Colorado, and again, I wanted to include a map, but we don't have the rights to put a map up on our press release. If you pull up a map and look at it, you'll see we are one hour, a little less than an hour from Colorado Springs and about two hours from Denver. Colorado Springs, including Pueblo and Cañon City, which is in the MSA, that's about 1 million people today and growing rapidly. Denver is about 4 million people and also growing rapidly. Our most important market will be Colorado Springs, but Denver will also be an important secondary market. Now, Black Hawk is about an hour west of Denver and two hours from Colorado Springs.

That's why we think Denver will not be our most important market despite being a bigger population, because people there will tend to go to Black Hawk. We might get, you know, 5% of the gaming trips from Denver might make a longer trip to see us, and 5% of the gaming trips from Colorado Springs might take the longer trip to go to Black Hawk.

Obviously, because Denver is bigger than Colorado Springs, we'd be the beneficiary of that. We will rival in quality any casino in the state. I actually think we'll be the nicest casino in the state. We're not on a narrow footprint like Monarch is. Monarch did a pretty good job with what's a very long, narrow casino.

Ameristar is also squeezed on a pretty small footprint, and their casino's on multiple levels. Yet both of those places do extremely well. They both have about 500 rooms, and they're both doing, we think, over $100 million a year of EBITDA. We will have 300 guest rooms. We don't think we'll do $100 million of EBITDA, but we think we'll make more here than our whole company does today. We'll get a very good investment, a very, very good return on the investment at $250 million. I was kind of playing with some math. If you look at our existing operations, we've done about $20 million of EBITDA in the first half of the year.

A couple things benefited us there, the sale of FreePlay and Churchill Downs exiting the sports business. Sale of FreePlay ended up in the second quarter this year rather than the third quarter. That's something we do in Indiana. We've done it every year for several years, where we're basically arbitraging the tax rate that favors small companies or small casinos, I should say. Those were a little bit unusual things that happened in the first half. On the other hand, we have the Circa deal, which is not in the current results and will be going forward. Our run rate's about $20 million for the first half if you make all those adjustments.

Call it $40 million a year, which is below last year, but it gives you a ballpark of where existing ops are going. Like I said, that's probably less than either Chamonix or the temporary American Place going forward. If you look at our stock price, we have 37 million shares outstanding. I was pondering, gosh, what EBITDA do we need to have to equal that share price, to equate to that share price? If you assume the company should be worth eight to 10x cash flow, which is pretty typical for casino companies these days, it works out. We have $400 million of debt. When we're done building all this stuff, we will have some surplus cash, but let's just ignore that for the moment.

You know, if you kind of say, well, what's it work out to? If you run that math, it's like $60 million-$80 million of EBITDA. If it's a 10x multiple, if we trade it at a 10x multiple, and this stuff is all done, you'd have to have about $60 million of EBITDA or $20 million more than we're doing now in our existing operations, which would be like we could do that in half of that Sprung structure in Waukegan.

If it's trading at an 8x multiple, we need $80 million, which is also not a big hurdle. That's why you can see we focused on what we're building and the resources we have to complete it. You know, existing operations had a tough comparison, but we're otherwise about as we expected. On that, did I miss anything?

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

No.

Okay. I know we're trying to do this a little quickly 'cause we know Caesars has their earnings call coming up, so we're happy to take any questions.

Moderator

If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll go to our first question from Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Ryan Sigdahl
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Good afternoon, guys.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Good afternoon.

Ryan Sigdahl
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group

I'm curious. I appreciate the color on the projects. I agree that's the focus. You mentioned in the press release that the launch dates had slipped a few weeks. Can you talk through that? I guess the temporary. I think previously it was expected late October. You're saying Q4 now. Can you just put a finer point on that launch timing?

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

No, that's fine. Well, you know, we don't control everything and you know, we're going as quickly as we can, but construction problems, things arise. The main thing that's been an issue for us there was a union. I forget the full name of the union. It was Local 150 or something. They are the union that represents guys who crush rock. You need crushed rock for both asphalt and concrete, and we need asphalt and concrete. They were on strike for about six weeks. As a result, the asphalt plants and the concrete plants were closed. We need concrete and asphalt. We have some.

We bought some kind of anticipating it, which is how we were able to get a ring structure around and erect the Sprung structure that we have. They settled that strike about a week ago, and now the plants are ramping back up, and of course, they have a big backlog of stuff. We're trying to get it as quickly as possible.

That's just one example. It seems like every day there's some phone call about something else, right? You deal with it. That's just a normal part of construction, to be honest. You know, trying to build anything these days with all the supply chain issues is a challenge, and we're fighting through it.

I think we had properly anticipated when we did the budgets, you know, we had to increase the budget quite a bit in Chamonix when we realized how hard it would be to build. Based on that, we used a big contingency in Waukegan, so I think we had that. You know, there's stuff like, ComEd told us they could not provide transformers. ComEd could not buy transformers. For a while there I thought, well, we're going to have to open with generators mounted on 18-wheeler trucks or something.

Our contractor was able to find some transformers that we bought and told ComEd that we have transformers, and that was a few $100 thousand , that we are offering to transfer to ComEd, so that we could have normal power. You know, there's stuff like that. We had troubles finding pumps for the sprinkler systems, and we finally found them. You know, we've had our challenges. You know, at the end of the day, it almost feels like.

Ryan Sigdahl
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group

I see whack-a-mole.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

I hate to use the comparison. Yeah, a little bit of whack-a-mole, but it also reminds me of these guys in Ukraine who are sending artillery shots at each other. You know, we have shot our missile, and we think we know where it's going to land, and we think it's going to be in the fourth quarter. At this point, you kind of monitor it.

There's not a lot you can do about it unless you want to spend overtime, and we don't want to spend overtime. You're encouraging everybody to go as quickly as possible, and it'll open when it's open. There's no, we're not gonna open until it's ready, and you can't open until they give you approval, both the building department and the gaming commission and so on and so forth. We think it will be fourth quarter.

We have started to hire employees. We've hired a lot of the management team, and we have a number of job offers out to people with them starting work at the end of October, which gives you some idea of when we expect to open. We will open a dealer school pretty soon. We will be paying people to go to dealer school to become dealers because we're going to need dealers. I think that's one of our big challenges is getting enough dealers to open all these table games, and getting them all licensed, which is a challenge. I recognize , this place in Waukegan is going to have like 800 employees.

That's not a whole lot fewer than our whole company has today. Then, Waukegan is also gonna have several hundred employees. We got a lot of work ahead of us this year. Our best guess is what we said in terms of the timing and p ut it another way, I think we're okay on budget, and it's gonna be a little later than we really wanted on timing, and I don't want to spend overtime to try to change that.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Yeah. We're not that far off from where we were last quarter for what it's worth, Ryan. I think last quarter we said late October, early November, and despite those challenges that Dan mentioned, we're still, you know, we've come to satisfactory resolution on all those items and continue to target that same ballpark, so.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Yeah. I mean, on Chamonix, to give you another example, I get up there, I get to each of these places once or twice a month now because things are happening. Maybe a month ago, you can see from the pictures we're using, what's called light gauge steel. You erect this kind of steel structure, and then you pour a slab above it, and the steel structure supports it.

There's gangs of people and subcontractors who specialize in that erection of light gauge steel. I'm up there, and the young man who's in charge of this for Hensel Phelps is very smart, very hardworking. Was frustrated because he was having to turn some of those teams away because the light gauge steel had not arrived on time.

When we went back into it because this stuff is kind of manufactured off-site and brought in on trucks, and they didn't arrive on time. We had workers ready to erect it, and we didn't have the material for them to erect. When we went back a step further, the guy doing the fabrication of that steel said, well, he didn't get his plans from our architects on time.

When you finally traced it down, it was basically our architecture firm. I don't know what they were working on, but there were, like, five guys who didn't get the plans out on time to the other people. After I blew a fuse or two on that, we were able to try to get caught up. You know, you find stuff like that that just slows you down some.

That's, by the way, that's every.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Every project.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Every project. I mean, this is, I think, my 13th and 14th major casino projects, and every one of them has kind of standard little things like that that you deal with. I mean, we had a fun one here. I was walking around Chamonix, and I walked into the loading dock area that is designed for stuff to arrive. I'm standing there, you know, and it's just in the early stages. It's just. I stand in there looking at it. I said, "Well, where's the dock?" The construction guy says, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, the truck backs in here, and you need something that's four feet tall to take the pallets of stuff off the truck." He's looking at it.

He says, "Oh my god, let's go look at the drawings." We went and looked at the drawings, and there was a space labeled loading dock, but there was no dock, right? It was like, just a mistake that somebody made. We're like, "You need a thing 4 ft tall for them to pull the pallets off." We have now made that adjustment.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Got it.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

The trucks come in, and it's not a flat floor. It's a little bit of a ramp floor to get the truck down so that the, you know. And that's just the normal. That doesn't really cost anything. But if you don't walk it while it's under construction. And you'd say, like, "Why does it take the CEO to discover that?" Well, I screamed that a few times. Like, what idiot architect did not put a dock in the loading dock? And then how many people looked at this and didn't realize it? And then I finally had to discover it walking it. Well, that's why you walk it.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Okay.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

God knows how many things our construction people discovered and fixed before I got there.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Okay.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

That's part of construction.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

That's why we've done a lot of these. I'll give you something else to ponder as we wrap up this question for you, Ryan. The next time that we talk to you and others on these earnings calls will be late October, early November. We'll be on the verge of either just about to open Waukegan, or we'll have a much more definitive date for you.

I think unlike some other casinos we've built in our past and in most casinos, I do think that the ramp-up period for this casino will be on the very short side. You know, sometimes you might take 12 months or so before you fully ramp up a property. I think this will be a swift ramp, and in part because of the competitors that Dan mentioned, and in part because we're just so darn close to so many people.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Yeah. It's pent-up demand. They have no existing casino. I think we'll ramp up pretty fast in Chamonix as well, but we're gonna ramp up very fast in Waukegan. In Chamonix, there are existing casinos. We're just a lot nicer than any of the others.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Got something else, Ryan, or are you good?

Ryan Sigdahl
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Good. Yeah, maybe my second question. Just curious what you're seeing on the demand side, if you've seen any deterioration in consumer behavior, going into July. Dan, you mentioned kind of $20 million EBITDA in the first half. You're gonna lose the $2 million of FreePlay, but is that kind of a realistic as you look at the back half, what you see in current demand and everything going on with construction at your existing facilities?

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Well, the stimulus checks benefited mostly the second quarter. They came out very late in the end of the first quarter. Like in July, we were still off a little in July at the Silver Slipper in particular that I recall. I haven't

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Versus prior year. Yes.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Versus prior year, the decline was much less than it was in the second quarter. Now, is that recession? You know, generally, the regional casinos hold up much better in recessions because we're a cheap trip. It's easy for someone to drive to us. There's usually three people per car. We don't do a large convention business like Las Vegas.

The convention business is the first thing that gets hit in a recession. It's hard for us to tell, but I think our business is not really feeling much of an impact. The year-over-year comparisons are getting easier because we're lapping the stimulus checks of last year. You know, just from last recessions, I think our business is pretty recession-resistant because we're an inexpensive way to gamble.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Yeah. I'll add Ryan sequentially. Not looking versus last year, but the last couple months, things continue to be on a relatively similar trend. Pretty pleased with where it looks like July will have shaken out for us. You know, the exception to that would be in Colorado, where as you know, the construction disruption continues.

We had a little bit of a separate problem where our construction created this weird river floodwater pattern that created some flooding issues in our casino over that July 4th weekend. That wasn't helpful. You know, that set aside, things continue as we would have expected sequentially.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Yeah. We also have a lot, at least probably half of what was historically Bronco Billy's is closed.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Yeah.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Part of that is closed because it becomes part of Chamonix, so it's under construction. We also closed, like, the center part of Bronco Billy's to kind of do a light refresh of it. It's still closed, but we're pulling it back together now. Bronco Billy's is operating at much smaller capacity than it's normally had in the past, so.

Ryan Sigdahl
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Great. Thanks Dan, Lewis. Good luck, guys. Look forward to catching up.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Sigdahl
Senior Research Analyst, Craig-Hallum Capital Group

When the temporary is about to open.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Yeah. Well, you're not too far away. Maybe we'll miss there.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Yeah, well, see you there.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Any other questions?

Moderator

We'll take our next question from Chad Beynon with Macquarie.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Hi, Chad.

Aaron Lee
Equity Research Associate, Macquarie Group

Hey, how you doing? This is actually Aaron on for Chad. Thanks for taking my question. With respect to the

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

We would've taken it for your name anyway.

Aaron Lee
Equity Research Associate, Macquarie Group

Thank you. I appreciate that. With respect to the competition to the temporary or to American Place, can you help us understand the situation in Kenosha, where we've heard about potential development, but I think this would still need some major approvals, correct?

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

That's correct. I don't know how they say it, but the Menominee Tribe.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Menominee.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Menominee. Okay. I like Menominee better. Which is, they have a bingo-oriented bingo palace type casino north of Milwaukee, quite a ways up. It's a relatively small casino. They have tried to get into Kenosha before. The Potawatomi, who would be impacted by it the most, 'cause they're just north of that in Milwaukee, killed it 10 years ago.

I think it was an effort. This time, the Menominee is backed by the Seminole, who get involved in these things sometimes. They said they're gonna try to put a casino in Kenosha. You know, we think most of our customers come from the South, and there's a pretty good gap of farmland between us and Kenosha. I don't think it has that big an impact on us. I also think they are a long ways from having the governor's approval and putting land in trust and then actually building it. I think it's a long ways from done, and I think a lot of uncertainty whether it ever happens. Even if it does happen, it doesn't really change our numbers very much.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Yeah. I'll throw a couple other thoughts in there. I mean, traditionally. Well, two things. One, pull up that Google satellite photo, and what you'll see is what Dan mentioned earlier. That's a lot of population density right where we are, going to the south, going to the west. As you start to go north up by up towards Kenosha, what you see is a lot of more farmland. From a density, population density point of view, you know, the density is where we are. Historically, what you'll see is casinos will do well if you have quality or distance, closeness on your side. In this case, we'll have both. We feel pretty good for both of those reasons.

The other thing I would maybe point out as well is if you're on a cusp city. Where does Alex live again? He lives in Wilmette. You know, our head of development lives over in the Chicagoland area. But a lot of those cities that are there around Evanston and whatnot, you are from a mileage point of view, probably a little bit closer to the Rivers Casino. But if you pull up a Google Map, what you'll see is a lot of yellow and red on the paths going towards downtown.

A lot of people in that area, I think, are gonna be predisposed to not wanna travel towards downtown, and will end up spending a minute, maybe five minutes more, perhaps even less, actually, with traffic going our way instead. If you were to include some of those people that are on the cusp, I think that additional population will largely offset any impact that you'll get from that Kenosha tribe. We still feel very, very good.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Yeah, the Kenosha thing, you know, they, I guess the Seminoles funded the purchase of a piece of land, but it's pretty insignificant to the Seminoles. That's what's caused the publicity. The Potawatomi, you know, go look at their website. They have a pretty serious casino. They're the only ones in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is a city of 2 million people. I'm guessing they make well north of $100 million a year of EBITDA at that place.

It's a guess, but just from looking at it. It's a pretty wealthy tribe. This would cut into them. I think we're gonna have a little tribal warfare here. They're both in the state of Wisconsin, and you need the governor's sign-off on it. The governor has said he's not studied the issue yet. It is a much more serious competitor for the Potawatomi because they have kind of a monopoly on Milwaukee at the moment, and Kenosha is kind of a distant suburb of Milwaukee. I think it's a long way from done.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Yeah, that process is gonna take a very, very long time.

Aaron Lee
Equity Research Associate, Macquarie Group

Gotcha. Perfect. Thank you. As my follow-up, how are you thinking about the size of the Full House portfolio? Would there be benefits to potentially selling one of your smaller assets to help improve the balance sheet and allow you to, you know, spend more time on development?

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Oh, yes and no. I mean, frankly, the small assets we have would be principally the ones in northern Nevada, and they're kind of a nice cash cow, and it doesn't take a lot of our time, and we don't need to sell them. We don't need the money, to be honest. It's kinda like, well, if we did have money from selling an asset, I'm not sure what we'd do with it. We don't really need it. Frankly, they're nice businesses as they are. So

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

I will say that I always scratch my head a little bit because we get a lot of interest from people looking at those northern Nevada assets, specifically over in Fallon, a lot more than you would expect. But Dan's right. They from a time point of view and from a cash flow point of view, they're consistent for us and don't require too much of us.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

We have a good management team up there that they're kind of run jointly out of Tahoe, but with a separate GM in Fallon. We fixed up both of them in the last five years, so they're both in pretty good shape. We have a conference call for about an hour once a month with those properties, and they do fine.

I get up there and visit maybe once or twice a year. It's not, you know, it's not like when I was CEO of Pinnacle, we had, like, 15 properties, including four in Argentina. Boy, sometimes you couldn't even remember which property you were talking about. We have five properties, and we're building two. It's really not a strain. You know, it's. It's not like we need to sell one for financing, and it's not a thing we have to do to have more focus on what we're doing.

Aaron Lee
Equity Research Associate, Macquarie Group

Okay, perfect. Thanks so much.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Thank you.

Moderator

Again, if you would like to ask a question. Oh, go ahead.

Lewis Fanger
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer, Full House Resorts

Go ahead.

Moderator

Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one at this time. Again, that is star one for questions. It appears there are no further questions at this time.

Daniel Lee
President and CEO, Full House Resorts

Okay. Well, thank you, everybody. I think our stock is pretty cheap. That's kind of implied by my little analysis of how little we have to earn in the new places in order to justify the current stock price. Hopefully we will earn much more than that, and the stock will rebound in the near future. In the meantime, we're gonna get ready to open Waukegan so that next time we talk, it's either open or about to open. As I mentioned, a year from now, we'll be opening Chamonix. Thank you very much, everybody.

Moderator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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