RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc. (RICK)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2023

May 10, 2023

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Greetings, and welcome to RCI Hospitality Holdings second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. You can find RCI's presentation on the company's website. Click Company and Investor Information under the RCI logo. That will take you to the Company and Investor Info page. Scroll down, and you'll find all the necessary links. Please turn with me to slide two of our presentation. I'm Mark Moran, CEO of Equity Animal. I'll be the host of our call today. I'm here in New York City with Eric Langan, President and CEO of RCI Hospitality, and Bradley, "The Human Calculator," Shea, Chief Financial Officer. Please turn with me to slide three. If you aren't doing so already, it is easy to participate in the call on Twitter Spaces. On Twitter, go to @RicksCEO and select the space titled $RICK, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc. 2Q 2023 earnings call.

Apologies for the technical difficulties here. We good? Looks like we're back at it. To ask a question, you will need to join the Twitter space with a mobile device. To listen only, you can join the Twitter space on a personal computer. RCI is also making this call available for listen only through traditional landline and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow. This conference is being recorded. Please turn with me to slide four. I want to remind everybody of our safe harbor statement. You may hear or see forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated. We disclaim any obligation to update information disclosed in this call as a result of developments that occur afterwards. Please turn with me to slide five.

I'd also direct you to the explanation of Rick's non-GAAP measurements. Finally, I'd like to invite everyone listening in the New York City area to join Eric, Bradley, and me tonight at 7:00 P.M. to meet management at Rick's Cabaret New York, one of RCI's top revenue-generating clubs. Rick's is located at 50 West 33rd between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, a little in from Herald Square. If you have an RSVP, ask for me or Eric at the door. I'm pleased to introduce Eric Langan, President and CEO of RCI Hospitality. Eric, take it away.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks everyone for joining us today. Please turn to page 6 for today's news. We moved ahead on a number of fronts in the second quarter. Revenue grew to $71.5 million. That's an increase of 12.3% year-over-year, reflecting both same-store sales and acquisitions. Free cash flow was $14.8 million, up 33%. Adjusted EBITDA was $21.7 million, up 8.8%. Five clubs look forward to optimizing their contributions. On a sequential quarter basis, our Bombshells turnaround program has started to produce results. We also advanced many of our projects involving club acquisitions, new club developments, the Rick's Cabaret Steakhouse & Casino in Colorado, and new Bombshells locations. I'll be back to tell you more and answer questions later. Here's Bradley to review the financials.

Bradley Chhay
CFO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Thanks, Eric. Good afternoon, everybody. Looking at some of the other major numbers in the quarter. EPS was $0.83. This reflected some non-recurring items. On a non-GAAP basis, EPS was $1.30, up 9.2% year-over-year. Cash from operating activities was $16.8 million, up 44.8%. We had 9.3 million weighted average shares outstanding. That's down 2.4% year-over-year due to prior period repurchases. The 200,000 shares issued as part of the Baby Dolls/ Chicas Locas acquisition had minor impact. That's because they were issued late in the quarter. Moving on to the income statement. Please turn to page 8 to review the nightclubs segment. Revenues totaled $57 million, up 18.4% year-over-year.

That was driven by $6.9 million from acquisitions and newly remodeled clubs, and 3.7% same-store sales growth. Operating margin was 31.6% and 39.3% non-GAAP. GAAP operating margin included primarily a legal settlement expense and an impairment. Compared to the first quarter from fiscal 2023, revenues increased 0.3%, driven primarily by acquisitions. Non-GAAP operating margin declined 1.1 percentage points. That reflected the fact that we had 2 weeks of the Baby Dolls and Chicas Locas acquisition, which did not allow enough time for full optimization. Please turn to page 9 to review the Bombshells segment. I only have three things to say here. Number 1, results improved sequentially.

Revenues increased 6.6%, driven mainly by the acquisition of Bombshells San Antonio and The Grange Food Hall with its new Bombshells kitchen. Non-GAAP operating margin expanded 1.6 percentage points. All this reflects initial progress from our turnaround program. Number two, while operating margin target remains 18-21%, the segment's performance at 15.4% non-GAAP was right in the middle of many well-known publicly traded restaurant chains that have recently reported their results. Lastly, number three, the segment was profitable, generating $1.8 million GAAP and $2.2 million non-GAAP. Please turn to page 10 with me to review our consolidated statement of operations. Note that all comps are as a percentage of revenues. Cost of goods sold declined year-over-year, reflecting increased service revenues. Salaries and wages were higher year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter.

This was due to minimum wage increases in many states where we have clubs on January first. It also reflects the higher labor costs at newly acquired clubs. SG&A was higher year-over-year, declined quarter-over-quarter. Year-over-year reflected newer acquisitions that are not fully optimized, Quarter-over-quarter reflected the absence of year-end audit expenses. Depreciation and amortization were higher year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. The second quarter of 2023 included a one-time accelerated amortization of Grange Food Hall leases. Other charges and gains reflected $3.1 million in legal settlement expense and $662,000 of non-cash impairment. Operating margin was lower year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter, On a non-GAAP basis, was approximately level with the year ago quarter and expanded 1 percentage base point from the first quarter. Interest expense was higher year-over-year Quarter-over-quarter. Second quarter of 2023 included initial cost of new debt.

Please turn to page 11. Keep in mind that this was after paying $18.4 million for the cash portion of acquisitions. Free cash flow was 20.6% of revenues, and Adjusted EBITDA was 30.3%. Both increased sequentially are in line with our 20% and 30% targets, respectively, as a percentage of revenue. To wrap up our discussion of the income statement, please turn to page 12 for an update of our geographic focus. In the second quarter of 2023, our regional revenue breakdown was Texas at 31%, Florida at 25%. New York, Colorado, and Illinois are 8%, 7%, and 6% respectively, and the other 8 states combined for 13%.

This demonstrates our geographic diversification, our exposure to growth states like Texas, Florida, Colorado, and how we develop our business clusters in key areas. To review our debt metrics. Net of loan costs, debt $45.8 million as of March 31st. That's an increase of $35 million from December 31st. The increase primarily reflected financing for the 5-club Baby Dolls Chicas Locas acquisition, primarily offset by scheduled paydowns of other debts. Our weighted average interest rate was 6.52%. This compares to 6.14% a year ago and 6.6% five years ago. Excluding balloons, our amortization schedule is now in the $12-15.7 million annual range, which is very manageable with our higher level of debt, or cash flow, higher level of cash flow.

Please turn to page 15 to review some of our other debt-related metrics. Just 0.1 as of March 31st, below our comfort level of around 3. Please note that this reflects our new debt related to Baby Dolls Chicas Locas acquisition, but only two weeks of contribution. Occupancy cost was 7.6% of revenues. This continued to be well within the 6%-9% range we've averaged when sales weren't dramatically impacted by COVID. Please turn to page 16 to look at our March 31st debt pie chart.

Our debt now consists of 54.9% secured by real estate, 30% seller financing secured by respective clubs and or the real estate to which it applies to, 6.6% of unsecured debt, 4.1% of debt secured by other assets, and lastly, 4% that relates to new bank line of credit that was used in the Baby Dolls Chicas Locas acquisition that was also secured. Let me turn the call over back to Eric.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Thank you, Bradley Chhay. For this quarter, we added a third section to our presentation. We call it Our Take, and are using it to explain underlying thinking to where we are going. I want to remind everybody of our safe harbor statement. You may hear or see forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated. We disclaim any obligation to update information disclosed in this call as a result of developments that occur afterwards. Please turn to slide 18. Everything we do is about our capital allocation strategy, which is similar to those outlined in the book The Outsiders by William Thorndike. First and foremost, the goal of our strategy is to drive shareholder value by increasing free cash flow per share by at least 10%-15% on a compound annual basis.

We have been implementing this strategy since the end of fiscal 2015, with three different actions subject to whether there is strategic rationale to do otherwise. One is mergers and acquisitions, specifically buying the right clubs in the right markets. We like to buy solid cash flowing clubs at 3-5 times Adjusted EBITDA using seller financing and acquire the real estate at market value. Another strategy is growing organically, specifically expanding Bombshells to develop critical mass, market awareness, and sell franchises. Our goal in both M&A and organic growth is to generate annual cash-on-cash returns of at least 25-33%. The third action is buying back shares when the yield on flow per share is more than 10%. As a result of these efforts, we have exceeded our primary goal.

Through the end of fiscal 2022, we have increased free cash flow by 22% on a compound annual basis while reducing shares by 1.5% on a compound annual basis. Please turn to slide 19. What is the current midpoint between whether we should buy shares or invest in buying or opening new locations? Using a possible range of $68 million-78 million for fiscal 2024 against 9.43 million shares, the 10% yield point for buying back shares comes in at $72-83 per share, subject to whether we can make better investments. Please turn to slide 20. Let's take a look at our most recent club acquisition.

We used $15 million in cash, $16 million in stock, and $35.5 million in debt to acquire 5 Baby Dolls and Chicas Locas clubs and their real estate. We estimate the acquisition will generate $11 million in Adjusted EBITDA in the first full year after closing. After that, with remodeling and some expansions, we estimate it will generate $14 million-$16 million in Adjusted EBITDA. Let's assume conservatively we go from $11 million in year one to midpoint, $13 million in year two and $15 million in year three. That total $39 million would represent an return of more than 50% on the $15 million that we put down on this acquisition. If you turn to page 21, let's take a look at our planned Rick's Cabaret Steakhouse & Casino in Central City, Colorado.

We bought the building and real estate for only $2.4 million. We anticipate it will take us about $8 million to complete, which would include 200 slot machines. Including the casino, a similar-sized RCI club generates between $8 million and $10 million in revenue. Slot machines at existing Central City casinos average $129 per day. That's another $9.4 million in annual revenue. The combined estimated revenue of $18.4 million at a 40% average club margin would generate $7.4 million operating profit. Let's assume conservatively that we only do $3.7 million in year one, and in year two we build to $7.4 million. That's a total of $11.1 million.

That would represent an average annual cash-on-cash return of more than 50% on the $10.4 million invested. Keep in mind, this does not include any table games or sports betting revenue. Please turn to slide 22. I'm sorry, slide 23. We also believe we have the opportunity to add even more locations. For example, it took 28 years for the company to go from one location to 21 locations. In the following seven years, we added 19 more, and in the next five and a half years, we added another six to total 56 clubs, which represent only a small portion of the market we want to consolidate. As our company expands in size, we believe we can continue to potentially accelerate our rate of growth.

This is due to a variety of factors, including increased economies of scale, enhanced market penetration, and greater access to resources. With a larger company footprint, we may be better positioned to capitalize on opportunities, take advantage of the synergies, and achieve operational efficiencies that can help drive growth. We believe as we continue to grow as a company, we can potentially experience faster rates of growth and achieve greater levels of success. Turning to Slide number 23, I'm sorry. We believe we have the cash to do this. Let's look at what happened in the second quarter. At December 31st, we had $34.1 million. We made an acquisition, $7.1 million in net new cash.

We made an additional $7.1 million in net new cash, and we used $18.4 million in cash, primarily for the Baby Dolls/Chicas Loca acquisition, ending the quarter with $13 million in cash. Let's look at what could happen in the next fiscal year. Using the range of $68 million-$78 million in free cash flow, plus $21.7 million in debt maturities, leaves us with a range of fifty or $46 million-56 million in projected cash available to use for future investments. Turning to slide 24. We also have shares we can use to finance acquisitions, provided we continue to do it carefully, judiciously, and in an accretive manner. To that end, we believe we have demonstrated a strong track record.

Since the implementation of our capital allocation strategy, we have acquired more than 2 million shares at an average price of $19.55 per share. We have issued 700,000 shares at an average price of $65.71 to provide $46 million of capital for acquisitions. From our viewpoint, we use shares that we've bought at an average of $19.55 and sold them for $65.71 or at 236% cash on cash return. To sum up, we have a long list of investment opportunities with the potential to generate significantly compelling returns when combined with our strong discipline and proven track record to make it happen. Please turn to slide 25.

Before we go into the Q&A, I'd like to announce we'll be holding our 30th anniversary Gentlemen's Club EXPO Convention August 20th to the 23rd at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. For more information, go to the website listed on the slide. Thank you to our loyal and dedicated teams for all their hard work and effort. We can't do it without them. Now here's Mark to start the Q&A.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Thank you, Eric and Bradley. Before we move on, I'd like to congratulate you both on the one-year anniversary of our first Twitter Spaces, the first ever earnings call on Twitter Spaces. If anyone would like to ask a question, please raise your hand in the Twitter Spaces. When you finish your question, please mute your microphone to eliminate any background noise. We have a limited number of speaker spaces, and after your question, we may move you back to the audience to free up space. Before we start things off, I'd like to give a special shout out to Kellen Curry, a listener in the audience and former equity research analyst at J.P.Morgan, who will be challenging George Santos next year for New York's third congressional district. Thank you for joining us.

Let's go ahead and start this show. We'd like to take questions from Rick's equity research analysts and some of its largest shareholders first. To begin, we'll have Scott Buck of H.C. Wainwright. Scott, please take it away.

Scott Buck
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright & Co.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Mark Moran. Eric Langan, I'm curious, can you give us an update on where you are, in terms of licensing for gaming, for the Central City, Colorado location?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Typically, their time is going to take 12 months. We filed at the end of November of 2022. We're hoping to hear something soon. Typically, you'll get some type of preliminary deal which allows us to then set up the casino. I'm hoping that we see that in August, September. Could be as late as October. Gaming in Colorado, it's been a very slow process, not just for us, but for all new licensees. I think I believe there's seven or eight licenses that are now applied for in the state of Colorado. Some are much older, due to, you know, various reasons, on funding of the casino, things like that. I think as a publicly traded company, our funding will be super easy to explain.

It's cash from the bank accounts. I don't think we're gonna have any issues when we reach that point. It's just getting to that point. I know that there's been some shuffling at higher levels in the Colorado Gaming development or department. Hopefully, the new people that are coming in are gonna hopefully speed this process up a little bit. We would definitely like to see our, you know, our license issued by the end of the year. We'd like to do our grand opening as a New Year's Eve party. I think worst case, we could be looking as late as March. Until they contact you, there's not really much we can do. Just sit and wait.

Scott Buck
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright & Co.

Understood. Thank you for that. Now I'm just curious if you could give us kind of an update on what you're seeing in the clubs, just given the current environment. I know the past couple of quarters there had been some weakness in a few of the blue-collar clubs, but, you know, you were kind of more than making up for that in some of the higher end stuff. Any kind of update there on the business would be great.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I mean, I think right now it's just inconsistencies. you know, I don't see real trends forming up or down. I don't see. I think we're just seeing kind of more of the same. We have a location that gets down a little bit. We make some adjustments. It goes up, and then we have another location that's down a little bit. We make some adjustments, and it goes up. you know, so it's just a constant right now. It's like a shell game where we're just kind of moving parts around and moving pieces around and just overall shooting for, you know, a set number each week. If we're hitting that number, you know, we're looking. Like I said, we're looking for the weak spots and the strong spots and we focus on those.

Everybody else is just kind of in water right now. Overall, though, you know, revenues have been strong as you've seen in this quarter. I don't believe that, you know... We've acquired enough new stuff that I don't think we'll see any decline in revenues. The question now is, can we continue to keep the growth rates at, you know, double-digit growth rates? We are looking at other club acquisitions right now that will help that, hopefully by the time we get into the fourth quarter or definitely through 2024. Everything is really, you know, we've been priming the pump here, so to speak, for 2024. I think you'll see a lot of activity as we move into 2024.

Scott Buck
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright & Co.

Great. Appreciate that. Just the last one on the acquisition front. Congrats on the deal closed earlier this year. What are you seeing in terms of pricing when you talk to folks? Any changes there, or are people, you know, kind of holding pat?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I mean, it's always been 3- 5 times. I mean, we basically set the market. Other operators that are trying to expand don't have the capital or the cash typically that we are able to pull into a transaction. They definitely don't have the track record and public track record. I think we just stick to the plan right now. It's all about the Adjusted EBITDA. If we see trends, if their numbers are trending down, we'll, you know, run a forecast based on those trend numbers and make an offer according to that. If the numbers are trending up, we'll, you know, we'll make an offer according to that. We just kind of watch, you know, where everyone's at and what we're seeing in our markets and their market.

It's been pretty, you know, it's pretty basic math these days for us, and nothing's gonna really change much.

Scott Buck
Managing Director and Senior Technology Analyst, H.C. Wainwright & Co.

Super. Well, appreciate the additional time, guys. Thank you.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Thank you very much, Scott. To further highlight your question on spend, I'd like to add that my spend at Rick's establishments has stayed consistent. Next up, we're gonna bring Anthony of Sidoti & Company.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst, Sidoti & Company

Yes, sir. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the questions. just to follow up, Eric, you mentioned that you're making some adjustments to some of the clubs that have to use your phrase, intermittent softness, that you've had. Can you just talk about some of the adjustments that you've been making? just wondering, are these generally the same clubs that first quarter results?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Sorry, I did not hear that. Can you say it again?

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Hey, Anthony, I'm not sure if that's you in the background, but could you repeat the question?

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst, Sidoti & Company

That was not me in the background. No. I'll repeat the question. Yeah. Eric, just wanted to follow up about the adjustments that you said you're making in some of the clubs that you've seen some softness. Can you just expand on that as to what you're doing? Then just in terms of the, what's the common theme, I guess, as far as the clubs that you have seen some softness last few quarters?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yeah, sure. I mean, basically what we'll do is increase social media, make sure that, you know, that our is doing to put people into the clubs. We may run some bottle service specials on slower nights. We may, you know, basically just do whatever we need to do to create a better value for the customers and guests that are visiting the location and doing things to put, you know, more people through the door, whether that's social media, whether that's on-site promotion. We had huge crews out at the Nuggets game last night. I'm sorry, the Miami game, I think, was the day before. You know, you get the idea. It's just, it's more promotional. We become more promotional.

We become more proactive on things. You know, like I said, we watch for, you know, if our main floor is not full, we try to fill it up. If, you know, VIP is empty, we'll try to, you know, run some specials. VIP, we may do more shot specials. We may do, you know, much, like I said, more social media promotions and specials. Just things to put people through the door. That's how we fix it.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst, Sidoti & Company

Got it. Understood. Yeah. Thanks for that color. Then just in terms of the second quarter here, you also cited higher labor costs at the newly acquired clubs. Do you expect to bring those costs down as a percentage of revenue now that you've had a, you know, a few weeks already under the belt?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Certainly. I mean, obviously, when we first take stuff over, they're a little heavy. We put some extra labor in there as well. We become a little heavy on labor. We sort through it. We move people around. We, if there's, you know, dead weight, we have to get rid of the dead weight, to get the numbers where they need to be. Typically, you know, it's a 3-month to 6-month process. Like Denver took a lot longer, I think, this location, because it's in Texas, will be much faster for us.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst, Sidoti & Company

Got you. Okay. You know, it was good to see Bombshells margins up sequentially. Do you still expect that longer term, you can get to your target range of 18-22% segment margins for that piece of the business?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Absolutely. You know, we were viewing prices through most of March. We raised most of the prices we needed to raise at the end of the March period. You didn't see any of those price increases in that quarter. You'll see the effect of the price increases in April, May and June. We'll... You know, the fights have been good. We had a couple of really big fights in April and the first week of May. We've got NBA playoffs have been fantastic. Some, you know, unbelievably close games that are bringing people out. You know, James Harden playing in Philadelphia, there's still a lot of James Harden fans in Houston, so that's bringing, you know, people out to Bombshells in Houston to watch the games.

You know, it hasn't disappointed. It's been Like I said, it's just been a great series. I think next series is gonna be even better, which I think will bring more people out, and then we get through the playoffs. Then I guess we're just relying on baseball for a while, and then football season will start back up. You know, it's the same drill.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

We have the WNBA too, Eric.

Anthony Lebiedzinski
Analyst, Sidoti & Company

Got you. All right. Thank you, and best of luck.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Thank you so much, Anthony. Next up, we have Lynne Collier of Water Tower Research. Lynn, please take it away.

Lynne Collier
Head of Consumer Discretionary, Water Tower Research

Thank you, congratulations. It's a great quarter. Congratulations again. I have a couple questions around your incredible growth opportunity in Central City. The first question is there some reasons that Central City cannot be as built out as Black Hawk? In other words, is there some sort of zoning issue that prevents it from being as big as Black Hawk from a gaming perspective? Number 1. Number 2, what do you envision for Central City looking out over the next 2 or 3, 4 years?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Oh, sorry, I couldn't get my mic to come on. You know, I know you were just up there. I wish I'd have been able to meet with you while you're up there. I just couldn't make the timing work with my schedule. You know, there's no reason Central City can't build like Black Hawk other than in the historic district it won't happen. There is other gaming areas down the gulch and that whatnot where they can build some large hotels like the Z Casino there in Central City. I think it's a 400 and some room hotel with about close to 700 gaming devices. That whole area I think could be developed at some point in the future.

I think the biggest changes is, you know, Black Hawk had a much more business friendly leadership in the city and basically grew their town faster. I think what's changed as well is the gaming laws changed in September of 2021, which is now allowing Black Hawk, or I mean, now allowing Central City to grow. If you look, there's, I think seven or eight licenses applied for in the state of Colorado. All but one is in Central City. Central City is the next growth area for gaming in Colorado. Central City has so much charm. They have so much more on offer in forms of entertainment, art, opera, than Black Hawk. So I think over time, you're gonna see...

I really don't look at it as two competing cities because the reality of it is they're 0.9 miles away from each other. You know, does the Strip and downtown Las Vegas really compete with each other, or is it just, you know, they each have their customer base, their form, you know, they cater to the, you know, the clientele? I think that Central City, Black Hawk will be in that regard, is that they'll share some customers, of course. Sometimes you'll go to Black Hawk, and sometimes you'll go to Central City. I think the reality is most people on most visits will end up in both towns at one point or another because they're just so close.

As they grow together, as that gulch is developed and Black Hawk develops up, you know, towards Central City, and they develop into each other, it's just gonna seem like one giant gaming area. That's what I see over the next, you know, maybe, three, five, 10 years, in that market up there.

Lynne Collier
Head of Consumer Discretionary, Water Tower Research

That sounds great. Thank you. I think they're only like 1 mile or 2 miles apart, right? Black Hawk and Central City.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I'm sorry, you broke up. I...

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Yeah, they're only a 1 mile or 2 miles apart.

Lynne Collier
Head of Consumer Discretionary, Water Tower Research

Oh.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yeah, they're 0.9 miles. They're 0.9 miles. They're not even 1 mile apart. City center to city center is 0.9 miles.

Lynne Collier
Head of Consumer Discretionary, Water Tower Research

Okay. Okay, great. I just have one follow-up question. You talked about Bombshells and the new initiatives that you have that are resonating with the consumer, and you talked about pricing, but what other things are you doing from an initiative perspective regarding Bombshells?

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Hey, Lynne, we were having some technical difficulties on our end. Would you be able to repeat that question again for Eric?

Lynne Collier
Head of Consumer Discretionary, Water Tower Research

I wanted to ask you about the initiatives that you have implemented at Bombshells. They seem to be really resonating, and I know part of it is pricing, but what other initiatives have you put into place at Bombshells in the last 2-3 months?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Well, the pricing was at the end of the quarter, none of the results is from pricing. A lot of it is just, you know, we always call it, or I always call it getting back to the basics. You know, teams get lazy or teams get complacent, we have to remind them to get back on the basics. That's getting back on social media, getting the girls on TikTok, getting the girls on Instagram, getting out there and, you know, taking the girls to promotion events, whether it's a basketball game or, you know, going hitting, you know, all the automotive car lots and inviting all the car dealers in and, you know, salesmen in and stuff like that.

Just getting out there, getting seen and getting, you know, our name out there so that, so that people come into the business. Then, of course, once they're in the store, providing, you know, the best customer service we can provide, making sure that, you know, managers are touching tables and that they're, you know, making sure the guest experience is the best that it can be so that not only do we, have, you know, happy guests, but we get returning guests. Because that's how you build, and that's how you build the margins. Of course, upselling drinks and upselling appetizers and desserts all help, with margins.

It's just, you know, basically getting everybody, you know, doing the things they're supposed to be doing anyway that I just feel that, you know, when your margins slip, it's typically, because of those types of things that, you know, just kinda slip by a little bit or people let go a little bit. Maybe they didn't go to this game or they didn't go to that game because they were too busy or they thought they were too busy. You know, just making people understand that we're never, you know, we're never too busy. We must continue to promote, we must continue to, you know, bring people into the business.

Lynne Collier
Head of Consumer Discretionary, Water Tower Research

Thank you so much. After going out to Colorado, I'm just amazed at what you've accomplished and you really have a true home run and congratulations. That's all for me, I appreciate the time.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Thank you.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Thank you so much, Lynne, for those great questions. Next up, we're gonna bring Rob McGuire of Granite Research. Rob, please take it away.

Rob McGuire
Equity Research Analyst, Granite Research

Congratulations on the quarter. Just have a couple of questions here. First off, on Bombshells, can you get the Bombshells margins back to 18% if the Arlington on-ramp, off-ramp is not yet reopened?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I mean, I believe we can.

Rob McGuire
Equity Research Analyst, Granite Research

Okay, great. Since the price increases went into effect this quarter, can you just give us an idea of how those have been going?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I don't... It's too early. I don't have the numbers from that period yet.

Rob McGuire
Equity Research Analyst, Granite Research

All right. Can you just talk about where cash is today? I might have missed that earlier. What you intend to do? Well, just where your cash is today in general.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I think $22.8 million what we ended the quarter with, and we haven't disclosed anything after that publicly. It's increasing.

Rob McGuire
Equity Research Analyst, Granite Research

Very good. If you could just look at the wages, they're a little higher in terms of wages as a % of overall revenues. Is that something we can expect going forward? Do you think that corrects back towards the mean with the price increases you've been putting in?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I mean, I think we will continue to be in that 20-25% range, I think is what we try to normally shoot for, you know, give or take a couple points. You know, I don't really worry about 1 quarter, simply because, you know, you could have a bunch of overtime, you could have a lot of little things that affect 1 quarter. If we start seeing a trend up on a longer term basis, then we'll have to be much more concerned about it. Right now it's very, very small amount of money anyway.

Rob McGuire
Equity Research Analyst, Granite Research

Okay. I appreciate that. Lastly, just you talked a little bit about the softness in the nightclubs. Has the trend of the softness really being limited to blue collar evolved, or is it continued to be kind of contained in that segment, as you kind of look at the business for the last, I don't know, 6-9 months?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

In the past, yes, it's been pretty based on the blue collar. It's hard to say with April because this April we had Easter this year, but last year Easter was in March. The only weakness was the week of Easter weekend and Good Friday. Of course, the Monday after Easter, this was a little weak. I don't know if the softness was just because of that one-week period or if we're, you know, if there's softness. There's no trends. Like I said earlier, I'm just not seeing any trend in weakness or any trend in strength either way. We'll continue to watch.

As long as we're doing our total weekly numbers, we'll monitor the best locations, we'll monitor the weakest locations, and we'll try to fix the weakest locations and try to make sure that our focus, at the high locations continues and they continue to build and do the big numbers.

Rob McGuire
Equity Research Analyst, Granite Research

Great. Thank you so much for your time.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Thank you so much, Rob. I appreciate it. That softness around Easter was, as a former altar boy, I attended church that weekend rather than go to Tootsie's. Next up, we have Joe Gomes of Noble Capital Markets. Joe, please take it away.

Joe Gomes
Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets

Congrats on the quarter, and thanks for taking my questions.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Sure, Joe. How's it going?

Joe Gomes
Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets

Good. You know, again, service revenues continue to perform nicely. Just wondering, you know, in your mind, Eric, you know, is that something that you think can just continue or do you think that some point in time they start to level out?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I mean, they're gonna find a top at some point. I think they're gonna continue to be in these ranges. I think in the highest peak of the business we were doing 42% or 43% service revenue margins. We're still below those peaks. We do have more Bombshells nowadays than we had back then. I think there's just a, you know, ongoing trend we'll just keep watching and, you know, as certain markets do better with the higher service revenues like New York, we could see the service revenues increase. I mean, the reality is they're gonna fluctuate. I mean, for example, Miami this weekend was insane.

Formula One racing, UFC, which was big UFC boxing, or fights, you had the big boxing event. There was a lot of things driving traffic. When there's that much traffic on the floor, of course, that drives VIP because customers, you know, want to be, you know, not bumped into or get away if they want their private area. Which drastically increases our service revenue. It really, I think, just depends as we move forward, how many events and those types of things. If we have a bunch of events in a quarter, you'll see higher service revenues. If all of a sudden there's not a bunch of events in a quarter, we could, you know, see a little bit lower service revenues.

Like I said, overall, I'm much more concerned with monitoring our total revenue. Our total revenue numbers. We're beating our internal goals for April and through May so far. I'm very happy to see those numbers being beaten. I thought they were pretty optimistic numbers to begin with. The fact that the, you know, the club goals, we set goals at the clubs and the fact that they're beating those numbers, I'm excited about. We are going against some major comps. Like I said, April last year had no Easter. We did have a very strong April last year. I think April was our strongest month of the year last year, actually. I going to try to figure out why.

I know it can't just be Easter. There must have been some major sporting events and some other things in that month as well. We started out the first week of May with a very, very strong week. Like I said, with F1 and the NBA games have been fantastic for us. Just a lot of positive. I mean, you've got Phoenix, you've got Miami, you got New York, you got Denver, all teams that definitely help our revenues right now in the playoffs. You know, we can't lose in the Miami, New York game because either one of those are great. I think we're leaning towards Denver.

We have more clubs in Denver than we do in Phoenix, I'd love to see Denver advance and because I think that'll be more revenue for us. We're watching those games close. Like I said, with James Harden, a lot of Houston fans for James Harden still. I think that if the Sixers continue to advance, that'll help our business as well. We've got, you know, three of the four series are great for us.

Joe Gomes
Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets

Excellent. Now, I think at the end of the first quarter, you had talked about, I think reopening the Galveston Heartbreakers and the Jaguars in San Antonio. Just wondering, you know, how they were performing, you know, this, the past couple of months.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Sure. Both have continuing to see improvements. Heartbreakers has had a couple record weeks, so we're very excited that location is continuing to get better and better for us. The real thing now is to get the Baby Dolls in Fort Worth reopened, which should open by mid-June, I think at the latest. We probably could have opened earlier, but we decided we wanted to do things right. There was some electrical issues and heating, air conditioning issues. There just wasn't enough power to the building, so we had to add additional power to the building, which added about 4 to 6 weeks to the process. you know, we just...

There's no sense in opening in June or July or August, having huge, you know, problems because we can't cool the building. That's all, that's all being worked on right now. We've also got, you know, our Lubbock, Jaguars location is under construction. They've got the steel up. They're closing the building, the parking lot's board. That, that location will come online soon, as well as the Pin Ups location that we bought in Fort Worth, Texas, that we'll, that we'll start construction probably in the next 90 days on that property. I have three more clubs coming up.

Joe Gomes
Senior Research Analyst, Noble Capital Markets

Great. One more for me, if I may. I know you had that $200 million goal of investment, for the, you know, each year of the next couple of years. I think at the end of the first quarter, we were around $110. You still confident you'll be able to get that other, let's call it $90 million, invested over the remainder of this fiscal year?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I mean, we're certainly gonna try. You know, we've got to find the right deals. We've got a lot of construction going on. We're in the process of 4 bank loans right now for various constructions and properties. Hopefully those will lock on through. We're getting rates between, I think 6.8% and 7.25%. Rates are not horrible yet. We're gonna try to lock in what we can lock in and get these other construction projects going. Some of the construction projects we're doing in cash, like the Jaguars in Lubbock, is all cash. Our Stafford location, we basically paid all cash for the construction there.

we've got multiple properties that we could turn around and cash out of at some point here in the next six months. If rates settle back down, the Fed stops. When the rates come back down and we start seeing a 6% rate again, I would look for us to do a refi or cash out, I should say, of probably around $20 million-25 million, which give us a, you know, nice chunk of cash going forward, which will make it easier to, you know, hit that $200 million mark. Right now I'm not seeing anything that's standing in our way from us making those investments other than we must find the right deals. I'm not doing deals to do deals.

I'm only doing deals if they meet our requirements, and we can get the cash-on-cash returns that I see, you know, versus buying back our stock.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Thank you so much, Joe, for those questions.

Before we bring up our next questionnaire, I'd like to encourage everyone to retweet and share this space. If you have a question to ask, please raise your hand and we will bring you up as a speaker. Next up, we have the deep value provocateur, Orchid Wealth. The mic is all yours. Hey, Orchid Wealth, you're gonna have to unmute yourself to ask the question.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

Got it. All right. Good quarter. My big thing that I wanted to get some clarity on is you guys obviously keep acquiring the real estate in these prime areas, Texas, Florida, Colorado. Do you have any idea what the underlying property values that you've been buying have accumulated by? Like, you know, I mean, if I'm in where Tootsie's used to be, how much in those respective counties is commercial property going up year after year, which you don't record on your balance sheet as those properties move up?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

We're not allowed to, you know, take step-up basis. We have to use cost basis accounting under GAAP. I would guess, you know, in certain markets. I mean, we've turned down some pretty. You know, there's always people out trying to buy your properties, right? I don't know if you guys. Anybody that owns property knows there's, your phone rings off the hook. "I wanna buy your house. I wanna buy this. I wanna." We get those calls on a regular basis. We've gotten some offers. I mean, we bought Tootsie's property, can't remember what year it was, 2015 maybe, for $15 million. I've got an unwritten offer, you know, verbal over the phone, would I take $24 million for it? Of course, I laughed.

I was like, "Well, if you add a zero, we can sit down and talk. We own the club." "Oh, we thought you could just move that tenant." I said, "No, we are that tenant." I mean, I don't know. I think they're somewhere... I think we have about $250 million-plus in real estate last time I did everything. We have a hundred and... On the sheet, I think, what? $120-some million in real estate debt. Was that slide 14?

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

All right. The thing is, I just keep looking at the fact that your borrowing cost on this real estate that you've had over the years-

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Mm-hmm.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

It seems to be growing at least equal to what you're paying out in interest on these properties.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Oh, probably, easily. I mean, we're only. You gotta remember, our weighted interest rate now on our real estate is only 5.41%. I mean, our overall is 6.52%, but our real estate debt's finance much cheaper. About a point cheaper, right? A little over a point cheaper. That's highly possible. You know, you gotta remember, a lot of this real estate that we bought, we've done some pretty major improvements, you know, to the properties as well. That never hurts with the value.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

Then about what % of the entire business do you own real estate, and what % is leased?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Bradley and I just did this the other day. 85 and 15%, or 83 and 17%. About 15-17% leased. The only reason we have so much leased now is because the restaurants and the Lowrie acquisition. I think it's pretty close to 85 and 15, I believe. We've got all the new locations that we're getting ready to open, that we're building in like Rowlett and Lubbock, Austin, Texas, Aurora, Colorado, downtown Denver, Colorado, all those locations are owned. As more locations open, the percentage of owned properties are going to go up versus leased properties, because we haven't added any leased properties recently. Not that we won't.

I mean, we find the right location, and it's got the right, you know, right term lease, and the lease's price is right. I mean, you know, if we can lease it cheaper than we can buy it, we may tend to lease. You know, just really depends on how much capital we have to put into the location as well.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

At the new casino location, when that goes in, you're gonna have a steakhouse, and you will have a club in there. Are there any other clubs in that area?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Hey, you said, "At the new casino location," but I didn't get the rest. I'm sorry.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

Oh. At the new casino location, you're gonna put in a steakhouse, and you're also gonna have a club...

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yes

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

of some sort.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yes.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

Are there any other clubs within that area?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

The 5 clubs we own, which are about average of about 45 minutes away.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

Okay.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

In Denver.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

The idea being is if somebody's on a vacation, and I've got a bunch of guys, and we all head up there, and we're looking for something, you are the only game in town when it comes to that. Or hopefully.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I'm about the only game in town for you to eat after 11:00 P.M. at night up there. Other than 24/7 at Monarch. I mean, this town is. It's amazing to me because it's literally the. It's a gaming town. All you can do is gamble. I mean, you can fish. In the summer, there's some things to do. In the winter, their numbers die down. You've got the opera. You've got a lot of art galleries and stuff in Central City. For Black Hawk, other than the new distillery area that they're opening, I just don't know a lot. The casinos, I mean, they barely have lounge acts. I saw some ads for this summer. They're bringing in some lounge acts.

I was like, "Wow, finally a lounge act, you know, a live band of some kind." You know, something. There's just. It's literally there's no entertainment in that marketplace right now. That's what was so exciting to me. I was like. You know, we can take Central City and turn it into the Fremont Street of Vegas with all the entertainment. The Strip is 0.9 miles away and has 0 entertainment. Come 11:00 at night, midnight, you're on a table, and you're not doing very good, you're not feeling it. You're like, "Man, I gotta get out of here." You got two choices: You drive back to Denver, or you go to bed in your hotel room. There's nothing else to do out there. I'm gonna give you a 3rd option.

Well, hey, let's go see the girls at Rick's, or, you know, as we continue to look at properties out there and do other things, you know, we may, you know, we may build a nightclub out there of some kind. You know, just other things to create an entertainment zone for the thousands of people, especially Thursday, Friday and Saturday, that are out there that are gaming and, you know. You know, if you're winning, you wanna stop and go do something else. If you're losing, you wanna stop and do something else, right? I just wanna give them those other options. I think.

If you wanna game still, you still can, which I think will be a big part of our deal is, you know, you may come to the casino to gamble and end up, you know, seeing an entertainer and ending up in VIP. You may come to see the entertainers, end up in VIP, and then decide, "Hey, let's go play blackjack for a while." I think there's just gonna be a lot of synergies between the two businesses. I know it hasn't been tried before, and I know I'm gonna have a learning curve. The beauty of it is, both businesses are so profitable that, you know, I'm still gonna be paid very, very well while I'm working through my learning curve.

That's why you see in our analysis, we said, look, the first year, let's say, we only do, you know, half the money. We only do $3-point some odd million, and it takes us that first full year to learn and get to the point where the second year we earn the $7-point some odd million. you know, we're still at 50% cash on cash return on this investment. To me, it's just a super easy... I haven't seen anything that's excited me like this since 2004 when I bought Rick's Cabaret on 33rd Street.

You know, that was a better company deal at that time, and we did $6.7 million in revenue the year before, and we paid $7.6 million for a single club, and within four days of owning it, I tore it down. There was nothing left but three brick walls. Then we spent, you know, $3.8 million rebuilding it, which was, you know, an unbelievable amount of money for us at that time. But, you know, that's what created their, you know, the RCI and the... that we see today. I think this property, for a very small investment of $10 million, has a chance of, you know, taking this company to a whole different level than where it is today.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

On a different pivot. When you take over clubs over the history of, let's say, the last 5 years or so, when you take over the business, what's like the Rick's premium that you guys are able to squeeze out on average from what they were doing numbers-wise to what you think, like in, a year, 1 and a half of you being there, you can get it up to? Is it like 15% improvement?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Typically-

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

It's 20% improvement?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Typically about 20%. I think we're at 17.4 on the trailing 12 months through December 31st. I don't know if Bradley ran it in March. If he did, I didn't see the report, but I know through December 31st, I think we were up... Or maybe that was through March 31st. We were up 17 or 18%.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

Okay

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I think 20% is a pretty good number for us. We tend to increase revenues and the EBITDA by about 20%.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

When you're purchasing the clubs for 3-5 times, it's 3-5 times their numbers, you come in, and you're finding another 20% on top of that, which obviously lowers your acquisition costs. You don't realize that until a few years later.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yeah. Typically, I mean, typically that's what we're seeing. Sometimes we see it in the first year. Sometimes we see it right away. I mean, look at Tootsie's. When we bought Tootsie's in 2007, we bought $18.8 million in revenue on. They were doing $8.8 million in EBITDA. We paid $25 million for it. The first year, we did $23.8 million in revenue and $11.4 million in EBITDA. Sometimes it's immediate, sometimes it, you know, takes like. Denver probably would've been pretty immediate had we not been coming out of COVID, there was employees to hire. You know, we didn't lose so much of the management staff because, you know, they had just not really recovered from reopening from COVID.

They'd only been open four weeks in Denver when we bought it. Some of the other clubs had been open a little bit longer, I mean, They were in markets that all opened late from COVID. There was a lot of issues we had to work through, it took us almost six months to, you know, to realize and see the gain there.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

One last question. When you showed us the universe of the 2,200 total clubs that are out there, give or take, what % of them are owners that have, let's say, four or more clubs? You know, I mean, like it's-

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I-

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

... not all individual owners, but I mean, like, you know, when you go to the industry, I've gone to a couple of these events. You know, I seem to run into people that these people own, like six, four, five. Sometimes, you know, there's a bunch of ones and twos. It seems a lot of.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yes

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

... participants at these club events are usually the guys that own multiple clubs.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yeah. At the EXPO, it's definitely a lot of multi-club owners, I think it's anywhere from 2 to, you know, 25 that these guys own.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

Mm-hmm.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Of course, you've got a couple of the big boys, you know, that own, that own lots of clubs like us. You know, there's not very many of those. I think only one other club owner really owns the same number or more, probably more clubs than we do. Most of them are smaller, you know-Between 4 and 10 clubs, I would say is an average. You've got a few, like I said, they're probably in the up to about 25 range. There's plenty of people out there for us to purchase clubs from as we go through. There's a lot of one-offs that we can do throughout time. You know, the key is running them.

We just made a major acquisition, and I laugh, I say, you know, people are worried about Bombshells, and 1 single location in the last acquisition does more annual, you know, EBITDA than all the Bombshells combined. It's like, why don't we, you know, focus on the important stuff, which to me, which is the clubs, and, you know, everything else is just bonus for us. You know, bonus ways for us to, you know, come up with the money, build additional free cash flow and, you know, put money to work while we're waiting for the next club acquisition. We have to put management teams in, we have to run them. You know, our director of operations for RCI Management Services is in Dallas right now.

He's working on getting the new club open. He's putting the teams together, putting our POS systems in, getting our culture ingrained in the acquisition, in the clubs that we acquired. That takes time. I mean, it's a 3-6 month process. You know, people say, "Well, can you go buy something else?" I could probably go buy something else right now, but why stretch our management team? You know, our pace of how we've done it has increased over time because our ability to manage them has increased over time. As our ability to manage and absorb more acquisitions increases, we'll buy more. You know, we'll make more acquisitions.

In the meantime, it's nice to have a couple of other things to put our cash flow into and keep the machine running.

Seth Swenson
Analyst/Investor, Orchid Wealth

Great. Thanks.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Thank you so much for those questions. Before we bring up our next person to ask a question, I'd like to give a shout-out to DKNY. My man, if you come by the shareholder reception tonight, I will teach you how to purchase sunglasses that aren't from the women's section. We also have a dunk tank waiting for you, as well as Bradley Chhay, America's favorite CFO, to do an arm wrestle challenge. If you lose, you will become a shareholder of RCI Hospitality Holdings. Next up, we're gonna bring Adam Wyden, the largest individual shareholder of RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc., up. Adam, please take it away.

Adam Wyden
Founder and Portfolio Manager, ADW Capital Partners

Can you hear me, everyone? Hello?

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Hello. How we doing?

Adam Wyden
Founder and Portfolio Manager, ADW Capital Partners

Okay, perfect. Sorry I'm a little late. I had another earnings call. I know these go on for a while, you'll have to catch me up. I'm just, you know, reading through the deck a second time. On the Steakhouse and Casino, you guys talked about, you know, conservatively taking 2 years to get from 3-7 to 7-4. Have you guys sort of quantified? I know your slot revenue participation is very, is less than half of Black Hawk, which is really conservative. I mean, if you could match Black Hawk, that's God, shoot, that's a lot more EBITDA. That's probably another $4. Have you sort of talked a little bit about like what the table games...

I know there's also supposed to be a steakhouse there, and you're talking about digital sports betting, but also potentially in-house sports betting. I mean, it'd be nice to sort of... You know, you sort of give it a bare bones estimate of what the revenue and EBITDA contribution. I mean, it might be helpful to sort of give the other layers. Obviously, it's a new business for you, so you're not gonna guide to it. It might be helpful to sort of outline the sort of other buckets and how big they could be.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Well, you've outlined the buckets. I'm not making any guess on any of those other revenue sources at this time, because I just don't know. I think the steakhouse is actually part of the club revenue. The only thing you really have that we didn't include is table games, which we have no clue on at this point. We've got some preliminary numbers. You can go to the Colorado Division of Gaming's website. You can download every casino's numbers. You can download combined casino's numbers. You can download it by city. You guys can go look at all those things yourselves and put together models. I am not sharing my models at this time. I think it's way too premature for that for us.

As far as the sports betting goes, I mean, we know that the online sports skins sell... or I say sell, but basically, a partner with an online sports betting group will partner with a casino, and those range anywhere from about $7.5 million-10 million over 10 years on a contract on a revenue share basis with a minimum payments. We are not including any of that at this time. We don't have a signed contract at this time with any other group. We have been talking with groups, negotiating with groups, and I think that within 30 days after our license is issued, we will have a full-time partner. Probably, the day the license is issued, we'll have the partner, and they'll be licensed within 30 days after that.

That'll be immediate income as well. I don't want to speculate on where we're gonna be or what that revenue is gonna be at this time. I don't need to. I mean, I just showed you that if I make 0 off of all those other things, I make 50% a year for 2 years. That's anticipating that I am going to be so behind the learning curve that I'm only gonna do 50% of the revenue in the first year that we anticipate. Well, it's not even that we anticipate. It's that the other operations do.

Adam Wyden
Founder and Portfolio Manager, ADW Capital Partners

Yeah, I.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I think it's a conservative number. I don't need to go out on a limb. I don't need to say we're gonna make $20 million or $15 million or anything else to justify the investment. I wouldn't even be trying to justify the investment, but I have a lot of, you know, calls and a lot of people saying, "Why are you doing this?" I wanted to put out there why we're doing it. This is our take. This is our math. This is the way we see it happening.

You know, if we can make 50% cash-on-cash returns, I mean, there's not too many investments I'm not going to invest in when I have the certainty of an investment like this and the backup of, you know, with table games and with online sports betting and actual sports book on the premises as well. I mean, we didn't include any sports betting that I can make my 50% returns that easily, so.

Adam Wyden
Founder and Portfolio Manager, ADW Capital Partners

That was sort of my point that, you know, you beat the crap out of the numbers and it's still a 50% cash-on-cash. You know, those are the best types of investments where everything goes to hell in a handbasket and you make 50%. I was just trying to, you know, lay out the other buckets for folks so they understand that if you execute on this like you've done on other things, there's a lot more upside. That's helpful. What else?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Have you... I mean, if, you know, I'll give you a little color on slots, for example. Central City is $129 a day. I think the Black Hawk average is about...

Adam Wyden
Founder and Portfolio Manager, ADW Capital Partners

$284.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

100 and something a day.

Adam Wyden
Founder and Portfolio Manager, ADW Capital Partners

It's always that.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

If you take your top casinos over there, they're running over 400 and something a day. You know, if we can come in somewhere between 129 and 300 even, in the middle of that zone, you're talking about millions more dollars. I think there's a lot of, you know, uniqueness to our project. I believe that, you know, with our properties in Denver, we'll be able to market our properties around the country. We'll be able to market a lot of packages to not only our employees and entertainers and our guests of our existing clubs around the country, but, you know, they'll bring friends and they'll, you know. This will become a very unique, very unique market, I think, for us.

Adam Wyden
Founder and Portfolio Manager, ADW Capital Partners

Got it. I don't know if anyone has asked about sort of M&A. I know you know you've got your digesting Birch and you did Lowrie. You know, have you commented at all about sort of these little clubs that you sort of are renovating and repurposing and sort of the ramp-up of those or any of the other sort of smaller M&A opportunity and what that looks like?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yeah. We've talked about the three properties that we have in various stages of construction right now, that will probably all be open in 2024. We talked about, I forgot what slide number it is now, but we've talked about the free cash flow generation on slide 23, that, you know, how much cash we'll have. We're still looking to invest, you know, $200 million a year. We're showing where this cash is gonna come from. We talked about the bank loans that, we'll still be able to get on our real estate, how we have about $20 million-25 million in cash out that we can do. If interest rates drop back under 6%, we'll probably immediately cash those that real estate out on new real estate loans.

I mean, all the pieces are in place. We just have to continue to do what we do.

Adam Wyden
Founder and Portfolio Manager, ADW Capital Partners

Right. Yeah. I noticed that you updated your buyback slide for different fiscal year 24 ranges with free cash flow. Obviously, these are on the consensus numbers, I suspect, not where you think you are, but sort of gives people a sort of a band of outcomes in terms of, you know, where the buyback is. You know, looking forward to hopefully seeing some of that as well. I'll hop back into the queue, and if I have more questions, I'll raise my hand.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

All right. Thanks, Adam. I'll let Mark take over again.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Thanks so much for those questions, Adam. Next up, we have Brian Stagflation, who has the best bio on all of Twitter. Please take it away.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Mark. Congratulations to Eric, Bradley, and the RCI team for a great quarter. As a frequent customer, I wanted to ask you guys the following question.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I think you have to turn off your mute there to ask questions.

Speaker 11

Is it better now? Can you guys hear me?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

You can hear him?

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

I can hear him.

Speaker 11

I wanted to ask the following question, which is, what systems do you guys have in place to ensure club quality stays consistent as expansion continues to grow?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

We just put our systems in. We put our culture in. you know, if you follow @ReardonDean1 or ReardonDean1, whatever Dean's handle is on Twitter, you know, that's our Vice President of Operations. He posts, you know, all the parties, how he takes, you know, he takes the teams to lunches and dinners, and he posts the DJ meeting the other day where we had a big MMA star as a surprise speaker on the call. I mean, those are the things we do. We build our culture. Our culture keeps everything else in line, because people wanna be a part of it.

Speaker 11

Thank you.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

There's a lot of people requesting.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Seems like Twitter's having some difficulties, guys. We're sorry. We're working on it here, but, hopefully you can hear me. You do sound like everyone who I'm hearing. Let's see if that works. Apologies for all of the technical difficulties we're having. We're gonna blame Elon on this one. I have a question, that was submitted anonymously, and so I'd like to encourage anyone who has questions who is listening who would like to ask them that you can go to the form at the top of this space and type them in. They'll be relayed to me, or you can DM me. This question is, Eric: What is the go-to-market strategy for you guys to expand into sports betting in an already crowded sports book app market? What is the main product differentiation?

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

The beauty for us is it's not our product. We're being paid a minimum fee to use our license in the state of Colorado. You got to remember, sports betting may be credited in certain markets. In other markets, it's not as crowded because you have to have a license in that state in order to take bets in that state. Currently in the state of Colorado, there are only 31 possibilities, I believe maybe 21 or 24, I can't remember the number, but I'm sure you can find it on the Colorado Division of Gaming's website, on how many of those licenses have actually, you know, are using what they call a skin. They call it skinning it. They skin it with their thing.

Like, when you bet on, you know, say, you know, BetOnSports, PENN Entertainment's deal, you're actually betting through the Ameristar Black Hawk in Black Hawk, Colorado. You're on their license. Everything's done through their license, through the skin of BetOnSports. That kinda gives you an idea. You know, there's still plenty of... You know, you talk about all those gaming companies, well, all those gaming companies aren't licensed in the state of Colorado, and anyone that aren't licensed should reach out to us because we have two skins at this point that should be available sometime around the first of the year. In fact, I'm gonna go to a gaming convention tomorrow afternoon and market those skins as well.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

With that, we are gonna be concluding our Q&A session. Thank you so much, Eric and Bradley, on this one-year anniversary of the first-ever earnings call on Twitter Spaces. For those who joined us late, you can meet management tonight at 7:00 P.M. at Rick's Cabaret New York, one of RCI's top revenue-generating clubs, and also where DKNY, our favorite troll, will be participating in an arm wrestling battle with Bradley Chhay and will become a shareholder tonight. Rick's is located at 50 West 33rd Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, a little in from Herald Square. The exact crime scene of where I spent $20 in ATM fees last night.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

I've seen you there three times, Mark.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Okay. It was 30. All right, Eric. Rick's, if you haven't RSVP'd already, you can ask for Eric Langan or me at the door. After 9:00 P.M., however, I will be busy implementing my own capital allocation strategy. I'm gonna pass off to Eric to say one more thing, but on behalf of all of us at the company and our subsidiaries, thank you so much. Now, Eric, with the last word.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yeah. I just wanna thank A shout-out to Antonio Brown, who brought the Camels and the goats to Houston to visit with me for a couple of days, and thank them personally for inviting me to their barbecue at their meet and greet. It was a great event. I had so much fun, and I look forward to next year's meet and greet of the Camels in Denver, where I plan to host you guys again. Hopefully we can set up some other companies for you guys to visit while you're out there so, you know, you're not just learning about us. Thanks again for inviting me and sharing your time with me.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Hey, Eric, one last thing is you said you hadn't been this excited since 2004 about the Central City opportunity, but I was just as excited when I saw Marissa Glodden and Nancy Landa video earlier today. I very much look forward to meeting you ladies in Dallas or Miami.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Oh, we met them in Miami. They were with us.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

I didn't meet them.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

at Carbone after F1. No, you didn't. I did.

Mark Moran
CEO, Equity Animal

Oh.

Eric Langan
President and CEO, RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc.

Yeah. Great. We had a great time. We partied at Carbone till I think about four in the morning. Yeah, definitely enjoyed the visit with them and look forward to hosting them again next time I'm in Miami, or if they make it to Dallas, I'll try to make it up there as well. With that, thank everyone for your time today. Look forward to another great quarter as we move forward and hope to talk to everyone again soon.

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