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Q4 2024 Dave & Buster's Entertainment Inc Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Cory Hatton; Vice President Investor Relations & Treasurer; Dave & Buster's Entertainment Inc

Kevin Sheehan; Chairman of the Board, Interim Chief Executive Officer; Dave & Buster's Entertainment Inc

Darin Harper; Chief Financial Officer; Dave & Buster's Entertainment Inc

Andy Barish; Analyst; Jefferies

Andrew Strelzik; Analyst; BMO Capital Markets

Dennis Geiger; Analyst; UBS Securities LLC

Jake Bartlett; Analyst; Truist Securities, Inc.

Sharon Zackfia; Analyst; William Blair

Brian Vaccaro; Analyst; Raymond Jame

Brian Mullan; Analyst; Piper Sandler & Co.

Todd Brooks; Analyst; The Benchmark Co. LLC.

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Dave & Buster's Q4 and fiscal year end 2024 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) Please note today's event is being recorded.
At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Cory Hatton, Head of Entertainment Finance, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Cory Hatton

Thank you, operator, and welcome to everyone on the line. Joining me on today's call are Kevin Sheehan, our Chair of the Board and Interim CEO; and Darin Harper, our CFO. After our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. This call is being recorded on behalf of Dave & Buster's Entertainment, Inc. and is copyrighted.
Before we begin the discussion on our company's fourth quarter and fiscal year-end 2024 results, I'd like to call your attention to the fact that in our prepared remarks and responses to questions certain items may be discussed which are not early based on historical fact. Any of these items should be considered forward-looking statements relating to future events within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause or results to differ from those anticipated. Information on these risks and uncertainties have been published in our filings with the SEC which are available on our website.
In addition, our remarks today will include references to financial measures that are not defined under generally accepted accounting principles. Investors should review the reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measure contained in our earnings release this afternoon.
And with that, let me turn the call over to Kevin.

Kevin Sheehan

Thank you, Cory. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. While we are disappointed by our results for the fourth quarter, we are very encouraged by the clear to these we have identified over the past few months and the most recent trends in the business and taking actions to unwind mistakes and make appropriate changes.
Previous leadership while well-intentioned, made significant and ill-advised changes to marketing, Food and Beverage, operations, remodels and games investment that negatively impacted the business. The current leadership team has been systematically unwinding these mistakes and pursuing a back-to-basic strategy, we're making high confidence improvements to the key areas of the business entirely in line with our previously communicated strategic plan.
For the avoidance of doubt, our strategic plan is the right plan. Execution against it was flawed, we are highly confident that our current actions will lead to significantly improve revenue, adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow and share value in the months ahead.
Results in March and April have notably improved from the trends of the fourth quarter and on through February, and we expect results to continue to improve in the coming months. Our financial position remains strong with relatively low leverage, no near-term debt maturities and no operative financial covenants. As you all know, we have an excellent business model with high returns on new unit investment, best-in-class store-level economics, disciplined expense management and significant operating free cash flow generation.
Importantly, the current leadership team and the full Board are laser-focused on managing this business to drive both revenue growth and free cash flow generation, our team could not be more excited by the opportunities we see ahead to meaningfully improve the operating performance of the business and shareholder value.
Let me take a few minutes to highlight some of the issues we have identified with key elements of the business and the changes we have made or are planning to make to unwind mistakes and deliver better execution and improved results. As previously discussed, we are much more in the process of returning to the basics of what made this company so successful in the past. This is a simple business with an exceptional business model that was doing quite well. In attempting to improve the business that was already doing well, prior leadership made very dramatic and chaotic changes that, among other things, distracted, confused and overwhelmed our customers and our operators.
On marketing, prior leadership made drastic changes to our media mix, essentially eliminating TV entirely. We went from 90%-plus TV to essentially zero. Prior leadership also overwhelmed our customers and operators with way too many and often overlapping and conflicting promotions.
We have already reintroduced TV back, and we have returned more closely to our historical cadence of promotional activity. In particular, we have reintroduced our historically most popular and successful promotion, our classic Eat & Play Combo. We will continue to promote this incredible value proposition in all of our marketing channels and are already seeing it as an increasing mix of old checks.
On operations, we were overwhelming our operators with promotions and making too many other changes to menu, service style, pricing, labor configuration, remodel activity and other changes while reducing or eliminating our training activities, and we were not properly in picking with and listening to our operators. We have dialed back most of this and returned to the historical practice I've personally spent an enormous amount of time directly with our operators hearing from them, hearing their issues and the many opportunities that we see each and every day.
We are also reintroducing our historical training practices and reestablishing our quality standards. On menu, we eliminated popular ticket entrees and overpromoted lower-ticket shareables, which led to a trade down. We also have favorably changed our pricing architecture and changed our menu design and configuration. We have already made changes to the menu design and configuration and many of the pricing issues as well.
We are in the process of returning our most popular entry items back to the menu and plan to roll out our Back to Basics menu in the coming months after some extensive testing.
On remodels, we didn't properly test our prototypes. We didn't listen to our operators. We didn't prioritize Target stores to be remodeled well, and we spent well beyond budget on many stores. We very strongly believe in our remodel strategy. We're really reevaluating our prototype in close collaboration with our operators, reprioritizing target stores and revising our budget spend in oversight. We completed an additional 15 remodels of DB stores for a total of 44 completed under the program which began in 2023. And this is in addition to almost 100 stores that opened in the last seven years.
Given the mixed results and the need to address certain flaws with the rollout strategy, we were proceeding with a more measured pace in the first half of 2025 to garner additional insights to better guide the running stores in scope to the remodel program and to ensure we are effectively allocating capital towards the highest return. There is no doubt that an effective remodel program should deliver high returns on investment and drive meaningful same-store sales growth.
On games investment, prior leadership deemphasize new games and development and investment. Up until earlier this year, we had not introduced an observable number of new games into our stores in over two years, which is a significant departure from our historical practice of what we know to be the right way to run our business. We have been able to move quickly and have an all-store lineup of new games rolling out in the stores now.
Leading the new lineup attractions is our all-new Human Crane, a life-size version of the classic Arcade core machine experience that builds on the innovative qualities of the Dave & Buster's brand. The Human Crane allows guests to become the core gently lowering into the sea of oversized prices.
With over 40 D&B stores operating the Human Crane today and plans to roll out 100 more locations in short order. The initial performance has been electric, and we expect to see a less than six-month payback on this hugely successful addition to the midway.
In addition to Human Crane, we are launching six new premium marquee games. UFC challenge, a high-energy UFC theme fighting game, exclusive to Dave & Buster's and further establishing our brand as a premier destination to watch every UFC and fueling our watch program. Godzilla BR, where players diverse themselves in the virtual reality battle against the colossal creatures in a thrilling multisensory experience.
NBA store where players compete at their favorite NBA icons in dynamics three versus three matches. Top Gun MAVERICK will play a step-up into the cockpit and take on intense missions inspired by the blockbuster film. NBA's mason's fund where players tested timing to win exclusive pride the favorite team in an engaging game. And finally, Funko where players can enjoy a retro-inspired game, offering a chance to win exclusive Funko collectives. These new games or just the beginning of the excitement we are rolling out in the summer with our revival of the Summer of Games further enhance a Midway experience.
New store development, delivering exceptionally high returns on investment has continued to be a successfully executed part of our business strategy. During the fourth quarter, we opened five new stores, four new D&Bs in Clarksville, Tennessee; Alabama; Ohio and Bloomington, Indiana, and one main event store in Moncler, California for a total of 14 new stores added to the portfolio in fiscal 2024.
We are pleased to also report that in December, we opened our first international franchise location in India. To date, we have entered into 35 franchise partnership agreements with over 35 stores committed to development, and we anticipate at least six additional franchise units opening in the next 12 months. As I see it, this will be one of the ingredients of our outsized growth as we look out into the future.
As a brief update on the CEO search, the Board of Directors continues to work with a global executive search firm to identify the future permanent CEO. We are vetting numerous highly qualified and capable candidates and are dedicated to engaging in a thorough and careful process to ensure we select the right individual who the Board strongly believes can lead this company.
In the interim, I am thoroughly enjoying working with this management team and remain 100% committed to continue to work closely with the Board to unwind the many clear issues we have identified and make the necessary and right changes to drive the pace of this business going forward. We will update you further when we have definitive news to report, which is all we want to say about the topic on today's call given the sensitivity of ongoing discussions with candidates.
Now I will turn the call over to Darin to walk you through the financial results of the fourth quarter. Darin?