Q4 2024 RCI Hospitality Holdings Inc Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Eric Langan; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; RCI Hospitality Holdings Inc

Bradley Chhay; Chief Financial Officer; RCI Hospitality Holdings Inc

Mark Moran; Moderator; Equity Animal

Gaml Way

Adam Wyden

Presentation

Mark Moran

Greetings and welcome to RCI Hospitality Holdings fourth quarter, 2024 earnings conference call. You can find the company's presentation RCIs website. Go to the Investor Relations section, all the links are at the top of the page.
Please turn with me to slide 2 of our presentation. I'm Mark Moran, CEO of Equity Animal. I'll be the host of our call today. I'm coming to you from New York City. Eric Langan, President and CEO of RCI Hospitality; and CFO, Bradley Chhay are in Houston today.
Please turn with me to slide 3. RCI is making this call exclusively on X Spaces. (Operator Instructions) And this conference is being recorded.
Please turn with me to slide 4. 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 may occur afterwards. Please turn with me to slide 5. I also direct you to the explanation of RICK's non-GAAP financial measures.
Now, I'm pleased to introduce Eric Langan, President and CEO of RCI Hospitality. Eric Take it away.

Eric Langan

Thank you, Mark and thanks for joining us today, everyone. (inaudible) takeaways. All comparisons are year over year, unless otherwise noted. Please turn to slide 6. Fourth quarter, nightclub sales same for sales increased for the second quarter in a row. This was the first time since the first half of fiscal 2023. A total company sales declined due to a hurricane and a fire resulting in lower EPS. However, non-GAAP EPS, net cash provided by operating activities and free cash flow all increased.
We ended fiscal year '24 with 8.955 million shares outstanding a reduction of 4.7% year-over-year. Turning to the capital allocation. We have officially launched our back to the basics five year plan. We have already made some considerable progress in implementing this plan, that includes continuing to buy back more shares in the current fiscal quarter -- first quarter of 2025. We also divested four underperforming bombshells location, close the Denver Food Hall, reduced bombshells related debt and discontinued franchising.
Please turn to slide 7. RCI has grown significantly since we initiated our capital allocation strategy at the end of fiscal year 2015. Revenue has more than doubled from $135 million to $296 million, CAGR rate of 9%. More importantly, free cash flow has more than tripled from $15 million to $48 million, a CAGR of 14%, while our share count fell by 13%. We are proud of this achievement. Thanks to all of our employees, entertainers and partners who have made this possible. Looking ahead, we plan to build on this progress through our back to the basic strategy.
Please turn to slide 8. Operationally, this means focusing on our core nightclub businesses and making new acquisitions. For bombshells, this means improving performance of existing locations and finishing the last three units under construction. Looking at capital allocation, we expect to generate more than $250 million of free cash flow over the next five years.
Under our plan, we will allocate 50% of that to club acquisition which includes the repayment of debt, since most of our debt is acquisition related and we will allocate 50% to share buybacks and dividends. Our fiscal 2029 targets call for hitting $400 million in revenue, $75 million in free cash flow and reducing our share count to 7.5 million or less. This would result in a doubling of free cash flow per share from where it is today.
Please turn to slide 9. For more details. Nightclubs are a core business. For anyone new to RCI in this call, we love this business because it generates an estimated 35% plus in operating margins. There are high barriers to entry and [claws] produce steady and significant cash flow. Currently, we are evaluating every club in our portfolio and we will rebrand reformat our divest underperforming locations.
As for bombshells, our target for the segment is 15% operating margins with a return to same store sales growth. Regarding club acquisitions, our goal is to acquire $6 million of adjusted EBITDA a year focusing on the best clubs buying for base hits and maybe an occasional run. Our target metrics remain the same 3times to 5 times adjusted EBITDA for club, business and farm market value for the real estate.
We will continue to finance our deals with a combination of cash on hand, bank financing and seller notes. We will also consider using stock if and when our valuation improves. We will continue to target 100% cash on cash returns within a three to five year period.
For the final part of our plan, as opposed to periodically buying shares, we anticipate implementing a program of regular buybacks and flexing up the stock buyback, if the stock is particularly cheap. We expect to buy a significant amount of stock if the price is right, given where our stock is trading in our view of what the business can do over time, we believe this is a great use of capital. We are also planning small dividend increases annually.
Please turn to slide 10. Based on our track record, we believe our five player plan is very achievable. Since fiscal 2017, we have completed $267 million of club and related real estate acquisitions. We have stayed disciplined on price. We have improved operations and financial performance consistent with our goals and we have been able to deploy larger amounts of capital as we've grown.
We think there's a lot more runway for club acquisitions as illustrated in the pie chart. Although we can't predict the size or timing. We think our goal of acquiring $6 million of EBITDA per year is very achievable on a five year average basis.
Please turn to slide 11 here. You can see that the anticipated growth rates of some of our key financial targets are somewhat conservative based on past performance. We also do not anticipate increasing leverage to achieve our goals.
Please turn to slide. 12. We have already made considerable progress on our plan in our nightclub business. We have generated two quarters of positive same store sales growth. We are working on three potential acquisitions. In our bombshells business, as I mentioned earlier, we have divested underperforming units. We closed the Denver Food Hall in early December and are marketing that real estate for sale. As we did and we also discontinued franchising. In addition, during the fourth quarter, we increased our share buyback program. We increased our cash dividend by 16.7% and we are continuing to reduce our share count.
Please turn to slide 13 for the first look of our updated capital location strategy. This is the path we will take to grow the company to $400 million in revenue, $75 million of free cash flow and continue to reduce our share count.
Now, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Bradley to review performance for the fourth quarter.