Marcus Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 1, 2024

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Joining us today are Greg Marcus, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer and Chad Paris, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of The Marcus Corporation.

Operator

At this time, I'd like to turn the program over to Mr. Parris for his opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to our fiscal 2024 Q2 conference call. I need to begin by stating that we plan to make a number of forward looking statements on our call today, all of which we intend to qualify for the safe harbors from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Our forward looking statements may generally be identified by our use of words such as we believe, anticipate, expect or words of similar import. Our forward looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected.

Speaker 1

Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on our forward looking statements. The risks and uncertainties which could impact our ability to achieve our expectations identified in our forward looking statements are included under the heading Forward Looking Statements in the press release we issued this morning announcing our fiscal 2024 Q2 results and in the Risk Factors section of our fiscal 2023 Annual Report on Form 10 ks, which you can access on the SEC's website. We will also post all Regulation G disclosures, when applicable, on our website at marcuscorp.com. The forward looking statements made during this conference call are only made as of the date of this conference call, and we disclaim any obligation to publicly update such forward looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. In addition, we routinely post news releases and other information regarding developments at our company that impact our investors, customers, vendors and other stakeholders.

Speaker 1

You should look to our website, marcuscorp.com, as an important source of information regarding our company. We also refer you to the disclosures we provided in today's earnings press release regarding the use of adjusted EBITDA, a non GAAP measure used in evaluating our performance and its limitations. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to the nearest GAAP measure is provided in today's release. Okay. With that behind us, let's begin.

Speaker 1

This morning, I'll start by spending a few minutes sharing the results from our Q2 and discuss our balance sheet, liquidity and recent financing transactions. I'll then turn the call over to Greg, who will focus his prepared remarks on where our businesses are today and what we are seeing ahead in the second half of the year. We'll then open up the call for questions. This morning, we reported a quarter that, as we expected, got off to a slow start, but picked up momentum and significantly improved as we move further into the summer season. In theaters, the lingering effects of content supply challenges from the Hollywood strikes created a slower than normal start to the summer movie season in April May.

Speaker 1

We then turned a corner in June with better content supply and we saw audiences return for the big screen theatrical experience in big numbers. In hotels, we once again continued our trend of gains in group business and delivered a quarter with solid growth in revenue, occupancy, RevPAR and earnings. I'll start with a few highlights from our consolidated results for the Q2 of fiscal 2024. We generated consolidated revenues of $176,000,000 a decrease of $31,000,000 or 15% compared to the prior year quarter, with revenue growth in our Hotels and Resorts division offset by revenue decrease in our Theater division. We delivered $2,200,000 of consolidated operating income and $22,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA.

Speaker 1

Operating income was negatively impacted by a non cash impairment charge of approximately $500,000 related to a leased theater location that we closed during the quarter and which is excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Below operating income, we incurred $13,900,000 of debt conversion expense associated with the previously announced repurchase of $86,400,000 of our convertible senior notes. I'll discuss our balance sheet and recent financing transactions further in a few minutes, but I'll briefly explain the non recurring debt conversion expense now. The required accounting for the repurchase transaction results in this charge to earnings for the premium paid above the principal value of the repurchased convertible notes. Conversely, the benefit for the cash value we received from the related proportionate unwind of our capital transactions, which economically offsets the vast majority of the premium we paid to repurchase the convertible notes, is accounted for as a 12 $900,000 increase in equity that does not run through earnings from an accounting perspective.

Speaker 1

In other words, in terms of the economics of the transaction that was recognized in the Q2, the net cash premium to repurchase the convertible notes was really $1,000,000 In addition to that unfavorable accounting treatment, our income tax expense for the quarter was negatively impacted by $1,100,000 for the related non cash tax impacts of the capped call unwind. In total, our net loss for the 2nd quarter was negatively impacted by 15,000,000 or $0.47 per share from the convertible debt repurchases and related transactions. As we have reported in the release, on the overall convertible debt repurchases and cap call unwind transactions, from a cash perspective, we were able to retire $86,400,000 of convertible notes for only 87,900,000 Excluding the impacts of the convertible debt repurchases, our net loss for the Q2 of fiscal 2024 was $5,200,000 or $0.17 per share. Turning to our segment results. I'll start this morning with our Hotels and Resorts division.

Speaker 1

Revenues were $74,500,000 for the Q2 of fiscal 2024, an increase of 6.3% compared to the prior year. Total revenue before cost reimbursements increased over $3,400,000 or 5.6% over the Q2 of last year. RevPAR for our comparable owned hotels grew 6.5% during the Q2 compared to the prior year, growing at 5 of our 7 owned hotels. The RevPAR increase resulted from an overall occupancy rate increase of 4.5 percentage points with an average daily rate or ADR that was down just slightly negative 0.2% over the prior year. Our average occupancy rate for our owned hotels was 72.7% during the Q2 of fiscal 2024.

Speaker 1

Our properties continue to perform well against both the competition in our markets and the industry as a whole. According to data received from Smith Travel Research, comparable competitive hotels in our markets experienced RevPAR growth of 4.6% for the 2nd quarter of 2024 compared to the Q2 of fiscal 2023, indicating that our hotels outperformed their competitive set by 1.9 percentage points. When comparing our RevPAR results to comparable upper upscale hotels throughout the United States, the upper upscale segment experienced an increase in RevPAR of 3% during our Q2 compared to the Q2 of fiscal 2023, indicating that our hotels outperformed the industry by 3.5 percentage points. The trend of strong group business continued in the 2nd quarter with group rooms increasing to 44.6 percent of our total room mix during the Q2 of 2024 compared to 40.1% in the prior year quarter. The slight decrease in ADR resulted from an increase in our group rooms as a percentage of our overall room revenue mix with growth in mid week rooms group rooms sold, which generally increases occupancy at lower rates.

Speaker 1

We also continued to benefit from improvements to our revenue management strategy at certain properties to drive higher midweek occupancy at lower daily rate offerings to optimize overall room revenue and RevPAR. Our success in growing group business and better revenue management drove our outperformance over our peers in the quarter. With the continued growth in group business and events, our banquet and catering operations grew with food and beverage revenues up 3.8 8% in the Q2 of fiscal 2024 compared to the prior year. Finally, hotels adjusted EBITDA grew to $11,400,000 during the Q2 on the higher revenues. Turning to theaters, our Q2 fiscal 2024 total revenue of $101,500,000 decreased 25.9% compared to the prior year Q2.

Speaker 1

Comparable theater admission revenue decreased 28.8% over the Q2 of 2023 with comparable theater attendance decreasing 26 point 3%. According to data received from Comscore and compiled by us to evaluate our fiscal 2024 Q2 results using our comparable fiscal weeks, United States box office receipts decreased 26.8% during our fiscal 2024 Q2 compared to U. S. Box office receipts during our fiscal 2023 Q2, indicating our performance was approximately 2 percentage points below the industry. Looking by month, we underperformed in April May and then significantly outperformed the nation in June.

Speaker 1

We believe that our lower box office performance during the Q2 was primarily attributable to an unfavorable film mix compared with the Q2 of fiscal 2023, which included 12 weeks of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, a film where we significantly outperformed our average market share in the prior year. While the Q2 this year also included the opening of a great blockbuster family film where we are also enjoying high market share, Inside Out 2, with only 2 weeks of the film's run falling in our 2nd quarter, much of this outperformance will benefit our Q3. In addition to the improvement in film mix in June, we believe several changes that we made to promotions during the quarter positively impacted our improvement in performance in June, which Greg will discuss further. Our average admission price decreased by 3.1% during the Q2 of fiscal 2024 compared to last year.

Speaker 1

The decrease in our admission per caps was primarily due to the introduction of several promotions we introduced early in the summer to encourage movie going and drive attendance. These changes include our new $7 everyday matinee promotion for seniors and children and changes to our Value Tuesday promotion that reintroduced a free complimentary sized popcorn for MMR loyalty members, resulting in higher attendance on Tuesdays at a lower ticket price as compared to other days of the week. In addition, average admission price was negatively impacted by a decrease in the percentage of 3 d and PLF ticket sales during the Q2 of 2024 compared to the Q2 last year, which was favorably impacted by high 3 d ticket sales from Super Mario Brothers and more films that played on PLF screens at higher attendance levels. Our average concession food and beverage revenues per person increased by 2.3% during the Q2 of fiscal 2024 compared to last year's Q2. The increase was primarily due to pricing changes implemented during 2023 and by an increase in the number of concession items purchased per customer.

Speaker 1

Our top 10 films in the quarter represented approximately 73% of the box office in the Q2 of fiscal 2024 compared to 80% for the top 10 films in the Q2 last year. The less concentrated film slate resulted in an approximately 2 percentage point decrease in overall film cost as a percentage of admission revenues. On the lower revenues, theater division adjusted EBITDA during the Q2 2024 was $15,100,000 compared to $31,300,000 in the prior year quarter. Shifting to cash flow and the balance sheet. Our cash flow from operations was $36,000,000 in the Q2 of fiscal 2024 compared to $55,000,000 in the prior year quarter, with the decrease in cash flow from operations primarily due to the lower EBITDA.

Speaker 1

Total capital expenditures during the Q2 of fiscal 2024 were $19,800,000 compared to $7,000,000 in the Q2 of fiscal 2023. A large portion of our capital expenditures during the Q2 were invested in the hotel business with guestroom renovations at the Pfister Hotel and meeting space and ballroom renovations at Grand Geneva Resort and Spa. The remaining balance of capital expenditures during the quarter were for maintenance projects in both businesses. Our capital investments and renovations projects have progressed as planned and we continue to expect capital expenditures for fiscal 2024 of $60,000,000 to $75,000,000 recognizing that the timing of several of our planned projects are subject to change as we are still finalizing the scope and timing of various projects and the actual timing of these projects will impact our final capital expenditure number for the year. We will continue to update our capital expenditure estimates as the year progresses.

Speaker 1

We recently announced the completion of several refinancing transactions. First, as I mentioned earlier in the call, we entered into agreements to repurchase an aggregate $86,400,000 of our convertible senior notes for cash consideration of $87,900,000 which is net of the cash we received from the proportionate unwind of the CapCall transactions. We affected the repurchase over 2 tranches. The first $40,000,000 tranche closed in the 2nd quarter and the second $46,400,000 tranche closed in July during our Q3. We believe the repurchase transactions significantly simplify our capital structure and eliminated potential future dilution at an attractive repurchase price.

Speaker 1

Following the repurchases, the remaining $13,500,000 of convertible notes are a much smaller piece of our overall capital structure and we expect to settle them with cash at or prior to their maturity in September 2025. 2nd, in July, we completed a private placement offering of $100,000,000 of senior notes in 2 tranches, dollars 60,000,000 of 6.89 percent notes with final maturity in 2031 and $40,000,000 of 7.02 percent notes with final maturity in 2,034. The proceeds of this offering were used to fund the convertible notes repurchases and for general corporate purposes. This was our first return to the private placement debt market since the pandemic and we were thrilled by the strong demand from new and existing debt investors for this oversubscribed debt offering. Through the completion of these financing transactions, we extended our weighted average debt maturity from 1.6 years to just over 4 years.

Speaker 1

We believe the successful execution of this financing once again underscores the importance of our core philosophies of maintaining a strong balance sheet with manageable leverage, ample liquidity and owning our real estate. Our balance sheet remains strong and we ended the 2nd quarter with $33,000,000 in cash and over $208,000,000 in total liquidity with a debt to capitalization ratio of 28% and net leverage of 1.9 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA. With that, I will now turn the call over to Greg.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Chad. Good morning, everyone. Over the last few quarterly earnings calls, we've talked about our outlook for the year in terms of 2 storylines that we expected to play out over the short term. 1st, we expected 2 different trends in our divisions with hotels continuing to grow with steady occupancy growth and events in our markets that we would benefit from. While we expected theaters to be impacted by product supply challenges following last year's Hollywood strikes.

Speaker 2

2nd, in theaters, we expected the year to be a tale of 2 halves with the most significant impact of the product supply shortages felt in the first half of the year with stronger product returning in the second half of the year, building momentum heading into 2025. This has played out as expected. But when you peel back the onion, there are surprises both positive and negative within the quarters. While the second quarter started out very slowly in our theater division in April May, we really started to see an inflection point in June with films that drew large audiences and even broke box office records. In hotels, we got off to a strong start that carried through to deliver a great quarter, which we expect to be followed by an even better Q3 given the events we have going on in our markets.

Speaker 2

While the quarterly comparisons to last year have been tough, they were not a surprise. We see improvement coming in the second half of the year and our long term outlook for both businesses remains positive. I'll start today with our Hotel and Resorts division. You've seen the segment numbers and Chad shared some additional detail on the performance metrics, including our outperformance to the comp sets and upper upscale hotels nationally. Overall, the quarter was solid with several highlights.

Speaker 2

1st, we continue to win group business that is filling in midweek occupancy and it helped grow our overall occupancy to nearly 73%. This is our highest occupancy level in the Q2 since the pandemic. And while it isn't quite all the way back to the typical second quarter pre pandemic average of around 77%, we continue to get closer. Our average daily rates were effectively flat in the Q2 compared to the Q2 last year, and we held ADR despite the increase in group business, which is typically at lower rates. In addition, we continue to benefit from optimizing our revenue management strategy at select properties.

Speaker 2

We've been aggressive on daily rates during low demand periods to drive occupancy and maximize revenue with our available room night capacity. The net result has been successful in growing our occupancy and overall RevPAR. Finally, we did continue to see some modest rate softening among leisure customers in the quarter at some of our properties, which was offset by rate growth in other segments. Our banquet and catering business continues to benefit from the strength in our group business with food and beverage revenues growing 3.8% in the Q2 of 2020 4 compared to the Q2 last year. As we look ahead, group bookings remain strong with our group room revenue bookings for the remainder of fiscal 2024 or group pace in the year for the year, running approximately 11% ahead of where we were at this time last year, excluding the impact of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Speaker 2

Looking further ahead, our group pace for fiscal 2025 is running over 36% ahead of where we were at this time last year. Banquet and catering pace for the remainder of fiscal 2024 2025 is similarly ahead of where we were at this time last year. Our newly renovated meeting spaces and ballrooms at Grand Geneva Resort and Spa and at the Pfister have contributed to our success in winning groups and event bookings. The guest room renovation at the historic building at the Pfister Hotel was completed on schedule with all rooms back in service in time for the RNC. We plan to complete the last phase of the hotel renovation with a refresh of the lobby and public space later this year.

Speaker 2

The investments we have made in our properties put us in a great position to win in our markets. As we all saw a few weeks ago, Milwaukee hosted the Republican National Convention and our 3 downtown hotels, the Pfister, St. Kate and Hilton Milwaukee City Center, all played a big role in welcoming an estimated 50,000 visitors to the city. During the 5 nights of the event, we hosted convention attendees and many VIPs in the complete sellout of our over 12 50 rooms at these 3 hotels, with 19 convention events in our ballrooms and meeting spaces. In terms of financial impact to our Q3, the RNC generated over $3,000,000 in incremental revenue for the division over our volumes during the same week last year.

Speaker 2

This was a milestone event for the city with national media coverage that highlighted our great hospitality and all the things that make this city great. While the event certainly will be a net positive to our Q3 results, more importantly, we believe the event showcased the city's ability to successfully host large scale conventions and events with venues including Baird Center, the expanded convention center that opened earlier this summer and Fiserv Forum. We are optimistic that the success of the RNC will have a long term positive impact on event bookings and hospitality demand in the market in future years. Turning to theaters, as I mentioned in my opening comments, we saw a significant difference in the performance of the division in April May compared to June, both in terms of the overall box office in each month and in terms of our performance relative to the nation. The National Box Office had its biggest monthly decline of the year in April of approximately 38% and then sequentially improved each month as we had more and better films to play.

Speaker 2

And Marcus Theatre's box office comparisons followed that national trend. Chad went through our results for the quarter, including our circuit underperformance, the change in the national underperforming the change in the national box office by 2 percentage points in the Q2 compared to last year. However, as Chad mentioned, while we started the quarter slowly, we finished strong. Looking by month, we underperformed in April May and then significantly outperformed the nation in June by over 9 points for the month. There are several changes that occurred that we believe drove this positive trend that has now continued into July.

Speaker 2

First, I'll start with the changes that we made. On our last call, I noted with a softer film slate, we were refocusing on driving attendance to keep customers coming to the movies and making sure we had a compelling offering for everyone, particularly our value oriented customers. In May, we rolled out our Everyday Matinee promotion, which offers a $7 ticket for kids and seniors for any shows starting before 4 pm on a standard screen 7 days a week. In addition, we continue to evolve our Value Tuesday promotion. We didn't make any further changes to admission prices on Tuesday.

Speaker 2

In May, we reintroduced a free complimentary sized popcorn for all MMR members, replacing the prior Tuesday promotion of a 20% discount on all food and non alcoholic drink for MMR members. These changes are designed to drive attendance and appeal to value oriented customers by making sure that Moviegoing remains the most affordable out of home entertainment option. Based on the 1st 2 months of results, the changes appear to be contributing to our improved performance. 2nd, the mix of films shifted to genres that played well in our markets in May June, including Inside Out 2, If and Bad Boys: Ride or Die, all of which under outperformed our normal market share. We expected that the increase in promotions would create a headwind to our admission per caps, which were down 3.1% in the 2nd quarter and were also impacted by a challenging comparison with high 3 d ticket sales for the Super Mario Bros.

Speaker 2

Movie last year. In terms of the quantity of wide release films in the Q2, we had a similar number of titles with 28 wide releases in the Q2 of fiscal 2024 compared to 29 in the Q2 last year. However, similar to what we saw in the Q1, the Q2 slate this year was weaker overall with lesser performances and fewer blockbusters with an average opening weekend U. S. Box office gross per wide release film that was 28% lower than the same average in the Q2 last year.

Speaker 2

Only Inside Out 2 opened to over $100,000,000 in the Q2 this year compared to 3 films with an opening over $100,000,000 and a 4th film, The Little Mermaid coming very close with a $95,000,000 opening during Q2 last year. In June, we saw that once again when quality product supply is there, audiences still want to come out to see films on the big screen. Inside Out 2 delivered the 2nd highest grossing opening weekend animated film of all time and has gone on to become the highest grossing animated film of all time, overtaking other Pixar blockbusters including Incredibles 2 and Frozen 2 with a domestic box office that now stands at over $600,000,000 during its 6 week run. The momentum continued into July with the releases of Despicable V4, Twisters and Deadpool and Wolverine with last weekend's highest R rated opening of all time. Deadpool and Wolverine broke several records for Marcus Peters as well, becoming our highest ever grossing weekend summer film opening between May August and our highest ever PLF grossing opening weekend summer film.

Speaker 2

As we look ahead to the rest of the year, we see a stronger second half. This fall, we are excited about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Joker, Folly A Deux, and Venom: The Last Dance among others. For the holidays, we look forward to films such as Gladiator 2, Moana 2, Wicked, The Lord of the Rings, The War of the Rohirrim, Kraven the Hunter, Mufasa and Sonic the Hedgehog 3. As we look further ahead to next year, the slate for 2025 is stacked with several very strong franchises, including Superman Legacy, Captain America, Mission Impossible, Jurassic World, Karate Kid, The Fantastic Four, Snow White, Wicked 2 and Avatar 3, just to name a few. As we look at the product supply ramping back to and potentially exceeding 2023 levels in 2025 further growth beyond, we remain very positive and optimistic about the long term future for the industry and our theater business.

Speaker 2

Finally, I'd like to briefly talk about growth in theaters. While over the last few years we've closed several underperforming theater locations as we optimize our footprint, we continue to look at opportunities to grow this business in attractive locations and with a financial model that makes sense. We recently announced the addition of a new theater to our circuit at The Shops at West End in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is our 8th location in Minnesota and our closest to Minneapolis.

Speaker 2

So that's a great example of what we think is possible when we work closely with landlords to reposition theater, in this case, an attractive lifestyle center and a good market that we know. We reopened the theater as the Marcus West End Cinema in early July, bringing all of our great offerings and programs to customers on day 1, including our magical movie rewards loyalty program, Marcus Passport, Value Tuesday and Everyday Matinee. We look forward to making further improvements the theater with the landlord in the months to come. Finally, I would like to briefly comment on the financing transactions that Chad covered earlier. As you can tell, we've been busy the last several months developing and executing a financing plan to extend and simplify our capital structure.

Speaker 2

And I would be remiss if I didn't congratulate Chad on leading a complex refinancing that we believe will be a huge positive for our shareholders in the long term. We often get questions on capital allocation, our priorities and how we think about the mix of paying a dividend and share repurchases. One of the ways we viewed repurchasing a substantial portion of our convertible debt was that we were indirectly buying back our equity by eliminating potential future dilution. We are continually evaluating where we can best deploy capital with each investment decision, whether for growth, maintaining our assets, returning capital to shareholders through dividends or through our current share repurchase authorization of 2,400,000 shares. In this regard, we are optimistic optimistic and will deploy capital where we see the best returns.

Speaker 2

I'd like to once again express my appreciation for our dedicated associates at The Marcus Corporation. Their outstanding work and commitment to serving our customers is responsible for our success and we appreciate all they do every day. As we say so often, they are our most important asset. So on behalf of our Board of Directors and our entire executive team, thank you to all of our associates. And with that, at this time, Chad and I would be happy to open the call up for any questions you may have.

Operator

We'll go first to Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 2

All

Speaker 3

right. Thank you. One question, your set of questions about the hotel sector. You talked about the benefits from the RNC. Wondering, was there any displacement impact from that event with demand pushed to other summer timeframes that you might benefit from later on?

Speaker 3

And did this event help heighten the profile of Saint Kate The Arts Hotel and provide potential justification for additional expansion of that concept?

Speaker 2

Look, it's a yes and no, Jim. Let me click that. It's complex what happens with the RNC. Yes, it did move some business later in the summer. So like the Northwestern Mutual Annual Conference was moved to accommodate it.

Speaker 2

So that was probably the biggest move. And so, yes, I'm sure at this place in business and I'm sure some people look at the TV and say, wow, Milwaukee is cool, I should go there, because it's true. But the other side of that is that there was and by the way, this is all in that positive, but there was a little displacement on the front end because the convention center was pretty much out of business for a few weeks before the RMC about because just the setup was such an extensive setup. So there were positives and negatives to it, but overall, we're really pleased with how it all turned out. As for St.

Speaker 2

Kate, yes, you have to look at you read my mind. I would like to have more of them, but we've got to get this one in a place. And it's so hard to judge when you get a one timer like the RNC. But again, we think the net positive, it continues to build and that concept continues to grow every year and we're pleased with how it's coming along. And so we do think about exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 3

Okay. Thanks. And then on the cinema side, I'm wondering is at this stage is film flow importantly a numbers game or is it dependent primarily on the quality and or demographic appeal of the film mix being released. I'm partly wondering about your read and consumer attitudes toward theatrical attendance at this stage. You're always pretty bullish on it today.

Speaker 2

You know, look, I think you know my theory is that at the end of the day, it is the number of films released. However, I mean that's I mean, it has to be what I would call a normal slate. If you don't if you release 110 films and not one of them is a tent pool, that's not what I would call a normal slate. And so I think, as we're thinking about the earlier part of the year where the number of films released seemed to be at a higher cadence, that what they were releasing, I'm glad they were putting movies out there and but not tent poles. We talked about what is a tent pole?

Speaker 2

What holds it in the tent? So lots of things can be inside of it. Not just if you just had tent poles, well, that's you're not stocking your tents full. And or if you don't have tent poles, well, the ceiling is going to be a little lower, so to speak. And so, at the end of the day, assuming the proportion number of tent poles and then smaller films and sort of a varied slate of different kinds of films, then I feel that the box office is still relatively predictable.

Speaker 2

But it needs to be because look at people want to go to the movies. Look at what we are seeing right now. And I want to you just think back a few years, no one's going to a family movie anymore. All of a sudden, we have the highest animated film of all time. You know, no, oh, Marvel's done, sick of fortune Marvel, and then we get that pool, we'll believe late.

Speaker 2

I saw last night, it was so good. But it's not. So, it's it's just, you know, you but you've got to take enough swings and you've got to get people back in the habit. You know, oh, right now, comedy is dead. Nobody's going to comedy.

Speaker 2

Although everybody wants a Deadpool, which I promise you is a comedy. People would like people, I don't know, seems to be more fun to laugh in a roomful of people than to laugh by yourself on the sofa. That's great. But you want a roomful of people around you. And so I think they just they got to get back to that and build the audience.

Speaker 2

People have to get back in the habit of going.

Speaker 3

One last one. Alternative content gained a little more traction when there's less content available. And I'm wondering if in the aftermath, as alternative content begins to subside from lack of need, what elements do you feel will have a more lasting impact? And will it be confined to certain days of the week or anything else of that nature?

Speaker 2

I think that alternative content will continue to be important to what we do. And I've always said, I don't think that it's going to become the biggest part of our business. But those last customers are very profitable. Those are high margin customers. And I think that that will be we'll need to be strategic and figure out that the key is for us to know the audiences, to know who that is and to effectively be able to market to them, because that's ultimately the challenge of alternative content is to be able to market to an audience.

Speaker 2

When you're not releasing something nationally and having and playing 500,000 runs of something, which is what a national run is of something over a month. You have to you throw as much marketing at it. So you have to be very efficient. And so our loyalty program, which continues to grow, and not just ours, because it needs all the industries and there are I think all the industry's loyalty programs could need to grow. As we get better at marketing and finding those audiences, for example, I'll give you an example, our Indian film, Bollywood content, we're getting better at it.

Speaker 2

And it's growing. Our St. Louis market has been very strong. Wehrenberg, when we bought them, had a very they invested the time and built that audience. And we're growing that.

Speaker 2

Now again, it's not huge dollar amounts, but over time, it grows and it can be meaningful and it can whether it's that or concert films or whatever we might be doing. It's something we have to pay attention to because as I said, those last dollars are the most profitable.

Speaker 3

Okay. Thanks for your thoughts. Appreciate it.

Operator

Our next question today comes from Mike Hickey with The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Hey, Craig, Jack, good morning guys and great job. Congratulations on your financing transactions. Awesome to see that converted in care of Chad. Thank you. Yes.

Speaker 4

I guess the first topic on the hotel side, really strong growth, lease versus expectations maybe for the first half here. And I get the group data looks good, but sort of your confidence here that you can continue to sort of grow the hotel piece second half of 'twenty four and 'twenty five. And I guess the backdrop here somewhat, Greg, is that I think prior quarter you expressed maybe a little softness in leisure. So sort of curious update there and then your confidence for growth.

Speaker 1

Yes, Mike, I'll start. As we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we did see some continued softness in leisure. I wouldn't say that it was meaningfully accelerating or different than what we mentioned in the Q1. But as you know, that's been a really hot segment of the business coming out of the pandemic. And so it's normalizing, which I think generally we thought and the industry thought was going to happen.

Speaker 1

What is happening, though it's offsetting it is we're seeing other segments of the business that have more than offset it. And that's primarily happening in occupancy. This quarter, it even managed to offset the softness in leisure rates to hold rate flat. And so we like the fact that our mix of business gives us the ability and opportunities to win in other segments to offset softness in certain sectors or parts of the business when it happens. And we were able to do that this quarter.

Speaker 1

And as we go into the second half of the year, we talked about the bookings and what the forward book looks like for group business, which looks strong for the balance of the year, good growth both this year and next year that we think will continue to help us offset any softness that we see in leisure. But I would say it's more of a sort of what a continuation of what we saw, but we're managing it.

Speaker 2

Well said. Nothing to add on that.

Speaker 4

All right. And then you called out the 5th year, you put some $20,000,000 in capital on that. Just sort of curious, maybe the renovations that you did there and how you think that will impact RevPAR or utilization, ADR, I guess, specifically if you want or how that asset should grow after the money you put in?

Speaker 2

Yes. I don't think we look at specific. We don't talk about specific assets like that. It's other than it's a mixture of stuff. When you something like that, part of it is just you have to do it because that's what you have to do to stay in the business and keep your assets up.

Speaker 2

But But it is so beautiful and it's and the F and B market is so competitive and that banquets market. So now people come and they see how great the asset is. I think there is obviously going to be a benefit to it. It's a little tough to quantify. But that is the cost of being in business over time.

Speaker 1

Yes. I mean, where we see it, Mike, is really in the bookings on the group side of the business and particularly renovated ballrooms, we're seeing that now, not just at the Pfister, but at Grand Geneva as well. Event planners like fresh space And that's where after you make an investment like this, you'll start to win some of that over other alternative venues. And I do think that's related to what we're seeing in some of the group bookings. The other piece, as Greg said, is maintenance capital in nature, but also preserving in the case of the Pfister premium positioning in the market in a premium rate and maintaining the asset.

Speaker 1

So a little bit of defense there on maintaining a leadership position in the market.

Speaker 4

Nice. Thank you. I guess topic 2 would be theaters. Nice to see you guys be opportunistic with the Showplace transaction. Curious what sort of opportunity you guys see in the market for similar deals as you look to expand your network now?

Speaker 2

I wish I could tell you they were lining up and there was there was a bunch of deals that we were able to do. But we keep looking. I do think that once I sort of my theory is that when things sort of when stabilize out, more stuff will break free. And this is the example that we this is how the company was built originally, and we're about to be 90, 80 years ago, my grandfather built the company by finding landlords that needed help, that said, we can work together to do something. My grandfather brought the skill of running the operation to the landlord that had the real estate and they became partners.

Speaker 2

And that's the kind of deals we would like to do. And we are out talking to people as you can see, because this deal got done. So we are out talking to people about trying to do these things. And I know our team is out looking and talking to people. But I can't tell you there's a long list of them right this second, but we'll just keep working at it.

Speaker 4

Would you guys start to think now that you sort of completed the financing piece, obviously, that took a lot of time. But now that that sort of cleaned up for you, would you start to consider more traditional M and A in the theater space as sort of more important on the list of capital allocation opportunities?

Speaker 2

Mike, I think it's changed. The M and A model in the

Speaker 1

theater business is fundamentally different than it was pre pandemic in that buying a circuit of theaters generally can be difficult because in the portfolio of locations, many of them are not cash flow positive. And so you really need to think about paying cash for a circuit and what you're getting and you have to look location by location. What we're seeing in terms of opportunities are more individual deals. And so it's a lot of hard work to do individual locations, but that's where the financial returns are going to make sense. And it's singles and doubles, not purchases of 20 circuits 20 locations in a circuit at a time.

Speaker 1

And that's I think where we're at until stabilization somewhere quite a bit north of where we are today kind of resets and helps everybody to understand what the rent levels need to look like in a leased circuit.

Speaker 4

Good. The I guess last question gentlemen on the staying on the theater side within the promotional piece, it looks like, Greg, you're having success there. Do you think that is sort of any indication of consumer that's, I hate to say, trading down, but sort of seeking value here, Greg? Or do you think that is maybe a factor of just not the best slate and they just need some extra motivation to get into the theater. And then I guess the follow on would be now that the slate is looking great for the foreseeable future, can sort of like the build out of that promotional be sort of be counterproductive, I guess, versus getting people in prime times with full ticket prices?

Speaker 4

Thanks, guys.

Speaker 2

No, I think it's there a few things that are going on. I think the dynamics are such that and let's break it like into a couple of parts. Like so one of the idea of the return to free popcorn. I mean, do I think that's indicative of a weaker consumer? No.

Speaker 2

I think that free is a powerful word. I mean, we didn't because we did it is very interesting. We did a substitution. We had made the change. And by the way, we tested this.

Speaker 2

We didn't just do this radically, but without trying to test it. Obviously, our test didn't sort of match what ultimately happened. But the idea of moving to when you give free popcorn, well, if you don't want popcorn, then what value are we giving to someone on a value Tuesday? We are giving because we and so we suppose if we give you 20% across the concession stand, that's going to be a value potentially to more people. That was the theory and as we tested it, it seemed to play out okay.

Speaker 2

But then when we rolled it out, it didn't match our expectations. And so we went back to free popcorn and we changed what the offer was. And it really seemed to have been it's hard to exactly quantify which piece of all that is. But it's something that we thought, okay, well, you make a mistake and you go back and you change and that seems to be a more powerful driver for Tuesdays. Now when I say Tuesdays, let me bring up to your next point, which is, we worried about things being counterproductive.

Speaker 2

And the answer to that is no, because one of the things that we think about and this is maybe the overlap of hotels overlapping with theatrical, And that is the right price for the right customer at the right time. Not like we just cut a discount across the board all day and all night. Our 7 let's call it our 7 and 7, dollars 7 matinee 7 days a week for seniors and kids that ends at 4 o'clock. And so, the might you displace a little bit of business? Yes.

Speaker 2

But in the aggregate, the idea of keeping it affordable for families, which again is we know the consumer is weakening a little bit. Again, is so how do we appeal to that family that maybe how do we keep this affordable entertainment? When let's face it, the studios have gone and they've put out a lot of product into that fire hose at what the consumer perceived as virtually free in their streaming programs. And how does that not impact us? That has to impact upstream and they have to know that.

Speaker 2

And so, we have to be able to be competitive. So the family can make the decision to get off the sofa and invest their time and go to a theater, which we know and the studios and we all know is a much better financial result for everyone and not just financial across the life of their content. So, because we all want people to be invested in the content. We want people to go the reason to go to theatricals, as I've talked about before, you sit on your sofa, it's very passive. You flip your remote and you can stop it and start it and not watch it if you didn't like it in the first few minutes, you have no investment.

Speaker 2

When you go to a movie theater, you've made an investment of your time. And you will like something more, you will tell more people about it, you'll want to watch it again when it comes out in the ancillary markets. That's Windows selling to the same person over and over again. But you got to have a price where you can make all those sales and that's where we are. I've talked about this before.

Speaker 2

I've told people this. I've probably talked about it on these calls. 20 years from now, the number of kids who will say to someone, I remember my parents took me to my first movie. They took me in the living room and we turned on the TV and I watched Inside Out too. That number will be 0.

Speaker 2

I promise you. But there will be so many kids who say, I remember my parents took me to my first movie. We went to the movie theater. My dad held my hand. He bought popcorn and I thought the characters were real.

Speaker 2

Inside Out 2 was my first movie. And they'll talk about it for the rest of their lives. And they'll be excited to go to Disney theme parks and experience the characters there and all the flow through benefits that you don't get just sitting on the couch. That doesn't mean sitting on the couch is bad. It just means it's not the same.

Speaker 2

Maybe more than you wanted in the answer, but you asked.

Speaker 3

Appreciate it, Craig.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Eric Wold with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Thanks. Thanks guys for giving me a couple of questions, couple of follow ups on some of the ones that have been out there. On the pricing question, so I guess on the midweek vanity pricing and discount Tuesday, I get your rationale. Greg, they just went through of why you guys made those changes. Should we make the assumption that those changes are viewed as more permanent changes to the pricing model and kind of promotional model or something that's more of a short term move with the slate and kind of where wallets are right now?

Speaker 2

Well, we've announced that it's for the summer. But obviously, we would seriously would be we'd be considering it for to bring it back on a more permanent basis. I think the most interesting thing though is actually how it looks like the pricing, the actual what we charge is less the $6 or $7 depending on if you're in our rewards program or not versus $5 seem to be less impactful than free popcorn, which is really very interesting. And but again, at $5 for 10 years, I define anyone to tell me they don't want to raise for 10 years, especially in an inflationary environment. I think that was very understandable.

Speaker 2

It's still $6 is an incredible value for that.

Speaker 5

Got it. And then on the acquisition question around the theater space, how far outside of the Midwest kind of home base would you be willing to look for the right opportunity that comes along? And how do you view the benefits of clustering in a region? I know you talked about that, obviously, the Chad mentioned the acquisition kind of environment is a lot different than it was. You're kind of looking at 1 Ds and 2 Ds and leases that come up.

Speaker 5

So I mean, if there's a single theater in a faraway place, does that make sense? Or you really need to think with the customer base and loyalty, you really want to and maybe kind of just management have more of a clustering or can you make it work with 1?

Speaker 2

You could absolutely make it work with 1. I mean, it's not as good as having a bunch of them, because you can get your it's not like the old days. The old days when you had to have an ad in the newspaper, I mean, we're talking real old days here. You wanted to have a bunch of them in the market because your just because your ad looks so much larger, when you ran all this all of them on 1. And now, you get people to your website and it's different in that regard.

Speaker 2

But still, I do think that there's some marketing benefits to being able to have multiple theaters in a market, whether you more for the ad hoc campaign, dollars 7 matinee, dollars 7 for seniors, 7 days a week for seniors and kids. Being able to market that so much more efficiently is certainly helpful, again, not the same as the days of old. And the more times people know your name and hear about you and get your programs are out there, the better off you are. But overall, we can really manage them anywhere.

Speaker 1

The only thing I'd add to that, Eric, is we certainly the bulk of our locations and the things that really move the needle in terms of customer preferences, those locations are in the Midwest. But we do have single locations in certain markets as far west as Aurora, Colorado, as far east as Philadelphia, where we have a few of them in that market, but a couple of them in that market. But, we have done it before. We certainly can do single locations in a given market, particularly if it's a great theater.

Speaker 2

Yes. And I mean, apparently people have seen my contacts all over the country.

Speaker 5

So I can imagine that that's not limiting your inbounds from a landlord maybe somewhere in a distant state because of where you are, you're still getting those calls? Yes.

Speaker 1

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then just last question on the hotel side. You spoke about the strong group pace that you're seeing in 2025. Is there any way to kind of note, I guess, or kind of think about how much of that may be driven by the convention center expansion versus just normal group business improvements that you may just be experiencing your hotel? I guess I'm just trying to get a sense of is that just an improvement of the baseline, I won't say just, but is that improvement of the baseline to your hotel business prior to the tailwinds of the convention center expansion really kicking in?

Speaker 2

Well, it's a little bit of both. I mean, look, it's the business coming back. It's the convention center getting stronger because because they've been, there's certain probably a bunch of people who say, well, I'm not booking your convention center until I see it done. But a bunch of people were, excited about it. And I give credit to Peggy Williams, our local convention visitors bureau, they've been out marketing hard and the business flow is better.

Speaker 1

Yes. I guess the only thing I'd add, Eric, is 25 a little bit of both. They are starting to book in some events further out on the calendar 20, 27, that I think they would quickly say Milwaukee would not have gotten were it not for the expanded convention center. But next year, near in, as Greg said, because they want some of this is they want to event planners want to see it. Next year, it's just a little bit

Speaker 5

of both. Perfect. Thank you

Operator

both. Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. So I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Parrish for any additional or closing comments.

Speaker 1

Great. Thank you. Well, we'd like to thank everybody for joining us today. We look forward to talking to you once again in early November when we release the Q3 results. Until then, thank you and have a great day.

Operator

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

Speaker 2

line.

Remove Ads
Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Marcus Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00
Remove Ads