Bowlero Corp.

Greetings and welcome to Bolero first quarter fiscal year 2024 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you want to require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host and turn the call over to Bobby LaBarra of Bolero. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Operator. Good morning to everyone on the call. This is Bobby Laban, Bolero's Chief Financial Officer. Welcome to our conference call to discuss our first quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings. This morning, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period ended October 1st, 2023. A copy of the press release is available in the investor relations section of our website. Joining me on the call today is Thomas Shannon, our founder, chief executive, and president. I would like to remind you that during today's conference call, you may make certain forward-looking statements about the company's performance. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore one should not place undue reliance on them. Forward-looking statements are also subject to the inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed. For additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in our forward-looking statements, you should refer to the cautionary statements contained in our press release. as well as the risk factors contained in the company's filings with the SEC. Bolero undertakes no obligation to revise or update any poor-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after today's call. Also during today's call, the company may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. The GAAP financial measures that are most directly comparable to each non-GAAP financial measure discussed in reconciliation of those differences between each non-GAAP financial measure and its most directly comparable GAAP financial measure can be found on the company's website. I'll now turn the call over to Tom.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I am Thomas Shannon, founder, CEO, and president of Valera Corporation. First quarter fiscal 2024 met our expectations. We worked hard during the seasonally slow first quarter to optimize dynamic pricing, began the journey of proactively selling in-center by building a sales culture, and crossed 350 centers in our fleet. Before I jump into my prepared remarks, I want to thank the 10,000 associates in our centers. The first week of July, our same-store sales comp was positive. We then began to tinker with price and find upsell opportunities. To simplify building a sales culture, we started with a one-size-fits-all program, upselling the third game of bowling for $5 and providing a $5 gift card. We removed summer games, a family program that was worth at least $6 million of revenue in the period. We also pulled midweek fixed price all-you-can-bowl specials that were traffic drivers. The changes drove wallet share pickup in our premium times of Friday and Saturday. However, the midweek customer did not like that offer. By Labor Day, our comp was down double digits, with Monday through Thursday dramatically worse. We reversed course on pricing midweek, and in the second week of October, our same-store comp had returned to being positive. I love this dynamic, as I built Bolero to serve all customers, and we learned that when you have a business that runs seven days a week, serving consumers nationally from all classes of life, everyone is looking for something different. We are continuing this journey to fill our lanes and provide our customer what they want, when they want. Some consumers want all-you-can-bowl during the week where they have a fixed price to entertain their family. On the weekends, a different subset of consumers is willing to pay more, still at a better value than a night out at a restaurant and a movie. Customers want to be entertained on their schedule, and as we have done so for 27 years, we will continue to deliver. Our total business is up 61% over first quarter 2019. 61%, and our comp is up 29% over first quarter 2019. In the first quarter, we saw volatility with our tickering with pricing, but that will only help into the rest of the year and the years to come. We learned a lot, and we will continue to optimize price and maximize revenue and earnings dollars with our efforts. Our shining star is our events platform. This fiscal quarter, first fiscal quarter of 2024, Events comped plus 9%. Leagues, which start in September, comped 12%. Events is up 77%, and leagues is up 15% from 2019. The resiliency of our model is in those results. This quarter, we crossed 350 centers, and I am very happy with the integration of Lucky Strike. They are fully on our proprietary events CRM, and we are already seeing the benefits of our world-class events team on their higher-end customer profile. We also opened a new facility that we built in Valley Fair Mall in San Jose, California, and the early results underscore the 40-plus percent cash-on-cash returns we are getting from new builds. We currently have 10 new builds in the pipeline. Bigger is better as we push higher average unit values into our business model. The long-term formula of double-digit revenue and earnings growth is proven and intact. Valero is evolving and getting more insightful every day. We have established a flywheel in our business that will enable us to compound top-line growth over the long-term fueled by self-funded reinvestment. As recently announced, we entered a partnership with Vici that started with a sale-leaseback of 38 properties for $433 million. We paid approximately $150 million for those properties. The pipeline opportunity for more sale leasebacks is in the 100 to 200 U.S. location, which we believe will generate incremental returns and underscore the self-funding model we have for acquisitions. Our scale and creditworthiness are unique in the out-of-home entertainment space. I will now turn it back over to Bolero CFO Bobby Lavin to provide more details on the quarter's results. Bobby?