This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk03: Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Every Holdings 2024 First Quarter and Year End Earnings Conference Call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, the call will open for a question and answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Now, let me turn the call over to Jennifer Hills, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, operator. Let me begin with a reminder that our Safe Harbor disclaimer, which covers today's call and webcast, contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed on today's call. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those contained in our earnings release today and in our SEC filings, which are posted in the investor section of our corporate website at every.com. Because of the potential risk, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We do not intend and assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which are made only as of today, May 8, 2024. We will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as the Just to Leave a DAO free cash flow and net cash position. A description of each of these non-GAAP measures and a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release and related 8K today, as well as in the investor section of our website. This call is being webcast and recorded. A link to the webcast and a replay of today's call can be found in the investor section of our website. On our call today are Randy Taylor, Chief Executive Officer, Mark Labai, Chief Financial Officer, Kate Wallenhauer-Fisher, General Counsel, Dean Ehrlich, Game Business Leader, and Darren Simmons, Bintec Business Leader. Now I will turn the call over to Randy.
spk02: Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. First, I would like to provide a few more details, where possible, regarding our plan to merge every with IGT's Global Gaming and Play Digital Businesses, which was announced on February 29th this year. While we continue to make progress on our proposed merger, we have no specific update regarding antitrust or regulatory matters at this time. As we have messaged in the past, we still anticipate closing the merger in late 2024 or early 2025. We are extremely excited about the opportunity to bring together the best of both of our businesses. While Evra has experienced tremendous success and growth over the past few years, we recognize the ability to accelerate our revenue growth by combining our complementary products and more rapidly enter new jurisdictions. Over the past several years, we significantly increased our investment in research and development and expanded the number of studios to diversify and increase game content. We have also been successful in expanding our product lines by leveraging our game content into new channels. Combining these businesses will provide greater resources and give us more opportunities for success over a product lifecycle. Additionally, we believe IGT's established global distribution network in both land-based and digital will enable every content to enter new global jurisdictions more quickly with less risks. We believe this combination with our game segment will provide more stable, long-term growth opportunities for the combined business. On the fintech side, we will be able to combine our fintech with IGT's gaming systems business. Upon closing, we will be able to work more closely with IGT's system to provide products and services that reduce friction for casino operators and their customers. And as they do today, IGT's casino management systems will continue to interface with fintech products from multiple providers. We will also continue to work with all gaming system providers to improve the expansion of cashless solutions to our casino customers by providing a positive, seamless transaction for their patrons. Additionally, combined, we believe we will be able to offer a complete suite of products from games to systems, financial access, red tech, and loyalty. The structure of the merger provides for shared equity ownership with modest pro forma net leverage at closing between 3.2 to 3.4 times and the ability to generate strong free cash flow. We believe this sets the combined company up well for the future. The estimated $75 million in cash synergies and estimated $10 million in capital savings are driven by leveraging efficiencies that can be gained primarily through procurement productivity, streamlining the assembly processes, and real estate optimization. They are not based on rationalizing existing product lines in the games business, which is where we believe previous supplier mergers have failed to deliver planned synergies. Additionally, revenue growth opportunities will come from leveraging global networks and a combined product offering. As part of the merger agreement, there's also an opportunity for a special dividend to be paid to every shareholders as of a record date prior to the close of the transaction. This dividend is essentially the free cash flow generated from the signing of the transaction, plus our merger related expenses and other adjustments for the agreement. The final amount of this dividend will be impacted by the time it takes to close and the transaction related expenses we incur. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the amount of the special dividend, if any, at this point in the process. Turning to the business performance in the first quarter, while the transition to our new family cabinets and game content has been slower and more challenging than expected, they're starting to see the green shoots appear. In the last four months of 2023, we had 34 new games approved, and an additional 18 have been approved year-to-date. We are in the early stages of installing this new content, but several of the new titles are starting to be recognized in industry surveys. In the April Eilers report, the for-sale Dynasty Soul ranked number three in top indexing cabinets in the portrait slant category, and the two versions of Dynamite Pop on this cabinet both reached the top 20 indexing games in the core low-denomination video reel category. Our Player Classic Signature Cabinet that was introduced in 2022 has performed well, and this performance is expected to continue with the recent introduction of several new game themes that have yet to be captured by EILER's survey results. The launch of the lower-profile Dynasty View Cabinet last spring was initially hampered by limited content at launch. There are currently 15 titles that have been approved, and we expect to have introduced all of these titles into our install base by the end of Q2. We expect to see performance improvements on the views of these new titles, which should positively impact both for-sale and lease units. The Premium Dynasty SoulSync was launched late in the first quarter with the mask, and our newest theme, Smoke and Hot Stuff Link, has just been approved. We expect installation of this new theme to begin this month. Additionally, four new families of titles are scheduled to be released for this cabinet by year-end. The Dynasty Dynamic Premium Cabinet was launched at the end of the third quarter with Hot Stuff Spin Frenzy, and our newest theme based on our proven proprietary brand, The Vault, is being rolled out now. There are also two more families, Cash Machine Inferno and Zolpar Master of Mysteries, planned for later this year. Finally, the Player Classic Reserve was launched at the end of last year's third quarter with great success. This premium cabinet launched with Jackpot Wheel Games, Casper, and Hot Stuff in the Class 3 WAF category. This quarter, we plan to launch the first content fully developed by our Australian studio. The first two themes to be deployed are Thunder and Lightning and Mighty King. We believe these investments in new cabinets and new content will drive improvements in the second half of the year. Although these improvements are taking longer than anticipated, we remain confident in our overall strategy. In terms of new product segments, we are in the final stages of the approval process necessary to enter Illinois with VLTs. This has been a multi-year investment that opens a 50,000 unit opportunity to us, and we expect to have sold our first units in the second half of 2024. Meanwhile, our core FinTech cash access services business continues to be a steady grower as we again processed more transactions and delivered more dollars to our customers' operations during the quarter than we have in any previous quarter. Consistent with many of the operator's reports, our financial access services were negatively impacted by some bad weather in January, but we saw improvement in February, and as we exited the quarter, we've returned to low to mid-single-digit same-store growth. April has been a little stronger and we expect this trend to continue over the remainder of the year. While we experienced some challenges in the first quarter, I believe that building blocks for our return to growth are present. I remain excited about the opportunities ahead and expect our growth initiatives to show improvement primarily in the second half of 2024. I want to end my remarks by acknowledging the strong team we have built here at Every. It is based on a culture of innovation and focused on the needs of our customers and the experiences of their patrons. I want to thank all our employees for their dedication and for making Every a top workplace, as once again recognized by the Top Workplaces USA for the third year in a row. Now let me turn the call over to Mark. Thanks, Randy. Let me begin by adding a little more color on our first quarter and our outlook for the remainder of the year. During the first quarter, as we expected, our games business continued to experience headwinds as we are transitioning to the new family of cabinets and introducing new content to support these cabinets. Revenue for both gaming operations and gaming equipment and systems declined year over year and was relatively flat with the fourth quarter. The experience declines in both our installed base and our quarterly unit sales. While our installed base declined by 595 units from year-end, approximately half of this decline was a result of strategic decisions to not use capital to replace cabinets in lower-performing locations where recovery of the capital would not have met our internal return hurdles. The remainder of the decline is attributable to the additional churn in our older cabinets. To address this, we now have three new cabinets with a deep pipeline of themes rolling out. The Player Classic Reserve and Dynasty Dynamic, which were rolled out late in the third quarter, are performing to our expectations. As of March 31st, we have installed a combined total of 661 units in over 75 locations. The Dynasty Soul Sync, our newest premium video cabinet, was just launched in the first quarter and is in the early stages of being placed on casino floors. Near term, new cabinet installations will mostly replace existing cabinets, but as these cabinets and gains gain traction, we expect to add incremental placements. Daily win per unit of $34.51 was down slightly from the fourth quarter, but we expect daily win per unit to improve as we roll out new cabinets and new content. In the first quarter, recurring revenues of $5.6 million from video king operations and increased revenue from our digital segment offset about half the decline in revenues from the installed base. First quarter gaming equipment and system sales were essentially flat with the fourth quarter. Gaming unit sales were below our expectations for the quarter as we sold 1,021 units at an average selling price of $20,827. With limited initial content available, the early performance of the Dynasty View has not been as strong as we anticipated. However, with additional themes being rolled out, now we expect performance of the cabin to improve. We introduced the Dynasty Soul in the fourth quarter and are still in the early stages of the rollout. Its acceptance is building momentum with our customers, and from launch through the end of the first quarter, we have sold 525 units. As Randy mentioned, Dynamite Pop on the Dynasty Soul is off to a strong start and is recognized in the April Eilers Games Report as a top-performing new game. Moving on to fintech, revenue declined 1% year-over-year as revenue growth in financial access services and software and other was offset by declines in hardware sales. Financial access services revenues grew 2.1% from the prior year first quarter as we processed a record 39 million transactions and delivered a record $12.4 billion of funding to customers' operations. While we did see some weakness in financial access in January due to weather issues, which is consistent with what operators have been disclosing, the trends improved as we exited the quarter and has helped steady thus far into the second quarter. Software and other revenues grew from increased kiosk maintenance revenue, compliance revenue, and central credit and other revenue, but was partially offset by a decline in new software sales from loyalty. The decline in loyalty revenue is a timing issue related to our customers' readiness to accept inflation. We did experience some hardware sale declines in certain foreign jurisdictions related to our ticket redemption kiosks in the first quarter of 2024. Loyalty key sales also decline, reflecting a decline in new installations of loyalty software. As we have discussed previously, loyalty sales can be lumpy. They typically tend to be larger initial unit sales and are generally tied to the timing of new financial access contracts or contract renewals. While the timing of revenue recognition can be delayed due to the operator's readiness for acceptance of the loyalty software and equipment, they are generally not lost, just deferred to later orders. For the quarter, consolidated gross margin expanded by approximately 80 basis points to 80.9%, primarily due to revenue mix shift to higher margin gaming operations and financial access services revenue from lower margin gaming equipment and hardware sales. Moving on to operating expenses, we incurred $15.7 million in one-time professional fees employee retention awards, and other costs related to the planned merger with IGT's Global Gaming and Play Digital businesses. These costs have been excluded from adjusted EBITDA, but skew our reported operating expense trends from a GAAP basis. The decline in adjusted EBITDA for the quarter to $80.3 million from $92.5 million in the prior year quarter is reflective of the lower revenues and higher operating and R&D expenses. The decline in adjusted EBITDA for games to $46.6 million for $53.7 million in the prior year first quarter was a result of both lower revenues and higher expenses, while the decline in adjusted EBITDA for fintech to $33.7 million from $38.8 million was primarily due to higher expenses. Net interest expense in the first quarter was $18.8 million, an increase from $18 million in the prior year. As a reminder, we have $400 million of outstanding unsecured notes at a fixed rate of 5%, and approximately $581 million of term loan that has a variable rate of interest. At the end of the quarter, our weighted average borrowing rate was approximately 6.7%. Also included in interest expense is the cash usage fee on our ATM vault cash arrangements. Our expense for the vault cash was $4.8 million compared to $4.3 million in the prior year first quarter. We ended the quarter with total net leverage at 2.6 times trailing adjusted EBITDA, which remains at the low end of our 2.5 to 3 times target range. Free cash flow generated in the quarter was $14 million, compared with $40 million a year ago. The decline was primarily the result of an increase of $13 million in cash paid for capital expenditures and the $12 million decline in adjusted EBITDA. We believe the increased investment in capital expenditures is important to refresh our installed base, and we expect this spending to return the installed base to growth and improve daily win per unit over time. Moving on to our outlook, our current expectations are that we will return to revenue growth in the back half of the year, assuming that our new cabinets and content resonate as expected with casino patrons. Daily win per unit rebounds and unit sales improve. We expect fintech revenues to return to growth over the remainder of the year, driven by increasing financial access volumes, improved software and other revenue, and a return to growth in our hardware sales. Turning to expenses, we expect higher operating expenses due to our investment in people and products, as well as the costs incurred related to the proposed merger. With $6 million in term loan repaid in the first quarter, we do not have any significant debt repayments due for the remainder of the year. With $400 million of our debt fixed at 5%, our net interest expense will depend primarily on what happens to interest rates this year. We expect our effective tax rate to be in the 22% to 25% range for the year, and our full-year cash taxes to be between $15 and $20 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to decline from the prior year, primarily reflecting the near-term headwinds that are impacting the game segment. But we expect to see improvement in the second half of the year as new cabinets and content hit casino floors and gain traction with customers, and we begin to provide product in new categories like BLT and international gaming. Capital expenditures are expected to be flat to up slightly from $145.1 million in 2023, as we primarily invest in replacing older cabinets and building out our installed base. Free cash flow is expected to be down from the prior year, but will remain strong. And with that, I will now conclude our prepared remarks and turn the call over to the operator for questions.
spk03: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. And you may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Jeffrey Stanchel with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Hi, this is Aiden Youngs, on for Jeff Stanchel. Thanks for taking our question. So starting off on the FinTech business, it looks like operating expenses, excluding adjusted EBITDA add-backs, were up fairly meaningfully quarter-on-quarter, both nominally and as a percentage of revenues. Could you add some color on what's driving that? And how should we think about the right R&D and OPEX levels heading into the remainder of 2024? Thanks.
spk02: Uh, yeah, thanks. Hey, look, I think we're as we look at operating expenses in R and D, we've always kind of talked that that labor and headcount is probably our largest expense category. It's still very tight labor market in terms of how we're operating today. Typically, there's annual reviews, other impacts that impact our current payroll where we are. We feel like we're at a pretty good level though. You know, Q1 levels for kind of what you're looking at from an R&D and op expense from a headcount and investment level are the right levels going forward. So in terms of modeling, I'd be thinking kind of consistent along those lines. I think in terms of percentage of revenues, obviously having a little bit of a decline in the revenues is impacting some of the percentage metrics. But again, we believe we're invested properly for the long-term growth of the business right now where we are. And as revenue begins to rebound, particularly in the second half of the year, we think that'll kind of close that gap and kind of get back to those normalized levels that we talked about. Yeah, I would add, you know, I think we're very comfortable on the FinTech side. Again, that's still a business that we believe you have to invest for improved products. It makes us, it provides better products for our customers and continues to help us, you know, grow that business.
spk04: And as Mark said, as the revenue comes back up, then I think we'll come back in line. Great. Thank you.
spk07: And it looks like flash payments were down 34% year on year. You know, recognizing there's a number of moving parts here, just curious to get your views on to what extent you think the announcement of the merger may be impacting sales. Are your sales reps seeing any confusion from customers on the deal and long-term strategy? Any thoughts here would be great. Thank you.
spk02: Yes. Yeah, that's a difficult one, right? Hard to say. I would say, look, we think we're – as we said in the remarks, we should – we expect to grow again in next quarter sequentially. Whether or not there's a real impact right now because of the deal, it's just really hard for us to – quantify that but uh we just brought our new sole cabinet that came out late in the quarter uh it's doing what we expected to do uh we think with some of the new themes on on view that should hopefully help that uh our mechanical uh products are are again hitting very well on the eiler's report so It's just hard to say. I can't tell you that there's not some, you know, some thought process out there, but I'm not going to point right now just early in the stage that, you know, it's being impacted just by the deal.
spk04: Great. Thanks for the call. I'll pass it on. Thank you.
spk03: And our next question comes from the line of Barry Jonas with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Hey guys, thanks for all the helpful remarks. Maybe I just wanted to dive more.
spk02: Can you maybe give more color of what gives you the confidence that you think new cabinet momentum will show up in the financials in the second half of the year, which starts pretty soon? Thanks. It's hard to say specifically, but we're investing in the capital, so we're getting games out there. We know that we're getting lift off of new games in comparison to the games that are being replaced. So in the install base, there is some churn, and it's first going to be to replace the older units. That's going to move in the right direction. We think that's pretty straightforward. The question is, how long did it hold? And does it really go to a higher win per day than maybe what we're modeling? So I would say, you know, we're seeing interest in the sole with the new, the two themes that have hit well in the Eilers reports, right? That's something new for us. So, look, there's green shoots here, Barry, that would point to the fact that, you know, we should improve in the second half of the year. It's a difficult one to say how much, but, you know, so far, you know, the new themes are working well, and we're seeing, you know, as we're replacing games, we're getting a lift. It's just that we have a big install base, and so that takes a little time. It's a bigger, you know, a bigger shift to turn, but we're still very comfortable that, you know, we're going to improve in the back half of the year. Great, great. And then just as a follow-up, you know, look, we know you need to run the businesses independently until the deal closes, but is there any early integration work or maybe ways for the two companies to work together between now and the deal close? Thanks. Yeah, Barry, I would say, look, that's kind of a topic we're really not going to cover. You know, you very are limited on what you can do. So I would say I'm going to stay away from that one because until, you know, as we said, we're not going to give an update there. So I would say I'll leave it at that, Barry. Unfortunately, not much I can give you.
spk04: Understood. Thank you. You bet.
spk03: And our next question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
spk06: Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions for all the detail. I'm just curious, as you sort of progress toward closing on the transaction, what kind of feedback are you getting sort of in the field in terms of opportunities that may be going slower or faster you know, as a result of just the pending deal out there.
spk04: Hey, David, how you doing?
spk02: I'm struggling a little bit with how to answer your question. I mean, I would say the feedback that we've got from customers is positive on the deal. You know, so, but, you know, whether or not I can say is there anything that, you know, we're doing in the interim, again, as I remarked to Barry, there's not a lot that you can really do at this stage in the game until you get through a couple of the processes that we've talked about between antitrust and regulatory. We did have a CAB, where we bring our customers in, a customer evaluation of the products. And I think, again, they were favorable to the transaction right there still want to see how it goes we've been very clear to our customers that both product lines will continue to be supported um and so i think that's really what they want to know and i think they've been supportive of that but there's not i guess anything else i can really point to david that that says where we are in this process and until uh we we are farther along and and have other information uh we're just as you said we're kind of operating as independent units with understanding that down the road, we expect to come together.
spk06: Understood. And Randy, your prepared remarks, you talked about some of the technology opportunities coming together, which is clearly an exciting part of all this. Notwithstanding the time to meld those two enterprises together, You know, presume that, you know, that there may also be some incremental R&D, you know, to that end. Have you started to look at, you know, what the cost of melding those together might be at this stage, or is that just way too early to get any insight on?
spk02: Yeah, David, it's just way too early. I think the good thing is, as we've talked on our remarks before, is that we don't expect to change R&D. R&D is what's going to drive this company and the success of this company combined. So it's definitely not going to be in the neighborhood of pulling back in my estimation right now. But, you know, specifically where and in that area, David, again, it's just too early to talk about anything of that nature or, you know, how we're going to look at that going forward.
spk06: Okay. Fair enough.
spk04: Thank you very much. Appreciate it, David. Thanks.
spk03: Our next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Morning. Thanks for taking my question. Wanted to ask about the iGaming or digital side of things. The market here in the US continues to grow quite significantly. And I know that's been an area of focus for your content here. And then you've also talked about expanding into the UK, Europe and Latin American markets. So can you just kind of give us an update in terms of how that that business, that line item is progressing and then opportunities for 24. Thanks.
spk02: Yeah, Ted, I'll take that one. Look, I think digital continues to be an important part of our business and a great avenue for growth. Again, what we really, appreciate about the gaming business is the ability to take proven content that we've developed and taken it to new channels and really expand what we're doing there. And as you mentioned, the North America-US market growing has created opportunities and our ability to get into new markets like UK is also something we're really excited about. Still very early stages of that international piece, but But we are live actually in the UK now and looking to continue to expand what we do in UK and in Europe with some partners that we have here in the coming quarters. So great opportunity. I think in terms of growth, you know, we ended the quarter probably just a little over $7.3 million of revenue. So nice year-over-year growth, probably about 12%, 13% growth on a year-over-year basis in terms of performance there. So it's, again, progressing nicely and continuing to grow along the path of our expectations.
spk00: Thanks, Mark. And then on the fintech side, you mentioned hardware, you know, coming in a little bit light this quarter. That's always been lumpy and kind of harder to predict. Is there general seasonality in that business? And I know you have a few big improvements and kind of products that are out in the market. Can you just kind of help us with the outlook for that for the rest of the year on the hardware side?
spk02: Yeah, Chad, to your point, it is lumpy. I would say, you know, we have signed contracts. We have, you know, product that we do believe will get placed this year. So we're very confident that that will, you know, ramp throughout the rest of the year. You know, the unknown is, you know, customers, when they're ready for it, and are they going to take it at that point in time? So, you know, we had some that got pushed this quarter and pushed out. But, again, these are signed contracts, which are generally kind of tied to a cash access contract. And so it's just when they want to install them and when they're ready for it. So we're still very comfortable that, you know, hardware should ramp up. throughout the rest of the year, but in Q1, just a little bit lower than we had anticipated, obviously, compared to prior year.
spk00: Thank you very much.
spk04: Appreciate it. Thanks, Chad.
spk03: Our next question comes from the line of John Davis with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
spk09: Hey, good morning, guys. This is Madison. I'm for J.D., I just wanted to touch on the comments around the decision to not replace some cabinets and lower performing areas. Is this something that's just going to be isolated to one cue or is this an ongoing process where you guys are looking at other areas where there could be some bleed over into two cue or the second half? I'll take that with Madison.
spk02: Look, I think we're always in the gaming operations team is laser focused on making sure they make smart choices with respect to, you know, generating revenue, driving revenue. And if we have low volume locations that are looking either for increased placement fees or new placement fees, in addition to swapping out equipment, you know, we want to make sure we get a reasonable rate of return and hit that hurdle for us internally to make sure it makes sense. And if it doesn't make sense, just to never get your money back or barely make any money over a four or five-year period of time, we're not going to spend that money. So we're always evaluating that. I think there were some larger concentrations of units in the first quarter. Again, we talked about our decline. So over 300 of them were probably those kind of decisions to not replace capital where we had the opportunity to. And I expect over the coming quarters, you'll see a couple more little instances like that, maybe not to the level that you saw here, but But, you know, we are making those choices to maximize our yield at the install base. Yeah, Madison, I would point out that those were really kind of related to two customers. So I don't want you to go get it. This is somehow throughout our install base. But there were a couple of customers that, you know, just they have lower performing units. And then there were some other issues tied to it. And we decided that, you know, from a yield, it made sense not to, you know, to go after those. So don't want it to look like it's low.
spk09: throughout our our install base but it was just primarily two customers okay got it just a quick follow-up here on the fintech side you know appreciate the color you gave on some of the hardware components but as we think about kind of volumes progressing through the year year or yields for that matter you know how are you guys thinking about cash to the casino floor and you know whether it be 2q or the second half and just any color uh in terms of what you're expecting from a yield perspective thanks guys
spk02: Sure, Madison. What I'd say is I think Mark covered it a little bit in his remarks that January was softer than we expected, but it really kind of recovered in February and March, and I would say so far April and early May have been you know, really pleasantly, not surprising, but, you know, higher than we kind of expected. So it seems to be right now that, you know, we would expect the cash access, you know, volumes to kind of stay at that, you know, mid to low single digit growth and maybe even a little bit better, but we'll have to wait and see. But I would say, look, we're still expecting growth on cash access. And I think we're kind of, we're kind of, budgeting for that level, but right now, I'd say we're seeing probably a little bit stronger than that. Yeah, and I would just add, look, even with the little bit of headwinds of weather in January that we saw, we still ended the quarter positive on a same-store basis, so it seems like the patron, the consumer, is still very willing to spend in the gaming environment, and we're seeing some, as Randy mentioned, some really good strength, probably above the kind of our expectation levels into April and into May, probably a closer to you know just mid to high mid single digits in april and into may so you know april last year may wasn't that impacted or what the comp wasn't so horribly bad either so it feels like it's still holding up very steady for us in this space got it yeah that's very helpful color i appreciate it guys and our next question comes from the line of david bain with b riley please proceed with your question
spk05: Great. Thank you. Hi, Randy. Hi, Mark. Quick question on the termination of the repurchase program. Does that signal confidence of a deal close and you keep the money for dividend purposes? Or is that more of a technical problem?
spk02: Well, no, I think it doesn't signal the confidence of the deal close. I still think our confidence hasn't changed. We still believe that we'll close at the end of the year or early next year. But what we wanted to point out was that we're not going to be, you know, we have a special dividend if it's payable, depending on our operations and merger-related expenses and so forth. And so we just want to make sure that shareholders understand that we're not going to be out purchasing shares because we think that takes away from the dividend. And then we also wanted to note the sell to cover where we've changed our approach to not withholding shares for tax purposes, which would require us to pay the cash into the U.S. government. So that would be a use of our cash during this time period versus just saying people should sell them on the open market and we'll still pay their taxes. But that would, again, help our overall potential for a dividend. So we're trying to manage cash as well to make sure that, you know, if possible, that there could be a dividend. So that was kind of two aspects to it, David.
spk05: Very good. That's perfect. And then as a follow-up, I know you spoke about some customers and their reaction to the deal generally. Have you specifically spoken to any systems customers or operators and maybe they've opined with regard to the potential of the cashless friction removal from the combination? Is that something that, like as David Cass was pointing out, that could actually be more accelerated than you originally anticipated amongst the IGT base, systems base?
spk02: yeah look i you know i i would i would expect we haven't i would say we haven't really talked specifically to customers i think there may be customers that are kind of thinking about what they're going to do on the system side the system side uh other in other words you know if they're if they're thinking about what they're going to use from a cashless and um maybe they have the igt system i think they are probably thinking about you know does that change you know how how they want to go forward And maybe that gives us more opportunity, you know what I'm saying, David? But I don't think I would say we've had any real discussions there because, again, we're in this period of they've got to operate, we have to operate.
spk04: Awesome. Thanks, Randy. Okay.
spk03: And our next question comes from the line of George Sutton with Craig Hallam. Please proceed with your question.
spk10: Thank you. I have a mathematical question for Mark. You mentioned the daily win per unit numbers are expected to improve in the back half of the year as a result of new content. Help us understand the percentage of your units that would be impacted by the new content. That sounded to me to be an unusually... or an unusual way to grow quickly the daily wind per unit?
spk02: Well, remember, the installed base The entire base of units were continually making content for all of our cabinets in there. It's not just about brand new cabinets that are out there as well. So we're always swapping out content and trying to move the needle in terms of performance and improvement. And that's how you grow over time as well. But obviously the new cabinets and the new content is something new to patrons and that drives generally a little more increased level of List on the devices as we make those swaps out on cabinets as well as the content on them. So, you know, what we've been seeing the installed base is generally anywhere from, you know. 10 to 1520 dollars a day of daily wind improvement on the swap outs. We've been doing clearly. We've been focused on the highest value. units first in the installed base, and we'll continue that over the course of time, swapping out lower-yielding or older equipment, legacy-type cabinets that may be a little more tired with the new, freshest content in there. So that's where we expect to see the biggest bang for the buck in terms of movement in the daily win. Thanks.
spk04: It's two-pronged, you know. Yeah. Sorry, Randy. Go ahead. Okay. I didn't have much more to add.
spk10: Go ahead. Well, I need to know what the two-pronged approach is.
spk02: Now that I said it, you have to, but I would say, look, you're focused on, you know, replacing themes where some of the themes have gotten older, and that's a little bit easier lift, but you have to start replacing the cabinets. So I think, you know, Mark's point is the cabinets plus new themes are probably the biggest lift, but also just putting new themes on older cabinets is a lift. So it's a combo.
spk10: Gotcha. Dr. Ehrlich has been surprisingly quiet on this call, and There was a reference to the early performance of the Dynasty View not meeting your expectations, but an expectation that that improves with new content. I just wondered if he could address sort of what might have been missing there, what may be coming that we should be enthusiastic about.
spk08: I'll hit the latter part of it of the stuff that we should be enthusiastic about because we have a huge lineup coming out of product that we feel hits the tried and true mechanics. uh the players are very familiar with and just the pure bandwidth on our emphasis on developing on some of the new hardware that we've been talking about for a while so what's happening here is that it's really starting to come to fruition as a product start getting deployed it's just taken a little bit longer than obviously any of us would have liked so i am excited about a lot of different products that are coming out through the next up and coming few months so Hard to name if I had to give you one. We got Smoke and Hot Stuff length that Randy touched upon that hits our premium segment. Very excited to see how that's going to do. And just the continued success of Dynamite Pop that we've, you know, all talked about. So obviously look forward to seeing a couple more themes resonate at that same particular level and see where this goes.
spk02: George, I'd add that, you know, on the Vue specific, right, we launched in throughout 23 with about six titles. We've now added nine more titles, so we have a total of 15 titles. So that's really what I'm focused on with those additional nine titles where, again, we place Vue out in our install base. and we obviously have it for for sale it's also um you know it's also our our cabinets that we'll be using for the blts so you know we're still excited about that but i'm focused on hey well those nine new themes really you know provide a lift um versus where we came out understood thanks guys thank you
spk03: This concludes our question and answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Taylor for his closing remarks.
spk02: Sure. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest in every, and we look forward to providing an update on our business outlook on our second quarter call in August. Again, thanks for joining us.
spk03: Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Disclaimer