Marcus Corporation (The)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Marcus Corporation fourth quarter earnings conference call. My name is Charlie, and I'll be coordinating your call today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will conduct a question and answer session towards the end of the conference. If at any time during the call you require assistance, please press star followed by zero, and an operator will be happy to assist you. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Joining us today are Greg Marcus, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Doug Nice, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Marcus Corporation. At this time, I'd like to turn the program over to Mr. Nice for his opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Charlie, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter conference call. As usual, I need to begin by stating we plan to make a number of forward-looking statements in 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. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties which can 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 that we issued this morning, announcing our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter results, and in the risk factors section of our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q and our fiscal 2020 annual report on Form 10-K, each of which you can access on the SEC's website. We'll also post our Regulation G disclosures when applicable on our website at www.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 our shareholders. And you should look to our website, www.marcuscorp.com, as an important source of information regarding our company. So with that behind us, let's begin. Our call will follow the usual format, where I start by spending just a couple minutes briefly sharing a few numbers from our quarter and year with you, and I'll discuss our balance sheet and liquidity. I'll then turn the call over to Greg, who will focus his prepared remarks on where our businesses are today and what we're seeing ahead, both short and long term. We'll then open the call up for questions. So you've seen the numbers. Our recovery continued in the fourth quarter, and for the second consecutive quarter, we're reporting positive net earnings, and significantly improved positive adjusted EBITDA. This quarter, it was our theater division that led the way, which was great to see. We once again had a couple of non-recurring items this year and last year, all of which are detailed in a non-GAAP reconciliation that we included at the end of the press release. And as we discussed adjusted EBITDA in our remarks today, I do want to refer you to the disclosures we provided in the press release regarding the use of this non-GAAP measure in evaluating our performance and its limitations. So, I said this last quarter, but it's worth saying again, what a difference a year makes. During our fourth quarter last year, we reported adjusted EBITDA of a negative $28 million, and this year we're reporting adjusted EBITDA of a positive $29 million, a swing of approximately $57 million. And we look at our completed fiscal year, you'll see that the adjusted EBITDA increased by nearly $107 million as we went from a negative $72 million last year to a positive adjusted EBITDA of $35 million in fiscal 2021. In the second half of fiscal 2021, our businesses generated approximately $54 million in adjusted EBITDA. Now, we've provided a breakdown of these numbers by operating segment in our press release. where you can see that our theater division contributed the majority of our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA. We ended the year with both divisions contributing approximately $24, $25 million in adjusted EBITDA for the year prior to unallocated corporate losses. Now getting back to the financial statement for a second, there were a few variations in our numbers below operating income worth briefly mentioning. While our full fiscal year interest expense understandably was higher than last year, Our fourth quarter benefited from the reduced borrowings because of our improved operating results and the fact that last year's interest expense included non-cash amortization of debt discount on our convertible notes, the accounting of which changed beginning in fiscal 2021. Now, offsetting that reduction in interest expense for the quarter, however, was a non-recurring item in last year's other expense line and reduced gains from disposition of property, equipment, and other assets this quarter. I'll point out that for the full year, we had over $3 million in gains on disposition of assets. Shifting gears away from the earnings statement just for a second, our total cash capital expenditures during the fiscal 2021 ended up at approximately $17 million, with a large portion of these dollars being spent on two projects, a theater renovation and a lobby renovation and the beginnings of a guest room renovation at our Grand Geneva Resort and Spa, with the rest going towards normal maintenance projects. As we look towards capital expenditures for fiscal 2022, we're currently estimating that our fiscal 2022 capital expenditures may be in the $35 to $45 million range. Of course, our actual expenditures during the year may vary and will depend on the timing of several planned projects as well as potential opportunities that may arise. Let me now provide some brief financial comments on our operations for the fourth quarter and fiscal year, and I'll start with the theater division. We continue to experience increased per capita spending by our customers in our theaters. Comparisons to last year's fourth quarter are not particularly useful, given that nearly half of our theaters were closed during portions of the quarter last year, and we had a limited amount of new films. But our average admission price increased by 11.1% during the full year fiscal 2021 compared to last year, and increased by 10.7% if you want to compare it to fiscal 2019, pre-pandemic. Our premium large format screens continue to outperform compared to our regular screens, contributing to this overall increase in our average admission price. Meanwhile, our average concession and food and beverage revenues per person at our comparable theaters increased by 15.6% for the full year, fiscal 2021, and that's comparing to last year, and has increased by 23.4% if you compare it to fiscal 2019. Our industry-leading mix of non-traditional food and beverage options, shorter lines at the concession stand, particularly earlier in the year, and the emphasis we're placing on encouraging guests to purchase their concessions and food and beverage ahead of time, either online or using our mobile app, on top of the fact that we just believe there's just an overall general pent-up demand for a return to normal, all of these we believe has contributed to our increased per capita revenues. Since a significant number of our theaters in both our circuit and the industry as a whole were closed during large portions of the fourth quarter last year, we believe a comparison of our results to pre-pandemic results in fiscal 2019 still may be the best way to compare our performance to the industry this quarter and fiscal year. When you compare our fourth quarter admission revenues to fiscal 2019, our admission revenues were down 21.4% during the quarter, and 54% for fiscal 2021 for the full year when you compare it again to fiscal 2019. Now, according to data received from Comscore and compiled by us to evaluate our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter and fiscal year results, United States box office receipts decreased 23.5% during our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter and 59.6% during our fiscal 2021 full year, both compared again to U.S. box office receipts during fiscal 2019. As a result, we believe our admission revenue decline outperformed the industry average by over two percentage points for the quarter and nearly six percentage points for the full fiscal year 2021. Shifting to our hotels and resorts division, the same logic applies. Comparing our total revenue per available room, or REVPAR, to last year does not provide particularly meaningful numbers, so we believe comparing the same metric to pre-pandemic levels in fiscal 2019 does help provide perspective on the pace of the current recovery. Our REVPAR for our seven comparable owned hotels decreased just under 20% during the fourth quarter and was down approximately 30% for the full year of fiscal 2021. Again, compared to the same periods during fiscal 2019. I'll point out these numbers exclude the St. Kate, which had just reopened during the third quarter of fiscal 2019 and was closed for major portions of the first two quarters and even a little bit of the third quarter in 2019. So we excluded that hotel in that math. According to data received from Smith Travel Research for the fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2019 periods, and compiled by us in order to compare our results, our hotels outperformed comparable upper upscale hotels throughout the United States during the fourth quarter and fiscal year by a significant 1.6 points and 9.6 points respectively during those periods. The data also indicates that our hotels outperformed competitive hotels in our market by approximately 2.7 points during the quarter and 6.9 points during the fiscal year, again, compared to fiscal 2019. Breaking out the fourth quarter numbers for the seven comparable hotels more specifically, our overall rev par decrease during the fiscal 2021 fourth quarter compared to fiscal 2019 was due to an overall occupancy rate decrease of approximately 16.5 percentage points, offset by a 5.5% increase in our average daily rate, or ADR. Our average fiscal 2021 fourth quarter occupancy rate for our hotels was approximately 52%. Finally, before I turn the call over to Greg, let me also briefly comment on our balance sheet liquidity. As our press release notes, our liquidity remains extremely strong with $239 million in cash and revolving credit availability at the end of fiscal 2021. At the end of the fiscal year, we had no borrowings on our $225 million revolving credit facility. Our liquidity position was further bolstered by an income tax refund of over $22 million that we received after year end, as well as state government grants of $4.3 million accrued during our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter, but not received until early in fiscal 2022. We also had proceeds from the sale of a retail center and a former theater totaling nearly $13 million during our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter, bringing our total sale proceeds to over $22 million during fiscal 2021, as we continue to take advantage of opportunities within our substantial real estate portfolio. We believe we may receive additional sales proceeds from real estate sales during the next year, totaling approximately $10 to $20 million, depending upon demand. We ended the fiscal year with a debt to capitalization ratio of 36.7%, And to put that number in perspective, our average debt to capitalization ratio during the eight years preceding the pandemic was 38.5%. I find that pretty remarkable given what our businesses have been through the past two years. And it's a testament to our philosophy of owning our real estate and keeping our balance sheet strong. With that, I'll turn the call over to Greg. Thanks, Doug.

Before I make a few comments on our operating businesses, I want to briefly pick up where Doug just left off. Last quarter, I started my prepared remarks by highlighting a few key differentiators for the Marcus Corporation, including our balance sheet, significant real estate holdings, and our diversified business portfolio. All three of those elements were on display again for all to see during the fourth quarter as well. You just heard from Doug about the continued strength of our balance sheet and liquidity positions. He also shared with you that we continued to selectively monetize surplus and non-core real estate during the quarter, further strengthening our balance sheet. And with a much more limited exposure to fixed monthly lease payments, we enter fiscal 2022 with a minimal amount of deferred rent and a great deal more flexibility than our peers. In addition, our diversified business model once again paid off as well. Last quarter, We had just reported our first profitable quarter since the start of the pandemic, thanks in large part to a very strong performance from our hotels and resorts division. As winter arrived and the hotel business experienced its typical seasonal slowdown, we were still able to report another profitable quarter, this time on the strength of significantly improved theater results. As you know, we view the world through a long-term lens. As I've said since the onset of the pandemic, the recovery path we are on may not always be a straight line. And we recognize that neither of our businesses are back to pre-pandemic levels yet. But I do believe unequivocally that these key differentiators for the Marcus Corporation are major strengths for our company and have contributed to both our long-term progress and our long-term success. The fourth quarter and fiscal year that we are reporting today were yet additional steps in our recovery. And we're pleased to be sharing these results with you. So let me start my divisional remarks with our hotel division. Doug shared some of the numbers with you, including comparisons to our pre-pandemic fiscal 2019 numbers and the fact that data indicates that we once again outperformed both the industry and our competitive sets this quarter. As expected, occupancies dropped off from our high point during the third quarter due to typical seasonality for our hotels. But overall, it wasn't a bad quarter for this division. They were profitable once again and contributed over $4 million in adjusted EBITDA, with the drive-to leisure segment leading the way once again, particularly on weekends. We were particularly pleased with the continued strength of our average daily rate during the fourth quarter and second half of the fiscal year. And while you have heard me say this before, it bears repeating. Our outperformance is also a direct reflection on the quality of our hotels and resorts and and the operational excellence of our outstanding hotel team, both in the corporate office and in each hotel. Stated simply, we've always had some of the best properties and best people in our respective markets. It doesn't surprise us that we've outperformed during this period of recovery. The arrival of the Omicron variant came at a time that is historically our slowest time of the year for our hotel division, so the impact was more subtle. We did have some cancellations and rebookings for later in the year, and in general, it resulted in a delay in a more robust reopening of offices. As you've heard me say before, we've always believed that in order for the business traveler to return to pre-pandemic levels, it all begins with employees returning to offices. That then can lead to businesses getting comfortable with their employees getting back on the road to see clients, potential clients, remote offices and plants, et cetera, as well as going to group events and conferences. Now that cases are once again dropping significantly, restrictions are being lifted, and new CDC guidance is out reducing the need for masks. We are hearing of offices gearing up for a greater return of associates, and we are optimistic that we'll continue to see improvement in business and group travel. We've seen a noticeable improvement in our group room booking activity in recent weeks, and while our group room revenue bookings for fiscal 2022, commonly referred to in the hotels and resorts industry as group pace, are still running behind where we would historically be at this same time in pre-pandemic years. It is quite an improvement from where we were last year at this time, and the increased amount of activity and leads we are experiencing suggest to us that we may further close the gap by the time we get through 2022. Banquet and catering revenue pace for fiscal 2022 is also running behind where we would typically be at this same time in prior years. but we continue to experience very strong wedding bookings. Some of the bigger events of the past are once again booking for 2022 and beyond. Overall, we generally expect our revenue trends to track or hopefully continue to exceed the overall industry trends for our segment of the industry, particularly in our respective markets. As in the past, our results from this division will vary by quarter due to the seasonality our property has historically experienced. But on a relatively year-over-year basis, we look for a continued improvement during this ongoing recovery. And as I have said in the past, we believe we have special assets that make our portfolio unique and give us the ability to pivot to other customer segments while we wait for business travel to fully return. As we look to 2022 and beyond, our team is actively shifting its focus away from navigating the pandemic and towards rebuilding and once again growing our hotels and resorts division. In our annual report on Form 10-K that we are filing today, we highlight key strategies in three key categories, operational excellence and financial discipline, portfolio management, and strategic growth. Strategies for operational excellence and financial discipline include sales, marketing, and revenue management strategies designed to further accelerate the pace of the recovery, focusing on leveraging strong leisure demand, driving average daily rate, rebuilding group demand, and growing ancillary revenues. While keeping the guest experience at the forefront, we also take a hard look at how we deliver our services with human resource and technology strategies that adapt to a changing labor market. We'll continue to take a hard look at how we can do more with less and how we can use technology to enable that effort. For example, at one of our hotels, we are currently testing the use of a robot to clean bathrooms. Portfolio management strategies will include continued reinvestment in our existing properties to maintain and enhance their value. For example, we anticipate additional reinvestment during fiscal 2022 and 2023 at the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa and the Pfister Hotel, two of our most iconic properties. We also recognize that there can be a time when the best option may be to monetize a given asset, and we routinely evaluate our strategy for each property against our expectations for future value creation. As a part of portfolio management, we are also actively seeking opportunities to invest in new hotels, and increase the number of rooms under management in the future. That could come in a variety of ways, including pursuing additional new management contracts and by seeking opportunities where we may act as an investment fund sponsor or joint venture partner in acquiring additional hotel properties. As we highlighted in our release in December, we announced the formation of a joint venture to do just that, with the JV then acquiring the Kimpton Hotel Monaco Pittsburgh, and we hope to find additional opportunities in the months and years ahead. So now let's shift to our theater divisions. Doug went over the numbers with you, including our tremendous increases in per-person revenues, and as you saw, we experienced significant improvement in this division during the fourth quarter, returning to profitability once again. Not coincidentally, our improved results coincide with the release of more new films by our studio partners, several of which were highlighted in our press release. And of course, we ended the fiscal year with the biggest movie of all, Spider-Man No Way Home, which has now become the third best-performing film of all time, The performance of that film certainly answered any questions about whether an exclusive theatrical showing of a blockbuster film could still generate blockbuster results. Spider-Man answered that question with a resounding yes. In fact, we believe there were several takeaways from the holiday season. We believe it proved there was strong demand for affordable, out-of-home entertainment. Spider-Man wasn't the only to draw to our theaters over the holidays. Films such as Sing To! Ghostbusters Afterlife and American Underdog, for example, brought families back to the theater as well, and that carried into early 2022. No other distribution channel for film content matches the experience of watching a movie on the big screen. We believe the numbers once again point out the importance of an exclusive theatrical release window as a means of maximizing the performance of film content over its life cycle. Meanwhile, We don't think it's a coincidence that films released day and date have consistently underperformed, and we saw that again this holiday season as well. It's been a long road back for our theater division, but one look at the quarterly progress we've made during fiscal 2021 tells a great story. Our total theater division revenues expressed as a percentage of fiscal 2019 total revenues increased every quarter of fiscal 2021, increasing from 20% in the first quarter to 32% in the second quarter, 59% in the third quarter and 82% in the fourth quarter. Like our hotel division, one of the highlights of the quarter was our continued outperformance versus the industry. As Doug shared with you, based on industry data available to us, we believe we once again outperformed the industry during the fourth quarter, and for that matter, throughout fiscal 2021. Additional data received and compiled by us from Comscore indicates our admission revenues during fiscal 2021 represented approximately 3.5% of the total admission revenues in the U.S. during the same period. This is commonly referred to as market share in our industry. This represents an increase over our reported market share of approximately 3.2% during the comparable period of fiscal 2019 prior to the pandemic. Once again, I want to call out our outstanding teams in our theaters and our corporate office. Like their counterparts in our hotel divisions, They have had to navigate through an uncharted period of time while dealing with some of the same labor shortages most businesses are dealing with these days. And they've done so with incredible effort and dedication. This was particularly the case during our incredibly busy last weeks of December due to the success of Spider-Man. The Omicron variant certainly impacted our theater division as well, particularly early in fiscal 2022. several films were shifted out of january and february to later in the year so it's likely that our first fiscal quarter will not be a particularly strong one but it still will be significantly better than last year and there's plenty to be optimistic about as we look ahead to the rest of fiscal 2022 and beyond as cases have declined rapidly in recent weeks and restrictions have been lifted we've once again seen an uptick at the box office several new films have performed better than expected in recent weeks and tonight The very well-reviewed film, The Batman, opens up to an exclusive theatrical run. You may remember that last year at this time, all of Warner Brothers films were released day and date with HBO Max. We are obviously biased, but we believe 2022 will be the year of the return to an exclusive theatrical release window for a significant majority of new films. One look at the film lineup for the remainder of fiscal 2022, many of which are listed in our press release, and you can see why we are excited about what lies ahead for this business. Another reason for the optimism is the most recent survey data released by the National Association of Theater Owners regarding consumer sentiment towards moviegoing. After dipping back into the mid-60% range with the onset of the Omicron variant, the percentage of those surveyed saying they are very or somewhat comfortable going to the movies once again hit 80% this week. This is just a point shy of the pandemic all-time high hit on July 11, 2021. The improvement in percentage of positive responses from females 35 plus was particularly encouraging as we look for the overall customer base to broaden in the months ahead. We recognize that the industry is still recovering and the film studios are still navigating this environment, but we're excited about building upon the progress we've made so far in our theater division and we look forward to continuing improvement in the periods ahead. With that in mind, like our hotel division, we believe the time has come to focus less on navigating through a pandemic and instead look ahead to where we can take our theater business in the years ahead. In that same annual report that I referenced in my hotel remarks, you will also find our current plans for our theater division. Our team has organized their plan under three main sections, maximizing and leveraging our existing assets in a post-pandemic world, reinventing and modernizing the out-of-home entertainment experience and strategic growth, Strategies for maximizing and leveraging our existing assets include additional investments in our industry-leading amenities including our proprietary premium large format screens and food and beverage concepts. We will also have a number of strategies to continue to evolve and energize our loyalty program and modernize our pricing programs. Expanding the use of technology in all facets of our business and looking for additional ways to monetize our lobby, screens, website and app with additional ancillary revenue generating opportunities will also be an important part of the section of our plan. Our goal is also to continue to introduce and create entertainment destinations that further define and enhance the customer value proposition for moviegoing and the overall out-of-home entertainment experience. Strategies to achieve this goal are expected to include testing and launching a variety of new programs with concepts such as a subscription program, and various additional entertainment options within our theater auditoriums on the table. For example, at our theater in Gurney Mills, we have converted an auditorium to what can best be described as a sports bar like no other. With the addition of eight high-definition monitors 75 to 100 inches in size and a laser projector combined with a dynamic splitter allowing us to project up to four other live games on the main screen for a total of 12 simultaneous events, it will be known as The Wall and will debut with March Madness, With this amazing viewing experience combined with our industry-leading food and beverage option, I can't think of a better place to watch those games. We will also continue to explore new content sources and deliveries to supplement our existing mainstream movie content. And we are also looking ahead to returning to strategic growth in our theater division when the time is right. Growth opportunities that we may explore in the future include new builds, management contracts, or taking over existing theater leases and acquisitions. We believe our strong balance sheet positions us well to execute on this strategy as attractive growth opportunities arise. Before I wrap up my prepared remarks, I want to acknowledge the press release that went out last week announcing the impending May retirement of Doug Nice, our Executive Vice President and CFO. After 36 years of service with the Marcus Corporation, we'll save our goodbyes until our first quarter earnings call in May. I'm happy to note that Doug has agreed to continue to provide advisory services to the company after his official retirement date in order to ensure that the transition to our new CFO is seamless. And while we're sad to see Doug go, we're equally excited to be able to promote Chad Paris, our corporate controller and treasurer to CFO upon Doug's retirement. Chad's been with us since October, working alongside Doug as we prepared for this eventual transition. He brings with him a wealth of experience in all the areas needed to be a successful CFO. We're excited to have someone of Chad's experience and expertise step into this role And we are confident that Chad is the right person at the right time. We look forward to you getting to know him in the periods ahead. I would also be remiss if I didn't wrap up this fiscal year by once again expressing my appreciation for our dedicated associates at the Marcus Corporation. It was only through their dedicated and outstanding work that we can be with you today celebrating the significant progress we've made navigating through the most difficult two years of our 86-year history. Yes, our key strategies include our balance sheet, our significant real estate holdings, and our resilient diversified businesses that I referred to earlier. But our secret weapon has always been our people. We always say people are our most important asset, and that was especially the case during fiscal 2021. So on behalf of our board of directors and our entire executive team, thank you to all of our associates from the bottom of our hearts. With that, at this time, Doug and I would be happy to open the call up for any questions you may have.

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your line is unmuted locally. We'll go first to Jim Goss of Barrington Research. Jim Goss, your line is now open.

All right. Thank you, and good morning. Good morning, Jim. Good morning. So I would begin with asking about the Gurney Mills, the wall. How do sports rights come into play there? Are you able to be treated as another bar and you don't have any issues dealing with that? How exactly does this could be a template for you in the industry?

Yeah, you know, that's exactly right, Jim. What we've done here is we have taken this screen and basically converted it to a sports bar. It will not play sports. theatrical content anymore. This is now a dedicated sports bar. It has multiple screens. We have some really interesting technology here where you can bring your iPhone or your Android device and load an app on and put your earphones in and you can then select which broadcast you want to watch. We'll have one over the main but if you don't want to watch it on the main speakers, you can watch all the others. But again, we feel that this is essentially, we've converted this away from being a movie theater where we're selectively putting up sports events to a sports bar.

Okay, and have you basically taken out the seats then and put high-rise tables or something like that for the viewers to watch?

Jim, that's the most comfortable, that's the best part of all the comfortable seats. No, well, actually, I say that half-kiddingly, but we probably actually are going to take some seats out. We haven't figured out which ones yet, but we're looking for some opportunities to put some high tops in. We've got to be careful of viewing angles. We also could potentially put in a portable bar in the space as well. We're going to have food and beverage delivered to the seats. So again, as a sports bar, we will be, and to differentiate really anywhere else in the theater, we'll be delivering the food and beverages and everything to the seats. But yeah, we're going to keep those seats in because that's really one of the things we think makes us special.

Okay. One of the other things is there were a number of footnotes in the

Oh, I'm sorry, Jim. The other thing to differentiate us on the sports issue thing is we're not charging to get in.

Okay.

I guess that would be... You can walk right in. The goal is to make money on food and beverage.

Okay. In the statements where you... take a net income to adjust to pretty much all of the footnotes relate to COVID-19 type events from over the past year. I wonder if you might talk about some of those and how much of those would be ongoing or will at some point you be sort of even from those COVID-related adjustments and what ones do you think are significant to you?

Well, you know, Jim, really, when you look at Most of them are in the past, right? I mean, the biggest thing that happened this particular quarter was the government grants and federal tax credits, which we had to actually reduce the number. We took a favorable event and took it out in order to come down to adjusted EBITDA. Our unadjusted EBITDA was higher than what we reported, but as you can see, we had nearly $7.4 million in additional COVID-related government grants And a portion of that was also some federal tax credits that we were entitled to, also related to some COVID legislation. So, you know, I mean, will there be any more of that in the future? I don't know. We don't have anything that we immediately see. But that's really the main thing that happened during this quarter and for the year. If you look at it, we had over $10 million of that for the full fiscal year. all favorable this year. We also had some minor impairment charges in both the quarter and the year. And those are more related to some of the real estate as we're evaluating it. But these are all small amounts that were just around the edges. So as you see, last year there were all sorts of these other additional COVID adjustments related to reopening expenses, closing expenses, et cetera. But you don't see a lot of that this year, and we would expect going forward that there would be less adjustments like that.

Okay, and lastly for me for now, the Searchlight Capital joint venture, which I think is tremendous. It seems to fit really well into the strategy you've had. How aggressive are you expecting this to be in terms of securing properties And how quickly, say, does the Kempton, Monaco, Pittsburgh hit the financials? How important will it be on the cost and expense side, and how quickly?

Let me take the second half of that first, and then I'll let Greg talk to the overall arrangement and everything else. Look, because this is off balance sheet, we have a minority interest in this property. The only thing you'll see will be on the kind of below the line, below operating income, you'll see that equity earnings and losses on joint ventures. And so our share of that, of any earnings or losses from that property, will show up on that line. Not a particularly, I mean, there was a small amount this particular quarter. We only had it for half of December. And so... You can't really judge anything from what you're seeing in this particular quarter. On a going forward basis, for any individual property with only a 10% interest, it won't be a particularly large number one way or the other. But as we continue to execute on this strategy, we would expect that you would start seeing some more impact there. And we'll have to do a good job of explaining that and making sure that that you guys, as investors, understand that the value that we have there in these ownership interests in some of these properties. The only other thing I'd mention is that, of course, we also have a management contract. And so that management contract, that does show up in the P&L, up in our other revenues. And again, you wouldn't see it this quarter, but on an ongoing basis, we also will have those management fees coming in.

And even to build on that a little bit, I think you're just going to, It made things a little more lumpy, you know, because we expect to see here, you know, eventually value realizations. And so if you go back and you think about sort of what happened with the West and Atlanta perimeter, for those of you who have been with us long enough, and Jim, I know you have been, you know, we saw a big value realization when the asset was monetized. So there should be more of that going forward. Look, how aggressive? Aggressive is not the word I like to use because we're not aggressive. We're opportunistic. And our job number one is to deliver great returns to our investment partners and our investors and our company. And so we are looking for these assets aggressively to make opportunistic investments. And as the markets present themselves, we will be able to go do that. The markets have been pretty aggressive generally, so we are looking very carefully at every asset that we can. This fit our template. It's a special asset. We've said, and if anything, the pandemic is highlighted. A strategy that maybe, I don't know that I could have said that we were intentional about necessarily, except that it was just sort of maybe in our fiber that we always wanted to have really special great assets, whether it's the Pfister or the St. Kate or the Grand Geneva or the Skirvin. These are these assets and these markets that sort of transcend just being a business hotel or a leisure hotel. And again, this Kempton Hotel Monaco in Pittsburgh is not just a business hotel. It attracts leisure traveler. It has a very broad base. So we'll keep looking for these special assets And when we see an opportunistic game play, we're going to get our partners on board and go for it.

Just one refinement. Does the 10% stake mirror what you would do in every case, or can you participate to a larger extent if you want to from an investment standpoint?

It would be an asset-by-asset decision. I mean, we've said previously, Jamie, you've heard us talk about that in general. That's the neighborhood that we see ourselves participating as we move forward on deals. But, you know, again, it would just depend.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your questions, Jim. As a reminder, if you'd like to submit a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads now. That's star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Eric World of B. Riley. Eric, your line is now open.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Just a follow-up question on the last comment around hotel modernization opportunities. I guess, how do you think about that opportunity in general? How much is driven by current demand trends and kind of the opportunity to recover? Is there a mindset that you just want to lessen you know, kind of hard asset ownership in general, you're just not sure which property it may be, or is there a scenario where, you know, nothing may be sold?

You know, I don't think it's a scenario where we want to lessen our hard asset investment. I think it's more of an issue of portfolio management. as we said in the remarks, what fits with our portfolio? What makes sense? What do the markets look like? What are the reinvestment needs in any particular asset? And so again, that all comes down to portfolio management. Where do we want to put the capital? Where should we be making the investments? Because these assets do require reinvestment. But as we've always talked about, again, as we get to a cash flow positive position again, What are we going to do with our cash flow? Our theater business really doesn't need a lot of investment. That theater business, as we've said, it's like buying a brand new car at this point. We really upgraded the whole physical plant significantly. But over the last five years or so, maybe going back seven years if you think about it. And so as we look to do with cash flow, we're going to do what we've always done, which is see about returning cash flow to shareholders and making other investments with it, which is which is, you know, which is good. So we can put capital to work for people very tax efficiently. Got it.

Thank you. And then kind of looking back at some of the comments earlier in the call and the press relates around, you know, the outperformance of both the theater division and the hotel division, you know, Q4 as well as full year. You know, clearly, you know, the Q4 outperformance amounts, you know, were lower than the full year. You know, obviously... Competitors have reopened probably a slower pace than Mark has had. So there's some catch up from the competitive set there, I imagine. But anything to read into that in terms of just that cadence and how should we think, what are your thoughts as you look forward to 2022 in terms of the ability to maintain and potentially even grow market share and outperformance levels?

Well, I think you're right. that seeing people reopen is moderating our gains. But I also think that some of it's gonna be a more permanent gain because of just, what do you call it, path dependency. It's a couple of things. One is, that's the economic theory of the old horse follows the path once they've worn it in. And so the advantage of getting people to move to your facilities where that's possible, will be, you know, is important. But again, when looking at it on a national basis, which we did, you know, just having the other guys open up is helpful. But, you know, we believe we have a superior product. We have superior teams. We've been, you know, our teams are even, it's even, you know, we see this in all of our businesses where we made a decision, as we've talked about, you know, early on, which was we wanted to stay open as best we could if we could basically lose less money being open and closed. This was a decision a year and a half ago to them in the height of the pandemic. We did that for a couple of reasons. And one was so we could keep employing people. We thought that was really important. And then we also felt it was important just to keep the business with some momentum. And I think that pays off now. We have teams in place that we kept in place where others didn't have that. And so I think that should work to our advantage. Can I quantify it? No, I can't quantify it. But I think it's to our advantage.

Last question on the last point on labor. Maybe update on what you're seeing right now with labor availability in your markets, wage rates, how much higher wage rates right now than they were you know, back in 19, for example, and beyond taking price, where are you seeing the best opportunities to leverage that and become more efficient?

Well, let me work backwards, and I'll let Doug maybe speak to more specific numbers. You know, in terms of just, you know, where do we see opportunities? Sort of what we talked about is I think it's going to be how do we leverage technology for the most part to – you know, extend what is a limited labor force, a shrunken labor force. Now look, I do think that there's going to be, and we are even seeing some of the labor force come back. But I'm not here on this call telling you, oh, it's all back to where it was. It's not. But, you know, especially, you know, I think a lot of our segment is, you know, as savings start to get, I think, look, we know there have been historically high savings rates in the country. As savings start to, if you're not working, as savings start to get eaten into, you start to go back to work. And anecdotally, I don't have a mathematical number to tell you, we're finally starting to see across many of our businesses, when we actually put up job postings, people showing up for interviews, which is a positive. But yet still, we know that we're still facing a tougher labor market and inflation and all those things. And so it's going to be things like, I think that was really cool. We talked about the use of a robot. to clean bathrooms, to make our housekeeping labor force more efficient. At Movie Tavern, we shifted the model at Movie Tavern. And this was actually pre-pandemic. One of the challenges that we had was with the model of people coming up and having to have servers take the order. We've moved to a model where now you can order on your app on your phone. And so with moving and just going to runners, that obviously makes that labor force much more efficient. Again, relying on technology, and we're doing that in our theaters with order. We're going to be really focused on getting people to order on their phones because it shortens up the line to the concession stand, which also works to our benefit in multiple ways in terms of helping that per capita. So really across, you could be in one of our hotels and be in some of our restaurants and probably won't be our most highest-end restaurants, but you might be ordering, you know, your food, you know, you might order your food off the app and have it run to you as opposed to having a server. And that's just due to the fact that we can't be as reliant on the labor markets. So there's all sorts of ways to do that that we're working with.

And as a first part of your question, Eric, you know, look, we don't have a one-size-fits-all kind of percentage or number for you because Our labor forces are quite different in our hotels and our theaters. We've seen increases across the board, no question about it, in our wage rates in both of our businesses. Having said that, that's where it gets interesting, right? Because we also shared with you our per capita increases Greg just talked about a second ago in our theater side, for example. It doesn't mean that we took an 11% increase in our ticket prices or a 15% or 20% increase in our concession prices. We were able to generate more per person, which significantly helps some of these labor issues that we're talking about, and it's not just by just raising prices. Greg, in his prepared remarks, talked about I mean, we are and have been looking at, our strategies include looking at pricing and how to basically do revenue management, which we've been doing forever in our hotel business. And so we'll continue to experiment and test some different ways to be able to be smart about our pricing and try different ways to do that in ways that can also then help to offset some of these wage increases that we are seeing. We've done some experimenting already, and we expect to do some more in the future. Perfect. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. At this time, it appears we have no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Nice for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, thank you. I'd certainly like to thank all of you once again for joining us today. We look forward to talking to you once again in early May when we release our fiscal 2022 first quarter results. Until then, thank you and have a great day.

That concludes today's call. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.