Butler Natl Corp

This conference is now being recorded.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today is Friday, September 16, and welcome to the Butler National Corporation first quarter fiscal 2023 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Operator assistance is available at any time during this conference by pressing zero pound. Your call leaders for today's call are David Drowitz, Creative Options Communications, Clark Stewart, President and CEO, and Craig Stewart, President of Aerospace Group. I would now like to turn over the call to Mr. Drowitz.

Thank you. Thank you, and good morning to everyone. Before Mr. Stewart begins, I would like to draw your attention to, except for historical information contained herein, the statements in this conference call are forward-looking and made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions as outlined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risk and uncertainties, which may cause Butler & National's actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results. Those risks includes, among other things, the loss of market share through competition or otherwise, the introduction of competing technologies by other companies, new governmental safety, health, and environmental regulations, which could require Butler to make significant capital expenditures. The forward-looking statements included in this conference call are only made as of the date of this call. and Butler National undertakes no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, factors described under the caption risk factors in the company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. So with that completed, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Clark Stewart. Mr. Stewart, it is all yours.

Thank you, Mr. Draywitz. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for taking your time to listen to us on this call and discuss the status of Butler National Corporation. I would call your attention to page 15 of the 10Q, where those risk factors are itemized in one extensive list and you should review those when you have your time the quarterly results get are good in my mind given the condition of the supply chain the employee market the inflation causing labor costs to increase and we do have a good cash position and things look look good here at butler national just to give you a review of the earnings per share The quarter ended in 2020, we had zero. Quarter ended in 2021, we had four cents. Quarter ended in 2022, we had one cent. For the quarter ended in April in 2020, we had a loss of two cents. 21, we had one cent positive. And 22, we had four cents positive. To give you a reading on our employee status, we have about 307 to 310 full-time employees, 62 to 65 part-time employees, so about 300 employees on the payroll. Our backlog status is about 23 million. Last year, that was 24.1 million. Subsequent to July 31, we have received more orders, and the backlog is a little stronger. We're really pleased with that. And if you look at the history, that's pretty much what's happening with the backlog. Component shortages have caused some problems in the electronics part of our business. We've had to redesign boards, replace components, and do a number of things that had we not had supply chain problems and availability, we would not probably have never done that now. That doesn't mean that's bad. We probably improved ourselves with better supplies. So that is the reason we have some fluctuations in the revenue and in the profitability because we've lost some production time in a couple different occasions where we had to redo the computer boards that run the systems. That's about all I have to say in summary, Craig. Did I miss anything?

The one thing I'd point out as well is that the first quarter last year had the PPP loan in there as well. So in comparison, it's not quite as bad as it looks. I think if we hadn't had the component shortages, and then the other side of it is looking forward, I think with the orders we're getting at AFCON and what's come through, a lot of cash deposits, but we didn't have a lot of earned revenue.

um in that in that period but i think that'll you'll see that come through in second third quarter pretty strong so i i think david we're ready for questions if we a sports book oh that we got to talk about sports but i almost missed the biggest exciting event we have and that's the sports book in the state of kansas we have agreements with three vendors is that right chris we have agreements with draft kings golden nugget and valley to provide sports support to our casino in dodge city or through our casino in dodge city we have the right to do marketing locations which we haven't really got fully defined at this point but up to 50 of those and 20 of those have to be paternal type organization like the elks and the american legion and those type of non-profits So we can expand that reach out to other locations as the requirements get defined.

Yep. Pretty exciting time in Kansas for sports wagering. And we are really pleased with our basic partners that we have. DraftKings has really stepped up and helped us be incredibly successful on the launch of sports betting. that's owned and operated by the Kansas Lottery but managed by us.

We've had minimum, almost no problem with the software of DraftKings on the setup and on the go to Kansas. It's geo-referenced to the boundaries of the state of Kansas, which means you can drive across the line into Missouri and your sportsbook goes off. You come back into Kansas, it comes on. It's a pretty neat deal and it does work and it's accurate. We're really pleased with them. They've spent a lot of time with us and done a good job of getting it under control. So we should have a major share of the market in the state of Kansas with DraftKings and Nugget and Valleys together. So that's where we are on the sportsbook.

We're also looking forward, we should have the temporary retail sportsbook open out of Boothill Casino by the end of September, first October time period. And then looking towards the end of the year of having the permanent one open, end of the year, first part of 2023, we should have the permanent sports book open. So it should be, you know, it'll be kind of a facelift a little bit from the casino space out there, but it'll be exciting. Thank you.

I think now we're ready for questions.

Sorry about that.

Excellent. Worth weight. All right. Let's open it up to questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to state a question, please press 7-pound on your phone now, and you will be placed in the queue in the order received. You can press 7-pound at any time to remove yourself from the queue. Once again, to ask a question, please press 7-pound. We are ready to begin. Our first question comes from Mr. Daniel Zeff at the Zeff Capital. Go ahead, please.

Hi. Thanks for clarifying the backlog strength and stuff like that and the prospects moving forward. Can you give us some more detail on the economics, whatever you're able to tell us, of the sportsbook betting situation? Who gets what and when will it and will it? contribute to the bottom line, all things being equal.

I'll give you my best guess. How's that? And it's basically the state gets 10% of the profit from the sports books.

And then we share with our sports betting partner a confidential amount less than that. And as you might guess, the sports betting partner provides us with turnkey solutions. As far as predicting out what comes out, it's pretty early to be able to forecast exact numbers, what we're doing. But we believe that not only will add financial numbers to our situation from sports betting directly, but also indirectly once we get the retail open to draw new customers and patrons in for other activities in the gaming facility.

I can give you some history here. Two or three years ago, we made a dollar bill chart that was presented to the legislature. When all the dust settled, we ended up with probably 5% to 6% of the dollar bet. They're the dollar one, I should say. That's really the profitability of the overall sportsbook, and that's at least That's public information that we filed with the legislature, the casinos, the four casinos filed that. So that's probably pretty representative of what it is. Very good.

Thank you.

Yep.

That's, that's the reading. Can you give us a bigger picture? Also a question. Um, I have a, that is, do you have opportunities to grow? inorganically? In other words, M&A on either side of your business, and is this something you're thinking about or looking at, and are there real opportunities, or can you grow organically or both moving forward?

I think the goal has always been to do both. I know that we are looking right now of trying to grow Both inorganically and organically both the casino side of the house and the aviation side of the house You know, we've just got to be strategic and any acquisitions that might come up and make sure they're they're good fits We don't want to be I guess reckless in the in the way we go out for look for acquisitions They've got to be a good fit and be a creative to the business so that's that's kind of where we are, but we are a Yeah, we are looking to grow the company both organically and inorganically. Thank you. Is that a question, Dan? Yeah, thank you. You bet. Thank you.

The answer there is yes, we'll look at anything that you'd like us to look at. Send us a message and we'll check it out.

Okay.

We are actively doing that, but I'm just telling you, don't If you see something you think we ought to be looking at, let us know.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Zaff. And again, if you would like to ask a question, please press 7-pound on your phone now. It looks like we have no further questions at this time, Mr. Stewart. Do you have any closing remarks?

Thank you, Mr. Grewitz. And again, I thank you all for taking your time this morning to review and listen to our discussion of what we're doing here at Butler National. We are very positive and think we're moving in the right direction. And like I say, any suggestions that anyone has, please send them forward and we'll look at them and see if we can grow this company on both sides of the business. Thank you very much. Appreciate all your help.

Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's Butler National Corporation conference call. Thank you for attending.