Bally’s Corporation (NYSE:BALY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Chad Beynon: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Robeson, I wanted to return to the international interactive segment. Margins in the quarter, 39%, certainly higher than, I think, what you had kind of talked to before and kind of where the street was. For ‘24, I believe your guidance implies 33% to 35%, and you kind of just talked about maybe some of the other regions, hopefully picking up. But as we think about margins and just the overall marketing environment, I guess historically, you’ve talked about 30%, now you’re 33% to 35%. Can you just kind of provide a little bit more color in terms of what the marketing environment is like and if this 39% in the fourth quarter should be viewed as more of an anomaly? Thanks.

Robeson Reeves: So touching on fourth quarter, I’d view that as an anomaly. The 33% to 35% range that we discussed allows us to ensure that we can continue to invest. We can continue to look at other ways to grow. So there’s some room in that to test and if you’re not testing, you can never actually always find stable growth. Yeah, our margins should be holding exactly there. I feel good about our plans. We’re going to go above the line with both Bally’s and Virgin in the UK. We definitely within that, we have expansion in Brazil. We’re looking at other markets, too. The tool in our locker that we haven’t unlocked over the past few years is looking at wider market expansion outside of North America Interactive. And running at these margins, which I know are very sustainable because we retain our customers so well, allows us to look at expansion opportunities.

Chad Beynon: Okay, great. Thanks. Great to see that. In terms of capital returns, you repurchased $70 million worth of stock in the quarter. So nice to see you’re being opportunistic there. For ’24, CapEx is still reasonably low. I believe it picks up in ’25 and ’26 with Chicago. So, how should we think about capital returns? I know you have, I believe, $95 million left on the current program. Do you have the availability to be opportunistic in the market if shares remain depressed?

Charlie Diao: Hi, this is Charlie Diao speaking. I think that what we’ve always said is that we allocate capital among different opportunities, internal investments, development as well as, obviously returning capital. At any point in time, the dynamics of each of those options may change. The point being, we do have significant development expenditures. We expect to get some financing for those development expenditures. At different points, we’ll see where the stock is and if it makes sense, the board will exercise that decision.

Chad Beynon: Thanks, Charlie. Appreciate it, guys.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. We’ll take our next question from Jonnathan Navarrete with TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jonnathan Navarrete: Hey, how are you guys? This is Jonnathan on for Lance. I want to touch on international. Any insight into the state of the U.K. consumer so far in 2024?

Robeson Reeves: Hi, Jonnathan, Robeson here. With respect to U.K. consumer, we’re seeing very stable spending patterns from our players. We don’t have very many big players, right? So it’s a very much consistent consumer. We’re getting high enough volumes of new customers into the funnel and we have enough levers to pull such as hold, such as call it content mix and everything else to ensure that we can manage the returns from our investments there. So we’re not seeing a slowdown. It was definitely the usual sort of January, post-Christmas pause but we’d understood that in all of our numbers and that happens every single year. We’ve seen good trends through the end of January and into February, as expected. Yeah, I feel very comfortable about the consumer in the U.K.

Jonnathan Navarrete: Great. In terms of CapEx, you called $165 million. Can we just get the split of maintenance versus growth?

Marcus Glover: Yeah, about think of it this way, there’s about probably $65 million, $70 million that will go to maintenance for the Casino & Resort side. We have some growth that’s probably in the neighborhood of $35 million to $40 million capital that will go into the properties, but probably will not see the ROI on that until 2025. So we’ll activate and develop this year, bring online for ’25. And then a significant portion for continued development and investment in our development efforts for interactives, that includes both North America and International Interactive. And then a very, very small portion for some enabling technology for centralization and integration efforts across the enterprise.

Jonnathan Navarrete: Understood. Thanks. And you also call out demolition costs, that’s not included in CapEx and just want to know, what is that figure like? Is it substantial or is it somewhat insignificant that you don’t need to call it out?

Marcus Glover: Yeah, we separate out. Now, I’ll let George add anything on to it if he has anything to offer. We separate out our development capital from what we share in that 165. So Chicago and Tropicana are separate. I won’t give you — we’re still going through the process now working with our contractors to understand what those demolition costs will look like. So we don’t have a number to share with you today. But those are separated out from that 165 and are not included in that number that we published. I don’t know if George has anything else to offer.

George Papanier: No, you’re right. We’re going through the bid process right now, both Chicago and Tropicana.

Charlie Diao: I think the other issue is as relates to, I mean, it’s just not the demolition of blowing it up as site prep and over some period of time. So the really fixing it on a particular calendar year, some of that’s going to wrap over, like, wrap over to 25. So that’s another reason why we don’t have specific guidance and held to a certain timeframe.