Chris Morris: Yeah. That’s a great question. So I’ll tell you the way that we’ve have been thinking about this journey that we’ve all been on. Internally, we’ve always referred to year 1 as the year of the foundation. And the reason we described as the year of the foundation is because there was so much infrastructure work that we needed to do just to catch up for what we would refer to as 15 years of neglect in this business. There’s — from a system standpoint, the systems were just way behind where they needed to be. the processes were way behind where they needed to be. As evidenced by the fact that I just mentioned that we didn’t even have the ability to have variable pricing across regions. So there’s a lot of work to do on the infrastructure.
There’s also a lot of testing that needs to be done. And so I — where we are right now is we’re right on schedule. We’ve executed everything that we set out to do on the infrastructure. We’ve tested everything that we set out to do, and we are now in the process of implementing all of those initiatives. And so I’m very proud of the work that the team has done. We’re right where we want to be on remodels, our new units continue to perform exceptionally well. We’re on pace on international right in line with what we were expecting when we built out our long-term plan. Game pricing is where we thought we’d be, just given the system limitations. Our food and beverage offering, I feel very good about the work that we’re doing there and the results that we’re driving and the new service model as evidenced by the impact that we’re already having on the guest experience.
So on the initiative side of things I’m very proud of the work the team is doing. And so — this is — but what we did say is like, look, this is a journey that we’re on. And clearly, there is tremendous upside in this business. There’s upside on each one of these initiatives when you size it up. And there’s collectively an enormous amount of upside in the value of the stock, and we continue to believe that the stock is significantly undervalued with the potential that we have in front of us. The unknown is just the macro environment and what’s going to happen with the consumer and the uncertainties. And so our focus is just focusing on what we can control. And clearly, what we can control, we’re executing against. And there’s – as we’ve dug deeper into each one of these initiatives, we’re as confident as we ever have been and being able to make a positive impact on this business over the medium term.
So the time line might shift a little bit here or there, but committed to getting the job done.
Operator: The next question is from Sharon Zackfia with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Sharon Zackfia: Hi. Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to go back to the kind of phases of what you’re doing with the gaming prices. I know you indicated that, that’s been a positive going through to the bottom line. I guess I’m curious on kind of what amount of impact there is from maybe people staying longer. I mean is it or saying for a lesser amount of time because the Power Cards are up quicker. I mean what is the — or is there any potential offset that you’re seeing the game price increases?
Chris Morris: Yeah. No, again, very good question and exactly the right question. So keep in mind, I said that we’ve gone through the testing and learning process. And one of the things that we wanted to make sure we understood is exactly what you just outlined to. We didn’t want to have a negative impact on value proposition, and we didn’t want to just kind of trade right pocket for less pocket and grow price on the front end, but then you reduce your overall spend by reducing dwell time. And so we’ve been closely evaluating that and tweaking it to get to the right balance. And so what we are implementing or what we implemented, we rolled out in February of 2024 was the results of all of that testing. And so we didn’t get it right at the beginning, and so we made some adjustments.
And we changed pricing to make sure that we were protecting the value proposition. We move stores in-tier, out-tier. We did all of that. And so now we’re moving forward with confidence that we’ve got the right formula. And so what we’ve rolled out, we’re not seeing a material deterioration in dwell time. And we’re not seeing any impact on value proposition. But I will tell you, we’re going to continue to closely monitor this. And we need to make changes, we’ll make changes. And so that’s the benefit of where we are now is we’re in a much better position to be nimble and to adapt to the extent that the consumer starts to go a different direction.
Operator: The next question is from Dennis Geiger with UBS. Please go ahead.
Dennis Geiger: Great. Thanks, guys. Wondering if you could just speak a little bit more to that maybe choppiness comments for the first quarter. Are you recognizing you’re appropriately focused on the longer-term strategic opportunities. But just maybe as it relates to anything you’re seeing from a customer standpoint, whether it’s across visits, other spending patterns, income or age cohorts. Anything to kind of call out there? And again, recognizing there has been a choppiness across the industry in recent months. But is there anything you could share on the customer behaviors, et cetera, in recent months? Any kind of shifting it on that front?
Chris Morris: You want to take that, Q?
Michael Quartieri: Yeah. I guess I would say it this way. It’s — the choppiness we’ve seen is really from a visitation perspective, but once people are in the door, they’re still spending at the same levels, they’ve always spent. The dwell times are just the same as they were before. So it’s really more of that visitation aspect of it than it is anything else. So that’s the piece that we’re feeling really good about. And that’s where we start seeing the improvement in the food and beverage, the spend and things of that effect that we’ve got us really excited about the long-term potential of the actions that were taken from an organic growth perspective.
Chris Morris: We’ve seen — maybe just to add in just a little bit more color as we’ve continued to dig in and look at our business. We’ve seen a couple of things. We’ve seen a little bit of weakness on the lower income consumer, but at the same time, we’ve seen strength on the high-end consumer. And everybody in between kind of acting in a normal fashion. And so that’s — those two are somewhat offsetting each other, but it is something that we’ve been able to kind of tease out of the data and we’re using that data to inform how we’re approaching the business and inform promotions and things of that nature.
Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chris Morris for any closing remarks.
Chris Morris: Okay. All right. Thank you, operator. We are entering 2024 from a position of financial strength, and we expect this year to be a transformative on our journey to unlock the potential of this phenomenal business. Thank you all for joining. We look forward to welcome you at one of our stores this year and speaking with you again soon. Thank you.
Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
