RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:RICK) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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And so we are going to see those things, come to solution. I think in march you’re going to see the a couple of the locations really pick up, the Denver food hall definitely will have an unbelievable mark. I know Heartbreakers is set up with the grand opening in the end of February to really lead us into March as well with the new day shift to open and the construction. The VIP room construction upstairs is about 85% complete. I know they were doing sound and lights last week when I was down there. So that’s all being done. That site should be done pretty quick. I was just at the Denver food hall on Monday. All the new TVs are in. We have a 220-inch screen up. A bunch of 90-inch televisions are all around the place, it looks unbelievable compared to what it was before.

Everyone there is very excited. Business is up. January — I think January this year over January last year; sales were up about 42%. But that’s still not where it needs to be yet. And it’s because we lost the largest sales — over 30% of their sales were the single booth that moved out, where Bombshells is moving into. And so, when that location reopens in March, that’s going to be big for that. So you have a lot of income coming in. Stafford location right now is targeted for 2024. They’re a little ahead on construction. So hopefully maybe we get that one a little early, which will be nicely changed and small cell construction usually runs a month or two over. So I’ll be excited if they get done early. We’re very close on roulette. We finally worked everything out with the developer, because our bids were extremely high, because they had us doing a bunch of work that the developer had to put in, the roads and stuff like that.

They were not our — the city made us put them on the plans. And so, everybody thought we had to build those, but that’s the developer’s part of that. So we finally got that worked out. So that construction should start soon. The club in Lubbock, the construction has started. The club in Fort Worth, construction has started. We’re waiting permits. So the Lubbock is probably a few months from starting construction and Huntsville is only a few months from starting construction. So there’s going to be a lot of stuff that’s going out but we — the main thing is, we’ve spent on all these things, right? We paid the architects. We paid for the building permits. We paid for a lot of this — a lot of this stuff is in our cost. So that will get much better as we move forward.

Q €“ Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Perfect. Moving to — I got two more and then I’ve got kind of a more qualitative one. On slide 18 you added this fiscal year 2023 capital allocation of $93 million and that includes Baby Dolls and Buyback and Heartbreaker and this and that. And I know you’re going to put more money in the casino. But you sort of committed to doing $200 million a year. Now, obviously, if you invest another — I think, yes, you said another $20 million on top of what you’ve already invested so far. I mean, do you still think you can fill out that $90 million? I mean that could be sort of two — that could be sort of a few Cheetahs or another big, Baby Dolls or Lowrie. I mean, do you still think that you can get another sort of large size acquisition, at least announced this year or even closed, another big deal or another couple of mediums to get you to 200?

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