Ark Restaurants Corp. (ARKR) on Q2 2021 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
Operator: Greetings and welcome to Ark Restaurants' Second Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn this conference over to your host, Ms. Sonal Shah, General Counsel. Thank you. You may begin.
Sonal Shah: My name is Sonal Shah and I'm General Counsel of Ark Restaurant. With me on the call today Michael Weinstein, our Chairman and CEO; . For those of you who have not yet obtained a copy of our press release, it was issued over the wires yesterday and is available on our website. To review the full text of that press release, along with the associated financial tables, please go to our homepage at www.arkrestaurants.com.
Michael Weinstein: Hi everybody. First of all, I want to point out that Anthony Sirica, our CFO, is not on the call today. He is ill, not with COVID, it is not anything extreme. He will get better in the next couple of days. But today he was at his doctor's office taking some tests. So, he apologizes for not being here. I'll do the best I can with any financial questions that you may have during the Q&A. I would like to just make a statement related to how fortunate we are in our company to have had the cooperation of all our employees during a very, very difficult time. These restaurants have been up and running for some time now, but during the shutdown and for a few months into the beginnings of reopening most of our key employees had given up anywhere from 50% to 90% of their base pay to remain with us. And that was a big help in enabling us to get these operations open quickly, getting them running smoothly. We are, as many companies are complaining, trying to find good people to work. There is a shortage right now, but we are operating at very good smooth levels and seeing a lot of revenue come into these restaurants. And we're very happy with where we are now. A couple of things that I'm sort of facile with, but Anthony would have been better explaining it. For the quarter we showed negative EBITDA after adjusting for the PPP loan forgiveness of $495,000. That means we removed from the EBITDA some $4 million plus of loan forgiveness. So, this is truly an operating number has nothing to do with the PPP forgiveness. So, it was negative $495,000 for the quarter, but in the quarter, we had two other adjustments, which we cannot include in the EBITDA, but we increased our vacation pay accrual of $500,000 after discussions with our outside orders. That's a non-cash item, but it shows as a non-cash expense which reduced EBITDA by that amount. And we also had $700,000 in lease adjustments because of the new accounting rules regarding straight-line in leases. So roughly somewhere between $1,000,001 and $1,000,002 of additional non-cash expenses, if they were to add back to EBITDA, as an adjusted number, we would have been positive some $600,000 to $650,000 in cash flow for the quarter.
Operator: Our first question comes from the line of Jeffrey Kaminski with JJK Consulting. You may proceed with your question.
Jeffrey Kaminski: Hi, Michael. Good afternoon. Congratulations on continuing to come through a rather difficult time. I've been on these calls for a while, years now, as you know, and I've generally asked the questions specific to some development, whether it be a Meadowlands or last year the PPP situation.
Michael Weinstein: So the answer is the strategy changed some time ago and with pretty much staying the course where we would be more inclined to buy properties with cash flow as opposed to building properties ourselves and taking that risk. The properties we've bought for which we own the land underneath another one in which JB’s in Florida, in which we are partnering with somebody who bought the land for us in a development. We just think owning the property if we can is a big advantage for us. The – and that's the situations we looking for. These one-off restaurants where people are retiring or no longer have an appetite to continue in their business, if their cash flow positive and if they have a long lease for instance, Blue Moon has a 26-year lease. We can buy those properties at very attractive prices. It makes far more sense than building out ourselves. So that's the basic strategy. We think those properties will continue to come up. We are one of the few buyers for those properties. The reason for that is we can offer an all cash deal where restaurants are generally bought locally for 30% down in some notes, and people who are retiring don't generally want to deal with the notes. So we'll favor somebody that could do an all cash deal. We have a lot of confidence that we can buy these things and run them well. Everything that we've purchased so far Rustic, Shuckers, JB’s on the Beach, Blue Moon, the two properties in Alabama. They're running at probably the best revenues in their history. We retained management in all of those cases, the have been retained. We have a great experience with them, but we're able to lend some knowledge to them that has helped them become more efficient. So – and they're all ideally located on the water or and spectacularly important locations. So that's what we're really looking for.
Jeffrey Kaminski: Thank you.
Michael Weinstein: You are welcome, Jeff.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Roger Lipton with Lipton Financial Services. You may proceed with your question.
Roger Lipton: Yes. Hi, Michael. Always nice to talk to you. A simple question which is on everybody's mind and I just thought I would ask you. Are you giving any thought yet to the timing of the dividend, reinstituting the dividend?
Michael Weinstein: So, we have not had any discussions with the Board regarding that. There would be, I imagine, historically the Board would like – first of all, the Board and I, and Anthony are very concerned that our balance sheet remains very strong. Once all the loans of the $13 million of the $15 million that we think will be granted are granted, the balance sheet will be in very strong position. I think before we decide on a dividend, we would like to see where – we would like to be more satisfied that the world is safe.
Roger Lipton: All right.
Michael Weinstein: So, I think we’re probably, six months or a year away from knowing that. I mean, I'm just taking a guess, I'm not an epidemiologist. So I think there will be a waiting period, even if we couldn't afford comfortably to issue a dividend to get back to that. The argument against that, because historically we want to do that, the only strong argument against that is what can we do with the money? I mean, we've had spectacular results finding these properties. The recent acquisition of Blue Moon was something like $1,000,007 down and another $1 million notes over four years. I think blue moon earns a $1 million the first year, 12 months we have it. Now, some of that has to do with pent-up demand from the pandemic, and we're seeing that demand flow into the restaurant. But Rustic, we bought it for $7.5 million, including the land when it was making a $1.5 million. Pre-pandemic, we were making $3.4 million. These returns are outsized. If we can continue to find these things, maybe we don't want to be so aggressive and reinstituting a dividend if we have a better use for the money. We'll see. But we're six months to a year away from making that decision. I would think Roger.
Roger Lipton: Okay. May be for where it's worth, you probably, you may realize Bloomberg predicts that it might go back and we have how they put this prediction together I have no idea.
Michael Weinstein: They didn't talk to me.
Roger Lipton: Yes, they're predicting in December – in September…
Michael Weinstein: Okay.
Roger Lipton: September 8 you will reinstitute $0.12. The only thing I would suggest in your contemplation, and you've thought about this is that that would allow the stock – if the stock doesn't begin to reflect the value of the company in terms of your various properties. And who knows when the stock will more accurately reflect what you've created over the last 30 years or so. So, while we're all waiting for the monetization of the various properties, it doesn't hurt either. And you can also for a compelling deal, you can always borrow $5 million or $10 million, obviously.
Michael Weinstein: Yes.
Roger Lipton: So that you could still pay a dividend. So, because it's straight to our low and will remain low. So there is that trade-off, but you thought of all that, I'm just – I would – as a shareholder, I would kind of like to get some sort of a cash return while I'm waiting for the stock to do what it’s ought to do.
Michael Weinstein: Okay.
Roger Lipton: But, good job, of course.
Michael Weinstein: Thank you. Thanks Roger.
Roger Lipton: Okay.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of today's question-and-answer session. I would like to turn this call back over to Mr. Michael Weinstein for closing remarks.
Michael Weinstein: Thank you all for participating. I'll speak to you next quarter. And stay well.
Operator: Thank you for joining us today. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.
