Boyd Gaming Corporation (NYSE:BYD) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

This follows the completion of our room remodel project at Main Street Station in late 2023. In addition to these property investments, we continue to make excellent progress on our project to transform our Treasure Chest Casino near New Orleans, from a three-level riverboat to a spacious single-level land-based facility with expanded gaming space and additional non-gaming amenities. Once complete around mid-year, this investment will significantly enhance the guest experience at Treasure Chest and position it for long-term growth. As we near completion of the Treasure Chest project, we are finalizing plans for our next set of growth projects, and we’ll have more details to share with you in the near future. Another important element of our long-term strategy is our balanced approach to capital allocation.

As part of this strategy, we plan to continue our current pace of $100 million in quarterly share repurchases in 2024, supplemented by regular dividend payments, while keeping our focus on maintaining strong balance sheet. In conclusion, this was another strong quarterly performance by our company, as we completed our third consecutive year of full year record results. But beyond producing record results, 2023 was a year of significant achievement. First, we maintained our focus on our core customers, resulting in continued growth from this important customer segment. Second, our growth initiatives delivered strong results with excellent returns from online gaming, Sky River, the Fremont expansion project and our recent hotel and food and beverage investments.

Third, our management teams continued to execute at a high level of efficiency, with property-level margins exceeding 40% for the quarter, a level we have now consistently delivered for three years. And finally, continued to pursue a balanced approach to capital allocation, returning more than $475 million in capital to our shareholders in 2023, while maintaining the strongest balance sheet in our company’s history. Strong performance in 2023 is attributable to our strategy, our leadership team and our operating model. But most importantly, it is a result of the dedicated efforts of our team members, who provide consistently memorable service that keeps our customers coming back. I’d like to thank every Boyd team member for their contributions to our company’s success.

Thank you for your time today. I would now like to turn the call over to Josh.

Josh Hirsberg: Thanks, Keith. 2023 was another record year for our company, highlighted by a strong fourth quarter. This was our third year in a row of generating record revenue and EBITDAR on a company-wide basis. Our revenue and EBITDAR growth in 2023 was driven by our Online and Managed business segments, reflecting the benefits of our diversification. Our properties have faced challenges all year from a softer retail customer and inflationary pressures. However, we are also seeing improving conditions in our property operations. Our focus on our core customer is paying off, as we continue to see growth in play from this customer segment. And during 2023, our retail customer trends across the country have been improving. And while cost pressures are not completely going away, they appear to be moderating.

Our property operating teams have done a very good job managing in this environment, with quarterly property EBITDAR margins consistently above 40% for the last three years. Beyond property operations and our other operating segments, as Keith mentioned, we expect our Online segment to generate $60 million to $65 million of EBITDAR in 2024. As you may recall, our Online results include a tax pass-through related to our Online partnerships. These amounts are recorded as both revenue and expense. During the fourth quarter, the tax pass-through amount was $97 million compared to $73 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. For the full year, the tax pass-through amount in 2023 was $328 million compared to $208 million in 2022. And moving to our Managed & Other segment, we expect to generate approximately $85 million of EBITDAR in 2024.

We expect EBITDAR from this segment to be more evenly spread throughout the year as compared to 2023. One additional housekeeping item related to this segment. In 2023, we generated interest income from an outstanding loan to the Wilton Rancheria Tribe. The loan has now been completely repaid, and therefore, we will not generate $24 million in interest income that we earned during 2023. As a result, net interest expense in 2024 should approximate $170 million. In terms of capital expenditures, we finished 2023 investing $95 million in the fourth quarter for a total of $374 million for the year. For 2024, we expect our capital expenditure program to include maintenance capital of about $200 million to $250 million, plus a recurring $100 million for growth investments.

This year, our growth capital plans include completing the new Treasure Chest land-based facility and starting additional growth projects in the second half of this year. We also expect to spend an incremental $100 million on the room renovations that Keith spoke about. So, for 2024, we estimate total capital expenditures of about $400 million to $450 million. With respect to our capital return program, during the most recent quarter, we repurchased $100 million in stock, acquiring approximately 1.7 million shares at an average price of $59.15 per share. For the full year, we repurchased $413 million of stock, representing 6.5 million shares. When combined with our ongoing dividend program, we have returned more than $475 million to shareholders during calendar year 2023.

Since we resumed our capital return program in late 2021, we’ve returned more than $1.1 billion to our shareholders and reduced our overall share count by 14%. We ended the year with an actual share count of 96.8 million shares and had $326 million remaining under our current repurchase authorization. We remain committed into 2024 to $100 million per quarter in share repurchases. We finished 2023 with total leverage of 2.3 times and lease adjusted leverage of 2.7 times. With low leverage, no near-term maturities and ample borrowing capacity under our credit agreement, we’ve created the strongest balance sheet in our company’s history. We also generate significant amounts of free cash flow from a diversified portfolio of assets. In 2023, we generated free cash flow of more than $725 million or more than $7.50 per share.