Greetings, and welcome to Ark Restaurants First Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Christopher Love, Secretary. Thank you. Mr. Love, you may begin..

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on our conference call for the first quarter ended December 30, 2023. My name is Christopher Love, and I am the Secretary of Ark Restaurants. With me on the call today is Michael Weinstein, our Chairman and CEO; and Vinny Pascal, our COO.

For those of you who have not yet obtained a copy of our press release, it was issued over the Newswires 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.

Before we begin, however, I'd like to read the Safe Harbor statement. I will need to remind everyone that part of our discussion this morning will include forward-looking statements and that these statements are not guarantees of future performance and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed on them.

We refer everyone to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a more detailed discussion of the risks that may have a direct bearing on our operating results, performance and financial condition. I'll now turn the call over to Michael. Thank you..

Hi everybody. This quarter was a relatively clean quarter in terms of comparisons. We had no additional restaurants on working for us as compared to last year's first quarter. And there were no restaurants that were closed compared to last year's first quarter. So it's relatively clean. Revenues were flat. I'm sure you saw the press release.

EBITDA was $2,572,000 versus $3,018,000. Our balance sheet remains really clean, $12,122,000 in cash. Total debt at the end of 12/30 was $6,742,000. The business within having relatively flat sales has shifts, obviously some restaurants are up, some are down. We are experiencing through 12/30 very strong revenues in Las Vegas.

But we also have rents that are much higher than they were in the comparative quarter last year. The Alabama restaurants are doing well both in sales and in cash flow. The Florida restaurants are our biggest problem right now, the full-service restaurants, which include JBs, Rustic, Blue Moon, and Shuckers.

There is some weather issues there, but there are always weather issues. Volumes are down in those four restaurants roughly 10%. That means two things.

Their customer counts are down, or where they're not down as much as revenues, people are sharing entrees, so we're finding just -- we're just not making any headway in terms of increasing revenues in those restaurants. Washington, D.C., has been problematic because the city is problematic.

New York has been very strong in all categories including election. Our biggest problems as a company have nothing to do with customer experience. The food quality is very high. The places are maintained wonderfully, services excellent. We have no problems with the way our restaurants are functioning.

There were two types of inflation over the last couple of years. One was inflation in the products that we buy, which turn -- in turn become the meal that has stabilized. And a lot of products actually are starting to come down. So food cost should not be an issue.

And we are now seeing between the downward movement in prices and us engineering our menus to have better food cost components, we're seeing our food costs, by and large, in very good shape. The other inflation was in labor. That is not coming down.

Legislation is underway, especially in Las Vegas right now, but also Florida and also New York, to increase minimum wage. And there is no offset that we can garner from that, other than to raise menu prices. And as I've said repeatedly in the past, we're not raising menu prices. We think our menus represent fair value to the customer.

We're still below what others are charging. However, these menu prices up 7% to 10% since the pandemic are still sticker shock. And it seems to me that's in part why our customer counts are down, as I said, especially in Florida. So that's a problem difficult to solve. We need more demand.

We are taking certain initiatives to create more demand, but that'll take a while to flow through. We're still looking at deals constantly to acquire operating income or find ourselves able to take advantage of locations that have closed where we think we can operate at significant revenue levels. So that's really it.

It's a demand problem right now in Florida and Vegas. It's a rent problem. But we think the revenues in Vegas are strong enough that we will not be penalized with a higher rent. We think the revenues that are coming our way because we're running a much better operation than in previous years in terms of efficiency.

We think we will not be challenged in terms of cash flow there, and that will remain pretty stable pre the rent increases. So I'll take questions at this point..

There are no further questions at this time. We have reached the end of question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the floor over to Michael Weinstein for closing comments..

All right. There are two other things to address. One is the Meadowlands Racetrack. As you know, we have a minority interest in the racetrack, and our hope is that we will get a casino license at some point.

As I've said in the past, the leverage for New Jersey to approve a casino license in the northern part of the state really is a function of when New York State issues downstate casino licenses.

Downstate meaning in Queens or Yonkers or even in Manhattan, there have been delays -- at the Governor's office and the state legislature to issue those license, but we think once they do issue those licenses, New Jersey will be very quick to move to license upstate New Jersey, northern New Jersey casino.

Bryant Park, as you know, our lease becomes due in March -- excuse me, May of 2025. There is a request for proposal that was sent out in October of this past year. We put in a proposal. We think it's a very strong proposal. We've been told we are finalists. We have a certain amount of confidence, but it's not subject to our control.

We've had meetings with Bryant Park to get fully vetted on our proposal. They have not made any decisions as of yet. No one is expected until the latter part of this month or next month. Once we have a decision on that, whether positive or negative, we will send out a press release. Thank you. I'll speak to you next quarter..

Mr. Love, we have one question.

Should we go ahead?.

Yes, please..

Yes. That questioner has dropped down. Not a problem. We have no more questions at this time. So this concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation..