Q1 2024 Ark Restaurants Corp Earnings Call
Presentation
Operator
Greetings, and welcome to Ark restaurant First Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. (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.
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 Vincent 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 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.
And 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 up. I'm sure you saw the press release. Our EBITDA was $2,572 versus $3,018. Our balance sheet remains really clean, $12,122,000 in cash. Total debt at the end of [1230] was $6,742 on the the business within having relatively flat sales on has shifts.
Obviously some restaurants are up, some are down. We are experiencing through [1230], very strong revenues in Las Vegas, but we also have rents that are much higher than they were in the comparable quarter last year.
In the U.S., the Alabama restaurants are doing well, both in sales and cash flow. The Florida restaurants are a big problem right now with full service restaurants, which include JP's, Rustic, Blue Moon and Shutters on. There's some weather issues there.
But there are always weather issues of volumes down in those four restaurants, roughly 10%. That means two things. Our customer counts are down of or within not down as much as revenues people are sharing on-trade.
So we're finding just we're just not making any headway in terms of increasing revenues. And those restaurants are Washington, D.C. has been problematic because the city is problematic and New York has been very strong in all categories, including events on our biggest problems as a company on 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 assumption. 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 on 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 the U.S. engineering our menus to have better food cost components. We've seen our food costs by and large, very good shape.
The other inflation was in labor on site that is not coming down. Legislation is underway, especially on Vegas right now, but also farther and also Europe to increase minimum wage on. And there's 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 a fair value to the customer on. We're still below what others are charging. However, these menu prices up 7% since the pandemic are still sticker shock. And it seems to me that's in part why our customer counts are down.
Yes, 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 will take a while to flow through. Are we still looking at deals constantly to acquire operating income or find our selves able to take advantage of locations that are close to what we think we operate at significant revenue levels.
So that's really a it's a demand problem right now in Florida in Vegas, it's it was it's a rent problem, but we think the revenues in Vegas is strong enough that we will not be penalized with a higher on rent. And we think the revenues that are coming our way because we run 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 that will remain very stable pre the rent increases.
So I'll take questions at this point.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. And we will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.
You may start to if you would like to remove your questions from the queue For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please. While we poll for questions.
A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Once again, a reminder to all the participants that you may press down on one to ask a question.
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.
Right. There are two other things to address that. One is the Meadowlands racetrack as you know, we have a minority interest in the race track and our hopes is that we will get a casino license at some point. As I've said in the past, is that 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 standard state meeting in Queens or Yonkers or even ahead of there has been delays.
Sparton has the governor's office and the state legislature to issues license. But we think once they do we'll issue those licenses in New Jersey will be very quick to move to license by upstate New Jersey, northern New Jersey casino Bryant Park, as you know, at least becomes due in March of excuse me, of 2025. There is a request for proposals that was sent out in October of this past year.
We put in a proposal we think is a very strong proposal with the help of our finalists are we we have a certain amount of confidence that it's not that subject to our control on. We've had meetings with Bryant Park to get fully vetted on our proposal on. They have not made any decisions as of yet.
No one. No one is expected. And so 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.
Operator
So love. We have one question. Should we go ahead.
Obviously, yes.
Operator
That question or has popped down not upon. 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.
