Q3 2023 Ark Restaurants Corp Earnings Call
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what the whole bar is talking about. Greetings and welcome to the AHRQ Restaurants third quarter 2023 results call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Christopher Love, Secretary for AHRQ Restaurants. Thank you. You may begin.
Speaker 2: and $7.7 million in debt. We paid down an additional $6 million of loans early on April 4th due to the high rates that, and that were now being charged because of the interest rate environment. Our current cash position is approximately the same as it was at the end of the quarter. Other than that on the balance sheet, there really aren't any significant changes. Very quiet. I think you also, the board also declared the dividend last week of 18.75 cents, payable on September 12th to record holders on August 31st. All right, thank you, Anthony. Obviously, we did not create or generate the EBITDA we did last year for this quarter. There are three components to that. Number one in Las Vegas, our Gallagher's restaurant, because of refurbishing requirements in our new leases, required us, we started the refurbishing somewhere in the prior quarter, but we were still closed until April 27th in this quarter when it reopened. So that cost us a significant dollar revenue and therefore some EBITDA cash flow. The second factor is our Florida full service restaurants. They're just down. Even though the down revenue was about 10, 12%.
Speaker 2: flow into demand flow into the test food court. The food court is doing better than the full service restaurants. On balance, if you look at that in the prior year, we just think people are not spending as much. New York, New York happens to be a middle income crowd. That's the demographic. So we think we're seeing people opting for less expensive options. That's probably taking place in our flow of the restaurants as well. Check averages are down. People are carrying on trays. So it's not only fewer people coming to the restaurant. People coming are not spending what they used to spend. It's just the environment we're in. So with that, I'll take questions. Thank you. If you'd 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 press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue.
Speaker 2: proposed to the legislature, but it's by no means a slam dunk and therefore we think the pressure created by New York casinos being open would be advantageous to our course. Sorry, I was just going to ask what would the timing be for that in a perfect world? Well, the perfect world is that before the end of this year New York is supposed to issue three downstate casino licenses. We know we don't know. By the way, we speak to law firms that are representing individual developers in New York to get their take on it all. I don't do this every day, but once every two or three months. I call a couple of the partners in these firms and who I happen to know.