Q2 2024 Bowlero Corp Earnings Call

Participants

Robert Lavan; Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer; Bowlero Corp

Tom Shannon; Chairman of the Board, CEO, Founder; Bowlero Corp

Lev Ekster; President; Bowlero Corp

Steven Wieczynski; Analyst; Stifel Nicolaus and Company, Incorporated

Randal Konik; Analyst; Jefferies

Jason Tilchen; Analyst; Canaccord Genuity

Matthew Boss; Analyst; JPMorgan

Eric Handler; Analyst; ROTH MKM

Eric Wold; Analyst; B. Riley Securities

Jeremy Hamblin; Analyst; Craig Hallum

Michael Kupinski; Analyst; NOBLE Capital Markets

Presentation

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Bolero Second Quarter 2024 earnings call for All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question again, press the star one. Thank you. Bobby 11 Valero's Chief Financial Officer. You may begin your conference.

Robert Lavan

Good morning to everyone on the call. This is Bobby Lavin, Valero's Chief Financial Officer. Welcome to our conference call to discuss Valero's Second Quarter 2020 for earnings. This morning, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period ended December 31st, 2023. A copy of the press release is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Joining me on the call today are Thomas Shannon, our Founder and Chief Executive and WebEx are our President. I would like to remind you that during today's conference call, we may make certain forward-looking statements about the Company's performance. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, one should not place undue reliance on them.
Forward-looking statements are also subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed. For additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in our forward-looking statements. You should refer to cautionary statements in our press release as well as the risk factors contained in the Company's filings with the FCC. Bolero Corporation undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after today's call.
Also, during today's call, the company may discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G, the GAAP financial measures most directly comparable to each non-GAAP financial measure discussed and a reconciliation of the differences between each non-GAAP financial measure and the comparable GAAP financial measure can be found on the company's website.
I will now turn the call over to Tom.

Tom Shannon

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I am Thomas Shannon, Founder, and CEO of Valero Corporation. Boral had a strong second quarter with total revenue growth of 13.4%. We continue to invest in our centers, our people and our goal to become the premier experiential recreation company. Our same store sales comp turned positive as consumers picked Bolero for celebrations. In the December holiday period, our revenues are up 65% from pre-pandemic levels as we grow market share through acquisitions and investing in our premium product calendar year 2023 was a transformative year. We started the year with 327 centers and ended with 350. We accelerated growth through acquisitions, bringing in the Lucky Strike premier centers into the portfolio, and we built two new builds that are outperforming expectations and have more than a dozen in the pipeline. We put $350 million of capital to work that will generate industry-leading 25 plus percent returns on capital newbuilds and Lucky Strike combined is pushing our average revenue per unit revenue up in second quarter 2024. Our average revenue per unit was up 6% year over year, combined with unit count increasing by 8%. We'll continue to focus on this formula to drive double digit revenue growth over the long term. Our best in class events platform continues to outperform. Event revenue increased by 30% year over year. Strong corporate demand for employees to come together in a work-from-home environment, combined with companies seeking premium offerings at a reasonable price during the BLOCKBUSTER December leagues was up 14% year over year as we expand socially opportunities combined with brand recognition from our PBA ownership. These are offsetting slower retail business traffic as sub-prime customer spend slows and we lap record-breaking prior year last summer, we spent considerable effort tinkering with our business model. We found good footing with a balance between promotional activity during the midweek and enhanced pricing and offerings on the full-priced weekends. Our model was fully reset in mid-October, and that allowed us to identify pricing opportunities across certain centers. In December, we took an average price increase of 2% across retail, the centers which we applied to events in January, we continued to see pricing opportunities enhancements across our product line this year, we also invested our C-suite. Last month we announced the promotion of lab extra to President. Lab brings 10 plus years of experience at Bolero leading dramatic expansion of leaves in amusements. We are investing in our people by adding to the C-suite that will complement our 12,000 plus workforce and providing premium experiences to the customer, which drive revisits and long-term growth.
With that, let me hand it over to Lev for a business review.

Lev Ekster

Well, thank you, Tom. I'm thrilled to be here today. The whitespace to grow revenue without more than 12 million square feet of entertainment space is tremendously exciting. When I joined Bolero, our music business was an afterthought. Today. It accounts for $100 million of revenue and growing. We're able to maximize amusement revenue by optimizing our pricing game selection and floor plans opportunities to drive the customer into the arcade while they're there on a wait for lean or get them to extend their visit at the bowling by playing a few games is why we performed so well with amusements, we plan to implement the same successful processes to our bowling and food and beverage revenue. Selling extra game of Bowling has 100% incremental profits to us driving traffic in the slower summer months through promotion or all you can bolt passes, help amusements and food and beverage attachment. Our database and loyalty program has millions of customers pushing content on the professional Builders Association telecast with the 2024 season, featuring the most broadcast hours ever in a single season on Big Box increases. The awareness of our centers, Lucky Strike is a well-recognized iconic brand. We're really leaning into the brand with the opening of Lucky Strike and more park in California and the upcoming opening of Lucky Strike Miami, the demand from customers for these properties as well as the inbound interest for job opportunities underscores the promise of the brand as an important part of the entertainment culture we are building. I look forward to meeting you in the coming months and showing the results.
And now Bobby 11.

Robert Lavan

Thanks, lead. In the second quarter of 2024, we generated total revenue ex service fee of $304 million and adjusted EBITDA of $103.1 million compared to the last year of $268.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of $97.0 million. As a reminder, service fee revenue is a pass through a non-contributor to earnings and is being phased out. Our total growth was plus 13.4% year over year in same store comp was positive 0.2%, positive 0.2%. Same-store comp is in line with our expectations. Our communications with investors down the middle as we continue to execute on difficult comparatives and outperform our peer set.
Adjusted EBITDA was $103.1 million compared to $97 million in the prior year. We continue to invest in our people with our same store comp payroll, up $6.3 million year over year. Lucky Strike outperformed our expectations for the $6 million plus contribution EBITDA in the quarter compared to $4 million the previous year. Our cost structure, primarily employee payroll normalizes after a double-digit comp and payroll in March 2023 corporate expenses are down while you continue to invest in our event sales team, non-comp centers contributed $14 million of EBITDA on approximately $41 million of revenue. The first three weeks of January 23 and four were difficult, primarily due to significant ice across the country. Same-store comps over the past two weeks have rebounded due to the slow start, we are slightly revising our expectations for the third quarter to high single 10s growth and a flat to down low single digit same-store comp. For the third quarter, we expect fourth quarter total revenue to be up around 20%. In the quarter, we spent $26 million on growth CapEx, $13 million on new builds and $10 million on maintenance. We spent $24 million on acquisitions and we repurchased $80 million of shares in the quarter. This morning, we announced a $0.055 quarterly dividend for an expected annual rate of $0.22. Our Board of Directors additionally increased our share repurchase authorization to $200 million. We have ample liquidity to continue to investing in our growth and rewarding our shareholders.
We also updated our capital guidance for the year. We are increasing our M&A spend from $160 million to $190 million. Conversions are up to $80 million from $75 million, and we continue to ramp up newbuilds holding our previous guidance at $40 million. Our liquidity at the end of the quarter was $212 million with nothing drawn on our revolver and $190 million of cash. Net debt was $960 million and bank credit facility net leverage ratio is 2.5 times. We have several exciting initiatives underway and are continuing to evolve and innovate. We believe in our fundamental offering an ADC or acquisition newbuild and conversion strategy as part of our operating ethos, and we remain enthusiastic about our long-term growth trajectory.
Thank you for your time, and we look forward to seeing you on the road.
In the coming months.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

We will now begin our question and answer session. At this time, I'd like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad.
Your first question comes from the line of Steven Wieczynski from Stifel. Your line is open you.

Steven Wieczynski

Hey, guys. Good morning, Tom. So so I want to ask about the ability to to hold guidance with the headwinds you've already faced, but obviously with weather so far here in the third quarter and Bobby, you called out the impact of weather so far. But if we look at your guidance for the third quarter and the fact you know, January is behind us, obviously, it seems like you guys might need to see a significant upswing are trends in February and March. So am I missing something there? Or are there other levers that you guys can use or willing to pull to get that third quarter more in line with your guidance?

Robert Lavan

Yes. I mean, the first three weeks of January hit us for a kind of about seven to $8 million on but we haven't seen and we've seen a rebound in the past few weeks. So we're pretty comfortable with our guidance at this point.

Steven Wieczynski

Okay. So based on what you're seeing today, you just think kind of February and March can kind of carry you into that guidance range there?

Robert Lavan

Correct.

Steven Wieczynski

Okay. Got it. And then the second question is for labs. Since he's on one of these calls for the first time, but they've obviously been at the the company for a long time. Obviously, you've got a nice promotion here. Was there anything you really want to kind of go after or change any major initiatives do you think is really going to benefit the Bolero story over time?

Lev Ekster

Yes. So I've been here long enough to see that we have probably the best mousetrap, the strongest business model out there. It really comes down to me focusing on the execution of that to maximize that food and beverage and amusement attachment to help continue to improve our people, our processes across the Company just to execute at a higher level. The business at its core is phenomenal, but I want to get us to Good to Great from good to great and these processes.

Steven Wieczynski

Okay. Got you, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks for. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thanks to your next question comes from the line of Randy Konik from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Randal Konik

And maybe to follow up on that a little bit on the processes. Can you kind of give us some perspective on often the things you're working on.
I think, Bobby, we had spoken at our winter Summit. I think a food and beverage system that's being implemented are looking to just can you give us some perspective on some of the things you're working on and areas of focus and that we can see to help these already very high margins potentially go even higher. Just curious. Thanks, guys.

Lev Ekster

Yes, this is live. I'm happy to take that. So, you know, Barbie's been with us, not that long, but the level of data that he brings to the table is something that we haven't had at our fingertips historically. So our decision making is way more data-driven these days, but also something we're focused on is really reducing the variance across all of our centers, 350 centers. We want to tighten up the processes. So can we apply our standards for repair maintenance budgets? Can we give guidance on what the optimal staffing parties should be to really maximize the foot traffic in our centers and have that convert to revenue. So we're going to foster this culture of collaboration across our company and use what works best across a given number of centers and expand that knowledge and that process to the rest of the centers.

Randal Konik

Got you. And then just any areas in particular, you're mostly focused on in addition to the ones you just talked about anything around food and beverage, anything else?

Robert Lavan

Yes. I mean, F&B, we're installing a fairly robust inventory management system that ultimately can add significant number one to the bottom line. And we've always had a perpetual inventory system. So that opportunity is rolling out this summer. We talked about the website. The website will roll out the next few months. And the reason the website is so important is it allows for dynamic pricing on you know, ultimately your goal, it is to fill the centers on the weekends at the highest price we can and fill the centers at the most reasonable price we can during the week. And ultimately dynamic pricing allows you to do that on the website system will allow that. And then when we get to the summer this summer, we're going to reimplement Summer Games, which is something we talked about that we did not have last year that cost us $10 million of revenue, but it also is going to be the website will allow us to effectively drive traffic in the slower times in the summer, which is sort of a key dynamic for really getting leverage out of our model.

Randal Konik

Thanks. And just last question on the capital plan, the one 90 versus one 60, is that a function of on get more assets you think coming to market, the bid-ask spread narrowing like just gives perspective on and the why that one 90 versus one 60, just the rationale behind that? Thanks, guys.

Robert Lavan

Yes, we we bought Lucky Strike. We closed September 15th. We got in there and we're accelerating our capital plan there just because the opportunity set in Lucky is significant. So really is the focus of that. We've got a few more deals in the pipeline, but really the end of the day we're pulling Lucky Strike in where we felt we'd spend the capital over a few years. It's definitely to be sooner.

Randal Konik

Thanks, guys.

Tom Shannon

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Telsim from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Jason Tilchen

Great morning and thanks for taking the question. Just to start, I was curious on Lucky Strike in the press release you talk a little bit about how profitability there was ahead of targets. Wondering if you could maybe just spend a minute drilling down on that a bit talking about some of the areas we're already seeing savings and then some of these further areas of improvement that you've identified that some of that, which could be and centered around some of those investments you're just talking about?

Robert Lavan

Yes. I mean, the bull aero procurement system is very strong. And so ultimately, we put in our systems in lucky, we only closed on September 15th. So it's that. But on top of that, our events platform just crushed it in December. And we had multiple center buyouts, which are very, very profitable to the business and center buyouts are great because they take down the center, you know, exactly how much staffing you're doing, how much food you're doing, how much liquor you're doing things like that in that ultimately sort of drove incremental profitability in centers. So we're very happy with where luckily coming out from.

Jason Tilchen

Great. That's helpful. And just one quick follow-up. And maybe give an update on how sort of the value bundles that you've been using during sort of the peak times have performed over recent months as you've expanded into more centers across the country?

Robert Lavan

Yes. I mean that ultimately that pizza and pitchers in every center, we're getting good uptake. You'll see that we're testing out the alley sampler. A lot of these things are we take a little bit of a pause in December because December is very focused on events, but we're pretty happy with the uptake now really focused on what Les said, is taking best practices from centers that are very good at upselling these products and pushing that to the rest of it portfolio.

Tom Shannon

But I think look, this is Tom. I'll chime in and add Dave & Buster's was down 7.8% on a same-store basis. In their last reported quarter, we were up two tenths of a percent, right? So it's a it's a map. We are massively outperforming the leisure and hospitality sector. And so the way you get there is by doing all these things like bundling value, pricing, tinkering with pricing and all these other sort of continuous optimization exercises. And so don't think of it as one initiative or another initiative that we talk about. It's really it's really been systematized and it's getting more optimized and will continue to become more optimized under Bob's leadership. We're playing with pricing and promotion sort of all the time. And I think that the result of being up when everyone all of our competitors, all of our peers were down in some cases down massively shows you the strength of our model and the strength of how we operate and how we adjust on the fly.

Jason Tilchen

Perfect. Thanks so much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Boss from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Matthew Boss

Great. Thanks, and I will do it, Tom. Hey, good. How are you, Tom?
Maybe two, just to start off, could you speak to performance what you're seeing from Lucky Strike maybe relative to initial expectations? And then could you just elaborate on the customer response specifically to some of the pricing and promotion changes and how you saw this impact second quarter comp?

Tom Shannon

I'll take the first part, and I'll hand off to lab on the second part of where we are. We're very pleased with Lucky Strike. It's outperformed our expectation. They had a very, very strong December, a very strong holiday season, and we're seeing and shockingly high revenue numbers out of the Lucky Strike properties. We also did we hired Nielsen to conduct a brand survey and they came in and concluded that the strength of the Lucky Strike brand was between 50% and 100% stronger than ball Arrow in terms of aided and unaided customer awareness. And so as an experiment, we opened our most recent center in more Park, California, which is just northwest of Los Angeles as a lucky strike. And it is wildly outperformed expectations. So we feel very, very good about the Lucky Strike brand. We're about to open our second new Lucky Strike location in Miami that will open probably this month, if not the beginning of March. And but we couldn't be happier with the Lucky Strike brands.
Lucky Strike performance. We already saw a 50% increase in profitability in the last quarter versus what Lucky Strike had done a year ago under prior ownership, and we're just getting started on and I'll give the second part of that question left.

Lev Ekster

Okay. So with regard to our promotions, like Tom mentioned earlier, we just continue to tinker and we're trying new things and trying new price points. We're trying new offerings, things that work we expand. So Tom, mentioned the pizza and picture worked really well or sorry, Bob, you mentioned that it's performing, right? So what do we do? We expanded that to our lead programs. And now we actually have a national lead program that comes with a pizza and pitcher for every team. And that's really resonating. It's one of our fastest national programs in terms of sign-ups when we're bringing Summer Games back. We're not going to bring it back exactly how we've done it in the past. We have some learnings. We're going to optimize that program. But at the end of the day, all of these, none of them operate in a vacuum. We tried to get foot traffic into our centers and now we're focused on execution. Once we have that customer. So we're seeing a really nice improvement in our NPS scores, which is our guest service landscape, right? We're investing into our people. And I think it's it's really a showing in those results.

Robert Lavan

And now we get that foot traffic back with these promotions and we execute, we convert that to revenue higher F&B attachment, for example, Seattle, when I manage acquiring like when I look at December, we took two points on retail and we look back at it after four weeks of running and we saw no consumer pushback. So we rolled it out in events in January and events is up 3% in January. So the consumer is not pushing back on our price movements. And frankly, they see the value in what we're charging. And so ultimately, we feel like the opportunity to continue going where we increased price in some places potentially like increased shoe pricing, maybe lower the price of Bowling, but increase the price of food like there's just a lot of opportunities to continue taking wallet share while giving the consumer a premium products.

Matthew Boss

Great. And then Bobby, maybe just as we think multiyear, what's your level of visibility to the new unit pipeline for next year where we sit today are just the potential opportunity to accelerate new builds and just how you view the whitespace opportunity in the highly fragmented bowling center total addressable market?

Robert Lavan

Yes. Well, we look at the white spaces as the total entertainment market. So as you can see in our press release, we're moving away from the word center. We're moving towards locations on the white spaces, significant from a newbuild perspective, we've got at least five a year for the next few years. And you remember these newbuilds, they come in at $7 million, $8 million versus our average unit value is $3 million. So for every new build that comes off, it's effectively three smaller acquisitions. And on the acquisition side, that the bid-ask hasn't really come in.
Yes. So we're kind of building dry powder while we expect a little bit more volatility in the entertainment space over the next year. So I don't want to get pinned down by sort of unit count and unit growth. We are building dry power when we expect sort of the ASPs to come down to great color. Best of luck.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Eric Handler from Ross MKM. Your line is open.

Eric Handler

Yes, good morning. Thank you for the question. Bobby, you spoke about increased payroll costs in the quarter and on a same pump basis. I'm curious, is that what weighed on your gross margin on a year-over-year basis? And as that anniversaries itself, I believe you said at the end of the March quarter, does that allow gross margin then to start improving in fiscal 25.

Robert Lavan

So there are two things that weighed on our gross margin. So there is $6 million of payroll in the comp centers backing out that ultimately cost us about 200 basis points on gross margin. The bigger one and I wanted to give these numbers is that Lucky Strike and the new acquisitions did $14 million of EBITDA but they had $8 million of D&A. You effectively had $6 million of gross profit on $41 million of sales. So the M&A accounting, it does depress our gross margin but ultimately, when you use a seven year formula for D. and A. for for business that is 50 years plus, it's kind of skewing it in the short term, but it will benefit in the long term. If I think about D&A last quarter on acquisitions, it was $4 million, now it's $8 million. Additionally, in the quarter, we had $1.4 million of D&A from We close West Nayak Lucky Strike. So we are being very focused on cash flow and performance, but it does create some noise in the numbers Okay, great.

Eric Handler

And then the implementation of a dividend was it was a nice surprise. I'm curious what made you decide now was the right time to increase capital returns and complementing that buybacks with now we've got this dividend at the same time, you're increasing your investment spending. So maybe to talk a little bit about your balance sheet.

Robert Lavan

Yes. So I joined here in May on and I have been unbelievably impressed by sort of the cash flow generation of this business in the second quarter, third quarter. We discussed that internally when we looked at all of our different outflows needed over the next few years. M&a conversions, new builds, and we looked at our liquidity and we had ample liquidity to continue buying back stock and pay a dividend. And so it's effectively, you know, we're really excited about where the business is, but we're much more excited about where the business is going and sort of the exit rate on FY 24 and just the opportunities in the capital. And frankly, there's more capital if we want to bring it in. But right now, we're still sitting on a lot of cash. So at the end of the day, we're going to reward shareholders and continue invest in the business.

Eric Handler

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Wold from B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Eric Wold

Thanks, good morning. So two questions, kind of follow up on prior comments. I guess, Bob, are going to take it.
I guess on the on the the average of 2% price taken in December, you talked about it kind of going in various forms from possible issues with beverage Boeing, I guess what drove the decision in each market or each center to make specific pricing either higher or lower with a competitive offering to the market, whether that specific trends of that location? Kind of what drove each decision on pricing?

Robert Lavan

Yes. So we only have retail. So MEMBER retail is it was a smaller portion of business in December but the reason we took it was we wanted to test the consumer a little bit and see how much pushback there was and there was none. So ultimately, we've had a pricing consultant in house for the past six months. And we're really looking at pricing by hour by day by center by products. And we saw some low-hanging fruit that we took in December that allowed us to test that change and whether the consumer react negatively to it, they didn't. So now we're pushing it into events. And so ultimately, we're going to continue doing as we have another round of pricing changes coming. And those are very exciting because we're kind of coming to the end of this consultant's engagement. There's so much opportunity to be dynamic that the consumer will continue to and more and have better product incentive.

Eric Wold

Got it. And then the comments around the promotions, kind of testing different things. Seeing what works expanding that. Maybe cutting back on why that didn't work. Maybe talk about some of something hasn't worked as you expected on kind of maybe promotion that kind of promotional activity and kind of beyond what you learned from the ones that didn't work?

Tom Shannon

Yes. Well, I'll look, this is Tom. I'll take the Mia culpa. So we had had Summer Games, which had built up to about $6 million of revenue Summer Games. Was it like a game out and season pass and business was so strong back in fiscal 23 that I decided to eliminated in the summer of 2023 because I figure we could just get full price for those games. And while there was some offset, there wasn't nearly enough offset to have made it worthwhile to kill that program. So as Les mentioned, we're going to bring that back, but that probably eliminating that probably cost us on order of $6 million of revenue last summer. So that was a pretty good example of something that didn't work that we have learned and we're not going to bring it back exactly as it was before we're going to make it better. They'll probably be a wider range of options for the consumer depending on what kind of experience they want. But that was that was entirely my decision and it was a a wrong decision.

Eric Wold

Okay.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeremy Hamblin from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is open.

Jeremy Hamblin

Thanks. And congrats on the strong results. I wanted to just dial in a little bit more on the Lucky Strike on integration, the acceleration of investment in that in terms of thinking about outcomes and rationale is can you just get a little deeper into that in terms of is it in terms of getting the implementation done and the capital investment, is this more of an opportunity you see driving revenue on. You talked about some of the systems you're bringing in that sounds like they are cost focused as well. But where do you see more of that opportunity here over the next 12 months?

Robert Lavan

Yes, it's going to be revenue and cost, right. So look, let's talk about the revenue side from Fenway, which does 13 plus million of revenue at $16 million. We think we can put in another four to eight. You can do the math on the magnitude of that. There's always a way there's that's the kind of things we're looking at and that we're effectively accelerating on the brand.
I'll let let's kind of talk more about the brand.

Lev Ekster

Look, even on the revenue side, I want to point out. So I've managed our amusements department for the last few years. A lot of those locations haven't seen investment into the games in a number of years we're addressing that. There are some locations that had no arcades. We're addressing that. And, you know, in terms of the brand, I think just I personally live in Miami, we have Lucky Strike Miami opening, I visit that center. I see the inbound interest people are reaching out before we even opened for events and buyouts. We do open calls for hiring events it looks like we're giving out free Taylor Swift tickets. The line is so long. We haven't seen that in any of our property is right. There is just a lot of demand for this brand. And I think we're going to get better with it. Our marketing department engage with an agency right now where we're going to develop the Lucky Strike brand identity. And if the results speak for themselves, Lucky Strike more Park, the food and beverage sales relative to bowling dollars, some of the highest we've seen, right? So it's just a totally different concept on. And I think we're really going to lead into that. And as strong as it was the Lucky Strike brand, we're just really strong operators and we know which levers to pull now to maximize it.

Robert Lavan

Yes. And if you look at just the math right now, Lucky is operating a little bit better than sort of the 20 low 20s EBITDA margin. There's no reason that that margin couldn't be our corporate wide margin.

Jeremy Hamblin

Got it. That's helpful. Let's switch to just technology investments. You noted that the website is getting updates. I think it sounds like that's coming here in a couple of months in terms of the refresh you're doing there. Wanted to just marry that all also with with Moneyball and you noted that that's becoming more of an out of center operations. I wanted to see if you could just provide some update there on the technology side and get a little bit deeper, get some eyeballs still operating in 64 centers.

Robert Lavan

So we haven't we haven't increased that yet, and Moneyball will be relaunching as a loyalty app and the company has a third party loyalty app that has a lot of demand, but it doesn't have a lot of functionality on and that will be rolling out this summer.

Jeremy Hamblin

Yes. Got it. And then last thing, just looking ahead, over the summer period, you talked about some gains in kind of bringing back some of the things you've done before. Just wanted to get a sense for when you're in an Olympic year like this year and some of the media that you have available within the locations in the centers, is that something that in the past historically has been a positive or negative for traffic. And is this something you see as an opportunity maybe to keep people on centers longer? Anything you kind of got planned around that.

Lev Ekster

Now this is live. I would argue that's a stretch. I don't think that has any bearing on our business, but I will tell you what media does have a bearing on our business. So we bought the PPA in 2019. Leagues across the country were dwindling ROE business. You see is strong. It's growing and it's growing by headcount. It's grown by average price per game and obviously revenue. So now we have this halo effect that the PBA. gives us right viewership on our first event for the PDA. The players championship was up 17% year over year in January. I think that property is getting stronger, but we have this flywheel now and we send our PBA. stores into our centers on ViziLite nights, and we delight and surprise our boulders. That's something that we have at our disposal and we're going to continue to lean into. But I think, you know, and in my growing involvement with the PBA, I think it's all upside. We're trying new things like our core business, but we're trying things with the PDA So this year will be the first ever PBA All-Star weekend in March, we had a really interesting property in the PDA called the elite lead this team-based. We did one event a year. I attended last year, Bayside bowl, it was electric. So we said, why shouldn't we do this more? We're going to have five events for the lead this season and we're going to continue to grow the casual viewership to that property and more awareness around bowling in our centers. As a result, that's more of the media that we're focused on Great.

Jeremy Hamblin

Super helpful. Best wishes, guys.

Robert Lavan

Thanks.

Lev Ekster

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Kupinski from NOBLE Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Michael Kupinski

Thank you, and thank you.
For taking my questions and congratulations on the quarter. I want to go back to the increase in payroll in the quarter. I know last year you indicated that you were tweaking some of your staffing levels. And I was just wondering if you can give us a sense of where you are today in terms of your goals and in terms of data center staffing levels.

Tom Shannon

I am Michael Tom, Shannon. Well, so as Bobby mentioned, last March, we gave all of our management staff in the field increases and salary that ranged from 12% to 17.5%. And we view that really as a one-time market adjustment. So we're going to lap that in short order, which will make the payroll comp much easier. And we did that with the goal of reducing turnover and increasing guest satisfaction. And both have been achieved. We dramatically reduced manager turnover, which was really important as the Company continues to grow. We need to retain managers and develop them for future leadership roles. No, we added about 25 locations last year. We continue to be ambitious in our growth plan and you need a stable and experienced group of managers to get you there. And that's what we achieved. We also see as we saw meaningful increases in Net Promoter Score results, which was the other part of the goal. So and we're about to lap that on the hourly side. There are a lot of tweaks with the model other than getting the allocations between some of the back-of-the-house and front-of-the-house functions?
Correct. So as we go deeper to the data, we find disconnects where we are running, for example, too much mechanics, labor and not enough server labor. And that's really a function of how bowling centers have had been run since the beginning of time. And so going in and now using the data we have and are available at our fingertips to really make the most informed and rational decisions with regard to allocations of labor within the center, I think will have a meaningful impact going forward. I can't quantify it, but I think it will be pretty substantial.

Michael Kupinski

Thanks for that color. All my other questions have been addressed. Thank you so much.

Tom Shannon

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Accel HOUSING from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

It's more as this has gone for you, and thanks for taking the question. Must have been pretty much answered. But just on the event business, looks like it continues to be very strong. Know how much of that strength is driven by corporate demand versus birthday parties other than et cetera.
I guess is there more room for upside as far as the corporate that recovery? Thank you.

Robert Lavan

It's going to keep going. I mean, it's both corporate and family. I mean, we saw significant strain on the corporate side in December and through January, despite the weather, we're still seeing a good ramp on birthday parties and family events so we are the beneficiary of a trade down in this dynamic where we're not too expensive. That is something that like a corporate can't do anymore or enough of a premium product at its place, you'd be willing to bring your employees. And so we're definitely seeing a benefit that we always do well with birthday parties.

Okay, great. And then just on the pricing, I guess you mentioned the 2% on event in January. I guess does guidance assume any more incremental price increases in the back half of the year or you just will would you continue to be flexible and adjust with demand as you move through the year?

Robert Lavan

It does not assume assuming more price increases.

Okay, great.

Robert Lavan

Thank you very much.

Operator

There are no further questions. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.