Ark Restaurants Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Ark Restaurants EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.18
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Ark Restaurants Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Ark Restaurants Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 2/10/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 11:00AM ET

Ark Restaurants (NASDAQ:ARKR), through its subsidiaries, owns and operates restaurants and bars in the United States. It operates restaurants in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Las Vegas, Nevada; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Florida; and Alabama, as well as fast food concepts and catering operations. The company was incorporated in 1983 and is based in New York, New York.

Ark Restaurants Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Margins have been squeezed and management is focusing on payroll efficiency and revenue growth to drive profitability.
• At Meadowlands, the company believes it is the frontrunner for a North New Jersey casino license, expecting New York to issue downstate licenses this year—and anticipating a prompt New Jersey response once that occurs.
• In the Bryant Park bid, a competitor has been selected but final approvals from the NYC Department of Commerce and New York Public Library are still pending, and the company has hired experts to challenge the process and defend its proposal.
• Decisions on dividends and share buybacks are on hold pending the outcome at Bryant Park; without that cash flow, management does not plan to pay dividends or aggressively repurchase shares.
• The company is also evaluating low-capital expansion opportunities and partnerships in new markets to grow without significant balance sheet impact.

Presentation

[Operator]

have your name, please? And your company?

[Operator]

And which conference you're looking for? Okay. I'll bring you right there. Hold on.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

Helpful in increasing demand, so we'll wait and see on that. All in all, we're just margins have been squeezed. We're trying to pick the margins up by being more efficient in payroll, hopefully driving some more revenue. The easy one to talk about of the two elephants in the room, Meadowlands and Bryant Park. Meadowlands, again, we think we're the most likely site for gaining a casino license in the North Of New Jersey, but New Jersey will not move until New York State starts to issue licenses for downstate casinos, meaning Manhattan or Queens or The Bronx.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

2 of those licenses, if there we suspect will be issued to Aqueduct and to Yonkers. We believe that once they're issued, it will take a matter of months for those to become fully operational casinos because the facilities are already built. For the third license and there are several developers vying for those, that will take some time. But we think the implementation of casino licenses at Yonkers and Aqueduct will force Jersey to make a decision that they have to do something in the North Atlantic City has been dying for years. And I think this would really be a death knell and Jersey will wake up and issue a license in the North.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

We suspect that New York State will issue licenses sometime later this year. So we also expect that that will generate a referendum to allow that it's a referendum voted on by the public to allow for casino gaming in the North. So that's the mail winners. Bryant Park, if we follow the headlines, the Bryant Park Corporation has said they want to go forward with somebody other than us. That deal has not been signed yet.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

It requires a positive okay from the POTS department in New York Public Library. We've

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

hired

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

a whole team of experts and we feel that we have a decent chance of retaining the operation of that facility. It will take months to know, but we really believe we're still in the game. We think the whole request for proposal process was flawed. And the thing that we don't understand is that the new license to operate would be issued to a company that has limited hospitality experience. We've been hugely successful and their minimum rent proposal is $1,000,000,000 less than us.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

So, it just doesn't sound like it's a logical business arrangement and we're looking into it. And hopefully, we will see something that starts to move us back into our direction. So, with that, any questions, I'm happy to answer.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Jeffrey Kaminski with JJK Consulting. Please proceed with your question.

[Jeffrey Kaminsky, Investment Advisory at JJK Research Associates]

Good morning, everyone. This is hi, Anthony. With respect to Bryant Park and the process, I guess you folks found out about the lease and the other party through, if I'm reading the hearings properly, through some sort of public hearing or public meeting. So my question is, are they more of these scheduled and can the public actually attend? And then as a shareholder, I have a vested interest in what happens to client park as do other shareholders of work.

[Jeffrey Kaminsky, Investment Advisory at JJK Research Associates]

What's preventing us as a member of the public and a New York resident from attending such a year?

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

There's nothing preventing you to go to public sessions. The community board session is a public session. The announcement of his of the Bryan Park Corporation's election was made at a subcommittee of the Community Board meeting, it's this Parks and Recreation Subcommittee at the Community Board and it was a public forum. There was a lot of robust conversation about it regarding the process and regarding the affordability of the selection of the new restaurant tour, we're reasonably priced. We don't think the selection of Seacort Entertainment Group and their licensing agreement, proposed licensing agreement with John George speaks well of affordability to the public.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

So there was a large discussion about that. But the Community Board's advisory position in this, The sign off they need to get a deal done with any operator has to come from the City of Commerce Department and from the Public Library. And they have not even proposed a change in operators to either one of those two organizations. Go ahead.

[Jeffrey Kaminsky, Investment Advisory at JJK Research Associates]

Our comments from the public, welcome at at the at the end of the week. I'm sorry.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

I I said We had we

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

had we had 25 employees at the community board meeting. We have 250 employees at the Bryant Park Corporation who are in danger of losing their jobs. Literally, 40% of those employees have been with us for twenty five years or more. So that constituency is also important in this process.

[Jeffrey Kaminsky, Investment Advisory at JJK Research Associates]

Right. And were any of them able to speak at the meeting and if I attended the next meeting as a shareholder, would I have an opportunity to make a statement or

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

You would have a minute to two minutes to speak.

[Jeffrey Kaminsky, Investment Advisory at JJK Research Associates]

Okay. Thank you.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

You're welcome.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Ravi Desai, a private investor. Please proceed with your question.

[Analyst]

Hey, Michael. How are you?

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

Good, Ravi. Thank you.

[Analyst]

I had a question. Moving forward as you guys think down the road, six months, twelve months, just wanted to get a sense of how you guys are thinking about the capital allocation on dividends or buybacks or if you guys have any other ideas outside of the strategic acquisitions that you're looking for down south?

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

So

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

that's a complicated question because it really depends upon the outcome of Bryant Park, certainly with regard to dividends. The right now without the cash flow that would be attending to operation at Bryant Park, we would not see a payer of dividends. That also is a question regarding buybacks. I think that same thought process is applicable. I don't think we're going to be aggressively buying stock unless we know what's going on with Brian Park number one, as a company.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

There may be people we're aligned with, who may want to take an interest in the stock. But without Brian Park, it's very hard to make these decisions. In terms of expanding the business, we have some nice opportunities we think that don't require tremendous amount of capital or where we would have partnerships with other organizations that see us as an important part of the process to establish some new operations. So, we're looking at that. It's sort of paralyzing in one respect for our balance sheet and income statement to have this issue with Ryan Park.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

But on the other hand, we're actively engaged and trying to find areas where we can expand sensibly. Hope that answers your question.

[Analyst]

Yes, that's helpful there. So we'll see how the Bryant Park shakes out and good luck with that. I think it I hope it holds in your guys' favor.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

Thank you.

[Operator]

It appears we have no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

[Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO at Ark Restaurants]

All right. Thank you all for your interest and we'll see you next quarter.

[Anthony Sirica, CFO, President,Treasurer & Director at Ark Restaurants]

Thank you. Bye bye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.

Participants

Executives

• Michael Weinstein, Founder, Chairman & CEO
• Anthony Sirica, CFO, President,Treasurer & Director

Analysts

• Jeffrey Kaminsky, Investment Advisory at JJK Research Associates
• Analyst