Full House Resorts Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 7, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Q1 results showed resilience — revenues were $74.4 million (apples‑to‑apples +0.9%) and Adjusted EBITDA rose to $13.2 million, up ~15% year‑over‑year.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management expects to begin construction of the permanent American Place casino within weeks after securing roughly $300 million of financing, with earth‑moving drawings approved and an 18‑month temporary‑license extension being pursued.
  • Negative Sentiment: American Place table‑games hold was meaningfully below prior year (1.2 percentage points in Q1 and weak again in April), which materially depressed gaming revenue and adds near‑term volatility to results.
  • Positive Sentiment: Chamonix/Bronco Billy's is showing operational improvement — adjusted property EBITDA improved from -$2.3M to -$1.3M and April database/traffic metrics (new sign‑ups +12%, rated visits +19%, win per rated visit +14%) indicate marketing and management changes are beginning to take hold.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Liquidity stood at about $41 million (including undrawn revolver) and management expects to refinance existing debt at a mid‑range cost (higher than ~5% but well below 15%), so financing execution and ultimate interest cost remain key near‑term risks/opportunities.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Full House Resorts Q1 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Full House Resorts Q1 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief 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. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Adam Campbell, Corporate Controller. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Adam Campbell
Adam Campbell
Corporate Controller at Full House Resorts

Thank you, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our Q1 earnings call. As always, before we begin, we remind you that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements that we're making under the safe harbor provision of federal security laws. I would also like to remind you that the company's actual results could differ materially from anticipated results in these forward-looking statements. Please see today's press release under the caption "Forward-looking Statements" for the discussion of risks that may affect our results. Also, we may reference to non-GAAP measures such as adjusted EBITDA. For reconciliation of these measures, please see our website as well as various press releases that we issue. Lastly, we're also broadcasting this conference call at fullhouseresorts.com, where you can find today's earnings release as well as all of our SEC filings. With that said, we're ready to go, Lewis.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Good afternoon, everyone. We'll be quick with our prepared remarks today since I know there's another call that's about to start. We had a solid Q1. Revenues were $74.4 million in the Q1 of 2026, which compares to $75.1 million in last year's Q1. Within this, American Place was up about 7%. Also, keep in mind that last year's number included $1.3 million of revenue from Stockman's, which we sold in April of 2025. On an apples-to-apples basis, revenues grew by 0.9% in the Q1. Adjusted EBITDA in the Q1 of 2026 rose to $13.2 million. That's almost 15% higher than our Adjusted EBITDA in last year's Q1, which was $11.5 million.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

We had growth at almost all of our properties. American Place, Chamonix and Bronco Billy's, Silver Slipper, and Rising Star all had large % increases in EBITDA. At Grand Lodge, which is our smallest property, we continue to be impacted by refurbishment work that, when it's done, should meaningfully upgrade the overall experience. Regarding our sports skins, last year we had an additional active skin last year, so the decline in 2026 reflects that fact. At American Place, our temporary casino continues to show significant growth. Revenues increased by 7% to $31.8 million in the Q1 of 2026. Adjusted property EBITDA rose 8% to $8.3 million. In the Q1 of 2026, our table games hold was 1.2 percentage points lower than in last year's Q1.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

For April of 2026, the state's gaming revenues just came out. We had a very good April, which you probably already saw yesterday, with total gaming revenues up almost 6% versus April of 2025. Our table hold percentage was off again in April of 2026. If we held as expected, our total gaming revenues would have been up almost 16% versus April of last year. Turning to Chamonix and Bronco Billy's, our revenues were down slightly to $11.3 million from $11.6 million. Revenues were affected by several things. First, the Bronco Billy's casino was pretty torn up in January and February as we replaced carpets and installed new ceilings. The Bronco Billy's side now feels quite complementary to the Chamonix experience. Second, the unseasonably warm weather resulted in less cash business in the quarter.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Two of Cripple Creek's biggest events both occur in the winter, Ice Fest and Ice Castles. They're both great experiences, each one brings more than 100,000 people to town. Warm weather hindered those experiences and adversely affected city visitation. Third, we had some unprofitable promotional activity in the prior year period. We have an entirely new management team that joined us beginning in April of last year, they are working to make sure that our marketing spend is much more efficient. We had a good quarter in Colorado despite those factors. In last year's Q1, adjusted property EBITDA was -$2.3 million. In this year's Q1, it was -$1.3 million, an improvement of 42%. It's a seasonal market strongly favoring the upcoming summer months.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

With the new property team, we've spent a lot of time focusing not just on efficiency and costs, but also on our overall marketing efforts. That analysis continues to show a huge opportunity for us, that awareness and penetration into Colorado Springs remains extremely low. As guests visit us for the first time, they realize that we didn't build a commodity product of more slot machines. They realize that we created a very unique experience. We often compare Chamonix to Monarch and Black Hawk, as both have similar levels of quality and are targeting a similar type of guest. The total Black Hawk gaming market, not including the neighboring casino town of Central City, was about $875 million over the last 12 months.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Monarch has 1/3 of the hotel product in Black Hawk, so it's reasonable to think that they have at least 1/3 of the gaming revenue. The reality is they could be higher than that, given their skew toward a higher-end guest. Using those numbers as a basis, our slot win per day at Chamonix and Bronco Billy's was about 1/4 of Monarch's slot win per day. Our table win per day was about 16% of Monarch's. Therein lies the opportunity. The numbers that Monarch is generating aren't unusual for an underserved gaming market. If we can improve our win per day figures so they are just 45% of Monarch's, then we will have earned a very good return on our investment in Chamonix. Part of that improvement will involve ramping our hotel occupancy from 41% today to the 80%+ that Monarch achieves.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

The marketing team is laser-focused on awareness. There are about 1 million people in the broader Colorado Springs area. There are another 400,000 people that live in the southern suburbs of Denver. That's about 1.4 million people for our 300 guest rooms and 700 gaming positions. Within that geographic spread, there are several specific zip codes that can meaningfully move the needle, and those zip codes are re-receiving a lot of our attention in a new digital campaign that we're rolling out. Preliminarily, April had good numbers with an estimated 9% increase in net slot win and a 20% increase in net table win. On the balance sheet side, we had about $41 million of liquidity at the end of the quarter, including the undrawn portion of our revolver. The summer season tends to be our strong season.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

That, combined with a lack of any major construction spend right now, should benefit overall cash flow in the near term. We've been very transparent about our efforts to fund the permanent American Place Casino, as well as refinance our existing debt. If you recall, we mentioned on our last earnings call that we've been working with a funding source that is prepared to fully fund construction of the permanent American Place Casino. We have funded the gaming license, land, slot machines, temporary casino, assembly of the workforce, the mailing list, all at a total investment today of about $170 million. The new financing will provide the approximately $300 million needed to move into the permanent facility. That solution requires a lot of legal paperwork, which the team is diligently making its way through.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

We continue to feel very good about that solution and look forward to giving you more details once we can, potentially in the next few weeks. We are confident enough on that financing that we expect to commence construction within the next few weeks. The early stages of construction take time, but not much capital. By starting now, we hope to open the permanent American Place about two years from now. Our earth-moving drawings were approved a couple weeks ago by the city of Waukegan, and we are working to obtain the other government approvals needed to begin construction. We have put together a good construction team that is well-versed in building regional as well as destination casinos. They include Power Construction, which is currently building the new Hollywood Casino in Aurora, Illinois. They're one of the largest builders in the Chicagoland area.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

We have W.A. Richardson Builders, who will act in an oversight role. They're one of the largest construction firms here in Las Vegas and have great experience developing casinos from their days at Mandalay Resort Group, including the Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, Illinois. They also recently built the Fontainebleau and Durango Resorts here in Las Vegas. Then we have WATG as architects. Their team has a long list of hospitality projects under their belts, including The Venetian in Las Vegas and the Hard Rock in Rockford, Illinois. Lastly, we're currently allowed to operate our temporary casino until August of 2027. In conjunction with our anticipated financing, a bill was introduced into the Illinois legislature to extend that date by 18 months.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

That would ensure a smooth transition from the temporary to the permanent, including continuation of the approximately $30 million per year in gaming and other state taxes that we currently pay. Typically, items like this in the legislature are voted on late in the session, which ends on 31 May. That's everything I had, Dan. What'd I miss?

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

No, I think you got it. Let's go to questions.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

All right.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

We'll find out from the public what we missed.

Operator

Thank you. We'll 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 press star two if you'd like to remove your question 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 your questions. Our first question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Jordan Bender
Analyst at Citizens Bank

Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Thanks for the question. Maybe not the quarter that you wanted necessarily in Colorado, on the expense side, you know, that continues to look better. I see, my math gets me to expenses down about 10% in the quarter. How much more do you guys think you have left to take out, you know, if we don't get any material revenue uplift from here?

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

There's a lot of blocking and tackling that's happened, and we'll continue to control the costs. There's stuff like we have an outsourced housekeeping service, which they only clean, like, nine rooms a day, and we end up paying for that. Down at the Silver Slipper, we clean 14 rooms a day. We're looking to bring that in-house, and we have to hire about 30 housekeepers to do that. Our laundry service, we think we can get more efficient. We hired an AGM in the Q1 who has a background in hospitality and food and beverage, and he was in a similar role at the Ameristar in Council Bluffs, and before that, the Ameristar in East Chicago.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

A real good guy, and he'll and he's working on that sort of thing. We also hired a finance director in the Q1, and frankly, we are getting much better reports reporting out of it, and that's helpful. You know, to really get to where we wanna be, we need to improve the revenues. We've got a lot of new marketing people working on that, and it's much more sophisticated than it was a year ago. You know, it's a constant process to try to make the marketing spend more efficient, and targeted. Like Lewis mentioned, digitally approaching certain zip codes. I mean, that's a more efficient way to do it. And so on. There's a lot of different aspects to this.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

One of the other things we're looking at doing, of course, the business there is very, like most casinos, slanted towards the weekend. You know, you're trying to hire people in a somewhat difficult place to hire them up in the mountains. We're looking at going out and offering people like a $5 an hour premium if somebody only wants to work on weekends. The kind of the backstory on that is if somebody is willing to go on our payroll working only, say, Friday and Saturday, they will not qualify for the health plan because it's less than 32 hours a week. The health plan costs us more than $5 an hour per employee.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

You might find somebody who's already gainfully employed, or maybe they're retired, not on Medicare, but they kind of like the idea of being a barista in our coffee place on Saturday mornings. It gets them out of the house. We'd love to have that employee. We're looking at all sorts of ways to be more thoughtful and efficient and effective. It doesn't happen overnight, but it is happening. Frankly, the April numbers are pretty encouraging 'cause I kind of feel like we've got our footing on the marketing stuff, and we're starting to show really strong numbers. April was a good month. The first part of May looks pretty good so far.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Hopefully we just continue to build on that going into the summer. We, you know, we are controlling costs, but ultimately it's about growing the revenues.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Those incremental revenues, you probably heard me say this before, at this point, the cost structure is pretty fully baked, so the flow through from those incremental revenues should be pretty steep.

Jordan Bender
Analyst at Citizens Bank

Perfect.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

We had a Mexican restaurant that was called Baja Billy's that had been closed for a while, and we revamped it. We promoted from within a new food and beverage manager, who's a very talented chef, and he did a phenomenal job on new menus and recipes and so on. I'd argue we probably have the best Mexican restaurant in Colorado at this point. We renamed it Don Juan's, which is kind of a fun name. We also tied it into the elevator to get to it. We did that. We're going to start offering a brunch on Saturdays and Sundays in 980 Prime, which is a wonderful venue for a brunch.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

You know, we're doing it in ways where we know on Fridays and on Saturdays and Sundays, there's demand for that brunch. We're not doing it every day of the week.

Jordan Bender
Analyst at Citizens Bank

Great. On the follow-up, good to hear in Waukegan, that's gonna get going here in the next couple weeks. Just curious your view on the casino, the proposal up in Kenosha and kind of where that stands and kind of how you guys underwrite that property in relation to yours.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

First off, our customers primarily come from Lake County. To the extent they come from outside of Lake County, it tilts towards the south. If you drive north from us to Kenosha, there's some farmland out there, so there's kind of a gap. They would have a much bigger impact on the Potawatomi in downtown Milwaukee than they would to us. That tribe is pretty powerful. I think, which brings up the second question, do they ever get there? They've been working on this for 20 years. This is not an Indian tribe from Kenosha. This is an Indian tribe, the Ho-Chunk, who have a small casino a couple hundred miles away from that in the middle of Wisconsin.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

They're trying to create a whole new piece of land and reservation trust that is strictly for commercial purposes to really cut into the Potawatomi business. It's more of a tribal war than it is for us and I don't think would have much impact on us. I think if they get there, it's gonna take them a long time. Like if everything went smoothly for them, it'd be a few years before they got open. Even when they did get open, I don't think it has much impact on us. My first guess is they never get there, 'cause what they're trying to do is not easy.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

You know, where you know, it's one thing if you're a poor Indian tribe trying to get a casino on your reservation. You're somebody that deserves empathy, if you will. This is not a poor Indian tribe trying to get a casino on their reservation. This is a reservation shopping and trying to get a casino in a commercially better spot than where their existing casino is. I think they have two or three up in the middle of Wisconsin. It takes a lot of different regulatory approvals and state approvals, and they're a long way from having it.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah. I will tell you the legal hurdles preventing that it's still a very, very long list.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

You, you know where this really gets us, Lewis? There is an analyst out there who is negative on us, and he brings us up every time. It's like, if he didn't have this, he'd have something else. I heard yesterday that he was telling everybody to invest in the Affinity bonds instead of us. It was with great pleasure to tell you that Affinity is shutting everything down they have in Primm. He's got some mud on his face, and that mud is getting thicker by the day.

Jordan Bender
Analyst at Citizens Bank

Thanks, everyone.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Thanks. Thanks, Jordan.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan Sigdahl
Ryan Sigdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. On the financing for American Place, good to hear the progress. Should hear something in the next couple weeks is fantastic. On the last call, Q4 call, Dan, you referred to it as, you know, acceptable terms. Lewis, you referred to it as attractive terms. Curious if you could give an update on anything on how it's trending at the moment.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Well, we're not a triple A credit, so it's, you know, we're not borrowing money at 5%, but it's also not 15. You know, we think we can get our existing debt refinanced and the incremental money and all be not a little bit higher than where our debt is today, but not much.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah, I was gonna say I don't have anything to add other than what we said. I mean, look, I don't think you're Knock on wood, I don't think you're gonna have to wait too much longer. You know, I will tell you that the amount of work that's happened behind the scenes has been extensive. You know, we continue to push forward and certainly feel better about where we are today than we did that last earnings call.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Yeah. Listen, it's understandable the firm on the other side of this doesn't want us to disclose their name or details until we have the final docs signed. So we're working to try to do that. That's understandable.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

We'll be done. I, look, on the positive side, I mean, the world has been such a shit show lately with everything going on in the Middle East and everything, and the high yield market has hung in there. You know, it's been pretty stable through all this, which is somewhat remarkable. That's encouraging.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

The high yield markets have held up. American Place has continued to display pretty strong numbers. Chamonix is starting to hit its stride. I mean, there's a lot of good that's happening. You know, all in, I think we're sitting in a good spot.

Ryan Sigdahl
Ryan Sigdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Good. Chamonix is good transition. Good to see kind of the scrappy nature of finding cost efficiencies across that entire property. Ultimately to go from, you know, going from losing $2 million in EBITDA to making $2 million, but we kinda wanna get to tens of millions, you probably have to really start to ramp the revenue as well.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Yes.

Ryan Sigdahl
Ryan Sigdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Have you had any, I guess, renewed thoughts around kinda how to drive that new customer to try the property and really start to build the base of business there on the revenue side?

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Yeah, we have it on all cylinders here. I mean, we now have a four-person sales force, we're looking for another person, who are just focused on meetings and conventions. They are putting quite a bit on the books, but that stuff is ahead of time, so it really starts to bear fruit in 2027, 2028. We have a new advertising agency. We have a Chief Marketing Officer here. We have a new Director of Marketing at the property. We have an advertising person here that we've added. There's a lot of stuff. We've subscribed to some third party, what do I call them?

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Research firms, I guess, who are giving us much more detail on not only who our customer are, customers are, but who's out there. We're getting a lot more sophisticated in our targeting and how we go. We started a You know, April was the first month where I saw, okay, this is starting to bear fruit. You know, hopefully, we will continue to show good results every month going forward. Some months you're gonna have off win percentage or something, but I think we have a base to build on. You know, Listen, we lost only a little bit of money through the worst part of the year seasonally. We will end up making money this year.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Not as much as we'd like, given our investment, but I think it forms a good base this year, and then better results next year. We've also, even on the other side, we've been working with the City of Cripple Creek to get them more focused on how to build it as a destination. You know, if you pull up Telluride, Colorado, which believe it or not, the population of Telluride is not that much more than Cripple Creek. Of course, they have a famous ski area, but they are four and a half hours from any metropolitan area. Closest metropolitan area to Telluride is Albuquerque. They have like a festival every weekend, all year long, everything from country music festival to film festival.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Actually, the one that's kind of intriguing is they have a mushroom festival. In Colorado, what do they do at a mushroom festival? They have one, right? Our single biggest weekend of the year is Ice Festival, where the city buys blocks of ice, puts them out on the street, and people carve them with chainsaws and stuff. I know it sounds kind of hokey, but it gives people the excuse to come up. Our biggest weekend of the year is in the middle of the winter when normally we are summer seasonal. We're now working with the city who's hired a new director of marketing to let's have more of these festivals. Let's have dream up everything. You know, we just celebrated Cinco de Mayo.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

You know, how do we do more of that? We're doing a lot of this, and the city is starting to get smarter about it. Because, you know, this little town has the potential of being a pretty significant destination for people from Colorado Springs and Denver. You gotta get them up there.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

You know, people do forget sometimes, and not on them. A lot of you guys haven't been around as long as we have. Not to make myself sound old, I mean, if you go back to when Ameristar opened, you know, Ameristar took over their property in Black Hawk back in 2006. I should say, I take it back a step. They launched, they rebranded and expanded a much nicer Black Hawk Casino in 2006. They opened up their hotel tower in 2009. It was a multi-year-

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

It was a failed Hyatt Casino.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

100% right.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

That they took over.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yes. If you compare their revenues from 2005 to 2010, over those five years, the growth in gaming revenues was like the CAGR. The five-year CAGR was, like, 24%. It's phenomenal. What people forget is they were the ones that kind of reinvented that market and said, "Look, guys, there is actually something nice in Colorado to go and gamble at." What Monarch has benefited from was that. 20 years ago, someone changed the mentality in Denver and said, "Guys, there's something nice." When Monarch opened, you already had people accustomed to a nicer building walking through or walking up and down the streets of Black Hawk. We didn't have that. We're only starting to get that.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

When we look at the penetration, when I say it's massively low, like some of the zip codes that I mentioned, we have, like, 8% penetration. There's no reason why it should be that low. Why are we focusing the digital efforts? That's exactly the reason why. We're not talking about finding hundreds of thousands of new people. We're talking about finding 20,000 new people to bring into the building on a regular basis. That's what moves the needle to a very good investment. Stay tuned. I feel very good. We feel very good about where the marketing sits right now. You know, the marketing team, as Dan mentioned, we brought in a new director of marketing, but we brought in a new ad agency as well. They started late in the Q4.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

It took them a few months to get kind of their hands around things. Their true efforts didn't really launch until March. There's a lot there, you know, we're showing very, very good signs in April. May is off to a good start. Again, look at the penetration stats and the win per day stats that I mentioned earlier in the call. Yeah, I think it's harder to think that we can't achieve those than we can.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Actually, the sometimes we're so used to the numbers. The American Gaming Association has a survey that shows that 30% of American adults visited a casino within the past 12 months. Now, that's the U.S. average, 30%. Colorado Springs is less than a third of that.

Ryan Sigdahl
Ryan Sigdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Very good.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Yeah.

Ryan Sigdahl
Ryan Sigdahl
Analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Daniel, well, you never fail to have me learn something new, Mushroom Festival is what well done. I look forward to a 24% CAGR over the next five years, Lewis. Good luck, guys.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John DeCree with CBRE. Please proceed with your question.

Max Marsh
Max Marsh
Analyst at CBRE

Hey, guys. This is Max Marsh for John. Still clearly in the early innings of GGR penetration in Colorado Springs, but is there any difference in what you guys are seeing on the database side? Any insight into the database sign-up trends would be helpful. Thanks.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah. I mean, the database trends are good. You know, if you look in the month of April as an example, new sign-ups were up 12%, rated visits up 19%. Win per rated visit is up, like, 14%. Short answer is the trends are good. We continue to grow the database pretty meaningfully, but we're also bringing in a higher volume or higher rated guest into the door.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

By the way, I'm kind of smiling here because he's reading that off a daily operating report. We hired a new finance director from outside of the casino business. He has a lot of experience in the hotel business, and he's gotten it organized pretty fast.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

A year ago, we wouldn't have had those April numbers by this point in May. If we had them, they were probably not reliable. Now we're getting them on a daily basis, and they are quite reliable. That's one of the first steps in getting this thing going well, so.

Max Marsh
Max Marsh
Analyst at CBRE

Great. Thanks for that. Could you give us a little bit more detail about what's driving the growth at Silver Slipper? I know we have a new management team there as well. Is that coming from better OpEx management, or could there be some broader tailwinds there?

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

It's a little bit of both.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah. I was going to say it's probably a little more on the OpEx side versus the revenue side. It's a little bit of both. You know, on the OpEx side, you know, look, we just have a new GM there. She's not a surprise, looking at things differently than the prior GM and is finding more efficient ways to do some of what we're doing. I think a big part of it has been on the marketing side and just trying to be smarter about the marketing dollars that go out the door. You know, it's an example I've used with a few of you, so you may have heard it.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

As an example, we used to have a weekly seniors day where we would give you a breakfast buffet for $0.99. What we found out was, that a nearby senior center was bringing people in for their, you know, weekly, you know, free or close to free breakfast. When we ran the numbers as to how many of those people were actually in the database and gambling in the casino, the answer was very, very few. You know, it's just taking a fresh look at different marketing ideas and making sure that the return is there.

Max Marsh
Max Marsh
Analyst at CBRE

Gotcha. Thank you, guys.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah. Thanks, Max.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Please proceed with your question.

Sam Shah
Sam Shah
Analyst at Macquarie

Hi, this is Sam on for Chad. Thank you for taking our questions. Switching over to Waukegan, now that you guys have made more progress towards the permanent construction of that property, any updated thoughts on the earnings power of that property? I know in the past, $90 million EBITDA was put out there. Any update or color on the timeline to get to that point and what's needed to get to that level?

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Even the temporary continues to progress. I mean, the run rate to date is in the ballpark of $40 million per year of EBIT, which is You know, if you start thinking about, you know, we've kind of indicated that it takes about $300 million to build the permanent, and that the cost of that money is probably a little higher than our existing bonds. You know, use 10% for a big round number, right? 10% on $300 million is $30 million a year. The permanent casino is twice the size of the temporary in terms of square footage. Has more restaurants. It's much better street appeal, much better decor. In terms of slots and tables, it's not quite double, but it's up significantly.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

We expect the permanent to do much more business than the temporary. There are a lot of examples like the Hard Rock in Rockford, which also went from a temporary to a permanent, their revenues doubled. You see it in the Hollywood in Joliet that moved from an old boat to a permanent building.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

New Orleans, Treasure Chest?

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

New Orleans with Treasure Chest. What's the one? Is it the South Carolina? No, Virginia, there's one. There's a few around that where people went from temporary to permanent. In every case, it has shown a big increase in revenues and profitability. You know, we do think it gets to $100 million. You said $90. I actually think it's $100. It doesn't happen overnight. It might take three years or something. If it takes us two years to build, it gets open two years from now, five years from now, it's doing $100.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

We say it doesn't happen overnight, although all the examples we just threw out, it happened overnight by turning the test. Nonetheless, we assume that it does not happen overnight.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Well, I think even in the temporary, it continues to grow. At some point, I mean, our win per slot machine per day is pretty high in the temporary casino. At some point, you start to kinda max out on weekends. I think we'll continue to show growth even while we build the permanent, you'll have a step to a new plateau in the permanent, it'll grow from there.

Sam Shah
Sam Shah
Analyst at Macquarie

Thank you. Appreciate that. Switching over to your guys' sports skins, wondering on the outlook for those, if you guys see upside or downside to the current run rate EBITDA related to those sports contracts over the next few years.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

At this point, we only have two. The one in Indiana. You know, in that industry, we used to have agreements with Wynn and Churchill Downs and Smarkets. You know, DraftKings and FanDuel and, to a lesser extent, MGM have moved in and so dominated the market that a lot of these other guys have pulled away. We have one, which is Smarkets in Indiana. They paid us in advance 'cause for a while they had not been paying us. We said, "Well, if you wanna extend the contract, fine, but you gotta pay us in advance." The accountants don't let us book it all at once, but we already have the money. We're gonna get that income over time for three years.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Seven years. Seven years it's spread.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Seven years. Oh my God, you're stretching that over seven years.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

It's like-

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Okay. All right.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah, initial access fee. Yeah.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Oh, okay.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

It is.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Okay.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Over 12.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

The other one is with Circa, who is a niche player. Their sportsbook here in Las Vegas is probably the biggest single sportsbook in the country. They have a good forte with that. In Illinois, you only get one license. We had three skins for our license in Indiana, and we also had three skins in Colorado. We only have one in Illinois. Of course, population of Illinois is much bigger. That is by far the most valuable skin. That's with Circa, I think they're doing okay. They know that business probably better than anybody. They're good at it.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

We'll have a beautiful sportsbook, permanent sportsbook in our new facility, which I think they're quite excited for.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Right.

Sam Shah
Sam Shah
Analyst at Macquarie

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

We continue to look for people who wanna get into the sports business and, frankly, at this point, there aren't a lot of new companies looking to get in. It's so dominated by DraftKings and FanDuel.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah, I will say on the, on the flip side, not that I expect this to happen anytime soon, but you know, you know, our agreements only include sports betting. They don't include anything for true online casinos. To the extent that that were to ever happen, you know, there is the potential for more upside, as we've monetized on that bit.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Actually, having said that, I'd forgotten. In Tahoe, we had a tiny sports book.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

that had been run for a long time by.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

William Hill.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

William Hill. There's a guy who used to be CEO of William Hill, who started a new company. What's the name of his company?

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Boomer's.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Boomer's. He came to us and made us an offer, and he's paying us significantly more in rent than we were getting. It's still not a big number.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

what? three times what it used to be.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

2x. 2x.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

2x. He's promoting it much more than William Hill was. You do sometimes have new entrants in. Now, he's not online. He's just, you know, it's interesting, and, you know, the sports betting companies, including DraftKings and FanDuel, are having to deal with the competition from what do you call those? Kalshi.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Prediction markets.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

prediction markets, right. They have started branches where they're going into the prediction markets because under the auspices of being commodities trading firms, these companies are offering sports betting in places like Texas and California, where it's not been legal, and they're doing it without paying any state income taxes. Well, from DraftKings and FanDuel, that's like, "Well, if they could do it, why can't we do it?" Well, Nevada came out and said, "Well, if you do that, then you can't operate in Nevada." They both backed away from operating in Nevada, and that opened the opportunity for Boomer's and who is not going to try to operate elsewhere.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

Yeah.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

So.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

You said income taxes. I think you meant gaming taxes then.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

I meant gaming taxes. Yeah.

Lewis Fanger
Lewis Fanger
President, CFO, and Treasurer at Full House Resorts

I don't know if they pay income or not. Yeah.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

Yeah.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

There's a little turmoil there with. We'll see where it goes because from the gaming industry perspective, the idea that somebody can start taking bets on the Super Bowl in Texas without any approval of the Texas legislature, and the fact that in the Texas Constitution, it forbids gambling, and it's very hard to change that in the Constitution. These people are offering Super Bowl bets in places like Texas and unregulated, untaxed. Not surprisingly, they're probably making pretty good money with it.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Full House Resorts CEO, Daniel Lee, for any closing remarks.

Daniel Lee
CEO at Full House Resorts

No, just, we are making progress, making good progress. I think it is going to be an exciting quarter because we are going to get under construction, we are going to get this financing done. You know, by the way, we do not take this lightly, you know, the starting construction will cost us, you know, a couple million dollars. You do not normally want to do that unless you are certain you have the money to finish. We are confident enough that this financing is going to come through, that we are going to start, because otherwise, the opening day keeps sliding. The initial stages of construction are, you know, guys driving bulldozers around. It is not a lot of money. We are going to go ahead and start because we are pretty confident that it is all going to come together here. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.

Executives
    • Adam Campbell
      Adam Campbell
      Corporate Controller
    • Lewis Fanger
      Lewis Fanger
      President, CFO, and Treasurer
Analysts
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