Dave & Buster’s reports Q1 adjusted EPS $1.12, consensus $1.72

Reports Q1 revenue $588.1M, consensus $622.95M. Comparable store sales decreased 5.6% in Q1. “We continue to make material progress advancing our key organic growth initiatives. We have seen meaningful success growing our loyalty database through our new marketing engine, highlighting our enhanced food and beverage offering through compelling promotions, refining our games pricing strategy, driving incremental special events and clear outperformance in our remodel initiative which we expect will lead to substantial improvement in revenue and profitability over the medium term. We also continued to open new stores at highly attractive returns on our investment and have continued to opportunistically return capital to shareholders via our share repurchase program in a highly accretive manner” said Chris Morris, Dave & Buster’s Chief Executive Officer. “During the quarter, we realized more than $10 million of incremental labor and marketing costs associated with the roll-out of new initiatives and certain marketing tests which we do not expect to repeat going forward. Additionally, we are pleased with the improving top and bottom-line performance we have seen over the last several weeks as we scale some of our more successful organic growth initiatives. I am proud of the hard work of our dedicated team in the quarter as we continue to deliver strong operating performance and generate significant free cash flow in the face of a difficult prior year comparisons driven by a complex macroeconomic environment and consumer demand curve. We remain laser focused on delivering the $1 billion Adjusted EBITDA target in the coming years.”