Participants

Chad Paris; Chief Financial Officer, Controller, Treasurer; Marcus Corp

Gregory Marcus; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; Marcus Corp

Mike Hickey; Analyst; The Benchmark Company

Eric Wold; Analyst; B. Riley Securities

Patrick Sholl; Analyst; Barrington Research

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, everyone and welcome to the Marcus Corporation third quarter earnings conference call. My name is Lydia and I'll be your operator today.
(Operator Instructions)
As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
Joining us today are Greg Marcus, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer and Chad Paris, Chief Financial Officer of Marcus Corporation. At this time, I'd like to turn the program over to Mr. Paris for his opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Chad Paris

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fiscal 2024 3rd quarter conference call. I need to begin by stating that we plan to make a number of forward-looking statements on our call today. All of which we intend to qualify for the safe harbors from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.
Our forward-looking statements may generally be identified by our use of words such as we believe, anticipate expect or words of similar our forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties which may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements.
The risks and uncertainties which could impact our ability to achieve our expectations identified in our forward-looking statements are included under the heading, forward-looking statements. In the press release we issued this morning announcing our fiscal 2024 3rd quarter results and in the risk factors section of our fiscal 2023 annual report on form 10-K which you can access on the sec's website. We will also post all regulation G disclosures when applicable on our website at www.marcuscorp.com.
The forward-looking statements made during this conference call are only made as of the date of this conference call and we disclaim any obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
In addition, we routinely post news releases and other information regarding developments at our company that impact our investors, customers, vendors and other stakeholders. You should look at our website ww.marcuscorp.com as an important source of information regarding our company.
We also refer you to the disclosures we provided in today's earnings press release regarding the use of adjusted EBIDA, a non-GAAP measure used in evaluating our performance and its limitations. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITA to the nearest GAAP measure is provided in today's release.
All right, with that behind us, let's begin. This morning. I'll start by spending a few minutes sharing the results from our third quarter and discuss our balance sheet liquidity and recent financing transactions.
I'll then turn the call. Craig, who will focus his prepared remarks on where our businesses are today and what we are seeing ahead for the remainder of the year. We'll then open up the call for questions.
Our highlights this quarter include strong operating performance, the completion of the retirement of our convertible debt and the return of capital to shareholders through share repurchases.
I'll start with our operating results. This morning, we reported a record third quarter that exceeded our expectations with both divisions contributing to our strong results.
Last quarter, we noted that we believed we had turned a corner with improving theatrical content supply that began in June, and we entered the third quarter with strong momentum in July. Theaters strong start to the quarter continued deep into the summer with a string of great box office performances that played well in our markets and delivered year over year growth in August and September.
Our hotel divisions, Milwaukee properties benefited from the Republican National Convention which drove strong revenue growth and profitability for the quarter. Both of our businesses outperformed their industries to deliver record revenue operating income and adjusted EBIDA for our fiscal third quarter, resulting in total company third quarter records for the same measures as well as record net earnings.
This is the first quarter that our theater division and the total company has exceeded pre-pandemic revenue and profitability. Marking a major milestone in the extended industry recovery.
I'll start with a few highlights from our consolidated results for the third quarter of fiscal 2024 we generated consolidated revenues of $233 million and over 11% increase with revenue growth in both divisions.
We delivered $32.8 million of consolidated operating income and $52.3 million of adjusted EBITDA below operating income. We incurred $1.4 million of debt conversion expense associated with the repurchase of $13.5 million of our convertible senior notes that we announced at the end of the quarter.
I'll recap the economics of our convert repurchases and this quarter's financing transactions in a moment. But in terms of the impact on our results, the repurchases and related non-cash tax effect resulted in a combined negative impact to net earnings of $1.5 million or $0.5 per share in the third quarter and $16.5 million, or $0.52 per share for the first three quarters of fiscal 2024.
The unusual accounting for this transaction mirrors our prior repurchases last quarter and further details on the repurchases and related cap call unwinds are described in today's earnings release, excluding the impacts of the convertible debt repurchases net earnings for the third quarter of fiscal 2024 was$ 24.8 million or $0.78 per share.
Turning to our segment results. I'll start with the record results in theaters. Our third quarter, fiscal 2024 total revenue of $143.8 million increased 13.6% compared to the prior year third quarter, while we had planned for the second half of the year to be significantly stronger than the first half. We also expected the third quarter to be a challenging comparison given the box office success of Barbie and Oppenheimer during the third quarter last year, a strong slate of blockbuster films that featured a film mix that was favorable to our markets, brought huge audiences out to our theaters and drove our performance for the quarter.
Comparable theater admission revenue increased 9.5% over the third quarter of 2023 with comparable theater attendance increasing 7.1% according to data received from comScore and compiled by us to evaluate our third quarter results using our comparable fiscal weeks. United States box office receipts increased 3.8% during our fiscal 2024 3rd quarter compared to us box office receipts during our fiscal 2023 3rd quarter indicating that our theaters outperformed the industry by approximately 5.7% points.
We believe that our box office outperformance during the third quarter was primarily attributable to a favorable film mix compared with the third quarter of fiscal 2023. We achieved our above our historical average market share for each of our top six movies in the quarter which were Deadpool & Wolverine, Despicable Me 4, Twisters, Inside Out 2 and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice inside out too and it ends with us.
In addition to the favorable film mix, we believe several changes that we made earlier in the year to value Tuesday with the return of free popcorn and our new $7 everyday matinee promotion positively impacted our improvement in performance in the quarter.
Our average admission price increased by 2.6% during the third quarter of fiscal 2024 compared to last year. The increase in our admission per caps was positively impacted by an increase in the percentage of POF and evening ticket sales during the third quarter of 2024 compared to the third quarter last year, which offset the impact of various pricing promotions during the quarter that were used to drive attendance.
Concession, food and beverage revenues were up nearly 14% with per capita concession, food and beverage revenues increasing by 7.9% during the third quarter of fiscal '24 compared to last year's third quarter.
The increase was primarily due to pricing changes implemented during 2023 and by an increase in the number of concession food and beverage transactions per ticket sold or our hit rate.
Our Top 10 films in the quarter represented approximately 83% of the box office in the third quarter of '24 compared to 73% for the Top10 films in the third quarter last year. The more concentrated film slate resulted in an over 2% point increase in overall film costs as a percentage of admission revenues.
On the higher revenues, theater division adjusted EBIDA was a third quarter record $33.2 million an increase of 24.3% compared to the prior year quarter adjusted EBITA margin during the third quarter of fiscal 2024 was 23.1% which was not only 200 basis points higher than our third quarter margins last year. It was also higher than our 22.3% adjusted EBIDA margin in the third quarter of 2019.
This quarter demonstrates that despite cost inflation over the last several years, we can get back to our old margins and profitability when the film product is consistently their driving box office even with 22% less attendance than the third quarter of 2019.
Turning to our hotels and resorts division revenues were $88.7 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2024 an increase of 8.1% compared to the prior year total revenue before cost reimbursements increased over $6.9 million or 9.6% over the third quarter of fiscal '23. RevPAR for our comparable owned hotels grew 9.8% during the third quarter compared to the prior year growing at four of our seven owned hotels. RevPAR in the RevPAR increase resulted from an average daily rate or ADR that was up 9.6% over the prior year with an overall occupancy rate that was essentially flat.
Our average occupancy rate for our owned hotels was 76.7% during the third quarter of fiscal 2024 the Republican National convention held in July significantly impacted the results at our three Milwaukee hotels resulting in an approximately $3 million increase in revenue during the five days of the convention.
The RNC primarily had the effect of increasing average daily rates with limited impact on occupancy during our normally peak summer period, excluding the impact of the RNC for the three Milwaukee hotels.
The average daily rate during the third quarter of 2024 was effectively flat compared to the prior year quarter and RevPAR grew approximately 1%.
Our properties continue to perform well against the industry as a whole when comparing our RevPAR results to comparable upper upscale hotels throughout the United States. The upper upscale segment experienced an increase in RevPAR of 1.4% during our third quarter compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2023 indicating that our hotels outperformed the industry by 8.4% points including the benefit of the RNC.
According to data received from Smith Travel research, comparable competitive hotels in our markets experienced RevPAR growth of 12.4% for the fiscal third quarter of 2024 compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2023. Indicating that our hotels underperformed their competitive set by 2.6% points. We believe our lower performance compared to the comp set was primarily due to our higher mix of contractual airline crew business at lower rates which we believe did not impact competitive hotels during the RNC.
Group demand continued to grow during the third quarter of 2024 particular particularly during midweek with group rooms increasing to 47.3% of our total room mix and 43.1% excluding the RNC groups during the third quarter of fiscal 2024 compared to 40.7% in the prior year quarter, an increase in our group rooms as a percentage of our overall room revenue generally increases occupancy at lower rates.
We also continue to benefit from improvements to our revenue management strategy at certain properties to drive higher midweek occupancy at lower daily rate offerings to optimize overall room revenue and RevPAR with the continued growth in group business and events including the RNC. Our banquet and catering operations grew with food and beverage revenues up 10.2% in the third quarter of 2024 compared to the prior year.
Finally, on the higher revenues, hotels adjusted EBITA grew to a third quarter record $23.1 million increasing 18.7% during the third quarter compared to the prior year quarter, shifting the cash flow and the balance sheet, our cash flow from operations was $30 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2024 compared to $21 million in the prior year quarter with the increase in cash flow from operations primarily due to the higher EBITA.
Total capital expenditures during the third quarter of fiscal 2024 were $18.5 million compared to $10 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2023. A large portion of our capital expenditures continue to be invested in the hotel business during the quarter including our renovations at the Vistar hotel and meeting space renovations and associate housing construction at Grand Geneva Resort and spa. The remaining balance of capital expenditures during the quarter were for maintenance projects in both businesses and construction related to the relocation of our corporate and divisional headquarters offices.
Our capital investments and renovations projects have progressed as planned and we now expect total capital expenditures for fiscal 2024 to end up at approximately $70million to $75million.
As I mentioned earlier in the call. During the third quarter, we entered into an agreement to repurchase $13.5 million aggregate principal amount of our remaining convertible senior notes for $15.5 million of cash consideration net of the cash received from the unwind of the cap calls in a transaction that closed in October. This marks the retirement of substantially all of the $100 million convertible 2025 with the overall program resulting in the repurchase of $99.9 million of convertible notes for net cash of $103.3 million.
We believe the repurchase transactions eliminated potential future dilution at an attractive price to retire the debt and significantly simplified our capital structure.
In addition, as we mentioned on our last call early in the third quarter, we also completed a private placement offering of $100 million of senior notes which were used to refinance the convertible notes repurchased and extend maturities.
The notes were issued in two tranches, $60 million of 6.89% notes with final maturity in 2031 and $40 million of 7.02% notes with final maturity in 2034 with the completion of these financing transactions our balance sheet is well positioned as we head into 2025.
We ended the third quarter with $28 million in cash and over $248 million in total liquidity with a debt to capitalization ratio of 27% and net leverage of 1.7 times net debt to adjusted EBIDA.
Finally, as we announced in today's press release during the quarter, we once again began repurchasing shares, buying approximately 693,000 shares of common stock for $9.7 million in cash, our strong balance sheet and confidence in our businesses, gives us the ability to continue investing in our businesses and pursuing growth while returning capital to shareholders through our quarterly dividend and opportunistic share repurchases.
We will continue to allocate capital with a balanced approach that supports our strategic priorities while pursuing investments that provide the most attractive returns to long term returns to shareholders.
With that. I will now turn the call over to Greg.

Gregory Marcus

Thanks Chad. Good morning, everyone.
When we were together last quarter, we discussed the improving trends that we were seeing, including an improving film slate with stronger quality film product and what felt like an inflection point in June the third quarter got off to a strong start in July and we know that the ingredients were there were where they're setting up for a good quarter in both of our businesses.
I'm incredibly pleased to report that the rest of the quarter continued, the early trends and our teams were able to deliver record results in both divisions and a record third quarter for the company overall that played very well in our markets helped drive us to record revenue, operating income and adjusted EBITDA and theaters beating our pre-prior pre pandemic records in the third quarter of 2019.
Well, you said the long-term recovery for the theater industry has been a winding road with several, several short term disruptions. This quarter marks significant progress and we're clearly building momentum heading into 2025. The Hotel division broke our third quarter records with the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, driving significant growth in average daily rates and illustrating the long-term potential for future events in this market to drive room demand.
Well, the growth and recovery in our industries is not a straight line and not every quarter is going to break records. This one feels very good and I'm very pleased to share our third quarter results with you today.
I'll start today with our theater division. As Chad mentioned, we outperformed the industry by nearly 6% points for the quarter and there are a few factors that we believe drove this first. The film slate was very good and played extremely well to our markets, particularly in July when we had a heavy dose of family content with inside out two, continuing its strong run, lifting it to become the number one movie of the year with over $650 million in domestic box office gross and despicable me for bringing families out to the movies.
As you might expect. Twisters played very well with audiences in the Midwest and Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice also played well in our markets.
We also performed above our normal market share in the biggest blockbuster of the quarter, Deadpool and Wolverine, which opened strong to huge audiences and held on to break records and become the highest grossing R rated film of all time.
Deadpool and Wolverine broke several records from Marcus leaders as well becoming our highest ever grossing weekend summer film opening between May and August and our highest ever PLF grossing opening weekend summer film.
Well, the stronger box office in the third quarter this year compared to last year's third quarter was primarily driven by stronger performances from the top five films. We also had more wide release films to play with 30 wide release films this year compared to 24 wide releases last year.
We also believe our performance, we also believe we'll try that again. We also believe our performance was the result of our continued focus on driving attendance to keep customers coming to the movies and making sure that we have compelling offerings for everyone, particularly our value-oriented customers.
We believe the changes we made earlier this year to our value Tuesday promotion continuing to bring, continue to bring customers back to theaters with the reintroduction of free complimentary size popcorn for all members.
In addition, our everyday matinee promotion which offers a $7 ticket for children and seniors for any shows starting before 4 PM on a standard screen, seven days a week continues to contribute to our improving attendance.
Our marketing and film teams continue to work together to roll out creative promotions and programs that are designed to stimulate movie going and bring out customers who might not otherwise go to the movies. This summer, we be we debuted Marcus mystery movie, a promotion that on two Monday's each month gives customers the opportunity to catch a 7 PM screening of an upcoming movie before its official release date for a $5 ticket. There's one catch the title isn't revealed until Showtime not even our theater staff know what movies will be playing.
The only thing we will tell you is the film is if the film is rated R or PG-13 and if it's a horror film, since many of our customers don't care for a surprise quite that big.
While we are only a few months into the mystery movie program, it has become a growing piece of our Monday business. During the weeks, the mystery movie is offered, customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and Marcus Mystery movie has developed a social media following that speculates on the upcoming film title.
More importantly, it brings customers out to see films, they might not have otherwise gone to see yet find themselves enjoying while building awareness of coming attractions. During the preshow trailers, these promotions and programs are designed to drive attendance and appeal to value-oriented customers by making sure that movie going remains the most affordable out of home entertainment option as shared as Chad shared. We saw meaningful per cap growth for both admissions and concessions, food and beverage, which we believe benefited from the stronger movie slate and several changes to promotions and pricing for concessions, food and beverage.
As we look ahead to the end of the year. We continue to see a strong fourth quarter slate for the holidays. Well, October got off to a slower start than we hoped and reminded us that not every big budget movie works, we are excited and looking forward to films such as Gladiator II, Wicked, and Moana 2, Lord of The Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Mufasa: The Lion King, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
As we look further ahead to next year, we see a slate for 2025 that is stacked with several very strong titles including Superman legacy, Captain America Minecraft Thunderbolts, Mission Impossible, Jurassic world, Karate kid, Megan 2.1, fantastic 4, the bad guys 2, the naked gun, snow white wicked 25 nights at Freddy's and Avatar three and many more. The 2025 slate includes both quality and quantity. We remain very positive and optimistic about the long-term future for the industry and our theater business.
Moving to our hotels and resorts division. You've seen the segment numbers and Chad shared some additional detail on the performance metrics including our outperformance to upper upscale hotels nationally.
It was a record quarter for the division and our team executed extremely well during our busiest month of the year, the Republican National Convention was the big story of the quarter for the division and given the timing of the event in July, we provided a number of the operational highlights on our last call as for the events impact in our third quarter, the sell-out of our 1,250 rooms at our three hotels in downtown Milwaukee at high rates resulted in an approximately 9% point increase in the average daily rate for the quarter and added $3.3 million of incremental revenue for the division over our volumes during the same week last year.
While an event of this magnitude isn't going to happen in our key markets every year. We are optimistic that the success of the RNC demonstrated the city's ability to host large scale events. And we have a long term positive impact on event bookings and hospitality demand in the market for years to come.
When we look at our performance, excluding the impact of the RNC. And I will say, although backing out the RNC is somewhat of a tough egg to unscramble. We believe we executed well during our busiest quarter.
As was the case last quarter, our average daily rates were effectively flat in the third quarter compared to the third quarter last year and RevPAR was up modestly both excluding the impact of the RNC.
Group business continues to increase as a piece of our total mix, representing 43% of our business mix excluding RNC groups compared to 40% last year is your customer demand. It used to be softer compared to last year, which continues the trend we've seen throughout the year in some of our properties. We've been able to offset the softness in this customer segment with increased group business and a modest improvement in business travel.
As we've done in theaters, our marketing team in the hotel division is adjusting strategy and getting creative promotions and weekend packages to attract leisure customers in a softer demand environment to drive occupancy.
As we look ahead, group bookings remain strong with our group room revenue bookings for the remainder of fiscal 2024 or group pace in the year for the year running approximately 11% of where we were at this time last year.
Looking further ahead, our group pace for fiscal 2025 is running over 30% ahead of where we were at this time last year for non-RNC related business, banquet and catering pace for the remainder of fiscal 2024 and 2025 is similarly ahead of where we were at this time last year.
Lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't conclude my remarks about our hotels and resorts division by highlighting the Condé Nast Traveler’s Awards several of our hotels recently received and noted in our press release, our hotels continue to be widely recognized by AAA Trip Advisor and a host of other outlets as well.
These awards are a direct tribute to our people from our executive leadership team and home office personnel to the outstanding management teams and staff at each and every one of the hotels we own and or manage. And I want to publicly thank our entire hotel team for another strong quarter and for all their efforts each and every day to take what might be an ordinary day for us and turn it into an extraordinary day for our guests.
Finally, I'd like to briefly comment on the financing transactions and capital allocation. We were pleased to be able to repurchase substantially all of our remaining convertible notes to finish cleaning up our capital structure.
We were deliberate in our approach and retiring the $100 million of convertible debt for $103 million in cash was a win and that win was led by Chad who I have to personally thank for stewarding that transaction.
Now, the convert repurch are behind us. I want to reiterate that we made this a priority because we have confidence in the long term future of our businesses and we want future value creation to flow to our shareholders.
Secondly, with the convertible notes retired, we moved to repurchase just over 2% of our outstanding shares.
We took a balanced and disciplined approach to deploying capital with each investment decision, whether for growth, maintaining our assets or returning capital to shareholders through dividends or share repurchases. As we discussed today, we are reinvest reinvesting in our assets and our management team is focused on opportunities for growth with our strong balance sheet we repurchase shares this quarter because we believe it provided attractive returns to our shareholders. We will continue to evaluate our investment opportunities through this lens and deploy capital where we see the best returns.
I would like to once again express my appreciation for all of our dedicated associates, the Marcus Corporation. We talk a lot about the investments that we make in our business, but we can never lose sight of the fact that our people are our most important asset and they prove that once again this quarter. So, on behalf of our board of directors and our entire executive team, thank you to all of our associates and with that at this time, Chad and I'd be happy to open up the call for any questions you may have.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions)
Mike Hickey, The Benchmark Company.

Mike Hickey

Hey, great, Chad. Congratulations guys. What a great quarter. Well done. Just two questions. First one, Greg on the consumer.
I know you're pretty close to your consumers. Do you think you're benefiting from sort of a trade down here, obviously, we've seen the inflation impact broadly speaking on the consumer and the economy and when you sort of reflect on your pricing, you don't give attendance, but, pricing, I'm guessing per ticket, sort of sub and concession, sub eight. So, you're sort of getting a few hours outside the home Plus Foods were under 20 bucks.
So, the value proposition, I guess in, in this market seems remarkable, especially when you consider as you alluded to the 25 slates that he's got a lot of exciting movies, and I think sentiment overall for movie going has increased. So, I'm just curious if you think you're sort of benefiting in that broad scenario, I just outlined.
And then the second question would be on capital allocation. You seem way ahead of your peers here and you did mention a buyback which is exceptional. To see, I'm curious how you're thinking about M&A I mean, obviously you've not looked away from it. Are you seeing activity or do you feel like you're in a position now to be opportunistic. I know you didn't want the deal, I think last quarter, is it how you're sort of thinking about the opportunity to sort of grow your asset base given where you are in your capital location, recovery. Thanks Guys.

Gregory Marcus

What a great point on, on what could be happening in the broader economy and its impact. And we've talked, I can't tell you that. I know the answer, Mike. I wish I knew for sure. But, we've always talked about six out of the, we always do that stat six out of the last eight recessions. The theater business got better because you're right. it becomes apparent that it's the cheapest form of outside the home entertainment. And so, if someone wants to go out and if then they have that and they don't want to spend the money that some of the more expensive, things can do that's going to benefit us.
But look, I think it's a, it's a combination of so many things and it's, it could be that it's probably some of that. It's some of it's the product mix. I can't, I would love to take credit for that, but that's just to some extent we got lucky, but they say what is luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation.
So, and we were prepared because we did do some things that operationally were important in this idea of sort of look re looking at what we, the changes we've made to Tuesday a year and a half ago to what we need to bring back the free popcorn and then focusing on the family and making sure that we were priced.
So, the family could come to the movies affordably. those were important changes along with all the other, marketing things we're doing and more to come. But the, and then a little bit of a version of the mean, because, you know, a year ago we were some of the things we had done and as we're always going to try new things and, and, we probably have had some catch up to do. So, I think it's a bunch of things. But I certainly support your point on that the economy is slowing down will be beneficial at a macro level to theater exhibition.
On your question on M&A that we of course, are open to it. We will be we'll always take our, our, our thoughtful approach to whatever we do. I can't say that there's a whole bunch of stuff that's been going on that we're hearing.
I hear some rumbles here and there. I think it's going to be one of those things where I think a lot of people are waiting to see where they stabilize out and then start to make decisions about their lives because that's what it comes down to. And a lot of the stuff where we would be looking at his family, things they've owned, and they've had for a long time, and we had a seismic event.
They were the government helped a lot of those groups out. So, they got through the rough patch so that they don't have any, they didn't have to make any, decisions that were that were, that were pressure decisions. But now they're looking and saying, okay, what do we and when they feel that they're at a point of stability that maybe they'll make some changes, but I can't tell you. There's much right this second.

Mike Hickey

Thanks, by the way, that mystery, only genius idea. Congrats, man. So good luck guys.

Gregory Marcus

But I'm going to tell you right now. Thank you. The only thing that was genius about it was copying everybody else doing it like my grandfather is saying the only originals were Adam and Eve everything else is a copy. There's a, there's other guys in the industry doing it and we saw it and said we should do that. So I, I only take credit for being smart enough to see a good idea and go with it.

Operator

Eric Wold, B. Riley Securities.

Eric Wold

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Two questions, I guess one, obviously you talked about some of the share games and, and our performance in the quarter with some that was driven by the changes you made to your value Tuesday and the $7 matinee, any way Chad to estimate what that might have benefited in the quarter. I know it's tough to figure out if someone shift it for another day to that or whatnot, but maybe just kind of some, some guesstimate of what it may have been and then remind us when you lap those changes in the coming quarters and then a follow up as well.

Chad Paris

Yes, Eric, thanks for the question. Very difficult to pull apart and see on an A&B test. Once we've rolled it out on putting some of these Tuesday changes in place. We know though that it's the customer feedback and our NPS scores and the anecdotal feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's brought back some of the deeply value oriented customers to drive attendance who then are in the building buying other things. And so, it has been a net positive. Certainly, I'd say the film slate was the other big one, this quarter genres that played really well to our audiences. And then your final question, we, we lap, we will lap the most recent Tuesday changes in May next year. So, we, we think there's still fair amount of, of year over year incremental benefit that we'll see for a while here.

Eric Wold

Got it and then follow up on the last question around M&A more so on the on the hotel side. I know you talked in the past about your potential to do more, more on balance sheet. Transaction hotels where it makes sense, I guess what would you need to obviously to see attractive target, attractive opportunity. But I guess broadly speaking, what would you need to see there. I mean, how much more would you need to see rates come down or how much of a factor that in the decision versus really, maybe just not seeing anything out there that even remotely seems attractive at this point.

Chad Paris

I think it's more toward the end of your, your last point. It's a slow market in terms of transactions being done. I think that just, you have so many assets that with interest rates went up, you have a bunch of people who bought them with interest rates lower and probably wrote lower cap rates into their models. And so, they didn't want to sell if they didn't have to and since there hasn't the economy has been okay. And they've been able to continue. So, as rates come down, the impact might be that that's going to actually loosen up the market. And people will start to transact again.

Eric Wold

Thank you.

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Patrick Sholl, Barrington Research.

Patrick Sholl

Thank you. Just sort of following up on the improving, kind of mark attendance trends within the theater side. I was just wondering if you got a sense that you had recovered all of the show that you had lost or I guess if not, how well is that something you think you would build up to. And then I'm just wondering if that's sort of bringing people that had sort of maybe thought that just cinema in general was too high price and coming back into theaters or if they were coming from, the more competitive markets.

Chad Paris

As I assume you're referring to the Tuesday changes specifically.

Patrick Sholl

Yes. Yes.

Chad Paris

I think it's really more of the latter to tough to tell, but it's more about the customer that either comes or doesn't come, but in many of our markets, I don't think it's, it's really so much as they're going to one theater operator versus another. The Tuesday changes are directed at deeply value driven customers and we're trying to, we're trying to make sure that there's a price point on a day of the week or at certain showtime, whether it's our, our everyday matinee program, that appeals to them and it, it's not just the day of the week, it's also making sure that there's non-PLF options available at good show times alongside the PLF options. So, for somebody who, who maybe doesn't want the PLF upcharge, those options are available to them.
And when they look at the total ticket, the total cost of going out to, to the movies inclusive of food and beverage and the, the experience for the family that we've driven or we've provided an offering that is, is attractive for them and gets them to come out. So, I think it's more about, coming versus not coming.

Patrick Sholl

Okay. And then like the stronger concession per cap, have you started to introduce like more merchandise or collectible in addition to collect collectible items into the concession offering or is it more just people finding the I guess combined value of the movie plus concession being attractive, opportunity.

Chad Paris

It's not a ton of merchandise on a stand-alone basis Pat, but we have had an increase in things like souvenir cups and souvenir popcorn tubs that, do create a must have item and associated with some of these films. And we do think that that's helped driving concession purchases, but not a ton of stand-alone merchant merchandise.

Patrick Sholl

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Thank you. At this time. It appears there are no other questions. So, I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Paris for any additional or closing comments.

Chad Paris

We'd like to thank you once again for joining us today and we look forward to talking with you again in February when we release our 2024 4th quarter results until then. Thank you and have a good day.

Operator

This concludes our call. Thank you for joining you. May now disconnect.