Q1 2024 Everi Holdings Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Jennifer Hills; VP - IR; Everi Holdings Inc

Randy Taylor; President, CEO, & Director; Everi Holdings Inc

Mark Labay; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, Treasurer; Everi Holdings Inc

Aidan Young; Analyst; Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc.

Barry Jonas; Analyst; Truist Securities

David Katz; Analyst; Jefferies Financial Group Inc.

Chad Beynon; Analyst; Macquarie Group Limited

David Bain; Analyst; B. Riley Financial, Inc.

George Sutton; Analyst; Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC.

Presentation

Operator

Good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Everi Holdings 2024 first quarter and year end earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this call is being recorded.
Now let me turn the call over to Jennifer Hills, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jennifer Hills

Thank you, operator. Let me begin with a reminder that our Safe Harbor disclaimer, which covers today's call and webcast contains forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties and could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed on today's call. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to those contained in our earnings release today and in our SEC filings, which are posted in the Investors section of our corporate website at everi.com.
Because of the potential risks, we caution not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We do not intend and assume no obligation to update any forward looking statements which are made only as of today May 8, 2024, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow and net cash position. A description of each of these non-GAAP measures and a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release and related eight K today, as well as in the Investors section of our website.
This call is being webcast and recorded a link to the webcast and a replay of today's call can be found in the Investors section of our website on our call today are Randy Taylor, Chief Executive Officer; Mark Labay, Chief Financial Officer; Kate Lowenhar-Fisher, General Counsel; Dean Ehrlich, Games Business Leader; and Darren Simmons, FinTech Business Leader.
Now I will turn the call over to Randy.

Randy Taylor

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning and thank you all for joining us today. First, I would like to provide a few more details where possible regarding our plan to merge Everi with IGT's global gaming and play digital businesses, which was announced on February 29th this year. While we continue to make progress on our proposed merger. We have no specific update regarding antitrust or regulatory matters at this time. As we have messaged in the past, we still anticipate closing the merger in late 2024 or early 2025. We are extremely excited about the opportunity to bring together the best of both of our businesses. While Everi has experienced tremendous success in growth over the past few years, we recognize the ability to accelerate our revenue growth by combining our complementary products and more rapidly enter new jurisdictions. Over the past several years, we significantly increased our investment in research and development and expanded the number of studios to diversify and increase game content. We have also been successful in expanding our product lines by leveraging our game content into new channels. Combining these businesses will provide greater resources and give us more opportunities for success over a product lifecycle.
Additionally, we believe IGT's established global distribution network in both land-based and digital will enable every content to enter new global jurisdictions more quickly with less risk. We believe this combination with our game segment will provide more stable, long-term growth opportunities for the combined business. On the FinTech side, we will be able to combine our fintech with IGT's gaming systems business. Upon closing, we will be able to work more closely with IGT system to provide products and services that reduce friction for casino operators and their customers. And as they do today, IDT's casino management systems will continue to interface with fintech products from multiple providers. We will also continue to work with all gaming system providers to improve the expansion of cashless solutions to our casino customers by providing a positive seamless transaction for their patrons. Additionally combined, we believe we will be able to offer a complete suite of products from games to systems, financial access, ReadyTech and loyalty with structure of the merger provides for shared equity ownership with modest pro forma net leverage at closing of between 3.2 to 3.4 times and the ability to generate strong free cash flow. We believe this sets the combined company up well for the future. The estimated $75 million in cash synergies, an estimated $10 million in capital savings are driven by leveraging efficiencies that can be gained primarily through procurement productivity, streamlining the assembly processes and real estate optimization. They are not based on rationalizing existing product lines in the games business, which is where we believe previous supplier mergers have failed to deliver planned synergies. Additionally, revenue growth opportunities will come from leveraging global networks and a combined product offering as part of the merger agreement. There's also an opportunity for a special dividend to be paid to every shareholders as of a record date prior to the close of the transaction. This dividend is essentially the free cash flow generated from the signing of the transaction, less are merger related expenses and other adjustments for the agreement. The final amount of this dividend will be impacted by the time it takes to close and the transaction-related expenses we incur. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the amount of the special dividend, if any, at this point in the process.
Turning to the business performance in the first quarter. While the transition to our new family cabinet and game content has been slower and more challenging than expected, you're starting to see the green shoots appear in the last four months of 2023, we had 34 new games approved and an additional 18 have been approved year to date. We are in the early stages of installing this new content, but several of the new titles are starting to be recognized in industry surveys in the April Eilers report before sale Dynasty, so ranked number three in top indexing cabinets in reported flat category and the two versions of dynamite pop on this cabinet both reached the top 20 indexing games in the core low denomination video real category. Our Player Classic signature cabinet that was introduced in 2022, has performed well. And this performance is expected to continue with the recent introduction of several new game themes that have yet to be captured by Eilers survey results. The launch of a lower-profile Dynasty view cabinet last spring was initially hampered by limited content at launch. There are currently 15 titles that have been approved, and we expect to have introduced all of these titles into our installed base by the end of Q2. We expect to see performance improvements on the deal through these new titles, which should positively impact both for sale and lease units for premium Dynasty sourcing was launched late in the first quarter with the math and our newest team, Smokin Hot Stuff Link has just been approved. We expect installation of this new theme to begin this month. Additionally, four new families of titles are scheduled to be released for this cabinet by year end, Dynasty dynamic premium cabinet was launched at the end of the third quarter with Hot Stuff frenzy and our newest team based on our proven proprietary brand Vault is being rolled out now. There are also two more families, cash receipt, Inferno and Zohar master of mysteries planned for later this year.
Finally, the Player Classic reserve was launched at the end of last year's third quarter with great success. This premium cabinet launch with jackpot games, Kasper and hot stuff in the Class three web category. This quarter, we plan to launch the first content fully developed by our Australian studio. The first two seems to be deployed our thunder and lightning and mighty team. We believe these investments in new cabinets and new content will drive improvements in the second half of the year. Although these improvements are taking longer than anticipated, we remain confident in our overall strategy in terms of new product segments. We are in the final stages of the approval process necessary to Ettrick, Illinois VLTs. This has been a multiyear investment that opens a 50,000 unit opportunity to us and we expect to have sold our first units in the second half of 2024.
Meanwhile, our core fintech cash access services business continues to be a steady grower as we again processed more transactions and delivered more dollars to our customers' operations during the quarter than we have in any previous quarter. Consistent with many of the operators reports our financial access services were negatively impacted by some bad weather in January, but we saw improvement in February and as we exited the quarter with a return to low to mid-single digit same-store growth. April has been a little stronger and we expect this trend to continue over the remainder of the year. While we experienced some challenges in the first quarter, I believe the building blocks for our return to growth are present. I remain excited about the opportunities ahead and expect our growth initiatives to show improvement primarily in the second half of 2024. I want to end my remarks by acknowledging the strong team we have built here at Everi. It is based on a culture of innovation and focused on the needs of our customers and the experiences of their Patriots. I want to thank all our employees for their dedication and for making every a top workplace has once again recognized by the top workplaces USA for the 3rd year in a row.
Now let me turn the call over to Mark.

Mark Labay

Thanks, Randy. Let me begin by adding a little more color on our first quarter and our outlook for the remainder of the year. During the first quarter, as we expected, our games business continued to experience headwinds as we are transitioning to the new family of cabinets and introducing new content to support these catalysts. Revenue for both gaming operations and gaming equipment and systems declined year over year. It was relatively flat with the fourth quarter we experienced declines in both our installed base and our quarterly unit sales. While our installed base declined by 595 units from year end, approximately half of this decline was a result of strategic decisions to not use capital to replace Cabot's and lower performing locations where recovery of the capital would not have met our internal return hurdles. The remainder of the decline is attributable to the additional churn in our older cabinets. To address this, we now have three new cabinets with a deep pipeline of themes rolling out player response to preserve and de-risk the dynamic, which we rolled out late in the third quarter are performing to our expectations. As of March 31st, we've installed a combined total of 661 units in over 75 locations. The Dynasty sourcing, our newest premium video cabinet, was just launched in the first quarter and is in the early stages of being placed on casino floors. Near term new cabinet installations will mostly replace existing CapEx. But as these cabinets and gain traction, we expect to add incremental placements daily win per unit of $34.51 was down slightly from the fourth quarter, but we expect daily win per unit to improve as we roll out new cabinets and new content in the first quarter. Recurring revenues of $5.6 million from video King operations and increased revenue from our digital segment, offset about half the decline in revenues from the installed base. First quarter gaming equipment and system sales were essentially flat with the fourth quarter. Gaming unit sales were below our expectations for the current quarter as we sold 1,021 units at an average selling price of 20,000. A 27 with limited initial content available with the early performance of the Dynasty view is not that as strong as we anticipated. However, with additional teams being rolled out now, we expect performance of the cabin to improve. We introduced the Dynasty sold in the fourth quarter and are still in the early stages of the rollout. Its acceptance is building momentum with our customers and from launch to the end of the first quarter, we have sold 525 units.
As Randy mentioned, dynamite pop on the Dynasty Sol is off to a strong start and is recognized in the April Eilers games report as a top-performing new game moving on to fintech. Revenue declined 1% year over year as revenue growth in financial access services and software and other was offset by declines in hardware sales, financial access services revenues grew 2.1% from the prior year first quarter as we processed a record $39 million transactions and delivered a record of $12.4 billion of funding to customers' operations. While we did see some weakness in financial access in January due to weather issues, which is consistent with what operators have been disclosing, the trends improved as we exited the quarter. It has held steady thus far into the second quarter. Software and other revenues grew from increased kiosk maintenance revenue, compliance revenue and central credit and other revenue. But was partially offset by a decline in new software sales from loyalty. The decline in loyalty revenue was a timing issue related to our customers' readiness to accept inflation. We did experience some hardware sale declines in certain foreign jurisdictions related to our ticket redemption kiosks. In the first quarter of 2024, loyalty kiosk sales also declined, reflecting a decline in new installations of loyalty software. As we have discussed previously, loyalty sales can be lumpy. They typically tend to be larger in initial unit sales and are generally tied to the timing of new financial access contracts or contract renewals. While the timing of revenue recognition can be delayed due to the operator's readiness for acceptance of the loyalty software and equipment, they're generally not lost just deferred to later quarters.
For the quarter, consolidated gross margin expanded by approximately 80 basis points to 80.9%, primarily due to revenue mix shift to higher-margin gaming operations and financial access services revenue from lower margin, gaming equipment and hardware sales.
Moving on to operating expenses, we incurred $15.7 million in one-time professional fees, employee retention awards and other costs related to the planned merger with IGT's global gaming and play digital businesses. These costs have been excluded from adjusted EBITDA, but skew our reported operating expense trends from a GAAP basis. The decline in adjusted EBITDA for the quarter to $80.3 million from $92.5 million in the prior year quarter is reflective of the lower revenues and higher operating and R&D expenses. The decline in adjusted EBITDA for games to $46.6 million from $53.7 million in the prior year first quarter was a result of both lower revenues and higher expenses, while the decline in adjusted EBITDA for FinTech to $33.7 million from $38.8 million was primarily due to higher expenses. Net interest expense in the first quarter was $18.8 million, an increase from $18 million in the prior year. As a reminder, we have $400 million of outstanding unsecured notes at a fixed rate of 5% and approximately $581 million of term loan. That has a variable rate of interest. At the end of the quarter, our weighted average borrowing rate was approximately 6.7%. Also included in interest expense is the cash usage fee on our ATM bulk cash arrangements. Our expense for the bulk cash was $4.8 million compared to $4.3 million in the prior year first quarter. We ended the quarter with total net leverage at 2.6 times trailing adjusted EBITDA, which remains at the low end of our 2.5 to 3 times target range. Free cash flow generated in the quarter was $14 million compared with $40 million a year ago. The decline was primarily the result of an increase of $13 million in cash paid for capital expenditures and the $12 million decline in adjusted EBITDA. We believe the increased investment in capital expenditures is important to refresh our installed base, and we expect this spending to return the installed base to growth and improve daily win per unit over time.
Moving on to our outlook. Our current expectations are that we will return to revenue growth in the back half of the year. Assuming that our new cabinets accommodate resonate as expected with casino patrons, daily win per unit rebalance and unit sales improve, we expect fintech revenues to return to growth of the remainder of the year, driven by increasing financial assets, volumes, improved Software and other revenue and a return to growth in our hardware sales.
Turning to expenses, we expect higher operating expenses due to our investment in people and products as well as the costs incurred related to the proposed merger. With $6 million of term loan repaid in the first quarter. We did not have any significant debt repayments due for the remainder of the year with $400 million of our debt fixed at 5%. Our net interest expense will depend primarily on what happens to interest rates this year, we expect our effective tax rate to be in the 22% to 25% range for the year and our full year cash taxes to be between $15 million and $20 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to decline from the prior year, primarily reflecting the near term headwinds that are impacting the Game segment. We expect to see improvement in the second half of the year as new cabinets and content hit casino floors and gain traction with customers that we begin to provide product in new categories like BLG and international gaming capital expenditures are expected to be flat. It's up slightly from $145.1 million in 2023 as we primarily invest in replacing older cabinets and building out our installed base. Free cash flow is expected to be down from the prior year but will remain strong. And with that, I will now conclude our prepared remarks and turn the call over to the operator for Quest.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Jeffrey Stantial, Stifel.

Aidan Young

This is Aidan Young on for Jeff Stantial. Thanks for taking our question. Starting off on the fintech business, it looks like operating expenses, excluding adjusted EBITDA add-backs were up fairly meaningfully quarter on quarter, both nominally and as a percentage of revenues. Could you give some color on what's driving that? And how should we think about the right R&D and OpEx levels heading into the remainder of 2024? Thanks.

Mark Labay

Yes, thanks, Aiden. Look I think we're as we look at operating expenses in R&D, we've always kind of talked that the labor and headcount is probably our largest expense category looks still very tight labor market in terms of how we're operating today, typically, there's annual reviews, other impacts that impact our current payroll where we are. We feel like we're at a pretty good level, though you know, Q1 levels for kind of what you're looking at from an R&D and OpEx benefits from a headcount and investment level are at the right levels going forward. So in terms of modeling, I'd be thinking kind of consistent a lot of those lines. I think in terms of percentage of revenues, obviously having a little bit of a decline in the revenues is impacting some of the percentage metrics. But again, we believe we're invested properly for the long-term growth of the business right now where we are and as revenue begins to rebound. That's particularly in the second half of the year.

Randy Taylor

We think that will kind of close that gap and kind of get back to those normalized levels that we talked about yes, I would add, I think we're very comfortable on the fintech side. Again, that's still a business that we believe you have to invest for improved products that makes us it provides better products for our customers and continues to help us grow that business. And as Mark said, as that revenue comes back up, then I think we'll come back in line Great, thank you.

Aidan Young

And it looks like spot shipments were down 34% year on year, recognizing there's a number of moving parts here. Just curious to get your views on to what extent do you think the announcement of the merger maybe impacting sales or your sales reps and the confusion from customers on a deal a long-term strategy? Any thoughts here would be great. Thank you.

Randy Taylor

Yes, that's a difficult one, right hard to say. I would I would say, look, we think we're as we said in the remarks, we should we expect to grow again in next quarter sequentially, whether or not there's a real impact right now because of the deal. It's just really hard for us for us to quantify that but we just brought our new sole cabinet that came out late in the quarter.
It's doing what we expected to do. We think with some of the new themes on view that should hopefully help that mechanical products are again hitting very well on the auditor's report. So it's just hard to say. I can tell you that there's not some some some thought process out there, but I'm not going to point right now is really the stage that it's in being impacted just by the deal.

Aidan Young

Great. Thanks for the color. I'll pass it on.

Randy Taylor

Thank you.

Operator

Barry Jonas, Truist Securities.

Barry Jonas

Hey, guys. Thanks. Thanks for all the helpful remarks. But maybe I just wanted to dive more. Can you maybe give more color what gives you the confidence that you think new cabinet momentum will show up in the financials in the second half of the year, which starts pretty soon.

Randy Taylor

Thanks your various units, it's hard to say specifically, but we're investing in the capital. So we're getting games out there. We know that we're getting lift off of new games in comparison to the games that are being replaced. So in the installed base, there is some churn and it's first going to be to replace the older units. So that's going to move in the right direction. We think that's pretty straightforward. The question is how long can it hold and is it really go to a higher win per day than than maybe what we're modeling. So I would say we're seeing interest in the sole with the new the two themes that have it well, in the auditor's report is right. That's something new for us. So look, there's green shoots here, Barry, that would point to the fact that we should improve in the second half of the year. It's a difficult one to say how much. But so far, the new themes are working well and we're seeing whether we're placing games, we're getting a lift this is that we have a big install base. And so that takes a little time. It's a bigger, a bigger ship to turn, but we're still very comfortable that we're going to we're going to improve in the back half of the year.

Barry Jonas

Great. Great. And then just as a follow-up, you know, look, we know you need to run the businesses independently until the deal closes, but are there any early integration work or maybe ways for the two companies to work together between now and the deal close? Thanks.

Randy Taylor

Yes, Barry, I would say like that's that's kind of a topic. We're really not going to cover that. You're very limited on what you can do. So I would say I'm going to stay away from that one because until we were, as we said, we're not going to give an update there. So I would say you I I'll leave it at that very unfortunately, not much I can I can give you.

Barry Jonas

Understood. Thank you.

Randy Taylor

You bet.

Operator

David Katz, Jefferies.

David Katz

Hi, good morning. Everyone. Thanks for taking my questions for all the detail.
I'm just curious, as you sort of progress toward closing the transaction are, what kind of feedback are you getting sort of in the field. But in terms of opportunities that may be going slower or faster as a result of pending deal out there.

Randy Taylor

I do and I'm struggling a little bit with how to answer your question. I mean, I would say the feedback that we've got from customers is positive on the deal on. So but whether or not I can say is there anything that we're doing it in the interim? Again, as I remarked very, there's not a lot that you can really do at this stage in the game until you get through a couple of the of the processes that we've talked about between antitrust and regulatory eight. But we have we did have a cap our on a when we bring our customers into customer some evaluation of other products. And I think again, they were they were favorable to the transaction right there. So want to see how it goes, we've been very clear to our customers that both product lines will continue to be supported. And so I think that's really what they want to know. And I think they've been supportive of that, but there's not, I guess anything else I can really point to David that says where we are in this process and until we are farther along and have other information. We're just as you said, we're kind of operating as independent units with understanding that's down the road we expect to come together.

David Katz

Understood. And Randy or your prepared remarks, you talked about some of the technology opportunities we are coming together, Rich, which is clearly an exciting part of all that. And notwithstanding that the time to meld those two enterprises together.

Randy Taylor

Yes, I presume that there may also be some incremental R&D to that end.

David Katz

Have you started to look at what the costs of melding those together might be at this stage? Or is that just way too early to get any insight on that to get it here and that is what it is way too early.

Randy Taylor

And I think I think the good thing is, as we've talked in our remarks before, is that we don't expect to change R & D that R & D is what's going to drive this company and the success of this company combined. So it's definitely not going to be in the in the neighborhood of pulling back in myosin estimation right now, but specifically where and in that area, David, again, it's just too early to talk about anything of that nature or how we're going to look at that going forward.

David Katz

Okay. Fair enough. Thank you very much.

Randy Taylor

Sure, David. Thanks.

Operator

Chad Beynon, Macquarie.

Chad Beynon

More of my question, wanted to ask about the VR gaming or digital side of things. The market here in the US continues to grow quite significantly. And I know that's that's I know that's been an area of focus for your content here. And then you've also talked about expanding into the UK, Europe and Latin American markets. So can you just kind of give us an update in terms of how that that business, that line item is progressing and opportunities for 24? Thanks.

Mark Labay

Yes, Chad, I'll take that. But no, look, I think digital continues to be an important part of our business a great avenue for growth. Again, what we really appreciate about the gaming business is the ability to take proven content that we've developed to take it into new channels and really expand what we're doing there. And as you mentioned, North America, US market growing, create opportunities and our ability to get into new markets like UK is also something we're really excited about still very early stages of that international piece. But but we are live actually in the UK now and looking to continue to expand what we do in UK and in Europe with some partners that we have here in the coming quarter. So So great opportunity, I think in terms of of growth, you know, we ended the quarter probably just a little over seven, 7.3 million revenues, a nice year-over-year growth brought about 12, 13% growth button on a year-over-year basis in terms of performance there. So it's again progressing nicely and continue to grow along the path of our expectations.

Chad Beynon

Thanks, Mark. And then on the fintech side, you mentioned hardware coming in a little bit late this quarter. That's always been been lumpy and kind of harder to predict. Is there general seasonality in that business? And I know you have a few big improvements and kind of products that that are out in the market. Can you just kind of help us with the outlook for that for the rest of the year on the hardware side?

Randy Taylor

Yes, to Chad, to your point it is lumpy. I would say we have signed contracts. We have, you know, product that we do believe we'll get placed this year. So we're very confident that that will ramp up throughout the rest of the year. The only unknown is customers when they're ready for it and are they going to take at that point in time so that we had something pushed this quarter and pushed out. But again, these are signed contracts which are generally kind of tied to a cash access contract. And so it's just when they want to install them and when they're ready for it. So we're still very comfortable that hardware should ramp throughout the year throughout the rest of the year. But in Q1, just a little bit lower than we had anticipated, obviously compared to prior year.

Chad Beynon

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Operator

John Davis, Raymond James.

Very good morning, guys. This is Madison on for J.D. I just wanted to touch on the comments around the decision to not replace from cabinets and lower-performing areas. Is this something that's just going to be isolated to 1Q? Or is this an ongoing process where you guys are looking at other areas where there could be some bleed over into 2Q or the second half?

Mark Labay

I'll take that one. Look, I think that we're always in the gaming operations team is laser focused on making sure they make smart choices with respect to a bit of generating revenue driving revenue. And if we have low volume locations that are looking either for increased placement fees or new placement fees in addition to swapping out equipment. As you know, we want to make sure we get a reasonable rate of return to hit that hurdle for us internally to make sure it makes sense and if it doesn't make sense, you know, just to that never get your money back or barely make any money over four or five year period of time. We're not going to spend that money. So we're always evaluating that because there were some allowed under concentrations of units in the first quarter.

Can we talk about of our declines over 300 of them are probably those kind of decisions to not replace capital where we had the opportunity to vote. I expect over the coming quarters, you'll see a couple more little instances like that. Maybe that's a level that you saw here. But but you know, we are making those choices to maximize our yield and the installed base.

Randy Taylor

Yes, that's and I would point out that those were really kind of related to two customers. So I don't want you to forget it is somehow throughout our installed base, but there were a couple of customers that don't just dabble lower performing units and then there were some other issues tied to it. And we decided that from from a yield it made sense not to go after those. So I don't want to look like it's all throughout our installed base, but it was just primarily two customers.
Okay. Got it.

And then just a quick follow-up here on the FinPac side, I appreciate the color you gave on some of the hardware components. But as we think about kind of volumes progressing through the year year or yields for that matter. How are you guys thinking about cash of the casino floor and whether it be 2Q or the second half? And just any color in terms of what you're expecting from a yield perspective? Thanks, guys.

Randy Taylor

But what I'd say is I think Mark covered it a little bit in the in his remarks that January was softer than we expected, but it really kind of recovered in February and March. And I would say so far, April and early May have been really pleasantly, not surprising, but higher than we kind of expected. So it seems to be right now that we would expect the cash access volumes to kind of stay at that low mid to low single digit growth and maybe even a little bit better, but we'll have to wait and see. But I would say, look, we're still expecting growth on cash access. And I think we're kind of we're kind of budgeting for that level. But right now, I'd say we're seeing probably a little bit stronger than that yet.

Mark Labay

I would just add, look, even with the a little bit of headwinds of weather. And in January that we saw we still ended the quarter positive on a same-store basis. So so it seems like the patron, the consumer is still a very willing to spend in the gaming environment. And we're seeing some, as Randy mentioned, some really good strength, probably above the kind of our expectation levels in April and into May probably up closer to either just mid to high mid single digits in April and into May. So April last year made wasn't that impacted or what the comp wasn't. So horribly bad either. So it feels like it's still holding up very steady for us in the space.

Got it. Yes, that's very helpful color. Appreciate it, guys

Operator

David Bain, B. Riley.

David Bain

Great. Thank you. Hi, Randy. Hi, Mark. A quick question on the termination of the repurchase program, does that signal the confidence of a deal close and you keep the money for dividend purposes or is that more I think you definitely talk money.

Randy Taylor

Well, no, I think it doesn't it doesn't signal the confidence of the deal close. I wish I still think our confidence hasn't changed. We still believe that we'll close at the end of the year or early next year. But so what we wanted to point out was that we're not going to be we have a special dividend if it's payable depending on on our operations and merger related expenses and so forth. And so we just want to make sure that shareholders understand that we're not going to be out purchasing shares because we think that takes away from the dividend. And then we also wanted to note to sell to cover where we've changed our approach to not buy not withholding shares for tax purposes, which would require us to pay cash into the into the U.S. government. So that will be a use of our cash during this time period versus just saying people should sell them on the open market and we'll still pay their taxes, but that would again help our overall potential for a dividend. So we're trying to manage cash as well to make sure that it's possible that there could be a dividend. So that was kind of both that kind of two aspects to it, David.

David Bain

Very good. That's perfect. And then as a follow-up, I know you spoke about some customers and their reaction to the deal generally. Have you specifically spoken to any systems customers or operators and maybe they've applied it with regard to the potential of the cashless friction removal from the combination. Is that something that like, as David cast is pointing out that could actually be more accelerated than you originally anticipated amongst the IGT base system space?

Randy Taylor

Yes. Look, I I would I would expect we haven't I would say we haven't really talked specifically to customers. I think there may be customers that are kind of thinking about what they're going to do on the system side, the system side, otherwise, in other words, if they're thinking about what's going to use from a cashless and then maybe they have the IGT system. I think they are probably thinking about that. Does that change, you know how how they want to go forward, but maybe that gives us more opportunity?
I'm saying, David, that I don't think I would say we've had any real discussions there because again, we're in this period of they've got to operate we have to operate some.

David Bain

Thanks, Randy.

Operator

George Sutton, Craig Hallum.

George Sutton

Thank you. I have a mathematical question for Mark. You mentioned the daily win per unit. The numbers are expected to improve in the back half of the year as a result of new content help us understand the percentage of your units that would be impacted by the new content. That sounded to be sounded to me to be an unusually unusual way to grow quickly. The daily win per unit?

Mark Labay

Well, remember the installed base, the entire base of units, we're continually making content for all of our cabins in there. It's not just about brand new cabinets that are out there as well. So we're always swapping out content and trying to move the needle in terms of performance and improvement. And that's how you grow over time as well. But obviously, the new cabinets, new content is something new to patients in there that drives general a little more increased level of of of you, though, and with on the devices. We make those swaps out on cabinets as well as the content on them. So what we've been seeing the installed base is generally anywhere from them 10, 15, $20 a day of daily with improvement on the swap-outs we've been doing clearly, we've been focused on the highest value units first in the installed base, and we'll continue that over the course of time, swapping out of lower yielding or older equipment, the legacy type Cabot's that maybe a little more tired with the new freshest content to their. So that's where we expect to see the biggest bang for the buck in terms of movement in the daily with its turnaround?

George Sutton

I need to know what a two pronged approaches.

Randy Taylor

And I said you have about it I would say, look, you're focused on replacing themes where some of the themes I've gotten older and that's a little bit easier lift, but then your but you have to start replacing the cabinets. So I think Mark's point is the cabins plus new themes are probably the biggest lift, but also just putting new themes on older cabinets is left. So it's a combo Catcher.

George Sutton

It has been surprisingly quiet on this call and there was a reference to the early performance of the Dynasty view, not meeting your expectations, but an expectation that that improves with new content I just wondered if you could address sort of what might have been missing there was may be coming that we should be enthusiastic about.

Mark Labay

I'll hit the latter part of it of the stuff that we should be enthusiastic about because we have a huge lineup coming out of products that we feel hits the tried-and-true mechanics that players are very familiar with and just a pure bandwidth on our emphasis on developing on some of the new hardware that we've been talking about for a while. So what's happening here is that it's really starting to come to fruition as the products start getting deployed.
It's just taken a little bit longer than obviously any of us would have liked. So I am excited about a lot of different products that are coming out through the next step in coming few months. So hard today, if I had to give you one, we got Smokin Hot Stuff lags that Randy touched upon that hits our premium segment, very excited to see how that's going to do and just the continued success of dynamite pop that we've all talked about so far, obviously, look forward to seeing a couple of more themes resonate at that same particular level and see where this goes.

Randy Taylor

It was I'd add that even on the view specific, right? We launched in throughout 23 of about six titles. We now added nine more titles. We have a total of 15 titles. So that's really what I'm focused on with those with those additional nine titles where again, we place view out in our installed base and we obviously have it for for sale. It's also and it's also our cabin that we'll be using for the VLTs. So we're still excited about that. But I'm focused on here with those nine new themes really provide a lift from it versus where we came out.

George Sutton

Understood. Thanks, guys.

Randy Taylor

Thank you.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over Mr. Taylor for his closing remarks.

Randy Taylor

Sure. Thank you for joining us today, and we appreciate your continued interest in Everi, and we look forward to providing updates on our business outlook on our second quarter call in August. Again, thanks, for joining us.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.