Food and entertainment specialist, Dave &Buster’s, just ended a difficult fiscal year but signs are hopeful for the year to come.
This quarter the company benefited from favorable weather and calendar shifts that moved important holidays like Christmas and New Year from weekend to weekdays. It also reported its first comparable sales store since 2017. Special mention goes to improved menu and popular menu items that brought market share gains.
The video gaming sector also benefitted from its shift toward offering exclusive branded games, including hit virtual reality titles. ‘Dragon frost’VR joined ‘Jurassic World’, ‘Halo’, and ‘Connect 4 Hoops’ as customer traffic drivers. These new games not only differentiated the company from its competitors, but also brought higher profit margins. Amusement revenue accounted for 57% of the overall business for the full year, up from 55% a year ago.
Analysts also expect that comps will fall somewhere in the 1.5% area in 2019 implying that this will be the company’s first annual increase in that metric in three years.
But it is the company’s growth strategy that is attracting investors as it plans to open 16 new stores in 2019. Investors expect that this will account more than $1.3 billion of its current sales pace. This will set a goal at a pace of 10% per year and only time will tell whether such aggressive goal will be achievable.