hi noah thanks very much for joining us today hey thanks for having me appreciate it yeah it's no problem we're looking forward to talking to you about kind of all things gaming i'm all thing acres manufacturing uh to start off with if you could kind of uh maybe give us an intro into into yourself your role at the company and then like we could talk a bit more about the company itself uh yeah so uh my name is noah akers i uh company's name is acres manufacturing like everybody who works at the company i i tend to wear many hats i get involved in the marketing and the sales and the product design and you know pretty much everything that we do and i'm not the only one there's a lot of people that at our company that kind of uh follow the same path so we're all uh wears as many hats as we like to say yeah yeah makes sense i mean uh your your father john uh you know if i'm not mistaken he is a big big part in the company and uh we've heard good things at gambling insider about kind of um his vision and how he's kind of maybe maybe helped change gaming for the better in the last few years uh yeah definitely i think that uh my my dad is as pretty well known in the gaming industry he's the i think the original inventor of player tracking and loyalty systems uh in the casino industry and um actually one of the interesting opportunities that we have is that all the uh the systems that we're essentially competing with today are made in that era of when he designed it you know 25 plus years ago so we go into casinos today and they're very limited technologically because they're still using the products that he designed in you know 1995 1996 literally the same hardware uh no added capability so casinos are really handcuffed in what they can do because that that um you know development hasn't really uh improved uh in in 25 plus plus years uh you know the other thing i would say is that we uh we always look at things from the player's perspective yeah and i think that's pretty uh unique in in terms of the casino industry especially you know casino suppliers uh who tend to look at things as just you know how can i add this module or force a replacement cycle of of you know some on-screen hardware or something like that um and and there's a lot of things that we can get into you know further in the conversation but as we talk about bringing out caches gaming as we talk about bringing on real-time data as we talk about migrating the player experience to an app well what is the player experience right what why do players want to participate in this why would they want to participate in this and if a casino wants to operate profitably they have to provide something that players enjoy using and players feel like they're getting benefit from and i think too often uh that's not even in the equation uh in terms of the design of a product uh and we're we place the highest priority on on the player experience absolutely um so it's a strong legacy for you for john there but i hope you don't mind me asking is that a tough act to follow for yourself uh for sure yeah i mean i i think that uh uh got caught me off guard yeah it's it's definitely tough i don't think that i'll ever uh gain the notoriety that my dad has he's a brilliant engineer um there's a lot of great things i could say about him so um uh he's a free thinker he doesn't uh get bogged down by ideas of of others or ideas that are are just kind of assumed to be facts he's always willing to uh you know to examine things and and find the truth and things or at least our truth and things and i think the other great thing i would say about him is he doesn't get discouraged right so uh we face an obstacle here and there even after months or years of work and when that obstacle maybe calls into question whether or not we're going to have success uh a lot of people myself including can get frustrated get emotional and that's something i've honestly i've never really even seen out of my dad he's he's very logical and he says hey you know what this is the barrier let's work on on removing that barrier and then we can be successful and i think that uh you know as i talk to you know myself every day and i talk to my kids that's an attribute that i try to implement into to all of us because you know this emotion and frustration doesn't get you anywhere right so if you have an obstacle let's let's think about it logically and figure out how to remove that obstacle and and achieve success so i really do admire uh my dad quite a bit i'll probably never be able to um you know replace him and you know i guess he's like a aga american gaming associate association hall of fame i don't really expect my name to be up there it's not really what i'm shooting for but uh definitely great to be around him uh at work every day and just to be able to call them my dad no that's that's great great to hear a kind of nice warm answer then and i hope i didn't put you on the spot too much with that question um my mom is really great too by the way [Laughter] yeah um definitely um moving into kind of you you mentioned cashless so cashless um something we've we've all talked about and heard a lot about and gambling insider and our sister publication gaming america we've uh we've covered it a lot in depth when it comes to acres uh and your firm kind of overall um what if you if i said cashless uh just as a jumping off point um you know where would you take the conversation well uh you know that there's a lot that goes into cash us right and i think that the the more you layer on to it the more likely you are to have success right so um there's a lot of benefits for casinos to go cashless uh and i think we all see that right so number one just the cost of inventorying and securing money is expensive right so if we take that out of the equation then that's more profit to the bottom line uh that you know add to that you know the process of moving and handling money obviously the transaction fees you know things like that um in addition uh uh you know on a on a game to game basis right there's uh you know bill validators and ticket printers and things like that and slot machines that add cost that if we can go to a pure cashless model and obviously that's that's a long ways away casinos will will save money right and so there's a lot of benefits that we can see that our casinos will gain from from going cashless but the real question is how do we benefit the players right so i've seen a couple instances of cash lists where um you know all it is is an either an app or an on-screen kind of secondary screen that they have attached to the game where the player types in a command and moves money uh from you know a wallet somewhere to the slot machine and when there's no other features beyond that what is in it for the player why would they bother to go sign up why would they bother to move their money into that wallet why would they bother uh to go through this you know clunky user interface there's no benefit to them whatsoever and so what we've done is we've created a system that we call foundation um and you it's a hardware device that you plug into the machine and it does two things it grabs all of the real-time data from any slot machine and that actually works out to be an over a thousand times more data than what casinos are collecting today obviously casinos don't have foundation uh so they're getting a hugely uh new rich set of data that they've never had before and then foundation also gives casinos the ability to change the credit meter on any slot machine on command right so that means that you can do bonuses like you know new bonus games that are automatically changing the credit meter for the player and you can do cashless right so you can plug the get you can interface the game into a essentially a payment processor or a wallet system where that payment processor is telling you hey uh noah acres is moving a hundred dollars onto machine one two three four five and uh foundation will automatically do that for you and so when we wrap all that up into one experience so we call that uh an electronic ledger account or the acres wallet is known on our website it really really changes the player experience in a beneficial way to the player because now i have the ability to move my money i have the ability to use points and free play and earn that stuff as i go and see real-time messages the casino can send me offers in real time or send me messages in real time as i play and they would know kind of how i'm experiencing the game and they can build in different levels of um you know of automation to say hey if this player is losing too much we want to respond in this way maybe we send a message maybe we send an offer maybe we send an employee over to talk to them but this really becomes an all-encompassing uh player interface that's gonna improve the player experience and do far more than just you know give the ability to to move money uh to and from the game you mentioned uh real-time data and you know again it's um perhaps slightly less talked about than cashless but definitely still a hot topic in the industry how important is it for for the casino experience overall and any casinos who aren't necessarily uh jumping on real-time data how much how far can they be sort of left behind without kind of uh utilizing and acting on kind of you know like say engaging with customers right and there when they're playing yeah i think that this is really untapped territory right and i think that uh they're really smart operators that we've talked to over the past you know nine months or a year or so as we introduce our product they say hey you know cashless gaming is great but what we are really after is the real-time data because they know i mean just look at what's happened in uh uh our lives in the past 20 years right so you got google you got amazon you got facebook you got netflix all these companies are using real-time personalized data to market to you and enhance your player experience uh on the casino you know we don't we don't do any of that right and so the real problem is you know i think at the outset i mentioned that we are using in our industry uh hardware that is 25 plus years old uh to uh to to conduct player loyalty and that's a big problem because 25 years ago there was no real uh notion of real-time data there was no notion of mobile devices so so that real-time data wasn't really important all casinos were trying to do in the 1990s was essentially count how much you played so they could send you a direct mail offer with a coupon and you know kind of kind of get you into their loyalty system that way uh things have evolved quite a bit and if you look at the growth of uh the tech industry again google facebook amazon netflix apple all these guys that are using uh personalized real-time data on you know every single player or every single customer uh those industries have grown tremendously like thousands of you know times over and the the gaming industry at least in the us uh we have a huge saturation of casinos over the past 20 years uh but our net gross gaming revenue is uh is underwater when you account for inflation so our industry hasn't been growing uh and you look at the industries that have been incorporating real time and personalization they've been growing exponentially and we think that when casinos adapt the real-time data they're going to experience the same kind of growth and there is a challenge there number one as i said casinos haven't really like nobody's using real-time data yet they've never been trained to use it they don't know where to store it they don't know how to process it so all these things have to be uh knocked out of the way before we can achieve success but the time to start doing that is right now and that's why we're here yeah definitely if if casinos adapt as you say to kind of uh real-time data and current circumstances uh how quickly are we talking the the industry can can modernize are we talking a number of years um you know what kind of time frame could we if any can we put on that i think it's pretty quick i mean i think that uh you know again let's let's uh let's back up and look at it from the player's perspective right so let's say you're sitting at a game and uh you put 100 bucks in and uh you you play that all the way down to 10 bucks right i would say that uh if you played it from 110 you're unlikely to redeposit you're unlikely to put another bill into that machine right because you haven't done it yet so at that point the player is bored they think they can't win i don't i don't know what's going through their mind uh but the casino would have the ability to say hey noah um uh put in 20 now and we'll give you 30 worth of credits or put in 20 now and we'll give you alone the chance to win this special progressive jackpot for the next 10 minutes you know whatever it is we can recapture that player's imagination we can kind of uh reinvigorate that experience and make it interesting again and just think about all the tools like if you just have all the data on your players in-house right so so here's the funny thing to think about uh you know there's a few hundred you know to a thousand people plus in any casino at any given time what if the casino knew how much money was in every player's pocket at any given moment they would be able to know who to market to what you know what level of offer to to send them how to treat them so on and so forth when we go to caches and we have this real-time data component they will know exactly how much money you have they'll know your spin history they'll know your spend potential and they'll be able to market to you accordingly so i think that once we get uh these systems in place which you know the onboarding process isn't that long uh changes are going to come pretty pretty rapidly so so you're talking about kind of things that will uh boost ggr uh boost kind of uh engagement and deposits and things like this uh one thing i do want to mention which is maybe slightly a separate discussion but obviously over the last uh kind of 10 months in nevada we've had we've had over a billion dollars of of ggr and i guess from from from your point um if casinos were even more efficient in using real-time data this this number could be even higher but i wanted to ask kind of uh someone covering in the industry um what do you put down this kind of these successful numbers too is it kind of just pent-up demand is it the fact that we had the pandemic enclosures and that kind of thing why is nevada and kind of vegas booming so much right now well i think that uh yes that pent up demand i think that there's uh fewer entertainment options on the table i think that also you know you had some really rich stimulants uh coming from the government that's putting money in people's pockets you know on a weekly or monthly basis and turns out that's pretty good for casinos to give people money uh and so all those kind of contribute uh to the success that we've had in gaming so so really even um pre pandemic i think i heard that casinos were doing pretty well especially regional casinos and now vegas is doing really well and what we're hearing in vegas is that uh uh you know labor's down like there's fewer people in the workforce so the margins are higher the casino marketing offers are down because players are just coming uh and it's just you know it's the entertainment's down a lot of the buffets are closed so a lot of the expense elements are gone and we're just catering to the players which is you know that's a good thing i think that uh for a while vegas was a little bit lost in uh trying to build up like the you know hotel and entertainment and all that stuff that's great that brings people but there was a core of of gamblers that i think was kind of lost in the shuffle and now the focus is getting more on those gamblers i will say that you know one thing that i think we can improve on is the demographic of gamblers as everybody knows it's a it's an aging demographic uh i think that for every you know past few decades that every 10 years has gone by uh the average age is increased by eight years so we've essentially over the past 20 years we've lost a new a generation of new players and i think that the reason is again facebook amazon netflix google all those companies that are marketing people real time mobile devices personalized the younger consumer wants those types of experiences and they're not able to get them in the casino environment now casinos are really successful amongst the you know older demographics because they're not demanding these types of experiences and that's great so so we can serve them uh very well with the offerings that we have today but if we want to get beyond that generation we really have to change it up and get into this real time and personalization and mobile devices so you you've talked about kind of uh acres aims and the wider industries aims when it certainly comes to cactus and real-time data um looking ahead to 2022 because it quite early and into the year um and you've just mentioned one just now you've mentioned a couple of challenges what are acres uh biggest challenges but also that the wider industry when it comes to kind of achieving your aims this year well i think uh again that you know top of everybody's mind is the status of the pandemic right so we don't want to see new variants and and new outbreaks and things like that that have gone on for the past two years and obviously shutdowns are kind of a nightmare scenario so that that's one thing that we'll just take that off the table obviously we're all hoping for that but i think that uh you know along with that goes to travel restrictions and things like that that are obviously really bad for business i think that casinos need to return to normal a little bit they need to find a way to get some of the staffing back in place uh like from my personal experience like the it departments are running extremely lean they're they're you know almost falling over because they have so much to do and there's so few of the people in there um uh we have to increase our start our service standards um casinos are doing well obviously but i don't think that just from a customer standpoint i go in and you know i might valet park my car and it takes me you know 25 minutes to get to get my car when i pick it up because they only got one guy at the valet so if if we keep giving people negative experiences they're gonna stop coming right and and um thankfully right now casinos are doing well and i think partially because every industry is having these problems right so you go to a restaurant and go to uh you know grocery store you can go anywhere you want and they're short staffed right so you're going to have a negative experience and a lot of places caused by that short staffing but if we're going to grow we really have to work to address that problem and provide positive experiences for players and i know that like the the situation is a little bit different in vegas versus some of the regional casinos uh but like when i worked as an operator in vegas we took a lot of pride in the fact that uh people were coming here to spend their vacation money with us they're spending their free time that you know they work all year uh so they have some money and they have the ability to travel and take a holiday either you know with with a friend family loved one whatever it is uh and we can't let them down like we can't make you wait in line the whole time we can't make you uh you know we can't cancel your show last minute all these things like that those those issues have to have to be worked out if if uh we're gonna continue to be successful in 2022 and beyond a final question for you now uh which kind of follows on from that last one uh let's say kind of um the biggest challenges are hopefully overcome and uh i guess i guess the um the phrase oh i was gonna use a latin phrase there i've forgotten what it is so i won't but basically if if all if everything remains constant if everything remains uh if nothing terrible goes wrong as you say with the pandemic what does acres uh if we're sitting here this time next year how if you look back on 2022 as a successful year what would you have achieved what kind of goals do you have and what would make a successful 2022 for you well i think that we have a lot a lot in the in the you know a lot of flames in the fire right now as you say uh and a lot of opportunity for success so uh foundation is uh you know currently i think we're installed in 30 plus thousand games uh i think by the end of this year we're hoping it's you know one of the six figures uh i think that uh we'll be doing lists in probably a dozen or more states uh i'm hoping that we can layer on the real-time marketing aspect to it we're building a bonusing system like we call the foundation jackpot controller we have some signage packages coming out for it it's going to allow operators the ability to to have the most flexible uh bonusing games they've ever had that can fit on top of you know games they own rather than games they lease um i think that we have this the foundation app store that i think was just uh announced today where we are welcoming third-party developers into our environment they can come in and uh create and sell their own applications to casinos so i think that uh for us a successful year would just be uh continuing to uh the path forward of achieving success on all these different product fronts just to just to get our ideas out about uh what what can be done with real-time data and personalization well noah best of luck with everything you aim to achieve and uh certainly best best to join in the family and and help you guys kind of carry on on your current success thanks very much for your for your time and for your fascinating insight and uh look forward to having you again in the future okay thanks a lot for having me appreciate it