Tilman will be on CNBC in 1 hour. Prepare for greatness!

Another two faced shitbag like his twin buddy.

He mentioned "saving ppp for smaller restaurants" when his lobbying group snuck in the loophole for big franchises to jump in that money and cut in the line in the first place!

Big ****ing saint. "Play it fair" when you double dip for round two.

The fact that he couldn't give a straight answer for Murray means he's safe because he couldn't decide whether to talk out of his ass or blow up hot air.

It's up to Murray here.

 

I wish Michael Dell was more aggressive with his bid

 

Damn, really sucks this SOB really had to purchase the Rockets.

 

Wait what, he is friends with Trump?!!! ****ing hell, of course he is.

 

Birds of a feather...

 

Not at all what he said.

 

Is this like yesterday where they said "Coming up next" and it was 4 hours later?

Edit: "1:30"

 

So you reopened 240 of 600. Earlier this year you had to lay off 40,000-45,000 employees. How many have you brought back?

We've brought back right now about 15,000 and it's interesting looking at the data y'all just showed on TV. When you go to full service restaurants, which like I operate, we're still operating with the 240 that are open at close to -60%. It's great to be open. It's great to bring some employees back to work but we're far from profitable. Right now we're just churning dollars, hoping it gets better. It seems to be tweaking up a little bit every week so far but we got a whole long way to go before we can bring all employees back & become a profitable business.

So you're operating at a loss of -60% because I assume in the open locations you're social distancing and lots of crowd control. Tell me what it's like in those locations.

Right. It's not just social distancing. Believe it or not, that hasn't been as big an issue. 15%-20% of America is unemployed, 15%-20% is scared of losing their job or holding onto their money and 15%-20% are just damn scared of going out in public yet. Believe it or not, opening up at 25% and now we're going to 50% in Texas this Friday, I don't think it'll have a huge impact on business. My operators are telling me we're really not turning away the business at this point, it's just the business isn't there.

You met at the White House with the President & Secretary Mnuchin. One of the topics on the table was the PPP program, intended for smaller businesses. You made the case that, as I read, perhaps in some future format, a PPP-like program ought to be available for larger companies, larger chains like yours. How was the received?

I think they understand it totally. What happened was the White House & Mnuchin were so smart at what they did. They said we got to have a vehicle to get the money to the people so let's use the SBA and get those banks to certify it and it's nothing but a mechanism to get money to employees instead of the unemployment line but what happened was this narrative of 'Oh big companies taking it from little companies' but there's enough money there for everybody and there's so many companies that got it. First off, only 9% of who got it so far, it's construction companies, it's law firms, it's everybody out there but the public companies caught all the grief because they had to have public filings. I don't have to file anything public. I'm a private company but I still at the same time wanted the little companies to get it first because I knew I had enough liquidity to go for awhile but then it gets to the fact, why are my employees - I would love to bring them all back on May 1st and put them all to work instead of just that portion. Because you work for Landry's & you work Tilman Fertitta, you don't get to come back to work? That's really unfair. I'm not getting the money. The people at the corporate office aren't getting the money. It's strictly for Landry's employees of all our different concepts & my people deserve to be treated just as good as anyone else.

I hear your point but as I understand it, the initial PPP was partly targeted to those small businesses because they don't have access to the credit you as a large chain would have and you took reportedly a $300M line of credit, which was available to you. You had access to credit those smaller businesses wouldn't.

That's a good point but the other side of it is the $300M I borrowed just keeps me going further but my payroll is $150M a month, which is a billion-five a year. The point is that so now we're going to evaluate every company and who can get credit? I had a Houston restaurateur in my office this week who has 4 restaurants and he has a multi-millionaire as his partner who is not the face of the business. Everybody took it. Just because you have a high profile owner or a public company, our employees shouldn't be treated any differently. It's all for the employees and that's all that matters. What's the difference if the government money is coming from the PPP or something like it or if it's coming from the Texas (or any state) unemployment. Government money is government money but let us put them back to work. They don't want to sit at home. Put them back to work.

Governor Cuomo has been pushing this 'American's first' law, which he says would refuse subsidies for any corporation that lays off employees and doesn't hire back the same number of employees it had pre-pandemic. Does that make sense to you as a strategy and what are businesses like yours thinking about taking any government funds & strings that may be attached with them? In terms of what the future of going to restaurants looks like, is it unreasonable for Cuomo or others to expect people should hire back to 100% of their pre-Coronavirus workforce in order to get this relief money or keep it without re-paying it?

I'm a fan of Mr. Cuomo's and I think he's done a great job but now he's in an area he doesn't belong in. He knows nothing about running businesses and you can't hire everybody back. Our business is not coming back for years, OK?, to get back to where it is. At least through '20 and '21 and most likely '22 all the expert economists say. To say you can't get any money unless you hire everybody back? So what are they gonna do? How are they gonna promote up? How are they gonna better their lives? If they can find a better opportunity somewhere else but you're gonna go penalize a company because they couldn't hire someone back because they don't have the business anymore? Makes no sense whatsoever.

One other thing people say when they hear you talking and going on about business is, "Isn't Tilman who lives off a lot of credit, he's highly leveraged, he'd be worse off than others." Talk about some of the business choices you've made and whether you regret it?

Not really. I chose to do business and own this company myself. There's two ways to do it. You have equity partners or you take on more debt. I prefer to borrow debt and not have partners, OK? My company has been very successful and been able to do whatever it wants to do. A pandemic comes along and hurts my company but yet we've always made good business decisions. It's just one way of growing a business. At the same time, could I go sell equity? Yes. You never know. I might go public again. I might go take on partners. The name of the game is to make your company survive and that's what we're doing now. Everybody has different ways of growing their business and that's the way I grew mine.

I know a lot of people are interested in the future of the NBA.

You sound like Donald Trump asking me that question yesterday. We feel very comfortable, as long as the experts continue to say things are getting better in America. The players want to play. As long as this doesn't continue to grow & continues to go the other way, I see the NBA playing. Everyone wants to play. America wants to see the NBA play and I look forward to us playing games later this summer and playing some regular season games and having a NBA champion like the Houston Rockets.

 

Trump is by far the worst president ever, and Fertitta is a cutthroat billionaire and Trump sycophant who in no way deserves PPP money, and I hope Trump gives him billions of taxpayer dollars, paid for by further indebting my children, so the Rockets can go well into the luxury tax and win a championship. These are my principles.

 

99
'America wants to see them play'

Didn't mention China!
You know Les would have said China!

 

POTUS is a charitable sort, he has donated a lot of other people's money.

 

Meanwhile half billionaire franchisee, Dodgers part-owner Magic Johnson offering 100 million in loans to the small biz owners PPP left out because Broke Tilman cut in line.

Magic Johnson offering $100 million in loans to minority-owned businesses left out of PPP loans

KEY POINTS

• Magic Johnson, the CEO of Magic Johnson Enterprises, partnered with MBE Capital Partners to offer $100 million in loans to minority- and women-owned companies.
• The funds will be distributed through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program.

 

RETRACTION: Tilman got the loans but Didn’t Keep PPP Money Because He Was Afraid of Criticism