and many more. Chicago remains one of our most significant near-term growth opportunities and I want to provide an update on where things stand. Beginning in June, The Illinois Gaming Board issued the first establishment licenses for video gaming locations in the city of Chicago, followed by a second round in July. Excel has already been approved for 17 of the 39 or approximately 44% of establishments licensed in the city, reaffirming our position as the statewide market leader. The next step is with the city of Chicago itself. The city's Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection has now begun accepting and processing applications for city video gaming licenses. Once a location receives its city license, the gaming board permits the terminal operator to connect to the state's central communication systems and go live. There have been some delays along the way, but based on where the process stands today, We expect the first Chicago establishments could begin operating in the coming weeks. What hasn't changed is our conviction that when this market opens, Xcel is well positioned to move quickly. We already have the infrastructure, equipment, operational expertise, and long-standing local relationships necessary to capitalize on what we believe will be a meaningful opportunity. Outside of Illinois, We continue to build momentum in our developing markets. Nebraska and Georgia both delivered exceptional double-digit revenue growth and are becoming meaningful drivers of Excel's overall earnings growth, not simply contributors to revenue growth. Elsewhere across our footprint, in Louisiana, we completed the acquisition of Rice Palace Truck Stop Casino during the quarter, and our pipeline remains active and attractive. In Nevada, last month we announced a new route agreement with Green Valley Grocery. This extends our relationship with Inavi Oil, adding approximately 600 terminals across southern Nevada, further expanding the platform we established earlier this year through our Rebel partnership. With Green Valley and Rebel, we have over 1,000 terminals with Inavi Oil and are excited to continue our partnership with them. During the second quarter, we continued to execute our disciplined capital allocation strategy. We repurchased approximately 500,000 shares for $5.6 million, while ending the quarter with approximately $255 million of cash and net debt of approximately $318 million, representing net leverage of approximately 1.4 times. At the same time, our $300 million revolving credit facility remains fully undrawn. We believe the strength of our balance sheet gives us the flexibility to continue investing organically, pursue disciplined acquisitions, and return capital to shareholders while maintaining a solid financial profile. As a reminder, when looking at the broader macroeconomic environment, our business is fundamentally hyperlocal. Our customers visit neighborhood bars, restaurants, truck stops, and convenience stores as part of their everyday routines, and that behavior has proven resilient across a variety of economic environments. Finally, I'd like to say a few words about our leadership transition. This will be my final quarterly earnings call as Chief Executive Officer. Later this week, on August 7th, Mark will become CEO while I continue on as chairman. We also recently promoted Stan Giedros to Chief Operating Officer. Stan built Toucan into one of the premier operators in Louisiana, and he brings that same operational discipline, focus on growth, and leadership to our broader organization. I am very confident in the strength of our leadership team and the future of this company. I believe Excel is strongly positioned for its next chapter, and I look forward to continuing to work alongside Mark, Stan, Brett, Scott, and the rest of our leadership team as chairman. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark.

Thank you, Andy. From an operational standpoint, the second quarter reflects the success of our priorities, improving route quality over route size, deploying capital where it generates the highest returns, and delivering a better experience for both our players and our location partners. That approach is producing excellent financial operating results. I'll begin with Illinois, which remains the cornerstone of our distributed gaming business. Consistent with our location quality optimization strategy, during the quarter, our Illinois average location hold per day increased 9% to $992 per location. The improvement reflects both a stronger portfolio mix and better productivity across the route. We have not disclosed an exact split between those two factors. The locations we added are generally higher performing, while many of the locations that came off the route were lower volume, unprofitable, or locations that closed independently. We're also seeing the benefits of investments we've made in the Illinois business. The rollout of ticket-in, ticket-out technology Tito is complete across our installed base. While player adoption is increasing over time, we're encouraged by the positive customer response and the operational efficiency the technology provides. Among those efficiencies, we are beginning to see a reduction in the amount of cash held in the field, which improves our working capital over time. We believe Tito will further enhance the player experience while supporting productivity gains for both Accel and our location partners. just as it has in other gaming markets around the country. Turning to Chicago, as Andy described, the licensing process is now actively moving and our focus is on operational readiness. We've been preparing the market for some time and have equipment staged, routes mapped, and the field and logistics infrastructure in place to begin connecting and servicing locations as soon as they receive their city licenses. Because we already operate at scale across Illinois, the incremental cost for us to stand up Chicago is low, and we can move as quickly as the city process allows. When these locations begin going live, we believe our existing infrastructure, service network and deep local relationships position us to capture our share of this market efficiently. Moving on, Montana delivered another solid quarter with location hope per day increasing 3% year-over-year. During the quarter, Century Gaming also completed a full machine conversion at Northern Winds Casino 2 for the Chippewa Cree tribe. An existing tribal partner choosing to deepen its relationship with Century Gaming is one of the strongest endorsements we can receive, and we believe it reflects the quality of both our technology platform and our customer service. In Nevada, quarterly revenue increased 17% year-over-year, while locations and terminals grew 54% and 53%, respectively, reflecting both the Dynasty Games acquisition and our partnership with Anabi Oil-owned Rebel and Green Valley Grocery convenience stores. Nevada hold per day declined 15.8% year over year, and I'd like to provide some additional context around that. Our Nevada portfolio now spans two distinct customer segments. Participation bars generate materially higher hold per day than convenience stores, and we've expanded our convenience store footprint much more rapidly over the past year. That change in business mix naturally lowers the blended hold metric, even though the underlying economics and growth prospects remain attractive. Beyond the mix shift, the Rebel and Green Valley locations themselves are early in their transition to higher quality gaming experiences. We've upgraded equipment, refreshed the gaming environments, added payment technology to improve convenience for the player, and introduced loyalty through our Gambler's Bonus Rewards program. We currently expect this to be a six to 12 month process, and the early operating indicators remain encouraging. Nebraska and Georgia once again delivered exceptional results with revenue increasing 55% and 47% respectively. What I think is particularly noteworthy is what's happening below the revenue line. Both markets generated significant adjusted EBITDA growth year over year. Because Illinois remains a significant part of our business, it's easy to overlook just how quickly our developing markets are scaling. They're no longer simply contributing incremental revenue. They're becoming increasingly meaningful contributors to earnings growth, and we plan to deploy additional capital behind those opportunities because we believe they offer attractive long-term returns. Turning to our new markets, in Louisiana, Toucan completed the acquisition of Rice Palace Truck Stop Casino during the quarter, adding 50 gaming terminals with plans to expand that location to 60. Toucan revenue increased 14% year-over-year, while terminal count increased 27%. Our acquisition pipeline in Louisiana remains active, and we believe our operating expertise and integration track record continue to position us as the buyer of choice in that market. Finally, at Fairmont Park, the property delivered its strongest quarter to date on a gross profit basis, and we're encouraged by the continued momentum we're seeing across the operation. Live table games have performed in line with our expectations and continue to gain traction with customers At the same time, the additional revenue generated from gaming continues to support investments in racing, including an approximate increase of $500,000 in purses paid out over the 2026 season. As Andy noted, we remain committed to the long-term development of a permanent casino at Fairmont. In the meantime, our focus remains on executing the fundamentals, improving the customer experience, and building a property that continues to strengthen over time. I'd like to close with a broader thought because it's something I've spoken about before and something I'll continue emphasizing as I prepare to assume the role of Chief Executive Officer. Increasingly, we need to think of Excel less as a logistics business and more as a gaming and hospitality company. A logistics business competes on efficiency and cost. Gaming and hospitality company competes on experience, content, relationships, customer service, and differentiation. and those businesses ultimately generate stronger economics. Everything we're doing points in that direction. Exclusive gaming content in the markets that allow it, hospitality and table games at Fairmont, continued enhancements to the player experience in Illinois and quality upgrades across our Nevada portfolio. These investments are helping create a better experience for players, a stronger partnership for our location operators and ultimately a more valuable business for our shareholders. That's where we believe the next phase of margin expansion will come from, and it's what excites me most about the opportunity ahead. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brett.

Thank you, Mark. The second quarter was another record quarter for Excel. Revenue increased 10% year-over-year to $368 million, while adjusted EBITDA increased 11% to $59 million. Operating income was $32 million compared to $27 million in the prior year period. Net income was $13 million compared to $7 million a year ago, and diluted earnings per share was $0.15 compared to $0.08. Before I get to cash flow in the balance sheet, I wanted to spend some time on a few discrete non-cash items that affected reporting earnings this quarter. With the exception of a one-time item I'll cover at the end, none of them involves cash, changes to our operating outlook, or effects adjusted EBITDA. but they do affect net income and earnings per share, and we think it's important to understand what reflects the underlying performance of this business and what does not. The first is a non-cash pre-tax charge of approximately 2.5 million related to older gaming equipment in our warehouses that was no longer part of our active operating plan. As part of our decision to streamline our equipment base, we are in the process of removing these legacy units, which improves the quality of our balance sheet, eliminates associated carrying and depreciation costs, and increase the usable space in our facilities. Importantly, this reflects a management decision to dispose of the equipment that no longer fits our operating needs rather than a change in our depreciation policy or the useful life of our deployed gaming terminals and represents a very small portion of our installed asset base of over 29,000 terminals. Our quarterly results also include a $5 million non-cash loss on the change in the fair value of our Class A2 contingent earn-out shares. This liability is marked to market against our Class A1 share price each quarter, which means a rising share price produces a charge. It's non-cash, it's a permanent non-taxable item that moves our effective tax rate from period to period, and it's added back to adjusted EBITDA. For contacts, we reported $5.7 million loss in the same line in the second quarter of last year, so it's not a driver of our year-over-year comparison. Turning to cash flow and to focus a little more into the definitions and levers driving our generation. We define free cash flow as net cash provided by operating activities, or operating cash flow, less purchases of property equipment plus proceeds from asset sales. Further, as a reminder, operating cash flow has two primary components, cash generation from the business and changes in working capital. Operating cash flow in Q2 2026 was $20 million, a conversion of 34% of adjusted EBITDA as compared to $43 million at 80% in Q1. However, we took advantage of purchasing a green tax credit in Q2, which is expected to move $17 million of operating cash out of Q2 and into Q3. Therefore, on a comparable basis, our operating cash flow was $37 million at 63%. Similarly, our free cash flow was $10 million or 16% for Q2, but excluding a tax credit purchase, it was $26 million or 45%, about 7% above Q1. We believe free cash flow provides investors with one of the clearest measures of the underlying cash generation strength of Excel's business, and it's a metric we intend to discuss more regularly going forward. I would offer one note of caution. Working capital can move this figure meaningfully from quarter to quarter, so we'd encourage you to evaluate over a longer window than annualizing any single quarter. We continue to expect full-year capital expenditure in the range of $60 to $70 million depending on the timing of year-end payments and Chicago license approvals and deployment timing compared to approximately $89 million in 2025. The majority of that spending is replacement capital deploying newer, better performing equipment into existing locations which carries an attractive return with a payback we generally expect to be between two and three years. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with approximately $255 million of cash and cash equivalents and total debt of approximately $573 million. resulting in net debt of approximately $318 million. Net leverage finished the quarter at approximately 1.4 of trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA, which remains among the lowest in our industry and reflects the conservative financial profile we've maintained. We also maintained significant financial flexibility through our $300 million revolving credit facility, which remained completely undrawn at quarter end. That liquidity gives us considerable flexibility to continue executing our capital allocation strategy. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 500,000 shares for $5.6 million, bringing first-half repurchases to 1.6 million shares for $18 million. Since initiating our repurchase program in late 2021, we repurchased approximately $201 million worth of our shares, and following the Board's replenishment of the program last year, we have approximately $146 million of capacity remaining. Our capital allocation philosophy remains discipline and returns focused. Every deployment of capital is evaluated against the same objective, maximizing long-term risk-adjusted returns for our shareholders. That means maintaining a strong balance sheet, investing organically where returns are compelling, pursuing disciplined acquisitions that meet our financial hurdles, and returning excess capital to shareholders when we believe our shares trade below intrinsic value. Looking ahead, our financial priorities remain unchanged. We will continue integrating recent acquisitions investing in the long-term opportunity at Fairmount Park, supporting growth across our developing markets, and maintaining the financial flexibility necessary to capitalize on additional opportunities as they arise. In closing, with another quarter of record financial performance, strong free cash flow generation, and one of the strongest balance sheets in our history, we believe Excel remains well-positioned to create long-term value for shareholders. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

The Q&A Roster Your first question comes from the line of Patrick Keogh with Truist Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. How's it going? Nice quarter, and congrats again on the leadership transition. Thank you for the good news on Chicago. You stated in your release that 44% of the approved licensees are at cell locations thus far. Small sample size, but a bit higher than your actual market share in the state. Are you finding that location operators are more inclined to partner with you, given any familiarity, or do you think you expect to be kind of closer to that 30-ish mark?

Thanks. Hey, Patrick. It's Mark, and congrats on your next endeavor. We're looking forward to seeing more in Chicago. But in terms of Chicago rollout of BGTs, I'd say that we probably will have Relatively close market share in the city as we do in the state. Relationships in Chicago will roll out over time, and I wouldn't expect a big difference between the two entities.

Okay, got it. Thanks so much, and yes, see you around. Looking forward to it. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of David Bain with Texas Capital Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you and congrats on the 2Q execution and likewise congrats to each of you really on the individual moves within the executive team. I guess I'll go with Chicago as well. You know, the go live within weeks, that was well ahead of our unmodeled expectations. We were thinking late 4Q. I mean, once Chicago is live. Do you believe the application and approval process accelerates from here, or could there be some final political hurdle before a ramp at a faster pace? Thank you, David. It's Andy.

I think that once the doors open or the gates open, you'll have a more normal flow of I think there's a lot of people kind of waiting to see what it looks like. I don't expect additional hurdles. It's getting started, and we're really close to that starting point. And whether it's weeks or a couple months, we don't know. But there isn't additional hurdles that we foresee at this point. This is the last hurdle.

That's fantastic. Okay, I guess I'll hop back in. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and thanks for the question. Illinois, it's the first time you've sequentially grown location cattle in about two years. You've talked extensively about pruning some of the The locations of the units across the state just to become a little bit more efficient. Is it kind of fair to assume we're maybe at the end of that pruning cycle or how should we kind of think about location count from here on out?

Hey, Jordan, it's Mark. As Andy said in his initial remarks, we really don't focus on the absolute growth of the location count. It's just the quality. I think you see that in the numbers in this quarter. Generally what we see is the locations that close independently based on their own performance, their general gaming performance is lower than the locations we bring on. So overall the margins are increasing per gaming machine and we continue to do that and we're optimistic that that trend will just improve over time. Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate a little bit more insight into the strategic rationale of owning the Rice Palace property outright and whether you view ownership of larger locations as a priority in markets where it's permitted.

Hey Max, it's Mark. So Rice Palace, it's a truck stop in Louisiana. The gaming business down there is centered around truck stops. They can host up to 60 game machines per location. It's just those machines, no table games. We think right now it's definitely in our best interest to own these types of properties, manage them according to our own wishes and plans. We're really excited about this acquisition. and we stated earlier we think there are other opportunities in that state to use our scale to improve our future earnings power.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Greg Gibbous with Northland Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great, Andy, Mark, Brett, congrats on the quarter. Congrats on the leadership transition here. Hey, just wanted to pull up on Chicago quickly as it relates to maybe, you know, where the estimates of the market, I guess, total market size is in terms of establishments, right? We've had the initial wave, I think it was 39, you said, licenses granted today, you know, maybe where that shakes out based on your estimates.

Yeah, I mean, what we've said in the past, and I don't think this right now, we don't have any other insight to change this, is that, you know, given the population of Chicago relative to the population of the state and kind of the trend right now in the state, it's probably worth about a billion dollars in total revenue. And then obviously the amount that the different TOs get is about a third of that. And then that gets divided up amongst all the players in the industry. So right now, we don't see that being any different in terms of the outlook that we have.

Yeah, and Greg, and the timeline on that is probably five plus years to fully deploy. So we definitely have some time to see that evolve. Got it. Very helpful.

Thanks, guys.

Your next question comes from the line of David Bain with Texas Capital Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. I'm just going to slip in two now if I could. But first, Illinois, statewide VGP growth has been above that GDP plus growth that we saw for a while. I guess 2Q25, it actually jumped to between 6% and 8% from a statewide basis. Now we've lapped that. I mean, so our trends that you're seeing so far in 3Q, are they more back in line with that GDP plus? Or are we sort of staying with that same sort of growth? Thank you for joining us. We've heard a couple of different things with regard to that potential expansion. And then maybe outside of that, a bigger picture, one would be the common denominator for the change in political will when it comes to expansion. I mean, is it just mostly budget shortfalls along with strong lobbying? What's the recipe for success? One of the things that we've been doing is calling some of the gray area markets and trying to understand their process there of becoming more regulated and just trying to understand where you've seen success and why you've seen success in those markets that have expanded.

Hey, David, it's Mark. In regards to the first question, it's well known that the Supreme Court decided that the skill gaming market there was illegal and they had 120 days to remove their games. We're still in that period. There's a lot of sort of dynamics in that state that could influence the ultimate outcome. We're optimistic that either skill games or VGTs, well, VGTs are already legal, so they get expanded, or skill games become legal. I can't really handicap any of the outcomes. It's, like I said, multi-factor outcome, so But we are optimistic that maybe there will be an expansion of regulated legal route gaming there. And then in terms of your second question, it's a great one. We always try to understand why it happens. I mean, Chicago is a good example of how difficult it is to predict these things. We would not have predicted that Chicago would have been the first real new market in many years. But it is, and there's many reasons and so on.

and your next question comes from the line of Max Marsh with CBRE. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking another here. With the Tito rollout now being complete, I'm curious where we stand with player adoption, how that looks, and if there are any insights into the effects there on demand and operating costs.

Thanks. Thanks, Max. Yeah, so I would say a couple things. One, it is fully complete in terms of, you know, customer feedback and that sort of thing you know anecdotally it's positively received obviously we don't like pull for that or anything but it's anecdotally well received in terms of the benefits to the business very clearly we have a benefit to cash it has been a reduction in total cash to the company in terms of what's out in the field versus what's available I'm not going to quote a number on that but you know that is something that we we've seen kind of fall off we want to make sure that that's consistent and trends forward but It has been very attractive for us. In terms of sales and revenue generation generally, it's really hard to kind of tease out what piece of incremental revenue we're getting from Tito. We do believe it lowers friction and other things. However, putting a number on that right now, it's something that not anyone to our knowledge is able to do. And as we're looking at it ourselves, we are seeing some potential for it to be influencing, but peeling it out from every other driver is not something we're able to do at this point.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Andy for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. And thank you for everyone who joined us today. This was another record quarter for Accel. But more importantly, it's another example of the progress we've made in building a stronger, higher quality business. We entered the second half of the year with momentum across our markets. one of the strongest balance sheets in our history and what we believe remains one of the most compelling growth opportunities in the industry with Chicago still ahead of us. As I previously mentioned, this is my final earnings call as Chief Executive Officer. Serving in this role for the last 17 years has been an incredible privilege and I'm immensely proud of the teams we've built and what we have accomplished together and I'm excited about what lies ahead for the company. I want to sincerely thank all of the people at Accel for their hard work and dedication, our location partners for the trust that they've placed in us, and our shareholders for their continued confidence and support. While my role is changing, my commitment to Accel is not. As I remain chairman of the board, I look forward to continuing to work alongside Mark, Stan, Brett, and Scott, as well as the entire leadership team. Thank you again for joining us today, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer.

This concludes today's call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.