Something Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Eric Langan, CEO of RCI Hospitality Holdings, Inc., have in common is they are trying to build Twitter into their business plans. Musk wants to acquire the social media platform for $44 billion. Meanwhile, Langan is looking to give his upcoming earnings call a glow-up using Twitter Spaces.  

Langan says his company is breaking with tradition by using Twitter Spaces for its next earnings call taking place either May 9 or 10, he says. They believe they are the first to do so on the platform. (I reached out to Twitter for confirmation, but they declined to comment.)

Twitter Spaces is a way to reach potential investors, and maybe even catch the attention of Musk, Langan says. “If I post right now, my average posts will get 5,000 to 7,000 views,” he says. “I had four guys that just started following me two days ago who combined have 500,000 followers. So, if they retweet the [earnings] call, now, that’s another half a million potential impressions, right? If Elon Musk was to even mention it in a tweet, 81 million people could potentially see it.”

Courtesy of RCI Hospitality

Spaces is a way to have live audio conversations on Twitter’s platform. When someone you follow starts to speak in a Space, it pops up on your timeline. If you join a Space as a listener, you can take actions like requesting to speak, reacting with emojis, following the conversation with captions or tweeting about it.

A lively earnings call kind of fits the portfolio of RCI Hospitality (Nasdaq: RICK), which through its subsidiaries, operates gentleman’s clubs, nightclubs, and sports bars/restaurants in cities across the U.S. Ahead of next month’s earnings call, the company recently reported projected sales of its clubs and restaurants at $63.0 million and $124.2 million for the second quarter and first six months of FY 2022, respectively. In FY 2021, the company had total revenues of $195.3 million vs. $132.3 million in FY 2020. 

I asked Langan if he thought investors will be on board with the new format once it’s announced. “I’ve talked to a couple of people that are very close to me [inside of the company], and they seem to be very receptive to it. But we’ll have an 800 number as well. If they don’t know how to use Twitter and don’t have an account, they can still call in. They just won’t be able to ask questions.”

The Q&A portion will be open to all Twitter Spaces participants, not just analysts or investors, and will be facilitated by Litquidity Media, Inc., a digital media company. Mark Moran, head of business development and operations at Litquidity, will be the “operator” during the session. 

An earnings call on social media is unique. But since the onset of the pandemic, virtual meetings have accelerated. For example, Broadridge CFO Edmund Reese recently told me that on the company’s virtual shareholder meeting platform for the full year 2021, meetings held virtually increased to 2,377 up from 1,957 in 2020, and up from 326 in 2019. Most U.S. states have allowed for virtual shareholder meetings. “If regulation allows, I believe the large majority of meetings will be in a hybrid environment,” Reese said. 

Langan says going the route of Twitter Spaces will make the earnings call more inclusive of younger investors and retail investors who are often left out of the conversation. “I hope it’s a way to engage the 25- to 35-year-old crowd,” he says. “When we got the statistics on previous calls, it’s a bunch of older guys that are fund managers.” 

Twitter Spaces will also attract the Web3 crowd, he says. “I’m in the NFT world and Web3,” he says. “These guys are paying $400,000 for a jpeg of an ape, for the Bored Ape Yacht Club, right? What if one of those guys were to come in and just buy $10,000 worth of our stock? My son’s 26 years old, so I’m kind of watching how he and his friends invest. But I don’t care to be a meme stock, as much as I care to really engage with my shareholder base.” 

One thing’s for sure, Langan is an avid user of the platform himself. “I’ve been on Twitter Spaces for the last eight hours,” he told me. Sounds like he’ll be ready for showtime come May.

See you tomorrow.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Big deal

A new report by Qualtrics takes a look at the return to work. Although 67% of all remote and hybrid workers surveyed plan to return to the office this year, only 13% will go back five days a week, the report found. Qualtrics also gauged what's holding employees from returning to the office. There are generation differences. About 68% of Gen Z workers are nervous about restrictions like mask mandates ending compared to Millennials (64%), Gen X (54%) or Boomers (49%). Meanwhile, 20% of Millennials and Gen Z don’t want to return to the office at all, compared to 16% of Gen X and 12% of Boomers. The findings are based on a survey of 1,050 workers ages 18 and older who are employed full-time. 

Going deeper

With an uncertain economic climate, 98% of finance leaders anticipate operating costs to rise in the year ahead, according to Deloitte’s UK recently released CFO Survey Q1 2022. About 46% of CFOs said they expect these rises to be significant. More than half of CFOs (56%) said the Russia-Ukraine conflict had heightened the level of uncertainty facing their business is high or very high. In fact, with the exception of the pandemic during Q2 and Q3 2020, "the risk rating assigned to geopolitics is higher than any other factor since the question was first asked in 2014," according to the report.

Leaderboard

Rick Custodio was named CFO at Harver, a cloud-based hiring platform. Custodio brings to Harver over 25 years of experience in executive leadership across the technology, IT, and financial services industries. He joins Harver from Sectigo, where he was CFO. Prior to joining Sectigo, he held financial leadership roles at a provider of omnichannel customer experience solutions, Genesys, as well as global financial services firms Openlink Financial, ITG, and JP Morgan Chase. In his new role at Harver, Custodio will help the company build on its existing foundation in order to scale the organization to support its high-growth strategy.

Kevin Yea was named CFO of Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board), effective May 2. He succeeds Roger Myers, CPA, who will be retiring after more than 10 years of service. Yea joins CFP Board from Ashoka, a network of social entrepreneurs with more than 30 global offices, where he served as CFO and treasurer. Prior to Ashoka, Yea was an advisor and CFO at Keel Point, a SEC-registered investment advisory and financial planning firm. Before making the switch to wealth management, he worked in the assurance and advisory practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. He also co-founded Pencil Joy, an illustration company.

Overheard

"Companies are beginning to panic. The downstream impact is coming, and it’ll be heavy."

—John Bree, the chief risk officer at Supply Wisdom, on how China’s COVID-19 lockdowns will exacerbate global supply chain woes and add to inflation in the coming months, as reported by Fortune.