Q3 2024 Wynn Resorts Ltd Earnings Call
Speaker Change: Welcome to the win-readsort 3rd quarter 2020 for earnings call. I'll participate in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today's conference. To ask a question, press star 1 on your touch tone phone, record your name and I will introduce you. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question.
This call is being recorded if you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the line over to Julie Cameron Doe. Chief Financial Officer, please go ahead.
Speaker Change: Thank you operator and good afternoon everyone. On the call with me today, Craig Billings and Brian Goldbrunts in Las Vegas, also on the line, a Linda Chen, Frederick Louis Vuitton and Jenny Hildzay.
Speaker Change: I want to remind you that we may make forward looking statements under safe private federal security laws and those statements may or may not come true. I will now turn the call over to Craig Billings.
Craig Billings: Thanks, Julie. And good afternoon everyone. That was always. Thank you for joining us today.
Craig Billings: The battle months ago that we had the opportunity to host many of the folks on this call and hear it when Las Vegas to take you through our business in general and wait on Mars on Island in particular.
He was great to see you all and I hope that our confidence in our current business and in our development pipeline came through.
Our leadership position in the world's most attractive gaming markets, our targeted investments in our existing properties, and our development in the UAE all give us great conviction about the future of wind resorts.
To that end, we announce that the board has increased our share repurchase authorization to 1 billion dollars, highlighting our continued commitment to prudently return capital to shareholders.
Craig Billings: returning to the quarter and starting in Las Vegas.
Craig Billings: Demand remained healthy here, and on a normalized basis, revenue was up about 1%, and EBITDA was essentially flat year-over-year on very tough comps.
Craig Billings: Despite those very tough year-over-year comps, we grew hotel revenue by 5%, slot handle by 4%, and continue to see healthy table drop in the casino.
Craig Billings: More recently, demand has remained healthy in the fourth quarter with strong growth in slot handle, stable drop, and solid non-gaming demand.
Craig Billings: Now, Las Vegas year-over-year comps are increasingly challenging, and I have said many times on these calls, trees don't grow to the sky.
Craig Billings: But demand from the high-end consumer remains stable, and with $950 million of trailing 12-month EBITDA on around $5 billion of capital in the ground between Wynn and Encore, we're extremely pleased with the performance of our business here.
Craig Billings: Looking ahead, our luxury positioning and unique programming continue to appeal to the market's most affluent and therefore most resilient customers, positioning us well to continue our leadership on the Strip as we move into 2025.
Craig Billings: Turning to Boston, Encore generated $63 million of EBITDAR, up 4% year-on-year during the quarter. Demand was strong across the business with slot handle up 3%, table drop up 1%, and non-gaming revenue up 2%.
Craig Billings: More recently, demand has remained healthy through October, led by strong year-on-year growth in slot handle and stable non-gaming revenue against another tough comp.
Craig Billings: Turning to Macau, we generated $263 million of EBITDA during the third quarter, up 3% year-on-year.
Craig Billings: Demand remained healthy, with operating revenue growing 6%, led by 10% year-on-year growth in combined mass table and slot width.
Craig Billings: While the competitive environment in Macau is clearly intense,
Craig Billings: We continue to focus on maximizing EBITDA rather than purely market share.
Craig Billings: To that end, we have several initiatives in place that focus on our natural product and service leadership that we expect will support and drive market share in 2025 and beyond.
Craig Billings: First, we continue to elevate our food and beverage programming with innovative new concepts, including four recently renovated and reimagined venues at Wynn Palace, the recently opened Drunken Fish at Wynn Macau, and the mid-2025 opening of our Destination Food Hall at Wynn Palace.
Craig Billings: At the Casino, we are currently revitalizing and expanding the Chairman's Club, our most exclusive gaming area at Wynn-McCow, and in the design phase for a similar expansion and renovation of the Chairman's Club at Wynn Palace.
Craig Billings: We are supporting these CapEx efforts with continued improvements to our recently enhanced Loyalty Program and our Only It Win events and experiences across culinary, music, entertainment, and sports.
Craig Billings: Longer term, our concession-related CapEx, including an events center and a production show, will support visitation and ultimately drive share gains in a market where unique experiences are increasingly appealing to guests.
Craig Billings: We've seen the current competitive dynamic in Macau before, and we are confident that continued investment in our market-leading assets and five-star service position as well to effectively compete profitably over time.
Craig Billings: More recently, October was characterized by a healthy mass table drop, strong direct VIP turnover, and 99% hotel occupancy.
Craig Billings: We saw particular strength during the Golden Week holiday period where mass table drop increased almost 30% compared to last year's Golden Week.
Craig Billings: Our long term outlook in Macau remains decidedly bullish.
Craig Billings: On the development front in Macau, we continue to advance design work on our event center and production show for Wind Palace.
Craig Billings: In fact, I was in Shanghai two weeks ago reviewing initial rehearsals for our production show, and I was very pleased with the early work on the production.
Craig Billings: Starting to win Al Marjan Island in the UAE, we were honored to receive the first land-based gaming license issued by the GCGRA back in early October, and as I mentioned, we were delighted to share more details about the development at our Analyst and Investor Update meeting here in Las Vegas a few weeks ago.
Craig Billings: Construction is rapidly progressing on the project with work now reaching the 24th floor of the hotel tower and over 3.6 million square feet of concrete and steel now in place.
Craig Billings: As we discussed in our update several weeks ago, we believe the UAE will be a 3 to 5 billion dollar gaming market, and certainly the most exciting new market for our industry in decades.
Craig Billings: I remain incredibly bullish about the future of our company.
Craig Billings: We have the best assets in the world's premier gaming markets and our team is the most dedicated team in the business.
Craig Billings: We are investing for long-term growth with an exciting high ROI development in the UAE well underway, which is unique in our industry.
Craig Billings: Outside of UAE we are exploring potential greenfield opportunities in attractive gateway cities and we have strategic land banks in each of our markets that provide additional development opportunities over time.
Craig Billings: Meanwhile, our leverage profile continues to improve as free cash flow grows, allowing us to increase the return of capital to shareholders through the recurring dividend and opportunistic share repurchases.
Craig Billings: Our best days lie ahead.
Speaker Change: With that, I will now turn it over to Julie to run through some additional details on the
Craig Billings: reporting.
Julie: Thank you, Craig. At Wynn Las Vegas, we generated $202.7 million in adjusted property EBITDA on $607.2 million of operating revenue during the quarter, delivering an EBITDA margin of 33.4%.
Julie: As Craig noted, on a normalised basis, EBITDA was essentially flat year-on-year, with lower-than-normal table gains holds negatively impacting EBITDA by around $2 million in Q3-24, and higher-than-normal holds positively impacting EBITDA to the tune of $12 million in the prior year quarter.
Craig Billings: OPEC's excluding gaming tax per day was $4.2 million in Q3-24, up 2% compared to $4.1 million in the prior year period. The Las Vegas team continues to exercise strong cost management without impacting the guest experience.
Craig Billings: Turning to Boston, we generated adjusted property EBITDA of $63 million, up 4% year-on-year, on revenue of $214.1 million, with an EBITDA margin of 29.4%.
Craig Billings: We've stayed very disciplined on the cost side, with OPEX per day of $1.14 million, up less than 1% year on year, and down slightly sequentially. The Boston team has also done a great job mitigating union-related payroll increases with cost deficiencies in areas of the business that do not impact the guest experience.
Craig Billings: Our Macau operations delivered adjusted property EBITDA of $262.9 million in the quarter on $871.7 million of operating revenue, with table gains hold in the normal range during the quarter.
Craig Billings: EBITDA margin was 30.2% in the quarter, an increase of 210 basis points relative to Q3 2019.
Craig Billings: OPEC's excluding gaming tax was approximately $2.55 million per day in Q3, up 7% year-on-year, primarily reflecting higher payroll and higher variable costs on increased business volume, but flat on a sequential basis.
Craig Billings: The team have done a great job staying disciplined on costs and we remain well positioned to drive strong operating leverage as the market continues to grow over time.
Craig Billings: In terms of CapEx in Macau, we're currently advancing through the design and planning stages on several of our concession commitments.
Craig Billings: And as we noted in the past few quarters, these projects require a number of government approvals, creating a wide range of potential CapEx outcomes in the near term. As such, we now expect CapEx related to our concession commitments to range between $350 million and $1.5 billion.
Craig Billings: to $425 million in total between 2024 and the end of 2025.
Craig Billings: Moving on to the balance sheet, our liquidity position remains very strong, with global cash and revolver availability of $3.5 billion as of September 30th. This was comprised of $1.7 billion of total cash and available liquidity in Macau and $1.8 billion in the US.
Craig Billings: The past few months have been active from a balance sheet perspective as we continue to extend our debt maturity profile and improve our leverage position. In fact, pro forma for a few transactions completed in early October, we've reduced growth debt by $1.2 billion year-on-year, resulting in approximately $70 million of annualised interest expense savings.
Craig Billings: The combination of strong performance in each of our markets globally, with our properties generating nearly $2.4 billion of trailing 12-month property EBITDA, together with our robust cash position, creates a very healthy consolidated net leverage ratio of just over four times.
Craig Billings: Our strong free cash flow and liquidity profile allows us to reduce leverage while returning capital to shareholders.
Craig Billings: To that end, the Win Resorts Board approved a cash dividend of 25 cents per share, payable on November 27, 2024, to stockholders of record as of November 15, 2024.
Craig Billings: We also opportunistically repurchased just under 1.5 million shares for $118 million during the quarter. And as Craig noted, the Board recently approved an increase of our share repurchase authorisation to $1 billion, highlighting our continued commitment to prudently returning capital to shareholders.
Craig Billings: Finally, our CapEx in the quarter was $101 million primarily related to the villa renovations and food and beverage enhancements at Wynn Las Vegas, concession related CapEx in Macau and normal course maintenance across the business.
Craig Billings: Additionally, we contributed $18.2 million of equity to the Wynn-Almarjan Island project during the quarter, bringing our total equity contribution to date to $532.6 million.
Craig Billings: We estimate our remaining 40% pro rata share of the required equity is approximately $800 to $875 million, fully loaded for capitalised interest fees and certain improvements on the island.
Craig Billings: Importantly we've also made meaningful progress on the debt financing for the project with significant interest from a diverse group of banks both locally in the region as well as internationally. We expect the financing will be completed later this year and we will update you in due course.
Craig Billings: With that, we will now open up the call to Q&A.
Speaker Change: and one follow-up question. To withdraw your question, press star 2. Our first question comes from the line
Speaker Change: of Carlow.
Speaker Change: Santorelli from Deutsche Bank, please go ahead.
Carlow Santorelli: Hey Craig, Julie, everyone. Craig, maybe if you could start just kind of outlining as you look out to 2025 across the regions.
Carlow Santorelli: Some of the required revenue, perhaps, to maintain margins. What are some of the cost increases that you guys are kind of forecasting for next year?
Craig Billings: Beep
Craig Billings: within your control at this point.
Craig Billings: Sure, Carlo. You chopped up for a second there, but I got the gist of your question.
Speaker Change: So, I guess first with the overriding statement that, as we've said many, many, many times before.
Speaker Change: We don't manage to a margin. We aggressively manage revenues and we aggressively manage costs, always taking the brands into account. I think if you look across.
Speaker Change: If you look across the two primary markets, or today's markets, Vegas and Macau, in Vegas, the high-end consumer, our consumer, continues to hold up. We are facing incredibly tough comps, which we've been pointing out quarter after quarter on these calls.
Speaker Change: We've lapped the largest of the the union payroll increases
Speaker Change: were in pretty good stead. I mean, jeez, our retail lease revenue, which is heavily tied to, you know, luxury retail, was up three and a half percent year over year in Q3. So we continue to see a strong consumer here.
Speaker Change: which gives us...
Speaker Change: comfort in in revenues but you know not comps because again the comps are getting tougher and tougher so and that is what it is
Speaker Change: But we feel good about it here. In Macau, Q3 was a little bit unique from a margin, since you were focused on margin, from a margin perspective.
Speaker Change: Our market share was stable sequentially, but GGR was down because the market GGR was down quarter over quarter, I'm talking about now.
Speaker Change: Second, we had higher VIP commissions in the quarter because VIP turnover was up even though VIP GGR was flat.
Speaker Change: Third, retail revenue declined by about $3 million, and then we had an extra day in the quarter, so we had an extra day of OPEX.
Speaker Change: So it was a little bit unique in Macau, but in Macau...
Speaker Change: And we kept UPEX in line, by the way, on a per day basis.
Speaker Change: So in Macau again, I think it really comes down to the competitive nature of the market there And market share versus EBITDA as we set up into into 2025, but again, it looks it looks pretty good. We feel good
Speaker Change: Great thank you and then if I could just just one follow-up is you guys you know obviously Craig you've talked a lot and for several quarters about you know some of the comp challenges in Las Vegas
Speaker Change: To the extent that you can kind of frame the headwind You guys will kind of be looking at as well as the rest of the market in the first quarter from the Super Bowl last year If you'd be able to put any parameters around that
Speaker Change: No, we haven't we haven't talked about the incremental EBITDA that we experienced with Super Bowl Super Bowl last year and certainly That that will be a headwind from a comp perspective, but we haven't put out any numbers Q4 and F1 is actually shaping up quite nicely
Speaker Change: for us. You can look at our room rates, our posted published room rates relative to our competitors and you can see that we're pricing at
Speaker Change: a very significant premium to the rest of the strip and as I think we said on the last call, although it's a later booking window than last year's F1, we thought we would be in pretty good stead and that's certainly how it's shaped up.
Speaker Change: Great. Thank you very much.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next we'll go to the line of Joe Greff from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Joe Greff: Good afternoon, everybody. Craig, just starting on Macau, you mentioned or you touched upon the competitive environment in Macau and what you're doing.
Joe Greff: programming, does it feel, if we look at where the market is today relative to the beginning of the summer, that at least competitive pressures
Speaker Change: vis-a-vis, you know, reinvestment market-wide in the business is a little bit better than where it was.
Craig Billings: today versus at the beginning of the summer? Yeah, stable to slightly better is, I guess, how I would characterize it.
Speaker Change: But it's still, it's very competitive.
Speaker Change: Understood. And then just as a follow-up to that, October obviously was great at the beginning of the month with Golden Week and the subsequent week after.
Speaker Change: The rest of since then, does it feel like a normal period or does it feel like we're starting to see a little bit improvement in terms of visitation or spend relative to what we saw earlier in the year?
Speaker Change: and in-court review other than our prepared remarks and so I guess I would stand by what I said in my prepared remarks. Golden Week was great and you've seen the rest of the, you've seen the market wide October numbers in total. We feel fine with where we are in Macau.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Next, we'll go to the line of John Decree from CBRE. Please go ahead.
John Decree: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Craig, I wanted to ask maybe specifically about when Macau, where the gaming business there has done quite well, particularly this quarter, I think.
John Decree: Mass market table drop was up 10% and so you know a lot of discussion happens around coat I'd but but curious as visitation recovers to Macau you know if you could give us any insight or colors to what you're seeing on the peninsula net at wind Macau
Craig Billings: Sure, I mean it's really a testament to our team. If you rewind...
Speaker Change: A year or so ago, the team had identified a number of areas where we could improve the physical experience, the food and beverage experience.
Speaker Change: Really, again, kind of like I mentioned in my prepared remarks, focus on the things that we are really, really good at, that we know drive market share. They identify those, and we've executed those over the course of the past year.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: benefit.
Speaker Change: Lin-Macau
Speaker Change: over the course of the past year.
Speaker Change: Thanks, Craig. That's helpful. And maybe a follow-up on Las Vegas at Table Drop. I think you've mentioned in your prepared remarks that you're still seeing really healthy trends from the high-end customer, but I think Table Drop is down a little. One of your peers talked about some big players that maybe didn't show up.
Speaker Change: this quarter, and then you mentioned, I think, quarter to date and Vegas Table Drop is up. So, I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more color on kind of what you're seeing in the high-end table play, if there's kind of been any shift in customer trends from queue on queue or anything like that.
Speaker Change: Shifts of, significant shifts of note, I guess, let's put it in historical perspective. If you rewound the clock...
Speaker Change: Six, seven, eight years ago in Las Vegas, you had a business that was subject to a lot of volatility from very, very high-end table play.
Speaker Change: And we've done a lot of very deliberate things over the course of the past X number of years, the past several years.
Speaker Change: to really grow and diversify our casino business. We've stolen a lot of casino market share and we've dampened the exposure to extreme high-end volatility.
Speaker Change: And I think it shows in the numbers. But as it relates to any given quarter, sure, you could have one or two people that could impact table drop overall. But that's the beauty of the Las Vegas model, right? It's about diversification. So hotel revenue up, slot handle up.
Speaker Change: table drop, you know, steady to down a couple points. It's just, it's not a broader trend, it's just part and parcel with running the business.
Speaker Change: Sounds good. Thanks, Frank. Really appreciate it.
Speaker Change: Page 10 of 10
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next we'll go to the line of Robin Farley from UBS. Please go ahead.
Robin Farley: Oh great, thanks. I guess it's kind of a follow-up question on when you look at the gaining revenue decline in Vegas, was that just more your international VIP play or was there also some domestic, you know, sort of difficult comps making domestic
Robin Farley: gaming revenue down as well.
Speaker Change: Hi Robin, I'm happy to take that. Look, I think when you look at the at the concert you really have to take account of hold.
Speaker Change: So when you normalize the hold year over year, that makes a big difference to that calculation. So in terms of that implied increase in, you know, if you think about contrary revenues of such a GGR.
Speaker Change: So first up, normalize for hold. And then bear in mind that our ADRs have increased about 7% year over year, so that meaningfully increases the gap cost of the hotel rooms that go through that line.
Speaker Change: So, you know, when you take those two things into account, you know, because we do that analysis all the time, you can really see that there's no trend there, it's just a function of hold and higher ADR. Yeah, I would just look at drop and handle.
Speaker Change: Robin, I mean, drop, year over year, drop down 4.4, slot handle up 3.5.
Speaker Change: So, the 4.4 is kind of what I was talking about with the last question that I answered. That can be a couple people, but it's not really indicative of a broader trend.
Speaker Change: 3.5 and slots is great. So we feel great about where the gaming business is here.
Speaker Change: Again, that high-end consumer continues to hold.
Speaker Change: Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker Change: Okay, thanks. This is a follow-up. You talked last quarter about your group business increasing. I was wondering if you could sort of give us an outlook for group bookings for Q4 and for next year. And yeah, just any comments on that, I guess.
Speaker Change: Sure, happy to. Brian, you want to take that? Sure.
Brian Goldbrunts: Hey Robin, the outlook for group business remains quite healthy for the remainder of the year and then we're pacing towards, as we've said before, a record year in room nights for this year at fairly strong ADRs.
Brian Goldbrunts: That's allowed us to build a really solid base.
Brian Goldbrunts: for our team to yield manage the rest of the rooms and segments.
Brian Goldbrunts: And in terms of 25 as we look forward, we get to a point where as you book more and more group rooms.
Brian Goldbrunts: you can really start to crowd out the other valuable business. So particularly in a year where we'll have around 50,000 room nights out of service next year for our Encore Tower room renovation.
Brian Goldbrunts: So, overall, we expect 25 to look a lot like 24 in terms of group room nights, but we'll push on rate as our team knows how to do, so pacing quite well and pacing like we were this year. Looking, 25 looking like 24 by intention. Correct.
Speaker Change: Okay, great. Thank you
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next we'll go to the line of Dan Politzer from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Dan Politzer: Hey, good afternoon, everyone. You increased your share repurchase authorization this quarter pretty markedly. Can you talk about how you think about capital allocation, you know, if you're going to deploy that opportunistically or programmatic or and, you know, along those lines how you think about your CapEx needs both domestically as well as in Macau. Thanks.
Speaker Change: Sure, I'll cover capital allocation theory, and then Julie will cover ethics. Opportunistically tends to be the name of the game for us. We're not programmatic buyers of stock, and we tend to buy back when we feel like buying.
Speaker Change: The stock is particularly cheap, so you saw we purchased $118 million during the quarter. We continue to believe the stock looks attractive at current levels, and that's why we...
Speaker Change: raise the authorization. We're always balancing.
Speaker Change: and I'm going to be talking about liquidity needs between capital deployment for growth, like UAE, debt management, we've been delaboring over the course of the past couple of years and then of course returning capital. Julie, do you want to cover major cap ex?
Julie: Sure, and yeah, there's not a lot more to add versus what we said in our prepared remarks really because you know We're now covering off on Marjan, so I think we've given really clear numbers on Marjan. From a Vegas perspective Obviously we continue to invest here, you know on maintenance and targeted high return projects So on the project side as I mentioned We're renovating the remaining villas now that we've completed the renovation of the spa villas And we're continuing to enhance the food and beverage program with new offerings So we have zero bond, and we have a restaurant refresh with Ciola Mare, which will be replacing Lakeside
Julie: We're also planning to renovate the Encore Tower hotel rooms during 25 So we expect total project capex for the remainder of 24 through 25 in Vegas to be in the neighbourhood of $300 million
Julie: and outside of that, MedVegas normal course maintenance capex of $75 million to $85 million.
Speaker Change: Macau I think I covered in the prepared remarks you know we've taken that range down a little bit now we're getting closer you know we're getting more certainty around numbers and also we're closer to you know that period as well so that range is tightened a little bit on the concession commitments and then the maintenance Catholics in Macau continues to be you know normally we look at times you know that's about 75
Julie: for what's going on there.
Speaker Change: Just turning to Macau, Wind Palace, I think the mass gaming volumes or revenues there
Speaker Change: We're down to touch. Anything that's changed or evolved in terms of the environment on the ground as it relates to that property?
Speaker Change: No, I don't think so.
Julie: to apply to Wynn Palace. No, not really.
Julie: Thanks so much.
Julie: Thank you. Next, we'll go to the line of Stephen Grambling from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Stephen Grambling: Hey, thanks. Just a couple of follow-ups on Macau as well. First, I think the REB PAR for the hotels were down in both segments.
Julie: I'm curious if there's anything to call out there, and then what are the expectations going forward on the hotel side? And I believe you also started to roll out smart tables early in the quarter. Is there any feedback on smart tables and the potential impact from those as we look into next year?
Speaker Change: Sure, not much of a read-through on RevPAR because as you know it's essentially a hundred percent, close to a hundred percent comp.
Speaker Change: occupancy. And we've been running very, very high occupancy levels, so not much of a read through there. On the smart table side, you're right, we are in the midst of, we are in the midst of rolling out smart tables.
Julie: We've got about a quarter of our tables covered, and we expect to have full rollout by Chinese New Year 2025. There's clearly benefits with respect to game security, prevention of human error, which we've talked about before, and then there's a bunch of benefits on the marketing side.
Speaker Change: primarily due to an abundance of very precise bet-by-bet data. We have a super clear view of how we intend to utilize that data and bring some innovative marketing.
Speaker Change: forward to our customers. We're not obviously not going to talk about that.
Speaker Change: at this point, but we're on our way.
Speaker Change: So just to clarify I guess when is that that complete rollout is is set now or you need to collect some data for a period of time?
Speaker Change: Ah, got it.
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Next we'll go to the line of David Katz from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
David Katz: Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. I'm not sure that there's been, you know, you've given, expressed some confidence about Macau, but, you know, is there any specific evidence or, you know, any impact from the stimulus so far that, you know, is discussable in this context?
Speaker Change: and or what drives the confidence. Thanks.
Speaker Change: October Golden Week was encouraging as I talked about in my prepared remarks.
Speaker Change: The, you know, we ran 99, we're running 99% occupancy.
Speaker Change: But
Speaker Change: in the past, and I would encourage you to look.
Speaker Change: pretty substantial positive impact on both resusitation and JGR, but I think it's a bit early.
Speaker Change: If anything is cascading through.
McAllister: McAllister. Got it. And if I can ask just one follow-up detail, along with the buyback,
Speaker Change: Did you indicate, you know, whether the quarter-ending share count is the same or whether you had acquired any, you know, quarter-to-date sort of post the end of the quarter?
Speaker Change: did not comment on the month of October or the first few days of November.
Speaker Change: Okay, okay. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thanks, David. Operator, we'll take one more call.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And our final question comes from the line of Brant Montour from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Brant Montour: Good evening everybody and afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I think Macau CapEx guidance
Brant Montour: went down from the prior range, and I guess it was just more of a wider guess of it before, but it's unusual we see CapEx expectations moving in that direction. Can you just comment on sort of what changed, if you can, from a competitive standpoint?
Speaker Change: Sure, and actually nothing's really changed from in terms of the
Speaker Change: from a competitive standpoint.
Speaker Change: Really, this is more about timing. We've made very certain commitments under our concession to the full CapEx, and this is really about the timing of getting it done. And as I've mentioned, I'm using the same words every quarter about we're dependent on a number of approvals for land use in particular, and we don't have control over those, so that drives quite a wide range of outcomes in terms of CapEx.
Speaker Change: And we've been saying that for a while and talking about how much we'll spend through the remainder of 24 and 25. And, you know, as we're getting closer to the end of that period, we've just tightened up that range. So nothing more to see than that. It just seemed unlikely that we were going to be able to get everything done in that time by the end of 25, given where we're at currently.
Speaker Change: Okay, thanks for that and then just a quick
Speaker Change: unrelated follow-up on the New York licensure process. If you have any thoughts on that and specifically with regards to one of your competitors making a comment about having some hesitation around iGaming legislation and if that has something that you guys weigh as well when you think about that opportunity.
Speaker Change: Yeah, we sure do. I'd heard about, I heard about the comments that you referenced and in fact I posted about this subject on LinkedIn back in...
Speaker Change: March, I believe it was.
Speaker Change: First, look, I understand the desire for states to generate taxes quickly from online gaming. There's very serious implications.
Speaker Change: honestly primarily on the folks who the everyday folks who work in land-based
Speaker Change: land-based gaming and resorts, resulting from any revenue declines due to cannibalization from online gaming.
Speaker Change: I mean a 15% revenue decline is half your margin.
Speaker Change: So you're not going to employ nearly as many people to the extent that you are, you know, you're being affected by online gaming.
Speaker Change: Second, there's the potential for longer-term regulatory blowback, and I think that's real. You know, as we've seen in markets around the world, look at Australia. I worked in the gaming market in Australia for
Speaker Change: a number of years, and when gaming proliferates to a certain point, there's societal and regulatory blowback. So yeah, I think it's an issue. And then, you know, later on top of that, the fact that you're talking about deploying billions of dollars of capital and employing thousands of people, yeah, it has to be something that you...
Speaker Change: So, long answer, but yeah, we're watching it.
Speaker Change: Okay, thanks for your thoughts.
Speaker Change: Well, thank you, Brent, and thank you, everybody. With that, we'll now close the call. We appreciate your interest in Wynn Resorts, and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter.
Speaker Change: Thank you for calling Wynn Las Vegas. The number you have dialed is not currently in service.