Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Thank you for participating in the third quarter 2021 earnings conference call of Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the call, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Robin Yuan, Director of Investor Relations of Melco Resorts and Entertainment Limited. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Thank you all for joining us today for our third quarter 2021 earnings call. On the call are Lawrence Ho, Jeffrey Davis, Evan Winkler, and our property presidents in Macau, Manila, and Cyprus. Before we get started, please note that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of federal securities law. Our actual results could differ from our anticipated results. In addition, we may discuss non-GAAP measures. A definition and a reconciliation of each of these measures to the most comparable GAF financial measures are included in the earnings release. Finally, please note that our supplementary earnings slides are posted on our investor relations website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mr. Ho.

Thank you, Robin. Our results in the third quarter reflect the pandemic's continued impact and the subsequent restrictions on our travel restrictions on our operations. Despite the challenges this quarter, we managed to remain EBITDA positive in each of our geographies. Once again, we would like to thank the Macau and mainland Chinese government for their handling of the COVID-19 situation. Currently, Macau citywide vaccination rate has reached over 60%, which represents remarkable progress versus the 30% cited on our second quarter results call. With a high level of immunity as a key focus in Macau, we believe that continued progress towards higher vaccination levels is an important step towards border reopening and a faster pace of recovery. Both Melco and the government are actively encouraging our citizens and employees to get jabbed as soon as possible. Here at Melco, we have rolled out employee vaccination incentive programs to support the government's efforts to meet its community vaccination goals. Driven by our Get the Jab Incentive Program, we're proud to be approaching a 95% overall employee vaccination rate in Macau, inclusive of those fully vaccinated and with first shot only. As endorsed by the Macau government, unvaccinated employees in Macau are required to undergo weekly NAT tests starting in October to protect our colleagues, our guests, and the broader community. In our Macau operations, we remain EBITDA positive this quarter despite a sequential decline in industry-wide GGR levels from the prior quarter. Our cost control measures were a primary factor of our EBITDA performance. We remain optimistic that our core business in Macau will recover back to pre-pandemic level once travel restrictions are eased. In the Philippines, Our gaming and hospitality operations at City of Dreams Manila experienced periods of closure when the government imposed stricter quarantine measures upon the new COVID cases. Our gaming operations were closed to the general public for 42 days from August 6th to September 16th. We subsequently reopened City of Dreams Manila with limited capacity as the authorities incrementally ease quarantine measures. Turning to Cypress, our casinos were fully open during the third quarter, which drove strong visitation over the summer months. As a result, we quickly returned to positive EBITDA. We expect further relaxation of COVID-related restrictions that would permit us to operate at maximum capacity, which will provide further support to the business. We have discontinued our pursuit of an integrated resort and will close our offices there in the coming months. Meanwhile, Melco remains committed to its global PAPEX development program. In Macau, construction of Studio City Phase 2 remains on schedule. We've recently topped up both tower structures, reaching an important milestone for the project. We expect Phase 2 construction to complete no later than December 2022. In Europe, the construction progress of City of Dreams Mediterranean is on track for opening in the second half of 2022. Finally, I remain optimistic in Melco's medium and long-term growth prospects. The pent-up demand from our customers is there, and we will be ready to enthusiastically receive them once travel restrictions are relaxed. From a macabre regulatory and policy perspective, We firmly believe that we are helping to build Macau into an even bigger, better, and more diversified international tourism destination. With that, I turn the call over to Jeff to go over some of the numbers.