Red Rock Resorts, Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Red Rock Resorts' third quarter 2024 conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephen Coote, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer of Red Rock Resorts. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today on Red Rock Resorts' third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, Scott Krieger, and our executive management team. I would like to remind everyone that our call today will include forward-looking statements under the safe harbor provisions of the United States federal securities laws. Developments and results may differ from those projected. During this call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures. For definitions and complete reconciliation of these figures to GAAP, please refer to the financial tables in our earnings press release, Form 8K and investor deck, which were filed this afternoon prior to the call. Also, please note that this call is being recorded. Let us start off by stating that the third quarter represented another strong quarter for the company by any measure. In terms of net revenue and adjusted EBITDA, our Las Vegas operations had their best third quarter in our history, while operating at near record adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter. In addition to showing strong financial results in the quarter, we continue to be pleased with the financial performance of our Durango Casino Resort. Durango continues to grow the Las Vegas locals market as the team continues to execute and improve the property's operational performance, while at the same time driving incremental play from our existing customers and attracting new customers to our brand. With three full quarters under our belt, the property increased visitation and net theoretical win in the surrounding Durango area by approximately 91% and 92% respectively, while signing up over 70,000 new customers to our database. Durango continues to ramp up and remains on track to become one of our highest margin properties, as well as generate a return of approximately 15% net of cannibalization through its first year of operation. Cannibalization remains in line with our expectations, and its impact is primarily felt at our RedRock property. Consistent with our past performance history, We expect to backfill this revenue over the next couple years, given the strong long-term demographic growth profile of Las Vegas Valley, and in particular within the Summerlin area, which between downtown Summerlin and the Summerlin West communities, we expect to have approximately 34,000 new households upon final build-out. As stated on our last earnings call, we are planning to move forward with the expansion of our Durango property later this year. Our current plans for the next phase of Durango include will add over 25,000 square feet of additional casino space, including a new high-limit slot and bar area. In total, the expansion will add 230 slot machines to the Durango Casino floor, including 120 slot machines dedicated to our new high-limit room. In addition to the expanded casino space, we will be adding an additional covered parking garage with almost 2,000 parking spots, significantly improving customer access to the property while providing us flexibility for future expansions at Durango. The current budget for the project is approximately $116 million, and the expansion is expected to take around 12 months to complete. We are expecting some disruption to the south side of the property during the construction period. Regarding the rest of the portfolio, we remain operationally disciplined within the quarter and continue to execute on our core strategy of reinvesting in our existing properties to deliver fresh and relevant amenities to our guests, all while remaining focused on best-in-class customer service. As we return to a more traditional seasonal pattern, the company continues to manage our expenses, generate record financial performance, maintain near record margins, reinvest in our properties, and return capital to our shareholders within the quarter. Now let us take a closer look at our third quarter. With respect to our Las Vegas operations, our third quarter net revenues was $464.7 million, up 13.9% from the prior year's third quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA was $202.7 0.6 million, up 5.8% from the prior year's third quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 43.6%, a decrease of 333 basis points from the prior year's third quarter. On a consolidated basis, our third quarter net revenue was 468 million, up 13.7% from the prior year's third quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA was 182.7 million, up 4.3% from the prior year's third quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 39% for the quarter, a decrease of 353 basis points from the prior year's third quarter. In the quarter, we generated operating free cash flow of $46.4 million, or $0.44 per share. This brings our year-to-date cumulative free cash flow to $292.6 million, or $2.70 per share. This significant level of year-to-date free cash flow was either reinvested in our long-term growth strategy, reinvested into our existing properties, or returned to our stakeholders via debt paydown, share repurchases, and dividends. As we finish the third quarter, we remain focused on our core local guests as we continue to grow our regional and national segments across our portfolio. When comparing our results to last year's third quarter, we continue to see strong visitation and carded slot play across the majority of our database, including our regional and national segments. This strength, coupled with the strong spend per visit across the majority of our database, allowed us to enjoy near record revenue and profitability across our gaming segments in the quarter. Turning to non-gaming segments, both our hotel and food and beverage continue to grow year over year and deliver record revenue and profitability in the third quarter. Our hotel division experienced its highest third quarter revenue and profit in our history, driven by the team's success and continued to drive higher ADR while maintaining occupancy across our hotel portfolio. Not to be outdone, our food and beverage division also experiences highest ever third quarter revenue and near record profit, driven by higher average check and cover accounts across our food and beverage outlets. With regard to our group sales and catering business, as mentioned on our last earnings call, we face a tough third quarter comparable and expect to face tough comparables for the remainder of the year. As we look forward to the fourth quarter, other than playing unlucky in sports in October, and the previously discussed softness in our group sales and catering business lines, we are seeing strength and stability in our core slot and tables business, in the locals market, and across our Carta database as we remain confident in our business prospects moving forward. Now let's cover a few balance sheet and capital items. The company's cash and cash equivalents at the end of the third quarter was $117.5 million, and the total principal amount of spending was $3.48 billion, resulting in net debt of $3.35 billion. As of the end of the third quarter, the company's net debt to EBITDA ratio remained flat at 4.2 times. Also during the third quarter, we made distributions of approximately $72.8 million to the LLC unit holders of Station Holco, which included a distribution of approximately $42.4 million to Red Rock Resorts. The company used the distribution to make its required tax payment and pay its previously declared dividend of $0.25 per Class A common share. Capital spend in the third quarter was 80.4 million, which includes approximately 47.4 million in investment capital, inclusive of Durango project retainage, as well as 32.9 million in maintenance capital. For the full year 2024, not including the spend to close out our Durango project, we now expect capital spend to be between $185 and $195 million spread between maintenance and investment capital. We also remain committed to strategically investing and offering new amenities to our guests, in order to drive incremental visitation and spend to our properties. Last month, we successfully opened a yard house restaurant at Sunset Station. While we are in early days, we are pleased with the guest response and the early results from this new amenity. We expect to continue to invest in our existing properties throughout 2024, including adding local favorite China Mama at our Palace Station property later this year. In addition to these amenities, we expect to make investments in both our Sunset Station and Green Valley Ranch properties in 2025. At our Sunset Station property, we are building off the success we are seeing with our recently renovated race and sports book and partial casino remodel by continuing to refresh the podium in order to better position the property to capture the continued growth in Henderson, including the master plan communities of the Sky and Cadence, which are expected to add over 12,500 new households upon final completion of both communities. As part of this project, we'll be adding in an all-new country western bar, a new Mexican restaurant, and all new center bar along with completely renovated casino space. Workers already commenced on this project and the total cost of the renovation is expected to be approximately $53 million. At our Green Valley Ranch property, we're expecting to start a complete refresh of our room product, aligning the hotel with our most recent renovations made to our well-received high limit table and slot rooms of the property. Work is expected to start in June of 2025 and will continue through November of 2025. The cost of the room renovation is expected to be approximately $150 million. Like our other recently introduced amenities, we expect these to be solid investments and are looking forward to moving beyond the disruption challenges of these properties as we introduce these new amenities to our customers next year. Turning now to North Fork, we are extremely excited about this project, which is situated on a 305-acre site located north of Fresno, California. With great ingress-egress off the heavily traveled Highway 99, the project is one of the most convenient and accessible locations in Central California, with over 5.8 million people located within two hours of the development site. When complete, this best-in-class resort will include approximately 100,000 square feet of casino space with over 2,400 slot machines, including 2,000 Class III games, 42 table games, and two food and beverage outlets and a food court with many exciting options. We have started site work and construction as we continue to finalize design. The total construction time for the project is currently anticipated between 18 and 20 months, putting the opening of the resort into 2026. The current cost of the project is expected to be approximately $785 million, which includes all design costs, construction hard and soft costs, pre-opening expenses, and any financing and development fees associated with the project. We are excited to be making progress and will continue to provide further updates on our quarterly earnings calls. Lastly, the company's board of directors have declared a cash dividend of 25 cents per Class A common share payable on December 31st to Class A shareholders of record as of December 16th. When we combine our share repurchases with our special and regular dividends, we have returned approximately $194.8 million to our shareholders in 2024. The company continues to have a strong year, and Durango continues to validate our long-term growth strategy and demonstrate the power of our own development pipeline and real estate bank, which consists of over 450 acres of developable land positioned in highly favorable areas across the Las Vegas Valley. This pipeline, coupled with our current best-in-class assets and locations, gives us an unparalleled growth story that will allow us to double the size of our portfolio and capitalize on the very favorable long-term demographic trends and the high barriers to entry that characterize the Las Vegas Locals Market. We'd like to recognize and extend our thanks to our team members for their hard work. Our success starts with them, and they continue to be the primary reason why our guests return time after time. We thank them again for voting as top casino employer in the Las Vegas Valley for the fourth consecutive year, as well as being certified by Great Place to Work for a third year in a row. Finally, we thank our guests for their loyal support each of the last six decades. Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks, and we are now ready to take questions.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. To remove yourself from the queue, please press star then 2. Today's first question comes from Joe Groth at J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, guys. Looking back at the performance in the 3Q, is there anything that you would call out as, sort of one-time or kind of a unique trend change outside of normal seasonality, whether that's extreme heat or renovation disruption? And maybe a sort of directional or mathematical way of answering it is if you look at the performance of Durango, less Red Rock, cannibalization, you know, how did the rest of the portfolio perform? I know in the two you basically mentioned that the 30 million year of your EBITDA Delta was basically Durango net of Red Rock catabolization with the balance portfolio flat. Maybe if you can answer it in that way. And then I have a quick follow-up.

Hopefully it's just quick, Joe. Let me start with the first piece of the question. There's no real unusual items throughout the quarter other than just that return of that typical third quarter seasonality. For example, if you look at past years in 2019, Q2 to Q3 was down almost 19%. So when you kind of look at Durango, what we talked about here is we expect to deliver about net 15% return on our investment in the first year investment. So it's actually higher than we promised. We actually promised 10%. So when you do the quick math, you know, if you have an $800 million cost, that's implying $120 million net of cannibalization. When you apply some impact to cannibalization, what you end up getting is that the core portfolio is down low single digits in terms of revenues.

Great. And then margins 43.3% or 43%. What sort of expenses, you know, sort of drove that increase? And then how do you think about flow through or margins going forward, particularly as, you know, we think about 2025 as, you know, maybe being more of a reinvestment in existing assets kind of year? And maybe you can talk about 25 in terms of renovation impact disruption that you might anticipate.

So in terms of just the margin, I'll just kind of frame it very simply. I think about 150 basis points. So that margin has contributed to cannibalization, so revenue moving to our existing properties over to Durango. And then you couple that with lower revenues as part of the Q3 seasonality. And then we are bearing the brunt of minimum wage, which costs us about $1.2 million for the quarter.

And then maybe you can touch on 2025 in terms of anticipated renovation impacts.

Yeah. Oh, sorry about that. Sorry. So in terms of the renovation impact, if I run it down by property, so our initial estimates on GVR, roughly about $11.5 million from an EBITDA impact. Sunset Station, approximately $5.4 million. And then Durango, about $5.9 million.

Thank you, guys. You're welcome.

And our next question comes from Carlos Santorelli with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good evening. Steve, you know, obviously in the third quarter seasonality, as you said, kind of returned to normal. And, you know, when you go back and look at your model in particular, the local segment, a lot of noise with palms and that stretch. How do you generally think about 4Q seasonality relative to 3Q? And obviously acknowledging the moving parts of the stub period of Durango last year makes that a little bit harder for comparability. But just thinking about 3Q relative to 4Q seasonality.

You've got a couple of factors in here, Carlo. But in general, if you took a pre-COVID year, taking out the noise of the palms, EBITDA is up usually around 12%. but you have to factor in that we did play a little bit unfriendly in terms of sports at this tune, about $7.6 million. In October. In October.

Okay. So think about it as kind of up 12, less, almost $8 million from the sports, assuming that doesn't reconcile in November and December. Correct. Okay. And then this is just an item of – just to clarify something – CapEx for the year, you said 185 to 195. Am I correct? And that excludes Durango closeout. Durango closeout for the year was about 95 million. Is that accurate?

Yeah, Durango closeout for the year is almost $97 million. We still have about a million dollars left to close that out.

Perfect.

Thank you, guys.

And our next question today comes from Steve Wyzynski with Steeple. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Steve, you mentioned that group sales have been a little bit softer than I think you guys have been expecting. And just wondering if you could give some more color on potentially what you guys think are driving that softness. And If we look at the margin on that food and beverage line, it's been a little bit lower than what we've been expecting over the last couple quarters, and just wondering if that's somewhat due to that lower group business.

Yes, Steve, this is Scott. Let me take that one. We'll take it into two pieces, one group sales hotel, and then we'll do the corresponding catering. When you look at the quarter, probably the most knowable piece of the quarter. We still are digesting a tough comp year over year as it relates to COVID rebooking. So there's about a million dollars of good news in last year's number relative to COVID rebookings. If you were to add that in and adjust, we're basically flat when it comes to hotel sales room nights. We expect that we're going to have tough comps into the fourth quarter and somewhat into the first quarter because of the Super Bowl as well in hotel. But if you look a little farther out to 25 and 26, we're very encouraged with our on the books pace as we go into those future years. And then catering really kind of mirrors the same effect as group room night sales does as well. where we're going to have a tough comp in the next two quarters, and then better outcomes into 25 and 26.

And, Stephen, to answer that last follow-up, in terms of the softness you're seeing in F&B, it's exactly what Scott said. It's pretty predominantly all catering, as F&B experienced a record revenue quarter.

Okay, thanks for that, guys. And then, Steve, you know, I understand you guys don't give formal guidance, but... you know, as we start to think about next year in 2025, is there anything, you know, you would call out in terms of, you know, whether it's headwinds, whether it's tailwinds or anything, you know, that would disrupt the normal cadence as we start to think about 2025?

Yeah, I think what you're, I mean, from a group perspective or the entire company?

The entire company, sorry.

Okay, I think the one we just talked about with Grefg is probably one of the bigger one-time issues. you know, if you kind of add all that together, you're going to experience about $23 million worth of disruption as we start the room remodel at Green Valley, continue the podium remodel at Sunset, and then we attach the garage to and the high-limit room at Durango. Those are really the big one-time items.

You're going to go up against Super Bowl and Q1. Correct.

As well as Con Ag and a couple others.

I think generally, Lorenzo, it's important to note that You know, I think most all the operators have said that Q3, the seasonality seems to have come back. It's a bit of a challenge. But October has bounced back and is very stable both on slots, table games, sports, handle, right. Obviously, the whole percentage due to the NFL hasn't been great. But our core business feels good going into Q4.

Okay. Thanks for the color, guys. Appreciate it.

The next question comes from David Katz at Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Good evening, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Can we just dive into the Super Bowl comps a little bit? It came up a couple of times. Was the Super Bowl volume levels in terms of hospitality strong and perhaps the sports betting was not? You know, what's the hard part and what's the easy part within the Super Bowl piece?

Well, this is Lorenzo. I think if you look at, obviously, you know, hotel, food and beverage, things like that, not having the Super Bowl, it's going to be a tough comp versus last year. I would say of all the events that the city has had, citywide events, whether it be F1, you name it, I think Super Bowl was just a huge, benefit to the overall city, and obviously we benefited from that as well. Actually, I think we lost money on the game. We did. Hopefully it will not be a headwind or repeated, but from a comp perspective. I see.

So the overall volume levels were very strong, but there was some sports betting impact. that came out of it.

Historically, over time, we typically would win money to the Super Bowl.

Just as my follow-up, the last time we walked through Durango, we talked about longer term with expansions, etc. Anything today that would you know, characterize how soon or what those expansions could or would look like and when you'd get to them?

Yeah, David, this is Scott. First, just want to reiterate that the garage and casino and high limit expansion is really kind of a preliminary phase for Durango. We need to do that in order to set ourselves up for the optionality of the other two phases. And, you know, As we look at those pages, we also compare our greenfield opportunities as well. I know we've spoken about Inspirata and Cactus as potential opportunities. I think what we want to do is we've got a lot of irons in the fire into the first and second quarter with the existing property remodels in the garage. We probably are going to want to see how the market's going into the first half of the year before we make a decision.

I think that's fair. Thank you very much.

And our next question comes from Stephen Grambling of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

I guess when we think about the election and some of the policies that put it out there, aside from perhaps corporate taxes, what is on your radar that could impact your business?

No tax on chips, I think, would be a positive for our business.

Yeah, we've looked at some economic analysis. I don't know if anything's really been published on it, but we think it could add somewhere in the neighborhood of about $200 million. a year to the local economy here, which obviously we would benefit from. Yeah, I think it would save the company about $2 million to $3 million in payroll tax as well.

That's helpful. And is there anything that's on the radar in terms of accelerated depreciation or other tax incentives for investment?

I mean, I think we've accomplished that with Durango. Our effective tax rate is below 13%. And that's due to, I think, some good work on the tax side for Durango. But, you know, so my sense is that we'll look to do that on our Sunset asset as well in GVR and the Durango Garage once they're put in service later in 2025.

Makes sense. Thanks. I'll jump back in the queue.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Barry Jonas with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. You added a new slide in the deck on cactus at the front of the new development pipeline section. Just curious where this stands in terms of what you'll be focused on next. Thanks.

I think that as we look at all of our greenfield projects, the good thing about a lot of them is the population growth is getting to a maturity point where they're up for consideration. So when we look at Cactus, it has different positive attributes than, say, an Enserada or a Kyle Canyon site. The specifics around Cactus are that it is a hybrid location. It sits on the Las Vegas Strip as well as it is surrounded by a very lucrative local market as well. So it makes it a unique development opportunity because you can take advantage of the hybrid aspect of the property or the location. It would probably be something of larger scale than, say, an Inspirata. So we weigh the pros and cons of that capital contribution as well.

Got it, got it. And then just, are there any other tribal or non-Vegas deals you're looking at at the moment, or is really the focus just your Las Vegas development pipeline?

Well, no, as I think we mentioned during the prepared remarks, we're incredibly excited about North Fork. So after working on this project over 20 years, we're in the ground looking forward, and we're in the throes of an 18- to 20-month construction period.

Yeah, and 5.8 million people in a two-hour drive, and we think we're going to have the Dominant property in the market, by far the best designed and built product in the market.

Sorry, I just want to clarify, outside of North Fork. Yeah, I mean, our core focus, obviously, is Las Vegas, Las Vegas locals. However, we do have a core competency of developing and managing tribal casinos. So, in addition to North Fork, which Steve and Frank mentioned we're in the ground with, it's a great location. We are active on the development side looking for new opportunities, as we have been for the last 25 years on the tribal side. But it's just got to be the right opportunity, the right timing, and it all has to kind of line up. But, I mean, we've actively looked probably at five or six just over the last year. Just, you know, we haven't found one that works for us yet. But we'll continue to look from a development standpoint.

That's really helpful. Thank you.

And our next question today comes from Brent Montour with Barclays.

Please go ahead.

Hello, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. I'm curious. We went through a lot of the headwinds next year, potential headwinds. Maybe we could talk a little bit about the tailwinds, specifically what you would typically see getting added back to Red Rock. mitigating that cannibalization you've seen so far in sort of a year two, as well as a Durango or a new greenfield year two growth before the construction disruption there.

Yeah, this is Scott. Great question. If you take Red Rock first, we spoke in the past about Summerlin West, which is the final phase of the Howard Hughes Summerlin project. In its completion over the next few years, it'll add an incremental 34,000 households just up behind the Red Rock location. So not only do we have a great story as it relates to household growth, but the average income in the area is one of the highest in the Valley, and we continue to see growth in average income in that area. So we're optimistic about the Red Rock back fill in the near term. When you look at Durango Durango sits in what's called the enterprise district of the city. It is by far the fastest growing area of the city and probably has the largest amount of remaining buildable acreage in the surrounding area. So we're excited about Durango continuing to have its own growth story into the next year as well. If you switch gears a little bit and you look at sunset, it's one of the key reasons we're refreshing sunset is the Henderson area around cadence has got quite dynamic growth, and we think we're going to see upside from that continued growth in that area of the valley as well.

That's helpful. Thanks for that. A second question. you know, the election just now behind us, you know, I can't remember it. Well, I'm sure you guys can remember, you know, elections that had distractions to your database and your players before. But have you gone back and looked at sort of how in your state, in the state of Nevada, swing state, is that the activity pickup that you've traditionally seen post-election? And if you think you'll see a similar sort of pickup post this election?

Well, when we looked at previous elections, there is definitely an impact, if you will, during an election year, and quite honestly, during an Olympics year as well. In previous years, it did drag on into December, but right now, as Lorenzo said, we're pretty encouraged with more velocity at this point.

Thanks, everyone.

Our next question today comes from John Decree with CBRE. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Covered a lot of ground, maybe one on the promotional environment, largely speaking across the locals market. I guess a couple of your peers have talked about it, maybe stabilizing or abating. And I guess some of the single asset operators in the neighborhood have been a little bit more aggressive. So curious what you're seeing, if you think it's died down at all or stabilized and if it's had any impact one way or another on your business.

Yeah, it remains unchanged in our view. And what we think is a stable, rational environment that is very manageable.

Got it. Thanks for that. And maybe one for Steve, just maybe a clarification if I missed it on the CapEx for next year. I think I heard $150 million for GVR, and was it $160 for Durango? And a quick follow-up, Steve, would be the disruption. I'm sorry, Steve?

Yeah, sorry. It was $116 for Durango, $150 for Rain Valley, and $53 for Sunset.

$53 for Sunset. Okay. And the disruption that you've outlined, I appreciate that. That's really helpful. The timing of this project, should we expect that to kind of be kind of straight line throughout the year, or is there going to be a 1H or 2H where maybe some of the heavier disruption occurs?

Well, Green Valley, you know, is really going to be focused in that June to November period. So that one is really, you can really pinpoint. Sunset is most likely going to be throughout the year as the last construction project expected to come in line before the holiday at the end of the year. And Durango, I would say similar, is probably in that middle part of the year is where the yeoman's portion of the construction is being done.

Got it. Okay, great, thanks.

And as a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star then one. Our next question comes from Dan Pulitzer with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. First, you've talked a bit about taverns in the past. I mean, can you just give us an update on how you're thinking about that, you know, element of your strategy in terms of CapEx or, you know, units that you expect to open over the next few years?

Scott, I'm happy to say that a few weeks back we opened our first tavern in the north part of town. So early performance is outpacing our expectation. So we're happy about that. We have two more coming online in the general area in north Las Vegas, which happens to be a very underpenetrated area for us. We have a product coming online in January and then a third tavern coming online in June. And then we have a total of seven opportunities and the remaining three will be scattered over the next year, year and a half. You know, I think in large part we're attributing the early successes of the first tavern because of the interlinkage of the boarding pass program and the fact that we're relatively underpenetrated out in that market.

Got it. Thanks. And then just on the North Fork, the 4% development fee on presumably the $750 million, do you receive that upon the property opening, or is it along the way? Do you get kind of pieces of that?

It's on the construction financing, and it's not going to be on the full $750.

There's some puts and takes there.

Got it. Thanks so much.

Thank you. And this concludes our question and answer session.

I'd like to turn the conference back over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call, and we look forward to talking to you again in about three months. Take care.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful evening.