Wynn Resorts, Limited

Welcome to the Wynn Resorts third quarter 2021 earnings call. All participants are on a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today's conference. To ask a question, please press star 1 on your touchtone 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 Craig Billings, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. On the call with me today are Matt Maddox and Brian Goldbrant in Las Vegas. Also on the line are Ian Collins, Linda Chen, Kieran Carruthers, Frederick Lubasuto, and Jenny Holliday. I want to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements under safe harbor federal securities laws, and those statements may or may not come true. I'll now turn the call over to Matt Maddox.

Thanks, Craig. And thank you all for joining us today. So first I'd like to address my decision to leave the company. I've been at Wynn for 20 years and been the CEO for the last four. And I made a commitment in 2018 to this company and to the board of directors and what was likely one of the messiest transitions in corporate history, that I would do everything I could to keep the culture, to get the company on firm footing, and to ensure that we would emerge better than we were before. Now, along that journey, as we were making lots of progress and getting things stable, we bumped into a pandemic. And that was the time, really, when wind was able to shine. We became the beacon in hospitality. People looked at us on what to do. We paid all of our staff during the shutdown. We invested in our culture. We knew that by doing those things and continuing to be exactly who we are, that it would pay off over the long term, not just for our people and for our customers, but for our shareholders. I'd like to thank the unwavering commitment and support of the Board of Directors during these four years. After we made this decision, they did ask me if I would remain on the Winn-McCow Board to ensure stability and to assist with the concession renewal process there, which I agreed to do through 2022, and also the Wynn Interactive Board to make sure that we create lots of value for the Wynn Resort shareholders, which I also agreed to. I'm very happy to say that the board is 100% behind and has picked the exact right person to replace me as I transition out in Craig Billings. Craig has been my right-hand man for five years now. He's been through the good, the bad, all of it, and he knows what to do. He understands culture. He's not a guy that's going to build a big corporate infrastructure. He makes decisions fast, and he feels the brand. And the company really couldn't be in a better position going forward. And, in fact, if you look at that, I think the proof is in this quarter. If we just jump to the results and get to business here, in Las Vegas, we made $183 million of EBITDA. And that's not a whole bunch of cost savings that are going to go away over time. Again, you sustain the margin, et cetera. Only $15 to $18 million of that $183 came from cost savings. The rest of it, we're taking market share. Over the last four years, we've opened a 400,000 square foot convention facility. We built a new golf course. We have changed out 40 of our 60 retail stores to become the shopping destination. We restructured our club so that margins went from 7% to almost 30%. We've raised our prices in our hotels, seeing straight flow through. Every area, we're taking share, casino included. We are not only outpacing all of our results, but we're taking share from the market. I knew coming in that we needed to cater to a demographic that was in more the 30 to 50s on top of our current demographic in the baby boomer generation. We've opened lots of new restaurants. In fact, one of the new ones, Delilah, if you call right now, you can't get in until February. I've never seen anything like it. And while that's one restaurant, it's an example of all the changes that we've made that have really set the foundation for when Las Vegas to take off like a rocket ship. And I think one of the most important aspects of a successful business is culture. People talk about that, but we all know in our business, only people make people happy. And if your employees believe that their future will be better because of the place they work and that their employer is going to take care of them when times get tough, you've harnessed the power of the universe. And that's what we have going on right now. Look, I'll give you an example. Hospitality is experiencing extreme labor shortages right now throughout North America. It's a fact. People are talking about it, but not at Wynn. We had four open servers in our restaurants, positions, open positions last month. We had 1,066 people apply. Sure, big tip job. You might expect that. We had 22 open positions for casino cleaners last month. They clean the bathrooms, the casino, the restaurants. They make the place sparkle. We had 2,015 people apply for those 22 spots. That is the sign of a good business. That's when you know you're going to win over the long term because your customers understand that loyalty and people want to be here. And so I feel very good about where Win Las Vegas is in terms of its culture, its employees, the product, and its future. Looking at Encore Boston Harbor, same thing. Record results, $64 million of EBITDA. And we did very similar that we did in Las Vegas during the shutdown was we looked at things that weren't working. We had a buffet that was losing $12 million a year. So we ripped it out while we were shut down, and we built probably the world's best sports bar that once Massachusetts legalizes sports betting, it'll be the best sports book on the East Coast hands down. We put in new food and beverage offerings. We reconfigured the entire casino. We changed out our casino loyalty program, and our database has been growing exponentially. We have over 418,000 people in the database, and at the trajectory that it's growing now, that's probably going to double over the next two years. So Encore Boston Harbor, again, is only at the beginning of its growth, and the North American assets really couldn't be in a better position. There was a little bit of concern that maybe the stimulus money or, uh, pent up demand, et cetera, was causing some of this. And that, that, that may be true for the. You know, for the third quarter and what we experienced in the summer, but it's certainly continuing in October when Las Vegas has its best month on record, highest EBITDA highest margin. And we held below our normal range. Same at Encore Boston Harbor. The group business is coming back. We've seen groups taking up over 30% of our room nights in August and September. And the way that we're running these facilities now and the way that we're yielding and being unrelenting on price because people like the quality, the flow through is happening. Just last weekend, our average rate was $780 in Las Vegas, and we're at 99% occupancy. And that is continuing into the future. because we're taking market share, and Las Vegas itself is growing. Turning to Macau, we've had, as everyone in the market has had, fits and starts there as to the business, but what has been very encouraging over the last month has been the consultation process with the government. It's been open. It's been transparent. It's been productive. And we feel very good about the future of Macau and our position in Macau. Looking at when interactive, we launched lots of new product this quarter that we're very proud of. We made great progress in Arizona with first time depositors and we're seeing good customer feedback and our retention is quite strong. However, the market is really not sustainable right now. Competitors are spending too much to get customers, and the economics are just not something that we're going to participate in in the short term. So while we built the brand, we launched the product in the third quarter, we're going to be focused on building a long-term business that's sustainable that is not losing lots and lots of money. So we are shifting our strategy to think about the future, think about the long term, think about cash preservation, and we remain very confident that we'll create significant value for the Wynn Resort shareholders with our digital strategy. With that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Craig. Congratulations, Craig. Thank you, Matt.