Wynn Resorts, Limited

Welcome to the Wynn Resorts Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session of today's conference. To ask a question, 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 Julie Cameron Doe, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. On the call with me today are Craig Billings and Brian Gilbrunst in Las Vegas. Also on the line are Linda Chen, Frederick Lubisuto, 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 will now turn the call over to Craig Billings.

Thanks, Julie, and good afternoon, everyone. As always, thank you for joining us today. It's about a month ago that we had the opportunity to host many of the folks on this call here at Wynn Las Vegas to take you through our business in general and Wynn El Marjan Island in particular. It 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 Wynn Resort. To that end, we announced that the board has increased our share repurchase authorization to $1 billion, highlighting our continued commitment to prudently return capital to shareholders. Turning to the quarter and starting in Las Vegas. 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. Despite those very tough year-over-year comps, we grew hotel revenue by 5%, slot handle by 4%, and continued to see healthy table drop in the casino. More recently, demand has remained healthy in the fourth quarter with strong growth in slot handle, stable drop, and solid non-gaming demand. 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 skies. 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. 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. Turning to Boston, Encore generated $63 million of EBITDA, 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%. 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. Turning to Macau, we generated $263 million of EBITDA during the third quarter, up 3% year-on-year. Demand remained healthy, with operating revenue growing 6%, led by 10% year-on-year growth in combined mass table and slot width. While the competitive environment in Macau is clearly intense, we continue to focus on maximizing EBITDA rather than purely market share. 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. First, we continue to elevate our food and beverage programming with innovative new concepts, including four recently renovated and reimagined venues at Wind Palace, the recently opened Drunken Fish at Wind Macau, and the mid-2025 opening of our destination food hall at Wind Palace. In the casino, we are currently revitalizing and expanding the Chairman's Club, our most exclusive gaming area at Wynn Macau, and in the design phase for a similar expansion and renovation of the Chairman's Club at Wynn Palace. We are supporting these CapEx efforts with continued improvements to our recently enhanced loyalty program and our Only at Wynn events and experiences across culinary, music, entertainment, and sports. Longer term, our concession-related CapEx, including an event center and a production show, will support visitation and ultimately drive share gains in a market where unique experiences are increasingly appealing to guests. 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 us well to effectively compete profitably over time. More recently, October was characterized by a healthy mass table drop, strong direct VIP turnover, and 99% hotel occupancy. We saw particular strength during the Golden Week holiday period, where mass table drop increased almost 30% compared to last year's Golden Week. Our long-term outlook in Macau remains decidedly bullish. On the development front in Macau, we continue to advance design work on our event center and production show for Wynn Palace. 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. Turning to win Almarjan 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. 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. As we discussed in our update several weeks ago, we believe the UAE will be a $3 to $5 billion gaming market, and certainly the most exciting new market for our industry in decades. I remain incredibly bullish about the future of our company. We have the best assets in the world's premier gaming markets, and our team is the most dedicated team in the business. We are investing for long-term growth with an exciting high ROI development in the UAE well underway, which is unique in our industry. Outside of the 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. Meanwhile, our leverage profile continues to improve as free cash flow grows, allowing us to increase the return of capital to the shareholders through the recurring dividends and opportunistic share repurchases. Our best days lie ahead. With that, I will now turn it over to Julie to run through some additional details on the quarter. Julie?

Thank you, Craig. At Winn-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%. As Craig noted, on a normalized basis, EBITDA was essentially flat year-on-year, with lower-than-normal table games 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. OPEX, excluding gaming tax per day with $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. 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%. 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 efficiencies in areas of the business that do not impact the guest experience. 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. EBITDA margin was 30.2% in the quarter, an increase of 210 basis points relative to Q3 2019. OPEX 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 volumes, but flat on a sequential basis. 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. In terms of capex in Macau, we're currently advancing through the design and planning stages on several of our concession commitments, 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 to $425 million in total between 2024 and the end of 2025. 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 U.S. 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 gross debt by $1.2 billion year-on-year, resulting in approximately $70 million of annualized interest expense savings. 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. Our strong free cash flow and liquidity profile allows us to reduce leverage while returning capital to shareholders. To that end, the Wynn Resorts Board approved a cash dividend of 25 cents per share, payable on November 27, 2024, for stockholders of record as of November 15, 2024. 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 authorization to $1 billion, highlighting our continued commitment to prudently returning capital to shareholders. 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. Additionally, we contributed $18.2 million of equity to the Wynn-Almarjan Islands project during the quarter, bringing our total equity contribution to date to $532.6 million. We estimate our remaining 40% pro-rata share of the required equity is approximately $800 to $875 million, fully loaded for capitalized interest fees and certain improvements on the islands. 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. With that, we will now open up the call to Q&A.

Thank you. To ask a question, Press star one on your touch-tone phone, unmute your phone, and record your name clearly after the prompt, and I will introduce you for your question. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. To withdraw your question, press star two. Our first question comes from the line of Carlo Santorelli from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hey, Craig, Julie, everyone. Craig, maybe if you could start just kind of outlining as you look out to 2025 across the regions 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 within your control at this point? Sure, Carlo.

You chopped up for a second there, but I got the gist to your question. So I guess first with the overriding statement that, as we've said many, many, many times before, 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 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. We've lapped the largest of the union payroll increases, and so while there is a little bit of wage pressure, it's nothing significant. So I guess 2025 in Vegas is really all about demand, and everything that we see now indicates that we're in pretty good stead. I mean, geez, our retail lease revenue, which is heavily tied to luxury retail, was up 3.5% year over year in Q3. So we continue to see a strong consumer here, which gives us, comfort in revenues, but not comps because, again, the comps are getting tougher and tougher. And that is what it is. 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. Our market share was stable sequentially, but GGR was down because the market GGR was down quarter over quarter, I'm talking about now. Second, we had higher VIP commissions in the quarter because VIP turnover was up even though VIP GGR was flat. Third, retail revenue declined by about $3 million, and then we had an extra day in the quarter, so we had an extra day at OpEx. So it was a little bit unique in Macau, but in Macau, and we kept OpEx in line, by the way, on a per-day basis. 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 2025. But, again, it looks pretty good. We feel good.

Great. Thank you. And then if I could, just one follow-up. As 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. To the extent that you can kind of frame the headwind that you guys will kind of be looking at as well, 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.

No, we haven't talked about the incremental EBITDA that we experienced with Super Bowl last year, and certainly that will be a headwind from a comp perspective, but we haven't put out any numbers yet. Q4 and F1 is actually shaping up quite nicely 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 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.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next, we'll go to the line of Joe Gref from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everybody. Craig, just starting on Macau, you mentioned or you touched on the competitive environment in Macau and what you're doing to address it with different changes to F&B and venue and loyalty programs and various 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 vis-a-vis reinvestment market-wide in the business is a little bit better than where it was today versus at the beginning of the summer?

Yeah, stable to slightly better is, I guess, how I would characterize it. But still, it's very competitive.

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. Does 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?

Well, I think my comments on October from the script stand. You know, we don't tend to provide in-quarter guidance or an in-quarter view 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.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to the line of John Decree from CBRE. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Craig, I wanted to ask maybe specifically about Wynn Macau, where the gaming business there has done quite well, particularly this quarter. I think mass market table drop was up 10%, and so a lot of discussion happens around Kotai, but Curious' visitation recovers to Macau. If you could give us any insight or colors to what you're seeing on the peninsula and at Winn-Macao?

Sure. I mean, it's really a testament to our team. If you rewind 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. 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 identified those, and we've executed those over the course of the past year or so. It is a fact that the more visitation you have, given the transient nature of the downtown customer, that visitation will disproportionately benefit Wynn Macau. But I would put it much more down to execution and the execution that we have done over the course of the past year.

Thanks, Craig. That's helpful. And maybe a follow-up on Las Vegas, a 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 this quarter, and then you mentioned, I think, quarter to date in 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 in customer trends from Q on Q or anything like that?

No significant shifts of note. I guess let's put it in historical perspective. If you rewound the clock 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 players. And we've done a lot of very deliberate things over the course of the past X number of years, the past several years, 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. 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, table drop, you know, steady to down a couple points. It's not a broader trend. It's just part and parcel with running the business.

Sounds good. Thanks, Frank. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. Next we'll go to the line of Robin Farley from UBS. Please go ahead.

Oh, great, thanks. I guess it's kind of a follow-up question on when you look at the gaming 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 gaming revenue down as well?

Julie, you want to take that? Sure. Hi, Robin. I'm happy to take that. Look, I think when you look at the comps there, you really have to take account of hold. So when you normalize the hold year over year, that makes a big difference to that calculation. So in terms of that implied increase, if you think about contrary revenues of such a GDR. So first up, normalize the 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. So when you take those two things into account, because we do the 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, Robin. I mean, drop year over year, drop down 4.4, slot handle up 3.5. 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. And, you know, the 3.5 in slots is great. So we feel great about where the gaming business is here. And, again, that high-end consumer continues to hold in there.

Okay, thanks. This is a follow-up. You talked last quarter about your group business increasing. So, 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.

Sure, happy to. Brian, you want to take that?

Sure. Yeah, 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. That's allowed us to build a really solid base for our team to yield manage the rest of the rooms and segments. And in terms of 25, as we look forward, we get to a point where as you book more and more group rooms, 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. 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.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we'll go to the line of Dan Pulitzer from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

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.

Sure, I'll cover capital allocation theory, and then Julie will cover CapEx. Opportunistically tends to be the name of the game for us. We're not programmatic buyers of the stock, and we tend to buy back when we feel like 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 raised the authorization. We're always balancing between capital deployment for growth, like UAE, debt management. We've been de-levering over the course of the past couple of years, and then, of course, returning capital. Julie, do you want to cover major CapEx?

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. On the project side, as I mentioned, we're renovating the remaining villas now that we've completed the renovation of the spa villas. 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 Ciolo Mare, which we'll be replacing lakeside. We're also planning to renovate the Encore Tower hotel rooms during 2025. We expect total project capex for the remainder of 2024 through 2025 in Vegas to be in the neighborhood of $300 million. And outside of that, the Vegas normal course maintenance capex is 75 to 85 million. 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 sort of closer to, you know, that period as well. So that range is tightened a little bit on the concession commitments. And then the maintenance capex in Macau continues to be, you know, normally we look at, you know, about 75 for what's going on there.

Got it. Thanks. And then just turning to Macau, Wind Palace, I think the mass gaming volumes or revenues there, volumes really, we're down a touch. Anything that's changed or evolved in terms of the environment on the ground as it relates to that property?

No, I don't think so. I think it's pretty consistent. All the remarks that we have made throughout the call regarding the state of Macau apply to Wind Palace. No, not really.

Thanks so much.

Thank you. Next we'll go to the line of Stephen Grambling from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Just a couple of follow-ups on Macau as well. First, I think the REBPAR for the hotels were down in both segments. 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 this Is there any feedback on smart tables and the potential impact from those as we look into next year?

Sure. Not much of a read-through on REVPAR because, as you know, it's essentially 100% – close to 100% comp 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 rolling out smart tables. 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. 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 forward to our customers. We're obviously not going to talk about that on the call. The real benefits of that require you to be at substantially complete rollout because you need a complete view of the customer. So a little too early to say at this point, but we're on our way.

So just to clarify, I guess when is that complete rollout is set now or you need to collect some data for a period of time?

Next Chinese New Year, Chinese New Year.

Ah, got it. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll go to the line of David Katz from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. I'm not sure that there's been, you know, you've 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? And or what drives the confidence? Thanks.

I think it's a little early to say if it's having an impact. Demand during October Golden Week was encouraging, as I talked about in my prepared remarks. We're running 99% occupancy. But in the past, and I would encourage you to look, probably early 2016 would be the the most recent example of that stimulus in scale, and you'll see that there was a pretty substantial positive impact on both visitation and GGR, but I think it's a bit early at this point to say if anything is cascading through McAllister.

Got it. And if I can ask just one follow-up detail, along with the buyback, you 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?

We did not comment on the month of October or the first few days of November.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, David. Operator, we'll take one more call-up.

Thank you. And our final question comes from the line of Brant Montour from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good evening, everybody, and afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I think Macau CapEx guidance 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?

Sure. And actually, nothing's really changed in terms of the competitive standpoint. Really, this is more about timing. You know, 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 think, you know, I'm using the same words every quarter about we're dependent on a number of approvals for land use in particular. And, you know, we don't have control over those. So that drives quite a wide range of outcomes in terms of CAPEX. 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 as we're getting closer to the end of that period, we've just tightened up that range. So nothing more to say 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.

Okay. Thanks for that. And then just a quick unrelated follow-up on the New York licensure process. 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.

Yeah, we sure do. I had heard about the comments you referenced, and in fact, I posted about this subject on LinkedIn back in March, I believe it was, First, look, I understand the desire for states to generate taxes quickly from online gaming, but there's very serious implications. Honestly, primarily on the folks who, the everyday folks who work in land-based gaming and resorts, resulting from any revenue declines due to cannibalization from online gaming. A 15% revenue decline is half your margin. So you're not going to employ nearly as many people to the extent that you're being affected by online gaming. Second, there's the potential for longer-term regulatory blowback, and I think that's real. As we've seen in markets around the world, look at Australia. I worked in the gaming market in Australia for 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, layer 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... So, long answer, but yeah, we're watching it.

Okay. Thanks for your thoughts.

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.

Thank you all for participating in the Wynn Resort's third quarter 2024 earnings call. That concludes today's conference. Please disconnect at this time and have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you for calling Wynn Las Vegas. The number you have dialed is not currently in service.