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?