Wynn Resorts, Limited

Welcome to the Wind Resort's fourth quarter 2025 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 one on your touch tone 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 Gulbrantz in Las Vegas. Also on the line are Jenny Holliday, Linda Chen, and Frederick Luvisuto. Please note that we've published a presentation to provide more color on the company and recent performance ahead of this call. You can find the presentation on our Investor Relations website. 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.

Good afternoon, and as always, thank you for joining us. I'd like to start today's call by taking a step back and taking a broader multi-year view of our business and talk about how the company is positioned relative to some of the broader forces shaping the world and our target customer base. We are now a little more than a year out from a meaningful milestone, the opening of Huenal Marjan Islands. This development is significant for many reasons, but over the long term, its importance as a step forward in our geographic diversification stands out, especially in the context of an increasingly multipolar world. Recent actions in geopolitics, currencies, and metals reinforce our view that multipolarity is not a transient trend. With it comes meaningful shifts in historical patterns of travel, trade, technology diffusion, and capital flows. Increasingly, those patterns are coalescing around a small number of global hubs, notably the U.S., China, and portions of the Middle East. We see this in financial markets, and we see it in the travel patterns of our international customers. At the same time, we are approaching a period of significant change driven by technology and artificial intelligence. Anticipation of those changes is already fueling substantial business formation and wealth creation centered again in the U.S., China, and portions of the Middle East. That expanding wealth creation will continue to drive demand for what Wynn Resorts has always delivered, exceptional product and service for the world's most discerning customers. This brings me to two related capabilities that position us well for the long term. Our relentless focus on our core customer segments, and our proven ability to develop and operate world-class assets in diverse geographies, thereby allowing us to meet the affluent customer wherever they choose to be. With the opening of Bueno Marjan, we are introducing a significant asset into a new and dynamic market. More broadly, we're moving toward a portfolio where we expect over 55% of our revenues will be generated in non-U.S. dollar-denominated markets, from assets we developed and operate each meticulously designed around the most valuable consumers in these key markets. So as we begin 2026, Wynn Resorts is on track to become one of the most globally diversified companies in our industry. That diversification combined with our brand, customer focus, and proven operating capabilities leaves us exceptionally well positioned for the longer term. Now, turning to the fourth quarter, when Las Vegas delivered another robust quarter with EBITDA of $241 million. It's important to note that the comparable quarter of 2024 benefited from nearly 31% hold, and thus when normalizing both periods, EBITDA in Q4 2025 was just above the prior year comp. Demand for our product in Las Vegas remained healthy across the board with drop, handle, and ADR all up year on year. While REVPAR was slightly below last year, the overall results reflect our ability to balance stronger ADRs with modestly lower occupancy in order to optimize the performance of the building. We remain well positioned to do this given our strong competitive positioning and our customer base. More recently, performance in the first quarter has been encouraging with casino volumes and REVPAR both holding up well. Looking further out, we feel good about the business in 2026. The visibility that we have into forward demand is largely through our group and convention business, which continues to look strong, on pace to grow both room nights and rate relative to 2025. As I mentioned last quarter, we will begin the Encore Tower remodel in the second quarter and expect to lose about 80,000 room nights in 2026. We expect to recapture some of that impact in rate, but the remodel will nonetheless present a slight headwind for the year. Turning to Boston, Encore generated $57 million of EBITDA during the quarter, with lower-than-normal table hold masking what was otherwise strong fundamental performance, with rev par, table drop, and slot handle all up year-on-year, along with tightly controlled outbacks. More recently, demand in Boston has remained healthy into February, aside from specific days impacted by poor weather. Shifting to Macau, this quarter was all about significant volume growth but unusually low hold in both VIP and MAS. The team delivered $271 million in EBITDA with low VIP hold costing us a little over $16 million in EBITDA. Volumes in the quarter were strong with VIP turnover up 48% and MAS drop up 18% both year on year. While we do not quantify the impact of unusual MAS hold, MAS hold in the quarter was below our expectations And like Las Vegas, Macau also held higher in the prior year quarter, skewing year-over-year comparability. Momentum in Macau has persisted into the first quarter, with volumes in January just above those we saw in Q4. We're also very excited about the upcoming opening of the new Chairman's Club floor at Wynn Palace, a 63,000-square-foot addition dedicated to our highest-value customers, featuring gaming alongside a suite of bespoke amenities. We expect to be welcoming guests into the space for Chinese New Year. Looking ahead to the rest of 2026, following sustained double-digit market-wide GGR growth in the back half of 2025, we remain optimistic about the future of Macau. Premium segment continues to lead the market, and that is a segment where we are always well-positioned. The expansion of the Chairman's Club at Wynn Palace, along with the refresh of the Wynn Tower Rooms at Wynn Macau, further strengthen our ability to capture this demand in 2026 and beyond. Turning to Winn-on-Marjon Island, I'd like to thank those of you who made the trip to join us for our investor day in the UAE in December. We hope the visit provided you with a clearer sense of both the scale of the opportunity and the broader dynamics of the region. During the fourth quarter, we reached a significant construction milestone when we topped out the tower at the 70th floor. Construction continues to progress rapidly with interior fit-out underway in all guest rooms and our iconic exterior glass about 80% complete. The opening of Wynn-Al-Marjan and the free cash flow inflection that it will bring reinforces our confidence that our best days lie ahead. Before turning the call over to Julie, I'd like to address one final item. As we announced a few weeks ago, Julie will be retiring before the next earnings call. On behalf of the company, I would like to acknowledge her accomplishments as CFO and thank her for her leadership and significant contributions over the past four years. Over to you, Julie.

Thank you, Craig. It's been such an honor to serve as CFO here at Wynn. We're known for our beautiful buildings and five-star service, but what sets this company apart from all the others are its people at all levels and across the globe. It's extremely rare to work somewhere where everyone is bringing their A game every day, but that's exactly how it is at Wynn. It's incredibly special. So before I get into the quarter, I'd like to thank each and every one of our employees in Vegas, Boston, Macau, Marjan, and London for all you do to make Wynn the best in the business. Turning to the numbers. At Wynn Las Vegas, we generated $240.8 million in adjusted property EBITDA on $688.1 million of operating revenue during the quarter, delivering an EBITDA margin of 35%. Hold positively impacted EBITDA in the quarter by just over $8 million. OPEX, excluding gaming tax per day, was $4.6 million in the quarter, up 4.1% compared to the prior year, largely due to incremental costs related to payroll, higher repair costs, and bad debt expense. Turning to Boston, we generated adjusted property EBITDA of $57 million on revenue of $210.2 million. with an EBITDA margin of 27.1%. As Craig mentioned, low hold negatively impacted the quarter's results, while casino volumes and rev par were strong. Slot revenues were strong, up over 2%, setting a new record for Boston. We maintained our discipline on the cost side with OPEX per day of $1.18 million, up less than 1% compared to Q4 2024, despite continued labor cost pressures in the markets. The Boston team has continued to do a great job of 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 $270.9 million in the quarter on $967.7 million of operating revenue, resulting in an EBITDA margin of 28%. Lower-than-normal VIP hold impacted EBITDA by just over $16 million in the quarter, And though we do not report EBITDA normalized for math hold, our math hold in Q4 was about 250 basis points lower than the prior year quarter, impacting our overall EBITDA margin. OPEX excluding gaming tax was approximately $2.85 million per day in Q4, with the increase from Q4 2024 driven primarily by a full quarter of gourmet pavilion-related costs, normal cost of living expenses, and variable costs driven by healthy business volume. In terms of CAPEX in Macau, back in Q2, we initiated two projects, as Craig mentioned, an expansion of the Chairman's Club gaming area at Wynn Palace and a refresh of our Wynn Tower rooms at Wynn Macau. The impact of those projects on CAPEX continues into 2026. For the full year 2026, we expect to spend a total of $400 to $450 million with several concession-related projects awaiting government approval. Moving on to the balance sheet, our liquidity position remains very strong with global cash and revolver availability of $4.7 billion as of December 31. This was comprised of $2.9 billion of total cash and available liquidity in Macau and $1.8 billion in the U.S. The combination of strong performance in each of our markets globally with our properties generating over $2.2 billion of adjusted property EBITDA together with our robust cash position, creates a very healthy consolidated net leverage ratio of just over 4.4 times. Our strong free cash flow and liquidity profile also allow us to continue returning capital to shareholders. To that end, the Wynn Resorts Board has approved a quarterly cash dividend of 25 cents per share, payable on March 4th, 2026, to stockholders of record as of February 23rd. Our recurring dividend highlights our focus on and continued commitment to prudently returning capital to shareholders. In terms of capex, we spent approximately $171.2 million in the quarter, primarily related to the Fairway Villa renovations, Zero Bond and Sartianos in Las Vegas, the new chairman's floor at Wynn Palace, the hotel tower refurbishment at Wynn Macau, and normal course maintenance across the business. In addition to that figure, we contributed $79.2 million of equity to the Werner Marjane Island project during the quarter, bringing our total equity contribution to date to $914.2 million. We also continue to draw on the Marjane construction loan with a drawn amount to date of $769.6 million. We estimate our remaining share of the required equity, including the new to new project, is approximately $450 to $550 million. With that, we will now open up the call to Q&A.

Thank you. To ask a question, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. Unmute your phone, 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 2. Our first question comes from Dan Paltzer with JP Morgan. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. And Julie, congratulations on the retirement, and thanks for all the help these past few years. First question on Vegas. Some of your peers have been fairly upbeat on the path for higher-end luxury properties to grow in 2026. And I recognize, Craig, you mentioned the limited booking window and visibility outside of group and convention, as well as the Encore Tower disruption. But I guess as we think about those puts and takes and your level of confidence in this high-end customer, the strength you're maintaining here, How do you think about the path to growing in Vegas in 2026?

Sure. It's kind of funny because I feel like we've spent the past few years trying to convince people that we weren't going to decelerate. And we've continued to hold up very, very well. If you look at the drivers in 2026, I noted the headwind of the rooms that will be out of service, and certainly I expect that will impact us. Again, we'll try to pick up some of that in rate. But the group business is doing really, really well, which of course in turn allows us to yield in the other segments. And so as long as the group pace plays out as we expect it will, strongly expect it will, we feel good about our ability to continue to price rooms. Gaming volumes, you can see gaming volumes in the quarter. And that gives you a sense for how tables and slots are holding up. So we feel good about our ability to perform really, really well in 2026. I mean, by any kind of historical standards, Las Vegas is absolutely crushing it. So we don't see anything at the moment that would change our view on our ability to continue to do so. Brian, would you add anything to that?

I'd say so far our key business indicators are all positive, but as mentioned, the out-of-order rooms will certainly be a challenge in the latter half of the year.

Got it. That makes sense. And then just in terms of the OPEX, Julie, I think you touched on Macau taking a little bit higher. In Vegas, I think there's been a little bit of an increase there, too. Is there any kind of parameters through which to think about the OPEX growth in Vegas as well as Macau for 2026?

Yeah, I mean, I'll start with Vegas and move on to Macau. So, I mean, the team in Vegas remains incredibly disciplined on OPEX, and we did raise our outlook last quarter to $4.3 to $4.5 million outside of major event periods. We ended up slightly above that range at $4.6 million in Q4. It's a very heavy event period with Formula One, Concours, New Years, and a busy convention calendar. You know, we also continue to see normal wage inflation in the union and non-union areas of the business. But otherwise, we're managing OPEX very tightly. And in terms of the outlook, we're not changing our expectation for OPEX to be in that 4.3 to 4.5 million per day range outside of major event periods. If I move on to Macau, you know, Macau, obviously, as we said on the call, we've got a full quarter of the Gourmet Pavilion. And we've had some, you know, obviously some cost of living increases going on in there as well. We once again saw the variable impact of higher business volumes in the quarter because we had very strong volumes in the quarter. We raised our OPEX per day expectations last quarter to be in the range of $2.7 to $2.9 million. And, you know, we're aligned with that number.

Got it. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Our next caller is Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I'll echo my congratulations and thanks to you, Julie. Really appreciate all the help and wish you the best going forward. Sticking with Vegas, first of all, I guess similarly kind of on that OPEC side of things, just thinking about the margins. I think the margins in Vegas are obviously up a lot versus 2019. You've just seen such incredible strength there and you know there's been a bit of a give back over the last couple of years maybe a bit of a return to normal whatever you want to call it but just thinking about really over the longer term not just 26 but how you think about just margin expansion whether that's possible at some point in vegas or if there's still a bit of a kind of normalization to go there sure um we we've always been pretty explicit about the fact that we don't really manage to margin per se

What we do is try to absolutely top-take revenue, which is about taking market share in gaming and driving ADRs, pushing the right customers into the building or retail tenants, and then being absolutely judicious about managing OPEX. And we're doing both of those things. So we don't really give margin guidance and we don't look forward in terms of margin, but philosophically that's really how we approach it and I think you saw that this quarter.

Got it. And then just on the on-court renovation, you know, it's helpful to call that out and, you know, on my math at least, 80,000 room nights could be maybe 50 million of EBITDA impact, you know, assuming that you don't get any recapturing on the rate, which you did mention. Anything that you could share there on just how you're thinking about it, particularly in the second half once you kind of fully start the renovations and also typical kind of IR arc on the longer-term basis of projects like this?

That sounds a little bit high to me, but the way to think about it is we stage and stagger the renovations as we're taking out floors such that they occur in the lowest demand periods. So that's one of the ways that we mitigate the impact of those renovations, thereby allowing us to pick up the highest rate periods. And then I think as you pointed out, we expect that we will pick up some of that in rate. Beyond that, it kind of is what it is. We need to do the renovation, and it's important to the building and the brand. Brian, what would you add?

We're starting in mid-May, so as far as impact, it starts in mid-May, and it'll consume about six floors as we go through the building. But it's a 12-month process, so this is going to linger into 27 as well. Yeah, that's a good point as well.

It's really split between two years.

Got it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Our next caller is Sean Kelly with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. First of all, Julie, thanks for all of your time and attention and, of course, the hospitality on the UAE trip. It was spectacular, so you'll be missed. And, you know, if I could, I wanted two questions on Macau. Maybe first, Craig, if we could lead off with a little bit of color on, you know, there's concerns both about promotions in the market and competition, and then, you know, specifically we've got some questions around just mix shift between VIP and premium mass. Now you kind of specialize in sort of both these segments. So just kind of wanted your thought on the overall environment. And then, you know, again, are you seeing any sort of notable shifts between business lines on, you know, like that may be impacting or changing, you know, margins in that segment?

Sure. Thanks, Sean. Yeah, both of your questions kind of lead to margin. I guess, first of all, with respect to margins overall, Margins in the quarter were really affected by three things. A significant jump in VIP volumes, but low hold. Unusually low hold in mass, which we mentioned a couple times in the prepared remarks. And remember, we generally accrue reinvestment on theoretical, not actual. So that obviously suppresses margins. And then the incremental OPEX that was previously discussed from cold adjustments in a full quarter of the gourmet pavilions. So there wasn't really a – beyond everything that I mentioned, there wasn't really a fundamental shift in the business. As you know, VIP can be incredibly lumpy. It's just the nature of the business. I wouldn't be proclaiming a market-wide shift or at least a win shift in the sources of business. With respect to reinvestment, and again, as we've discussed on prior calls, look, it's a very short booking window in Macau. And so it's daily hand-to-hand combat, as I've said before, for customers. And we'll adjust reinvestment up or down in any given period to make sure that we achieve our business goals. I can't say that our quarter was unusually impacted by a significant jump in reinvestment.

Very clear. And then as my follow-up, you mentioned in the prepared remarks as well some of the excitement around the new chairman's club space. So just wondering, could you give us a little bit more color and detail there? I think timing sounded like open by Chinese New Year, but you talk about the kind of scope and scale there, what you've been investing, and potential impacts for both 1Q and maybe the full year.

Yeah, sure. Thank you for asking about it. Uh, we are waiting on, I think one final, um, government approval that maybe we got it yesterday, actually. Uh, so we do expect we'll be opened by, by Chinese New York. This is a significant, we did it in record time. It's amazing that the development team was able to do it, but this is a significant expansion of the chairman's club. So the chairman's club, for those of you that aren't aware is an area in, uh, within wind palace. That is the space that's dedicated to our highest value customers. This expansion actually triples the size of the Chairman's Club to nearly 100,000 square feet. The space includes gaming areas along with a whole bunch of amenities, including several boutique food and beverage outlets, entertainment areas, a cigar lounge, a bar. Honestly, we believe it will set a new standard for premium gaming space in Macau in an area that already feels very, very comfortable to our best customers. So we... We feel great about it opening up. The impact on Q1, we'll see. We're hoping to get into Chinese New Year, and obviously the rest of the year we don't provide any forward guidance.

Just confirming that we have the approval for the opening today.

Oh, thank you. So we're good to go. You can strike the word expect from the prepared remarks.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you, Sean.

Thank you. Our next caller is Robin Farley with UBS. Your line is open. Sorry, one moment please, Robin. We'll go to the next caller, John Ducree with CBRE. Your line is open.

Hi, Greg, Julie. I'll pile on to the congratulations and gratitude. It's been a pleasure working with you. Good luck on what's next for you. Maybe to stick with Las Vegas, kind of ask the kind of consumer question a couple different ways, but with lower occupancy, obviously rate was up, but I think it's impressive. Gaming volumes are up. We saw higher food and beverage revenue, and so Craig, I don't know if we could talk about, you know, are you getting more foot traffic in the door from other properties not staying at Wynn, or is it really just a higher price? You know, anything you could say about gaming volumes and F&B revenues being up, you know, despite a little bit of lower occupancy in the hotel?

Yeah, thank you. First, driving rate over occupancy is, is an incredibly intentional strategy. It's not a strategy that we're doing because it's being hoisted upon us. When we drive rate over occupancy, we can change our restaurant opening hours, we can staff the building differently, and we can really push EBITDA. On the gaming volume point, it is definitely not the mass customer that's wandering in the door and driving our incremental gaming volumes. We set out geez, three years ago now, and changed a tremendous number of things in the business from our hosting strategies to our underlying technology to aspects of our rewards program and our reinvestment. And that has resulted in a pretty significant shift in market share in our favor. And this was another quarter where you saw the benefit of that. Brian, anything you would add?

I'd say the ops team continues to crush it on optimizing RevPAR, focused on keeping the restaurants full, and still tightly controlling OPEX. So all of those are key in our future.

Very helpful. I think I've piled two questions in there, so I'll step out of the queue. Thanks, all.

Thanks. Thank you. Our next caller is Brant Montour of Barclays. Your line is open, sir.

Good morning, or sorry, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Can you guys, I don't know, I don't think you guys have talked about this yet, but sort of the convention calendar for you guys for the year by quarter, you know, any sort of, what should we think about in terms of year-over-year comparisons and what stands out to you when you look out over the year in terms of group?

Brian, you want to take that?

Sure. I think if you look at some of the city-wide comparisons, It doesn't impact us as much, but there's some significant change this year over last year. Q1 seems to be higher than last year. Q2, a little bit more challenged because the beginning of April, you've got Passover, Easter. And then we layer in pretty nicely. There's a couple holes in the summer. We have plenty of prospects. The team's doing a great job in filling those holes. And we're pacing nicely right now, so we'll see how it goes.

Okay, great. Thanks for that. And this is a follow-up on Macau. You know, you guys already talked about margins and sort of the effect of VIP mix. But when we look at just the VIP volumes, which look incredibly strong, and you're not the only ones that have seen this, can you just help us understand, you know, what's driving that? Is there more – are you guys doing more direct lending as part of that rolling ship business? What are sort of the supply and demand, you know, things to keep in mind when we're trying to understand those things?

Thank you. We definitely have not changed any component of how we think about credit. We're not driving volumes on the back of incremental credit. As you know, in VIP, a very small number of players can drive a very large amount of turnover. We have been making very specific investments in our VIP hosting teams and in our VIP player development, and we saw the benefit of that this quarter.

Great. Thanks, everybody. Sure.

Thank you. Our next caller is David Cass with Jefferies. Your line is open, sir.

Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Julie, congrats and all the best. I wanted to just get an updated comment on Las Vegas broadly, and you know, how do we think about the opportunity for your assets to continue to grow, you know, either top line or bottom line? Is it, you know, and I understand that the refurbs are necessary and helpful, you know, but how do we sort of think about your presence there, you know, growing longer term?

Yeah, look, the way I think about it is Vegas, if you look at Vegas, over the course of the past, really since the emergence from COVID, Vegas has become a more multifaceted destination than it's ever been. And you know, and we've talked about this before, Vegas has a long history of tacking on incremental sources of demands. The Raiders are an example of that. The Sphere is an example of that. And really, the business is more diversified The total business here in Vegas is more diversified than it's ever been. That next maturation of the market tends to appeal to customers that are in our customer segment. And during that same period, I would humbly say that we have continued to distance ourselves in the market and provide the best option for those high value customers. You've seen those high-value customers hold up, even as folks, perhaps folks who are in a different income strata have not. And I think that we have been a real beneficiary of that. So from an organic same-store sales basis, I feel very good about our business and our position in Vegas. I mean, look at the EBITDA numbers and the return on invested capital that we're delivering out of this building. It's Tremendous. Then beyond that, of course, we have a pretty significant land bank here. You have to choose the right time and place, or right time, rather, to flex that land bank. If you look at the last two openings in the market, they have had to be share-takers because, you know, market visitation did not change with those two openings. But over the very longer term, you know, particularly as, again, as I was saying in my prepared remarks, you have incremental wealth creation from everything that's going on in technology and AI. We think that demand for our products will allow us to take advantage of that expansion. It's just a question of when. So, again, I don't really think, you know, well, candidly, I don't really think will 2026 be greater than 2022. But I think where will we be in 2030, in 2032, and what will our business look like? And I feel very good about it.

Okay. Thank you.

Sure. Thank you. Our next caller is Chad Bynum with Macquarie. Your line is open, sir.

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. And, Julie, congrats on all your accomplishments as well. I wanted to ask – Unfortunately, maybe more of a near-term question. Just around 2026, I know a lot of the lodging companies and event centers are talking about the World Cup impact. I know it's making its way through Boston for a couple weeks, and then obviously in Los Angeles and other cities where international customers could be here and maybe frequent your properties. I guess my question is, do you think there could be an impact – or maybe a spark that we haven't seen from maybe some international customers coming back into the market and then frequenting your properties? Thanks.

Sure. It's a good question. In Boston, for sure, the direct impact there, I would expect, would be on ADR. In Vegas, we have an entire strategy that we have developed to take advantage of the proximity of the World Cup. That's a very targeted strategy because we don't need the mass volume to make their way here. Certainly, we will take advantage of that and make sure that we are able to ghost on the event, if you will. Does it impact how we think about 2026? Maybe on the margin. But I don't think I'd be calling it out as a specific driver of the year.

Okay. Thanks, Craig. And then as it relates to AI, you talked about just the wealth effect that could improve your customer's wealth over the next couple years and then drive business to your properties. But what about internally in terms of tech that you guys are using, either in-house or with certain vendors to help, whether it's search or content, kind of product on the floor. Do you think we will see an improvement in 26 versus 25 that could either help on the revenue or margin side?

A great question. How much time do we have left on the call? Okay, so first of all, we're already seeing the effect of that wealth creation. We already have customers that are spending time with us that have had wealth created through everything that's going on with artificial intelligence. So this isn't something that I'm just kind of forecasting out of my head. I mean, we can see it. And it's not – and in the long run, I don't anticipate that we'll just be here. I anticipate that we'll be in Waiton-Marjon Island, where you have the UAE being extremely aggressive in terms of AI infrastructure and AI model development. And so I think that that will benefit us there as well, and I think it will benefit us in Macau as a new generation of wealth is created in China. On the internal side, our approach to date, you know, we worked under the presumption initially that anything that was focused on OPEX efficiency would be packaged up and sold to us because that's where everybody was going to head first. And that has kind of proven to be the case. I think with respect to that, and look, anybody who watches CNBC, particularly today, is that there is a general feeling that we are finally at a tipping point with respect to the models. And I believe that to be true. And so I think from a OPEX efficiency perspective, you will start to see gains over the course of, you know, the next several years. What I think is underappreciated in the enterprise is the amount of plumbing that goes into how all the applications that we utilize, the databases that we utilize, are connected. And so that plumbing doesn't change overnight, and so that takes time. But I'm certain that that will happen. So if we weren't focused on the OpEx side, what were we focused on? We were focused really on customer delight. And so that really comes down to personalization. where we've rolled out several things. I won't get into the details on this call for competitive reasons, but where we've rolled out several things that have had a meaningful impact, we believe, on retention. We focused on improving the underlying machine learning and modeling for our reinvestment. That's true here and in Macau. And that has certainly had an impact. I believe you can see that showing up in gaming volumes. So, you know, it's a little bit of everything. Oh, and then the last piece I would say, I think if you're watching the markets, you may have seen TripAdvisor was trading off heavily today, citing the impact of what's called GEO, generative engine optimization, on a business that is very SEO, search engine optimization dependent. So we've been on that for probably about a year now, making sure that our discoverability, and that's from a hotel sales perspective primarily, food and beverage as well, but mostly hotel sales, that our discoverability is would be absolutely top notch as GEO starts to take over SEO. So there's really, honestly, there's 100 things that will ultimately come out of all of this. I'm not going to put us in a position where we're talking about impact on, well, I'll never put us in a position where we're talking about impact on margins, but it certainly will show up.

Thanks, Greg. Appreciate it.

You got it.

Thank you. Our next caller is Stephen Lozinski with Stiefel. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, guys. Excuse me. Good afternoon, and congrats, Julie. Hope you have a great retirement. Not sure if I missed this or not, Craig or Julie, but if we think about Macau margins in the fourth quarter on a more normalized basis, meaning hold normal in VIP, mass OPEX is quasi-normalized, based on our quick math, is it safe to say those margins would have been pretty close to the 31.5% margin that was posted in the fourth quarter of 24? Am I kind of thinking about that the right way?

You're a little above where we would put them. We would probably put them somewhere around 30.

Okay. Thanks, Craig. And then I'm not sure how much you'll say, Craig, or not, given that we're kind of in the first quarter, but Chinese New Year obviously starting up in the next couple days. Would you give any kind of high-level view on kind of where you guys are booked at this point or what do you think demand is going to look like?

Yeah, booking pace is good. We feel very, very good about where we are. And with the opening of Chairman's Club at Palace, we feel like we have something new and shiny that will delight our best customers. So we're feeling good about Chinese New Year. We do, and we've called this out, I think, kind of ad nauseum now, but we do run into capacity constraints around these peak periods based on table count. That doesn't affect our best customers, obviously, but on the more base mass side, we do. But we feel great.

Okay, gotcha. Thanks, Craig. Appreciate it.

Sure. Thank you. Our next caller is Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Great to see you on the trip a couple months ago. I guess I'll be the first to ask an Almarjan question. But as we progress through the year, could you guys just give us any kind of signposts to think about, be it even when the rooms will go on sale as we look towards just strength of the opening? And then A second part of that question would be, one question I get is just, it feels like the only hindrance in that market is supply constraint. And could you just give us a sense for when you look around the property, how long it's going to take for that area to kind of be fully built out and how necessary that is to hit some of the targets that you guys are looking for? Thanks so much.

Sure. The signposts along the way, we'll release them in press releases. I mean, we put out construction updates and then we update folks on this call. With respect to when rooms will go on sale, that's the subject of discussion right now, but if I had to spitball it at this point, it would be late Q3, early Q4. You are correct that it would be great to have a bunch of incremental room capacity. We are not dependent on that incremental room capacity to meet our base case. I want to be very, very clear about that. Said when we were in the UAE was that meeting the outperformance numbers or beyond would certainly require incremental hotel capacity. Those of you that were there saw that construction happening. So the construction is absolutely happening. I don't expect a material uptick in the room count prior to our opening. I mean, we are but a year and a few months out at this point. But shortly thereafter, I would expect incremental rooms to come online. Our strategy to deal with that in the short run and ultimately the long run is to have a very, very strong transportation program and effectively utilize adjacent cities as a source of day-to-day visitation. And so we're being very, very thoughtful on the transportation side. So just to reiterate, Bay's case unaffected, but we certainly would like incremental hotel rooms to come up, and they are coming up.

Great, thanks. And I guess just a quick follow-up just to ask about my town. We saw on some of the trade rags that maybe a hotel expansion here in Boston was back on track. I didn't see anything in the slide deck and referenced anything planned for Boston, but could just you guys walk through any expectations around anything you want to do in this market? Thanks.

Sure, sure. Thank you for that. Yeah, there was a bit of misreporting, actually, in a number of those articles. So let me clarify. We're not developing hotels on our balance sheet. Rather, we own some 16 acres of land adjacent to Encore, and we are contemplating providing a portion of that land under what is effectively a land lease. So to that end, we entered into an MOU with the City of Everett outlining certain things that we would each do to facilitate that development. And really, this is part of a broader vision for the neighborhood, including a potential rail stop and, of course, a possible Major League Soccer Stadium, very, very close to Encore Boston Harbor. So to be clear, we're not developing those hotels. We would be a land lease lessor. The hotels themselves would drive benefit to Encore Boston Harbor, and we would be excited about that. But that's what we're up to.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next caller is Ben Chaykin with Mizuho. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, thanks for taking my questions and just wanted to, you know, echo the previous comments. Maybe to follow up on UA, you know, recognizing you've provided us with a high-level financial framework, can you give us your latest thoughts on the mix of F&B entertainment versus gaming and then some of the swing factors as you see it today? Thanks.

Sure. I mean, we... we've outlined our expectations for the market in a base low and upside case. Beyond that, obviously on the gaming side, the market is extremely supply constrained. We're kind of it for quite some time. I think we've said in the past we expect that market to have many attributes that are consistent with Las Vegas, which is very, very strong non-gaming demand. So the balance there really is how we utilize our room base. Vegas, where the vast majority of our revenue is non-gaming, Macau, where the vast majority of our revenue is gaming, I wouldn't expect it to be at either of those polls, but it will really come down to the tension of how we utilize those rooms. You'll see in the numbers that we provided very healthy gaming revenues representing the productivity of the casino and also the supply constraint nature of the market, but you'll also see a healthy balance of non-gaming revenues reflecting substantial ADRs and a substantial willingness to spend in that market for food and beverage.

Helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next caller is Steve Kozella with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, good evening, and thank you for taking our question. And I also wanted to say congrats to Julie. Maybe just following up on Almarjan, as we continue to get closer to the opening, can you share how your database continues to shape up and the efforts to build the pipeline to get the right people to the property when it opens?

Sure. On the hosting side, you know, we started building our hosting infrastructure, Jesus, year ago, a year and change ago, when we started bringing on very senior folks with regional experience. So the kind of one-to-one relationship marketing has been well underway, and I would say that general awareness among high-value players regionally is extremely high. I mean, we've been getting approached. by people in pretty far-flung places asking when the property will be open. On the mass market side, we have begun primarily through digital, building a database and creating awareness. We are communicating with those folks regularly in anticipation of the opening. And I think that will be additive. Honestly, So we're doing a lot, long story short, to build the database, but the awareness among people who are both gaming customers and non-gaming customers in the market, the unaided awareness is actually quite high. So I don't want to be flippant about it and say, you know, we don't need to build a database because we absolutely positively do, but we're feeling pretty good about people showing up the day we open the doors.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator, the next question will be the last. Thank you. Robin Farley with UBS. Your line is open.

Great. Hopefully you guys can hear me. I wanted to circle back to your comment about Macau and reinvestment. I know you said there wasn't a significant jump, and I think that was in your reinvestment spend. Can you talk a little bit more broadly about what you're seeing in the environment? Others are talking about how much more competitive it's gotten. Are you seeing that stabilize in terms of what others are doing, even if your own reinvestment rate has... has not had a jump. Thanks.

Sure. I mean, I won't specifically comment on others, our perception of others' reinvestment rates. I would say that there has been at least one operator in the market who has publicly stated that they are driving incremental reinvestment. I think you naturally get responses to that. I think you're really talking about a band market-wide. You're talking about a band of 200 basis points in reinvestment. know when you talk about reinvestment moving up and down so as we have said before i don't view the market as being in some all-out promotional war by any means uh but like i said in my prepared or in in a response actually to another question it's a short booking window and it's a competitive market and that's you know that's the way it is so we all i can really do is speak to what we do and that is move reinvestment up down do what we need to do in order to drive EBITDA-positive incremental visits. And lastly, as I mentioned on prior calls, we have a to-the-basis-point, day-by-day view of what our reinvestment is, and so we are able to modulate it on the fly far better than we ever have, which really relates to some human capital and technology improvements that we made several years ago so that we can really bring it up, bring it down, bring it up, bring it down, and do whatever we need to do at any given moment.

Okay, thank you. And then just a quick follow-up on Vegas. Craig, in your comments when you were sort of talking longer term about demand and growth in 2030 and all of that, you kind of wrapped it up by saying you were making the point that you think about growth longer term. But you made a comment about, you know, 26 maybe not being greater than 2025. And I didn't know if that was just like a theoretical making the point that you weren't as focused near term or, and I know you don't guide, but is the expectation, you know, given the room remodel disruption, it would be reasonable to think that EBITDA would be gone year over year? Is that sort of a takeaway that we should have from that comment?

My comment was purely theoretical. I'm simply pointing out that this is true in Macau, this is true in Vegas. We don't control the market. We control our share of it. Everything we do every day is designed to be a share taker, hold share and be a share taker. That manifests itself in two ways, gaming volumes and ADR. By all measures, I think we've shown that we are very successful in that strategy. And so opining on 26 for us is actually opining on the market. And I'm not going to opine on the market. In fact, you all spend a lot more time analyzing market-level trends, quite frankly, than we do, per se, because we are thinking about how to deliver the absolute best product so that we can top-tick our own EBITDA. So, but my comment was purely designed to illustrate the fact that we're thinking about an arc that is, you know, five to seven years out.

Okay, great, understood, thanks.

Sure.

Well, thank you for joining the WinResorts Q4 earnings call, and thank you for all the kind words. We appreciate your interest in the company, and the team looks forward to talking to you again next quarter.

Thank you, everybody.

And thank you for participating on today's conference.