Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Las Vegas Sands first quarter 2020 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Daniel Briggs. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Joining me on the call today are Sheldon Adelson, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Goldstein, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Patrick Dumont, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the call over to Mr. Adelson... Please let me remind you that today's conference call will contain forward-looking statements that we are making under the safe harbor provision of federal securities laws. The company's actual results could differ materially from the anticipated results in those forward-looking statements. In addition, we may discuss non-GAAP measures. A definition and a reconciliation of each of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures is included in the press release. Please note that we have posted supplementary earnings slides on our investor relations website. We may refer to those slides during the Q&A portion of the call. Finally, for those who would like to participate in the Q&A session, we ask that you please respect our request to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question so we might allow everyone with interest the opportunity to participate. Please note that this presentation is being recorded. With that, let me turn the call over to Mr. Adelson.

Thank you, Dan. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I hope all of you, your friends and families, are in good health during these challenging times. The COVID-19 pandemic is unlike anything I have ever seen in my business career. While this pandemic brings many challenges, it also presents each of us with an opportunity to make a difference and to provide assistance to all those who have been impacted. A company is fortunate to have the financial strength to enable us to focus our efforts on the safety and security of our team members and customers, and are making a difference to those in need in each of our host communities of Macau, Singapore, and Las Vegas. We don't know how long this pandemic will last, but we are confident that travel and tourism spending in each of our markets and around the world will eventually recover. As surely as day follows night, people will travel again, shop again, come together again to enjoy entertainment and social interaction, to exchange ideas and to conduct business. Focusing on the support for our team members and communities today will position us to recover more quickly as the impact of the pandemic eventually subsides. It is also the right thing to do. Excuse me. Our optimism about an eventual recovery, coupled with our financial strength, enables us to continue the execution of our previously announced capital investment programs in both Macau and Singapore. We believe these investments will strengthen our leadership position in each of these markets and will provide a larger platform for future growth as travel and tourism spending eventually recover. Macau, we are making great progress in our $2.2 billion U.S. dollar capital investment program for the London of Macau and the Grand Streets at Four Seasons. In addition to these large projects, with which you are already familiar, we're moving full speed ahead with a number of other investments, which we think will increase both the attractiveness and the diversification of our integrated resorts portfolio. Now is not the time to pause or slow down investment in Macau. We see the opportunity and possess both the financial strength and the strategic commitment to make additional investments. With our effort to accelerate investment in Macau, we intend to play our part in supporting the local economy in the short term and ensure we are in a leading position to capture the eventual recovery in tourism spending. I remain steadfast in my belief that Macau has the opportunity to become one of the greatest business and leisure tourism destinations in the world and the mice capital of Asia. As I've said on many occasions, we welcome the opportunity to invest billions of dollars in additional investment and contribute to Macau's diversification and evolution into Asia's leading leisure and business tourism destination. Turning to our investment in the expansion of Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, we remain excited to be a part of Singapore's continued growth as a leading business and tourism and leisure tourism destination. We continue to make progress on the MBS expansion that will provide additional updates in the future. We will also continue to reinvest in marina-based sands to enhance the customer experience in advance of the expansion. Finally, turning to Las Vegas, the eventual recovery could take more time here than in Asia, but we're confident that Las Vegas's best days are ahead of it, that Las Vegas will remain the greatest leisure a business tourism destination in the United States. Let me now spend a moment on capital allegations. Maintaining a strong balance sheet makes great business sense while we weather the storm caused by this pandemic. A balance sheet strength will enable us to invest in promising future growth opportunities and will position the company to deliver industry-leading growth in the years ahead. While we have suspended our dividend program, we remain confident that the recovery in travel and tourism spending and the strength of our business model will enable us to deliver both growth and the return of capital to shareholders in the future. I assure you, I have not said, yay dividends and yay buybacks for the last time. I'm looking forward to seeing them again and hopefully very soon. Thank you for joining us on the call today, and now we'll take questions.