Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Good afternoon. My name is Nora, and I'll be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Las Vegas Sense Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Daniel Briggs. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Joining me on the call today are Sheldon Adelson, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Goldstein, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Dr. Dumont, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us on the call are Dr. Wilford Wong, President of SanchChina, and Grant Shum, Chief Operating Officer of SanchChina. 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 law. The company's actual results could differ materially from the anticipated results in these forward-looking statements. In addition, we may discuss non-GAAP measures. The definition 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 please turn the call over to Mr. Adelson.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I hope that all of you and your families are staying safe and healthy. While the business volumes continue to be impacted by the pandemic, we're pleased to see improving operating results, especially in Asia. In Singapore, Marina Bay stands at a profitable quarter as operations progressively resumed across the resort during the summer. In Macau, operating losses reduced sequentially over the second quarter. The third quarter results, however, are not representative of our current business trajectory, as the resumption of visa issuance across all provinces in China only commenced toward the end of September. The initial stages of recovery since then have been very encouraging. Through the October golden week, we saw meaningful recovery across the different segments of our Macau operations. Importantly, business volumes in the premium mass segment enjoyed the most significant researches. This vital segment is central to our ongoing investment program in Macau and has been leading our revenue generation at this stage of the recovery. We expect the base mass market to recover as visitation to the market increases. Consistent with the recovery of premium mass and overall domestic China consumption returns. We also experienced strong recovery in our retail malls with the luxury retail segment enjoying the strongest performance. We continue to make excellent progress in our $2.2 billion U.S. dollar capital investment for the London and Macau and Four Seasons projects. The Grand Suites at Four Seasons, the largest all-suites Four Seasons hotel in the world, is non-complete, licensed, and hosting customers in the premium mass segment. These gorgeous new suites have been receiving great customer feedback since the golden week. We will be introducing a variety of additional world-class integrated resort products and amenities as we complete the London and Macau and other capital projects. The Londoner will include two new all-suite hotels, more than a dozen new restaurants, additional retail and new mice and entertainment facilities. Our unwavering commitment to our significant ongoing investments in Macau enables us to play a part in supporting local employment and the local economy. It also ensures Macau will be even better positioned to recapture and, over time, increase. the chair of leisure and business tourism from China and the rest of Asia. I remain steadfast in my belief that Macau has the potential to become one of the greatest business and leisure tourism destinations in the world and the most capital of Asia. As I've said on many occasions, we would welcome the opportunity to invest billions of additional investment dollars. and extend our contributions to Macau's diversification and evolution into Asia's leading leisure and business tourism destination. Now turning to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. We encourage that MBS was profitable in the third quarter, despite the absence of overseas tourists. We hope to see the initiation of reciprocal travel arrangements in the coming months as health concerns. We remain committed to pursuing long-term investment in Singapore and our expansion of Marina Bay Sands, although there would be likely delays in the timing of the expansion given the challenges created by the pandemic. In addition to the expansion, we will continue to reinvest in Marina Bay Sands to enhance the customer experience and the tourism appeal of the resort. In Las Vegas, we are pleased to report that the recovery is well underway. Weekend occupancies have been as high as 70%. Together with our state and local government leadership and the entire Las Vegas community, Our team members are working diligently to prepare to safely host convention and group meeting customers from throughout the world, throughout the country, and around the world. We look forward to once again welcoming these customers back to Las Vegas, which will always be the most important convention and group meeting market in the United States. as we have said in the past increased analyst and the resumption of the convention of good media business are both critical components to achieving a full recovery in las vegas now moving to our balance sheet maintaining a strong balance sheet makes great business sense while we weather the storm caused by this pandemic Our balance sheet strength enabled us to continue to execute our capital investment programs in both Macau and Singapore, which we believe will position the company to deliver industry-leading growth and profitability in the years ahead. We're as confident as ever in the strength of our business model and the eventual recovery in travel and tourism spending in our markets. So thanks again for joining us on the call today. Now we'll take questions.