Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Sands Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are placed on a listen-only mode, and we'll open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to hand the floor over to your host, Mr. Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Joining the call today are Patrick Dumont, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Wilford Long, Executive Vice Chairman of SandsChina, and Grant Chung, CEO and President of SandsChina and EVP of Asia Operations. Today's conference call will contain forward-looking statements. We'll be making those statements under the safe harbor provision of federal securities laws. The language on forward-looking statements included in our press release also applies to our comments made on the call today. The company's actual results may differ materially from the results reflected in those forward-earning statements. In addition, we will discuss non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measure are included in our press release. We have posted an earnings presentation on our website. We will refer to that presentation during the call. Finally, for the Q&A session, we ask those with interest to please pose one question and one follow-up so we might allow everyone with interest the opportunity to participate. This presentation is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Patrick.

Thanks, Dan. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining the call. I wanted to start with a few summary points. We remain confident in our long-term strategy in both Singapore and Macau, and we'll continue to invest for future growth. We have a long-term view on economic growth in Asia. We believe the trends of economic growth and wealth creation will continue into the future. Our goal is to position our property portfolio to capitalize on a growing demand of premium travel and world-class entertainment experiences in Asia. We are fortunate to have the balance sheet and cash flow strength to support our meaningful capital investment program. Turning to our quarterly results, the high end was softer in both of our markets this quarter, which negatively impacted our reported financial results. Despite this, we delivered strong financial results at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, generating an EBITDA of $590 million for the quarter. If we had held as expected our rolling play, our EBITDA would have been $4 million higher or $594 million. Singapore remains an ideal market for high-value tourism. Our focus on creating unique and memorable entertainment and hospitality experience for our customers continues to generate industry-leading financial performance. We believe that growth in tourism in Singapore will continue over the long term. Our financial results continue to reflect the elevation of Marina Bay Sands' structural earnings power following our significant product investments, suite renovations, service enhancements, and the execution of our premium customer strategy. Looking further ahead, we remain enthusiastic about the additional growth opportunities presented by our new development project in Singapore, which will be directly adjacent to Marina Bay Sands. It will meaningfully increase our premium suite capacity, service and entertainment offerings, and will include the introduction of a state-of-the-art arena envisioned to be the finest in Asia. We remain on track with the development process and look forward to opening our new development in early 2031, subject to the required government approvals. Let's turn to Macau. We delivered $529 million of EBITDA for the quarter. If we had held as expected in our rolling play, our EBITDA would have been $11 million lower, or $518 million. SandShine's growth in gaming revenues and volumes meaningfully outperformed the Macau market overall. We are encouraged by our progress there. Our market share of Macau mass gaming revenue reached 26.1% for the quarter. Our strongest performance since the fourth quarter of 2023. When compared to the third quarter of 2025, we delivered growth in gaming volumes across all segments. Rolling volume was up 31% year-over-year. Our non-rolling drop was up 11% year-over-year. And slot ETG handle was up 26% year-over-year. We believe these improvements are indicative of our progress in product and service level improvements. I would also like to highlight our approach to reinvestment in Macau has remained consistent over the last several quarters. Our goal is to remain consistent with our reinvestment strategy going forward and to achieve greater profitability as revenues grow in the future. With respect to operating expenses, as we mentioned last quarter, we have elected over the last year to invest in additional table operating hours, increased sales, marketing and customer service personnel, and enhanced levels of customer service. We continue to believe these investments are critical to the achievement of our long-term objectives. These objectives are providing outstanding service and hospitality to our customers and creating unique and memorable experiences. We are continuing to invest in Macau, and we are focused on the highest return projects over the next three years to create the best opportunities to increase cash flow. Through our capital investment program, we are reorienting our Macau portfolio to address the most profitable segments. The renovation of Venetian, which commenced in March, is progressing. We expect to have the Venetian refreshed and reintroduced by Chinese New Year 2028, along with new premium-focused gaming salons and related amenities. Macau remains the largest gaming market in the world, and we believe the market will grow and reach new heights in the years ahead. We retain our goal of reaching $700 million in quarterly EBITDA and more over time as we fully implement our investment and operating strategies and as the Macau market grows in the future. Regarding our program's return capital to shareholders, we repurchased $950 million of LVS stock during the quarter. We have now repurchased 19% of the company's outstanding shares over the last 12 quarters. We have approximately $5 billion remaining on the $6 billion repurchase authorization from our board approved in July. We believe additional repurchases of LVS equity through our share repurchase program will be meaningfully accretive to the company and its shareholders over the long term. We also paid our recurring quarterly dividend of 30 cents per share during the quarter. In addition, our board has approved a 20% increase in our quarterly dividend to 36 cents per share beginning the first quarter of 2027. We also purchased additional shares of SEL during the quarter. The company's ownership percentage of SEL has reached 75.6% as of September 30, 2026. We look forward to continuing to utilize the company's share of purchase and recurring dividend programs to increase returns to shareholders. Thanks again for joining the call today and for your interest in the company. Now let's take some questions.