MGM Resorts International

Good afternoon and welcome to the MGM Resorts International Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Joining the call from the company today are Bill Hornbuckle, Chief Executive Officer and President, Corey Sanders, Chief Operating Officer, Jonathan Halkyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Hubert Wang, President and Chief Operating Officer of MGM China, and Andrew Chapman, Director of Investor Relations. Participants are in a listen-only mode. After the company's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. In fairness to all participants, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please note, this conference is being recorded. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Andrew Chapman. Please go ahead.

Andrew Chapman Good afternoon and welcome to the MGM Resorts International second quarter 2022 earnings call. This call is being broadcast live on the internet at investors.mgmresorts.com. We've also furnished our press release in Form 8K to the SEC. On this call, we will make forward-looking statements under the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated in these statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements is contained in today's press release and in our periodic filings with the SEC. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or otherwise. During the call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures and talking about our performance. You can find the reconciliation of GAAP financial measures in our press release and investor presentation, which are available on our website. Finally, this presentation is being recorded. I will now turn it over to Bill Hornbuckle.

Thank you, Andrew, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon. Our second quarter results represented our highest adjusted property EBITDA quarter in the history of Las Vegas, both on an absolute and same-store basis, and the highest second quarter in our regionals ever with seven of our U.S. properties setting all-time records. I again want to sincerely thank our employees for their continued hard work, commitment to excellence, and dedication to creating world-class experiences for our guests. Thanks to them, our company's service scores have improved sequentially each quarter, both overall and across all the metrics we track. I could not be more proud of the progress we have seen in servicing our customers. Before I dive into our results in more detail, let me reiterate that our long-term strategic planning remains unchanged. We're focused on continually improving our guest experience, delivering operational excellence, investing in our people and planet, and allocating capital responsibly. So let's turn to those results. We took another meaningful step in April to simplify our corporate structure and complete the monetization of our real estate assets with the closing of our strategic transactions between MGM Growth Properties and Vici. This transaction brought us 4.4 billion in cash, which we intend to use to invest in our core businesses while continuing to pursue meaningful growth opportunities. One such opportunity was the acquisition of the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas that officially closed in May. I've had the opportunity to spend some time at the property and have met a number of the co-stars. I cannot say enough about the strength of the team at the Cosmopolitan and the exceptional service culture that has been created there. Our focus now is on integrating the operations of the property into MGM Resort's portfolio and working together to maximize the future success of this world-class resort. We also recently announced another strategic divestiture in our portfolio. In June, we reached an agreement to sell the operations of the Gold Strike Tunica to the Cherokee Nation for $450 million. As a company, we felt this was an opportunity to sharpen our focus in Mississippi on Beau Ravage and take advantage of an attractive valuation. Gold Strike is a very special property. I'd like, again, to thank every employee in Tunica for consistently delivering amazing first-class gaming and entertainment experiences to our guests. We look forward to seeing GoldStrike continue success with the Cherokee Nation, and we expect this transaction to close the first part of 2023. The divestiture follows our prior announcement to sell the operators of the Mirage, which still also stay on track for close later this year. Consistent with our strategy to grow our international online gaming footprint, we announced in May a tender offer for Leo Vegas, a leading global online gaming company with licenses in eight jurisdictions, primarily in the Nordics. LeoVegas has a talented management team, a cloud and mobile-based technology platform, and an appreciable growth plan that we'll execute on as we develop our digital gaming presence in Europe. We also expect this transaction to close in the third quarter of this year. Shifting now back to focus on our brick and mortar development pipeline, we're hopeful that New York will solicit applications by the end of the year for one of three additional casino licenses. We are eager to respond and expand our existing property in Empire City, which is less than 15 miles from Manhattan, with an attractive footprint for development and growth. If we do receive a license, we look forward to working with the state of New York, Yonkers, and our surrounding jurisdictions to drive jobs and economic growth to that region. In Japan, we submitted our area development plan to the Japanese government in April, and are optimistic that we'll receive an approval decision in the fall of this year. Following that process, we will share further details about the project. And in the UAE, we continue to make progress on bringing the MGM brand family to Dubai, where we have a management agreement for a non-gaming integrated resort that has been developed in partnership with WASL. The project has broken ground, and we're continuous on the development progress. And we will watch with great interest what does or doesn't happen around gaming in the region, hopefully in the near future. Turning to BetMGM, Adam Greenblatt and the team provided a comprehensive update at their analyst day, reaffirming their long-term roadmap and path to profitability. The team at BetMGM is also working on a comprehensive refresh to improve the interface and customer experience later this year. Following a successful launch in Ontario in April, BetMGM announced a partnership with Carnival Cruises, Corporation to provide onboard ship betting and gaming under the BetMGM brand. BetMGM operates now in 23 markets, United States and Canada, across retail, online sports, and iGaming operations. In May, BetMGM committed 21% in share in the active markets in both U.S. sports betting and iGaming, which puts us in the number two position. BetMGM is the clear leader in iGaming and having reached 29% market share in May. And looking forward, with the addition of Ohio, most recently Massachusetts, as well as the potential for California, we continue to see great opportunity for expansion with BetMGM. We're accessible to those three states with over a 45-man addressable audience. Our investment in BetMGM is an important enabler to our omnichannel strategy and a key competitive advantage that allows us to drive incremental earnings between our brick-and-mortar and online channels. Early results of this strategy have been positive with a strong acquisition story with over 43% of our MGM Rewards signups coming from BetMGM versus 33% in Q2 2021. Of these signups, we have seen substantial growth in those who are visiting MGM property for the first time. Turning to Macau, our operations were affected by the limited visitation to the region, obviously due to the COVID restrictions. As you've likely seen, the Macau government closed all non-essential businesses in July in the face of rising case counts, which impacted our properties. Last week, we saw operations reopening on a limited basis, and we're working to minimize our operational costs in the short term and position our properties to capture more than our fair share of premium mass business as demand returns, hopefully, in the long term. We're also working on our concession renewal. We are pleased to have received the terms of this tender last week. with no surprises with all the submissions due by September 14th. The Macau government will then review the submissions and grant new concessions, hopefully by year end. We remain confident in the future of Macau and are proud to be partners in shaping the future of one of the world's premier tourist entertainment and gaming destinations. While our second quarter results were nothing short of spectacular, we are of course mindful of the marketplace concerns of a potential recession. We also recognize that starting in the back half of the year, we'll be lapping strong comparisons driven by pent-up demand around our reopenings. With all of this in mind, it is important to highlight that we've built an incredibly agile business over the last few years due to COVID and other factors, and we will adjust and pivot quickly if we see any signs of consumer demand slowing. That said, we sit here today, our business and forward-looking pace remains extremely strong. In fact, looking ahead, we continue to be quite bullish on our domestic business outlook based on a number of tailwinds coming in the near year, including a rebound in our convention business, the return of international travel, and a lineup of exciting events to Las Vegas. Let me touch on a couple of these points a bit more. First in 23, we expect to grow our convention mix and rate year over year. Also in the terms of city-wides, we look forward to welcoming CES back in better form, and once again, the Con Expo trade show to Las Vegas in March of 2023. This will be their first return post the COVID shortened 2020 event. When in rotation, this is one of the most well attended citywide events of the year with historical attendance well north of 130,000. Add to that the return of international visitation to Las Vegas, which in 2021 represented only 3% of visitors, then 10 to 15% in pre-pandemic year, and our international customers have longer stay patterns than domestic guests, and we expect these guests to return in force as international flight capacity will reach over 80% of 2019 summer levels. And finally, the event calendar in Las Vegas is arguably the best the city has ever seen, and MGM will be primary beneficiary even at our scale and positioning. Las Vegas is now truly a powerhouse sports destination with the Golden Knights and Raiders calling Las Vegas home. Looking ahead in 23, the city will host the Sweet 16 in the lead eight rounds of the NCAA's men's tournament and our first ever Formula One race. And then in early February of 2024, we'll play host to the Super Bowl. When you put it all together, the business case is incredibly compelling for continued growth and momentum in our business. And as Jonathan will describe, we see tremendous value potential in the shares of MGM Resorts. With that, I'll turn it over to Jonathan to discuss the details of the quarter.