Wynn Resorts CEO Craig Billings said in his company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday (local time) that “Macau is really the most fascinating aspect of our portfolio right now.”
Billings was quick to add that “… the equity markets obviously aren’t appreciating that, but that’s fine.”
According to a Motley Fool transcript of the call, Billings admitted that “we started a journey toward being a very, very good, very aggressive mass marketer with the opening of [Wynn] Palace [in Cotai]. He added that “if you look back at [20]19, some 80-plus percent of our EBITDA in Macau came from sources others than VIP.”
Billings predicted that the Macau “market obviously is going to reopen [after the COVID-19 pandemic] as a more mass-centric market…”. He added: “We’ve seen new customers come to Macau, different customer motivations than perhaps historically we’ve seen, shopping motivation, leisure motivation, things like that.”
Billings also said in the call, “Now we’re under no illusion that we’re talking about a Las Vegas-style nongaming market” in Macau, adding that, however, “it’s just a very, very different dynamic there [Macau]. But the ability to adapt and change our business as the market changes and adapts or even leads that, which we’ve have historically done here in Las Vegas is something that I personally find fascinating and a very, very interesting investment – incremental investment opportunity.”
In the call, Wynn Macau President Ian Coughlan revealed that the company has two undeveloped land parcels at Wynn Palace totalling 11 acres (4.45 hectares), apart from another acre and a half in the existing property. “So we have three opportunities to build very meaningful product offers for the future” and “there’s great opportunity for us to expand our business considerably in Macau.”
Coughlan concluded: “So we’re ready when Macau bounces back, and it will bounce back… and the long-term future of Macau, as Craig has pointed out, is exceptional.”
According to a Wynn Resorts statement earlier this week, Wynn Palace recorded a negative Adjusted Property EBITDA of US$0.9 million for the first quarter, compared to a positive US$27.4 million in the same quarter of last year.
Wynn Macau’s Adjusted Property EBITDA stood at a negative US$4.7 million for the first quarter, compared to a positive US16.6 million for the same quarter in 2021.
This undated handout photo shows the Wynn Macau resort in Nape. – Photo courtesy of Wynn Resorts
