Wynn Resorts Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator

Welcome to the Wynn Resorts First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All participants are in a listen only mode until the question and answer session of today's conference. To ask a question, press star one on your touchtone phone, record your name and I will introduce you. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. This call is being recorded.

Operator

If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the line over to Julie Cameron Doe, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Thank you operator and good afternoon everyone. On the call with me today are Craig Billings, Brian Gilbrance and Jenny Holiday in Las Vegas. Also on the line are Linda Chen and Frederic Louvisuto. Please note that we've published a presentation to provide more color on the company and recent performance ahead of this call. You can find the presentation on our newly relaunched Investor Relations website.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

I want to remind you that we may make forward looking statements under Safe Harbor Federal Securities Laws and those statements may or may not come true. I will now turn the call over to Craig Billings.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Thanks, Julie. Good afternoon, and as always, thank you for joining us. Before we get into the quarter, I want to take a moment to recognize a very significant milestone. Last month, I was pleased to join nearly 1,700 of our day one Wynn Las Vegas employees in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of our iconic Las Vegas resort. I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to each every one of our team members, including those 1,700 folks who have been with us in Vegas since the beginning.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

This anniversary was a tribute to the dedication, passion and hard work that so many have demonstrated over the years to build the strength of our business today, a business that is delivering near record results with a significant property opening now less than two years away. I also want to acknowledge the significant contributions of Elaine Nguyen to both our business and the broader Las Vegas community. Elaine, who cared so deeply about our employees, was truly one of a kind and will be missed by many. Turning to the business, I'd like to address upfront the potential impact of tariffs on our business. We expect the direct impact of tariffs on OpEx to be low and entirely manageable with most of the impact in The U.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

S. Stemming from food and beverage, where we are actively working through alternative sourcing for the most impactful items. CapEx, however, is a different story. We had a number of CapEx projects in flight in The U. S.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

And while we had sourced for those projects presuming some tariff impact, the current tariff rates have driven us to delay about $375,000,000 of CapEx projects, including the Encore Tower remodel. Once tariff rates have settled, we will thoroughly respec and resource the most severely affected items. While we're staying nimble, the pace of change at the moment is just too significant to commit to revised timing on that CapEx. Turning to the potential indirect impacts, there's been plenty of recent research on the potential impact of tariffs on growth. And while we are certainly better insulated than some given our more resilient affluent customer base, there's obviously uncertainty out there.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

So far, however, our businesses in Vegas and Macao are holding up quite well. In Vegas, April RevPAR was up slightly from 2024, slot handle was up and group activity was as expected. So the business through April felt pretty good. And the visibility we have into forward demand, which is primarily through our group and convention business, also looks just fine. Of course, the booking window in other channels is much shorter than group, and so we are watching those channels carefully.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

In Macau, mass drop in April was in line with 2024 and direct VIP turnover was up nicely. Golden Week, which just ended, saw mass drop up from last year and full occupancy in the hotels. But again, the booking window there is short and we are watching customer activity day to day. Long story short, recent results have been good, but we have to acknowledge the uncertainty out there and the impact that uncertainty may have on demand. As always, we have a playbook ready for every scenario.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

So with that, let's turn to the quarter. Were pleased to deliver another solid quarter of EBITDA here in Las Vegas on an impossible comp against the twenty twenty four Super Bowl. On last quarter's call, we called out a $25,000,000 headwind to EBITDA, and we did a bit better than that as we were only down about $11,000,000 when adjusting for hold in both periods. Demand remained healthy in the quarter with a 4% increase in total casino revenues even without the Super Bowl in 2025. Our slot business continues to be a bright spot as the investments we have made in our premium slot areas and in the team have helped maintain our premium positioning.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

In fact, if you remove Super Bowl weekend from the prior year quarter, we were up across the board, Drop, candle, RevPAR, nongaming revenues and EBITDA all up year over year. Turning to Boston. Encore Boston Harbor generated $57,000,000 of EBITDAR. Slot volumes continue to hold up well with slot went up about 3%. More recently, demand in Boston has remained healthy through April with drop and handle flat to last year.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

In Macau, other than hold, the business in Q1 felt very good. Business generated $252,000,000 in EBITDA with poor VIP hold costing us nearly $40,000,000 of EBITDA. We saw healthy volumes in the quarter with turnover up 31% and mass drop up one point, both sequentially. Adjusted for VIP hold, we grew market share sequentially and improved EBITDA margins from Q4 to Q1. While the market in Macau continues to be highly competitive, we remain disciplined in our focus on maximizing EBITDA and generating a healthy margin profile.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

We were also pleased to recently open the Gourmet Pavilion Food Hall at Wynn Palace, an exciting new amenity for us, which is already driving visitation and eliciting enthusiasm from our customers. In fact, since opening the Gourmet Pavilion, we have seen about 2,400 incremental daily restaurant covers at Wynn Palace, a strong indicator of additional visitation to the property. Turning to Wynn on Marjan Islands, construction is now up to the 40 Seventh Floor of the tower and we will top out later this year. We will soon be commencing with the fit out of interiors in portions of the building and we're also now sculpting the elaborate beachside pool scape. We remain on track for our targeted opening date and we believe the property will be well positioned as the only integrated resort to open in the near term into what several analysts have predicted will be a $5 plus billion GGR market.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

We think this is the most compelling development opportunity in the industry right now. Our future is bright. And as I mentioned last quarter, while our stock price continues to inappropriately reflect the value of our assets, we will buy back stock. To that end, we purchased $200,000,000 of stock in the first quarter and another $100,000,000 thus far in Q2. With that, I will now turn it back to Julie to run through some additional details on the quarter.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Thank you, Craig. At Wynn Las Vegas, we generated $223,400,000 in adjusted property EBITDA on $625,300,000 of operating revenue during the quarter, delivering an EBITDA margin of 35.7%. Removing the Super Bowl weekend from each quarter, revenue and EBITDA were up five point four percent and two point seven percent respectively. OpEx excluding gaming tax per day was $4,300,000 in the quarter, up 4.1% compared to the prior year due to normal wage inflation from our union and nonunion areas and a prior year recovery of bad debt. The team in Las Vegas continues to exercise strong cost discipline and has been able to mitigate the majority of recent payroll related increases without impacting the guest experience.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Turning to Boston, we generated adjusted property EBITDA of $57,500,000 on revenue of 209,200,000 with an EBITDA margin of 27.5%. Prior year EBITDA benefited $2,000,000 from a one time credit to OpEx in addition to about $3,000,000 of high hold. We stayed very disciplined on the cost side with OpEx per day of $1,180,000 up just 1% from Q1 twenty twenty four despite continued labor cost pressures in that market. The Boston team has continued to do a great job of mitigating union related payroll increases with cost efficiencies in areas of the business that do not impact the guest experience. Our Macau operations delivered adjusted property EBITDA of $252,100,000 in the quarter on $865,900,000 of operating revenue resulting in an EBITDA margin of 29.1 in the quarter.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Lower than normal VIP hold impacted EBITDA by a little over $38,000,000 in the quarter. OpEx excluding gaming tax was approximately $2,640,000 per day in Q1, flat year on year. The team has done a great job in staying disciplined on costs and we remain well positioned to drive strong operating leverage as the market continues to grow over time. In terms of CapEx in Macau, we recently opened the Gourmet Pavilion at Wynn Palace as Craig mentioned and we're currently advancing through the design, planning and approval stages on several of our larger concession commitments. As we noted the past few quarters, these projects require a number of government approvals, creating a wide range of potential CapEx outcomes in the near term.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

As such, we expect total CapEx spend in 2025 inclusive of our concession related commitments and other projects to range between $250,000,000 to $300,000,000 Moving on to the balance sheet. Our liquidity position remains very strong with global cash and revolver availability of $3,200,000,000 as of March 31. This was comprised of $1,800,000,000 of total cash and available liquidity in Macau and $1,300,000,000 in The U. S. The combination of strong performance in each of our markets globally with our properties generating nearly $2,300,000,000 of LTM adjusted property EBITDA together with our robust cash position creates a very healthy consolidated net leverage ratio of just over 4.3 times.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Our strong free cash flow and liquidity profile also allows us to continue returning capital to shareholders in both Macau and The U. S. To that end, the Wynn Macau Board recently announced it has recommended to shareholders an increase in the final dividend for 2024 to $125,000,000 up from $50,000,000 in the previous period, subject to shareholders' approval at the upcoming Annual General Meeting on May 23. In addition, the Wynn Resorts Board has approved a cash dividend of $0.25 per share payable on 05/30/2025 to stockholders of record as of May 16. During the quarter, we repurchased 2,360,000.00 shares for approximately $200,000,000 and an additional $100,000,000 so far in Q2 twenty twenty five.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

These share buybacks, together with our recurring dividend, highlight our focus on and continued commitment to prudently returning capital to shareholders. In terms of CapEx, we spent approximately $160,000,000 on CapEx in the quarter, primarily related to the Villa renovations and food and beverage enhancements in Las Vegas, concession related CapEx in Macau and normal course maintenance across the business. Additionally, we contributed $51,200,000 of equity to the Wynn Al Marjan Island project during the quarter, bringing our total equity contribution to date to $682,900,000 During the quarter, we started drawing on the construction loan with a drawn amount to date of $278,000,000 We estimate our remaining 40% pro rata share of the required equity is approximately $650,000,000 to $725,000,000 With that, we will now open up the call to Q and A.

Operator

Thank you. To ask a question press 1 on your touchtone phone. Unmute your phone, record your name clearly after the prompt and I will introduce you for your question. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. Our first question comes from Carlo Santarelli with Deutsche Bank.

Operator

You may go ahead, sir.

Carlo Santarelli
Carlo Santarelli
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Hey Craig, Julie, everyone. Maybe this is for Craig. Know that the way that we see promos discounts in Las Vegas is different than maybe the way that you guys think about them or see them. But it does look like in the first quarter that came down fairly, really both as a relative to the

Carlo Santarelli
Carlo Santarelli
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

business model which was on

Carlo Santarelli
Carlo Santarelli
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

a dollar basis. I was wondering if there's been any change there or if just a lot of what we're seeing is the Super Bowl comparison and some of that savings is coming through just from that weekend alone?

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Sure, Karamo. Those numbers are going to correlate very strongly with ADR because a significant component of our reinvestment is in the form of rooms. So your presumption that it relates to Super Bowl is correct because our ADRs over Super Bowl were even more off the charts than they are ordinarily.

Carlo Santarelli
Carlo Santarelli
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Okay, great. And then Julie, you talked about kind of the contributions and where things stand as of today. How should we think about the cadence of kind of that remaining six fifty to seven twenty five?

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Yes. Thanks, Carlo. I think we've talked about this in the past. It's following the usual kind of construction curve. So it's going to be we'll be deploying that over the course of the remainder of this year and into next year.

Carlo Santarelli
Carlo Santarelli
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Okay, great. Thank you.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

But it is pro rata. It is essentially side by side with the bank financing. So it is not equity first, bank second.

Operator

Thank you. Our next caller is Shaun Kelley with Bank of America.

Shaun Kelley
Shaun Kelley
Senior Research Analyst & MD - Gaming, Lodging & Leisure Equities at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Craig, maybe you can just give us your thoughts on there's obviously a lot of questions around kind of consumer and some of the mix. And as your business has evolved, particularly the growth you've seen in slots, could you just give us your latest sense on sort of how much international inbound is when exposed to and how much China or Asia sourced VIP should we think about purely on the Las Vegas side of the equation? That would be helpful.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Sure. First step is to bifurcate it between the very high end and not the very high end. On the very high end, we're not seeing really any implications for visitation at all. Outside of that group, post COVID, international is like nine percent of Las Vegas room nights, which is we can easily, easily backfill. And so we do see a decrease in international visitation, particularly from Canada and Mexico, as others have mentioned.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

It doesn't really impact us much at all.

Shaun Kelley
Shaun Kelley
Senior Research Analyst & MD - Gaming, Lodging & Leisure Equities at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

That's helpful. And then big picture, obviously, it looks like sounds like the forward calendar and everything you're seeing on group is consistent and fairly unchanged, which I think fits with everything we've heard from the market right now. But maybe just your thoughts on sort of the rate picture as we move into the summer kind of cross Memorial Day, sometimes that area gets a little bit more volatile. Obviously, the booking windows are very short. But anything that you see in activity there or anything you see on the pricing side one way or another that we should be aware of?

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Nothing from a pricing perspective, nothing out of the ordinary from perspective, honestly, this last weekend, we had bookings that were well above the norm. And so look, we can't be naive. There's uncertainty out there, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, and we have to watch this stuff day to day. But as I also said in my prepared remarks, things look fine as of now and booking continues kind of where we would expect it. Although again, as you rightly point out, the booking window is relatively short.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

So we'll see once things really start to kick in and the impact of the decrease in port traffic that you're seeing in LA and the impact of tariffs really set in. We'll see. But as of now, everything's pretty good actually.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Brian, anything

Brian Gullbrants
Brian Gullbrants
Chief Operating Officer - North American Operations at Wynn Resorts

you'd say the revenue team and our sales team are continuing to take rate wherever they can. You can look for yourself. Our rates are extremely strong, beating the market. And when we look to 26 on the group side, we're pacing even better than expected. So feeling good about group pace and feeling good about where we are right now.

Brian Gullbrants
Brian Gullbrants
Chief Operating Officer - North American Operations at Wynn Resorts

We'll see what happens in the summer.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

But watching it like a hawk.

Brian Gullbrants
Brian Gullbrants
Chief Operating Officer - North American Operations at Wynn Resorts

That's right.

Shaun Kelley
Shaun Kelley
Senior Research Analyst & MD - Gaming, Lodging & Leisure Equities at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. David Katz with Jefferies. You may go ahead.

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

Good evening, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. Can you just talk a bit more about Macau?

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

And

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

we've obviously heard your commentary about the competitiveness in that market. And just talk a bit more about how that manifests and how respond to it. Are we talking about credit or promotions or what else is manifesting in terms of that heightened credit? Yeah,

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

sure. I mean, I think it's I think one of our peers talked about it on a call regarding the strength of the premium mass market and the importance of the premium mass market to Macau at the moment. And we would clearly second that. I mean, you have a market where the booking window is short. And for a while, the promotional environment was probably more player friendly than it had historically been.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

That's eased in what we see as a pretty stable promotional environment now. But it's the day to day hand to hand combat of getting that customer to make a trip and getting that customer to come to your property. So I can't say it's any one of those things that you mentioned. It's really a combination of kind of all of them. And the competition for that customer segment is fierce.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

So what do we rely on? We rely on the things that we've always done really, really well service, the quality of the product and then muscles that we've built over the course of the past few years on the machine learning side and on offer development and offer delivery on many of the new amenities that we've put in, the complete reconfiguration and changes that we've done in our food and beverage program, the opening of the food hall that we just talked about. All of those things are important to our ability to be competitive. But it's a river of nickels, David, so it's really all of those things. You've got to be prepared to do all of those things and do them well.

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

Understood. And I just want to be clear. Is it notably worse than it was six or twelve months ago? And do you have any sense about what the trajectory of that might be in the next twelve months?

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

No, I don't. In fact, I think it's better. So I think everybody came out of COVID. I mean, had this period of closure and you had a period in which the junkets were taken out of the market. And so I think you had this period of time coming out of COVID when everybody was kind of finding their footing.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

I think we were unique coming out out of COVID because we were in particularly strong shape coming out of the gates. And I think at this point, everybody has kind of found who they are and how they're going to compete. And I think that stability that we're seeing in the market over the course of the past, call it six months is good for the market, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a very, very competitive dynamic. When I say it's a competitive dynamic, it's not a negative statement. It's not a I'm not saying anything bad about the market.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

I'm just stating reality. And it's a reality we live with every day and we're fine with it.

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

Perfect. Thank you.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Sure.

Operator

Thank you. Steven Grambling with Morgan Stanley. You may go ahead.

Stephen Grambling
Stephen Grambling
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Hey, thank you. Craig, I think in your opening remarks, talked about the disconnect in the value of the stock and your willingness to buy back, which sometimes, you you hear about conglomerates and holding companies having discounts. I guess, how do you think about synergies from operating as one business across multiple properties globally and one brand versus perhaps dis synergies if there ever was an option to consider in separating out properties?

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Well, taking a single scale business that can pull cash flow from multiple sources and redeploy it into development opportunities globally and turning it into multiple subscale businesses that cannot is probably not a good idea. Second, you have a reasonable amount of cross property play. And in fact, there are elements of our marketing strategy that are deployed globally. You have a lot of efficiencies in the capital structure by having a business that has more scale and more sources of cash flow. There's a whole litany of reasons that operating the business as a single business makes sense.

Stephen Grambling
Stephen Grambling
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

That's helpful. And one of the first things you said was development. I'm curious, and one of the things that you haven't touched on yet, don't think, was just around New York. That's something that's been out there a little bit. There's been some waffling from some of your peers.

Stephen Grambling
Stephen Grambling
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

I guess what's your latest thoughts and maybe any timing thoughts on New York as a development opportunity?

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Sure. I think the current plan seems to be for the RFAs to be submitted by the June with licenses awarded sometime by the end of twenty twenty five or early twenty twenty six. New York's a great potential market and we're certainly prepared to put together a fair proposal. It's also a complicated market with a lot of considerations. You've heard some of our peers talk about online gaming and that's certainly a point of concern for us.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

And we also need to consider the potential impact of tariffs on build costs. So and then pile on top of that the fact that the local politics are complicated. So we continue to be in the running in New York, but we absolutely will not get over our skis to win the license there.

Stephen Grambling
Stephen Grambling
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thank you so much. Sure.

Operator

Thank you. Our next caller is Robin Farley with UBS.

Robin Farley
Robin Farley
Managing Director at UBS Group

Great, thanks. Just going back to the CapEx that you mentioned you're putting on hold, can you give us a sense of sort of what projects? And also, what's the scale of that the increase in that CapEx cost? I'm just thinking if that would be similar read through to your potential New York project in terms of the CapEx impact from tariffs? Thanks.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Well, first the bulk of it is the Encore Tower remodel. So call that high 200s out of three seventy five that we talked about. The rest of it is kind of cats and dogs that we were doing here in The U. S. I don't think the read through would be instructive because you're talking about a greenfield new build where you have a lot of steel, a lot of MEP, a lot of things that are sourced from a lot of different places.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

And in this particular instance, we had kind of two or three relatively high dollar items on a per unit basis that were sourced from high tariff locations. So I don't think the read through would be applicable.

Robin Farley
Robin Farley
Managing Director at UBS Group

Okay, great. No, understood. And then just on the group, piece, some of the larger hotel companies have talked about softening group. And so I think the comment about 2026 was like pacing better than expected. Can you I guess, what had you been expecting just to think about how your twenty twenty six group is trending just relative to what we're hearing from the other large hotel companies?

Robin Farley
Robin Farley
Managing Director at UBS Group

Thanks.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

I'll start by saying we are not experiencing softening group. But Brian, do you want to follow-up?

Brian Gullbrants
Brian Gullbrants
Chief Operating Officer - North American Operations at Wynn Resorts

Yes. The strength in '26 that we're seeing, we would probably attribute to Q1. NADA, CONEXPO, there's a couple of large groups that alternate cycles and they're lining up next year. So next year looks great. Demand is strong and we're looking quite good.

Brian Gullbrants
Brian Gullbrants
Chief Operating Officer - North American Operations at Wynn Resorts

So feeling good about '26 right now.

Robin Farley
Robin Farley
Managing Director at UBS Group

Great. Super helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. John DeCree with CBRE. You may go ahead, sir.

John Decree
John Decree
Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe on the development pipeline, you mentioned Thailand. In the slide deck, we've talked about that a little bit in past calls and New York. But I guess there's some rumbling that Japan might reopen bidding for IRs.

John Decree
John Decree
Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group

I'm curious, Craig, if you'd look at Japan again and under kind of what pretense that might be interesting for you.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Thank you for the question. There's we'll always look at any gateway city where meaningful capital can be deployed and we think the Wynn brand resonates. So Japan fits that bill. There's structural challenges in the way that the licensure and ownership have been outlined in Japan. And so when we look at it, of course, but it's got to be right and the setup has to be right for us.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

We have plenty of development opportunities. We have a land bank in The UAE. We have a land bank in Boston. We have a land bank in Las Vegas. You mentioned Thailand.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Obviously, bill there has been delayed and there's some components to the bill that probably won't work if they stay in the bill. But it's an amazing potential market with unbelievable airlift, infrastructure, tourism, etcetera. So we've got plenty of development opportunities. We would only look at Japan if the setup was right.

John Decree
John Decree
Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group

That's helpful, Craig. I appreciate the insight on that one. And then maybe an easy one. Not sure to the extent inflation or construction cost inflation kind of overflows outside of The U. S.

John Decree
John Decree
Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group

But do you see any risk in global construction costs at The UAE? I think your contract there even in Macau, any potential cost increases on CapEx that you've seen?

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Quite the opposite. Well, two things. One, we have a substantial portion of The UAE already bought out. So we have a very, very strong budget certainty in The UAE. Elsewhere, you really it's more on the FF and E on the furniture, fixtures and equipment side.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

You have vendors out there that have lost a lot of customers. And so you see opportunities actually from a cost savings perspective. I can't quantify that into any of the projects that we're executing right now because it's too early frankly with where we are in the process in Macao. And again, we're pretty much bought out in The UAE. But no, I don't see any spillover effects outside of The U.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

S.

John Decree
John Decree
Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group

Great. Thanks, Rick. I appreciate the help.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Sure.

Operator

Thank you. Brandt Montour with Barclays. You may go ahead.

Brandt Montour
Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank

Good afternoon or good evening, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. So I just want to clarify on the CapEx announcement today on the call with $375,000,000 of spend. The decks that you put up, it doesn't look like there's much difference for the Encore Tower shifting. I'm just hoping you could clarify that.

Brandt Montour
Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank

And then specifically, for the Encore Tower, I don't think you were expecting much disruption in the year. So I guess we should sit here and think that there's not much benefit of pausing it for operational considerations. How are you thinking about how that will affect the 25 P and L?

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Sure. Thanks for that, Brian. Yes, if you look carefully at Page I think it's Page 19 in the presentation, we did keep everything as is, but there's a footnote calling out the $375,000,000 delay. The reason for that, and we debated how to present it, was really because, as Craig said, can't actually come up with the accurate timing of when that's going to happen. So we don't want anyone to think we are canceling it because we're absolutely not.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

We're fully focused on getting it done. We just have to do the work now to figure out once tariffs settle down, how can we respec and rescope and then reschedule and retime how we're going to do it. So it's still in the CapEx forecast because it's going to happen at some point. It's just we can't be clear on the timing, so we just footnoted it.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Then figuring out the revised timing is not trivial because when we respect pieces, particularly furniture and fixtures, it's not like we're flipping through a catalog, right? We're getting samples created, we're sit testing those, we're beating those up, we're getting feedback from operations on the finishes, we're giving comments back to the vendor. This is a process that takes a lot of time. So to the extent that we respect a single piece of furniture, we're delayed by X number of months. There's just nothing we can do about that.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

So as Julie said, once we have certainty on sourcing and once we have certainty on what the tariffs will be from the country of origin on those sources, then we'll recommence. But we just don't know when that is right now. Right now, we're selling all the rooms in Encore through end of this year, Brian?

Brandt Montour
Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank

Correct.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

End of this year. And so if we move out another couple of months, then we'll start selling through the end of Q1. But we'll do the CapEx eventually.

Brandt Montour
Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank

Okay. That's really helpful. And then a follow-up on Macao. Julie, I think you said that the OpEx ex tax per day was flat year over year. I know you also opened up the food hall at the Palace.

Brandt Montour
Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank

I'm just sort of curious how you were able to keep OpEx per day flat with that opening. And then also if you could give us a sense of how that should trend throughout the year with I know that you guys have more concession agreement related stuff, you're waiting on approval. So any other thoughts on the progression of the year on OpEx per day would be helpful.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Sure. Thanks for that. We opened the Gourmet Food Pavilion just about a week ago. So it didn't it wasn't included in the quarter. We've managed OpEx very, very carefully though.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

We've been very focused on we can drive economies elsewhere so that we can seek to neutralize the impact of the additional costs associated with that. So we're working on that. And as a result, as we look out where OpEx is going to land throughout the remainder of the year, it's in the right zone where it is right now.

John Decree
John Decree
Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group

Great.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

And I just add to that. The team who's on the call is doing their job right, we're generating incremental revenue out of the footfall that we get out of that facility. So sure, we pick up a couple of hundred FTEs. We can manage that pretty easily relative to the total employee base, but we should be driving incremental EBITDA out of that. And that's really the approach with each of the concession related commitments that we made.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Now the margin profile on those concession commitments, we need to focus on that and drive that. But if we have 2,400 incremental covers that we're doing in Wynn Palace every day, it's a pretty trivial amount of conversion to the gaming floor that we need out of those incremental visitors in order to drive EBITDA that more than fades the OpEx coming out of the food hall itself.

John Decree
John Decree
Director - Equity Research at CBRE Group

Makes sense. Thanks everyone.

Operator

You. Ben Chaikin from Mizuho, you may go ahead.

Ben Chaiken
Analyst at Mizuho Securities

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Regarding Wynn Almarjan, I think in the past we've talked about some of the different player cohorts in three buckets. Number one, inbound to Rosh Al Khaimah number two, those living in Dubai and then number three, destination luxury customers. You know, understanding this is a brand new asset, how would you rank order those in terms of opportunity as you see it? And then anything you can share regarding the expected demand or magnitude of the second bucket, those living in Dubai?

Ben Chaiken
Analyst at Mizuho Securities

Thanks.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

You either took really good notes or have a great memory. Those are in fact the three cohorts that we would focus on. I don't rank order them because each of them is incredibly important. You can think of those markets you can think of them slightly differently. So in Las Vegas as an example, 25,000 people a day come through Wynn Las Vegas, but only 10,000 of them are lodgers.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

And the rest of them are coming from adjacent properties and from the Las Vegas Strip. That's very akin to the first group that you mentioned and that's about having sufficient amenities to drive to really get one of their four days in Rasahima on property. The second bucket is a lot like a locals market. And so you can think of that very similar to the wonderful business that we have in Boston where you're dealing with people that are within a certain driving range and you market to those folks in a very specific way. You use food and beverage in a very specific way.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

And the third bucket is really the vast majority of our lodger business here in Las Vegas, which is a fly to market as opposed to a Locals market. So from an EBITDA perspective, each one of them is important. And from a vibe and aesthetic and customer experience perspective, each one of them is important. And they each play a role in the programming that we have put into that building.

Ben Chaiken
Analyst at Mizuho Securities

Thanks. Appreciate it. Sure.

Operator

Thank you. Chad Beynon with Macquarie. You may go ahead, sir.

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Wanted to ask a two parter on a few of the non gaming related items in Las Vegas. Julie, think you mentioned at the beginning that OpEx should increase on food and beverage. First question, is there a specific growth rate that you can kind of talk to that would offset some of those price increases to keep margins flat?

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

And then my second question is around the retail business. Not sure if you've seen any impact in terms of the high end handbags and watches at your stores. And can you just kind of remind us if it's roughly an eightytwenty base versus turnover on that business? Thank you.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Sure. I'll take each one of those. So first, I may have perhaps I misspoke in my prepared remarks. What I said in my prepared remarks is that we don't expect tariff impact on OpEx. I think that was the genesis of your question on food and beverage.

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

Yes. Okay. Sorry about that. Thank you.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

That's okay. We don't expect any impact because that's really a sourcing question. Now are there certain things that you can only get from certain places? Absolutely. But the vast majority of things that would be most impactful, we can resource and we're already on it now.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

So we don't expect much there. In terms of retail, you can see the Q1 numbers. You can see in our press release where you can see everything else. Retail was essentially flat year over year and that's coming off an absolutely incredible comp. So nothing really and frankly coming off a prior year that had Super Bowl in it, which is a which was obviously a giant retail number.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

So nothing of note in retail to talk about. And lease terms vary, not all over the place, but they vary a decent amount between base rent and percentage of turnover. So there's not a lot that you can infer from our lease revenues about the gross value of goods.

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

Okay. And just to be clear, yes, my question was kind of going forward on a tariff impact on the pricing of some of those items in the store. So you're not you haven't seen anything thus far in terms of price increases or hearing potential increases from your tenants in April

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

have not. I think that's going to come down to retailer by retailer and those are really, at the end of the day, their decisions. I mean, we're the landlord effectively and we do a great job managing our real estate, but we're not in there obviously making pricing decisions with them.

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

Great. Thank you very much.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Sure. Thanks, Chad. Operator, the next question will be the last one. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. And our final question comes from Joe Staub with Susquehanna. You may go ahead, sir.

Joseph Stauff
Institutional Investment Analyst at Susquehanna

Thank you. Two quick questions, please, if I could, on Macao. Craig, I was just curious maybe on your observations on the competitive environment in Macau, Cotai in particular. And whether or not you are seeing any impact from, say, the new hotel product recently launched from some of your competitors?

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Sure.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Thanks for the question. On the first one, I'll really reference back a bit to how I responded to David. It's a very competitive market. I think you've heard that from a number of our peers. As I said earlier, that competition manifests itself in many, many ways.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

The promotional environment is actually quite stable, but it's day to day hand to hand combat in order to be competitive in that market. And I think that's true for everyone. On the hotel product side, we continue to run full. We continue to have market share that we're very proud of. We are incredibly proud of the state of our assets.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

We keep them in tip top shape and we continue to run the best service levels in the market. So you're right, there is incremental product coming to market. That is absolutely the case. We too have been innovating with CapEx not on the room side but in other amenities as we've talked about pretty extensively on this call. And I like our ability to be competitive there.

Joseph Stauff
Institutional Investment Analyst at Susquehanna

Thank you.

Craig Billings
Craig Billings
CEO at Wynn Resorts

Sure.

Julie Cameron-Doe
Julie Cameron-Doe
CFO at Wynn Resorts

Okay. Well, thank you, operator, and thank you to all the participants on the call. We appreciate your interest in WIN RESOURTS, and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter.

Operator

Thank you for participating on today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Executives
Analysts

Key Takeaways

  • Tariffs and CapEx: While tariffs have minimal impact on OpEx, Wynn has delayed about $375 million of US CapEx projects—including the Encore Tower remodel—until tariff rates stabilize and resourcing can be re‐evaluated.
  • First quarter results: Wynn delivered solid performance on tough Super Bowl comps with Las Vegas EBITDA down just $11 million (4% casino revenue growth), Encore Boston Harbor generating $57 million EBITDAR, and Macau delivering $252 million EBITDA despite a $40 million VIP hold headwind.
  • Forward demand remains healthy, with group and convention bookings pacing above expectations for 2026, premium slot investments supporting market‐leading ADR growth, and leisure booking windows holding firm.
  • Major developments on track, including topping out the Wynn Al Marjan tower for a late‐2025 opening into a $5 billion GGR market and opening the Gourmet Pavilion at Wynn Palace, which is driving ~2,400 incremental daily covers.
  • Financial strength and capital returns: Wynn finished Q1 with $3.2 billion of global liquidity, a 4.3x net leverage ratio, repurchased $300 million of shares year‐to‐date, and announced dividends of $0.25 per share in the US and a $125 million final dividend in Macau.
A.I. generated. May contain errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Wynn Resorts Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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