Wynn Resorts Ltd Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call

Welcome to the Wynn Resorts 3rd Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode into the question-and-answer session of today's conference. To ask a question, please press star 1 on your touch-tone 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. 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.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. On the call with me today are Craig Billings and Brian Gulbrands in Las Vegas. Also on the line are Jenny Holliday, Linda Chen, and Frederick Luvisuto. 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 Investor Relations website. 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.

Thanks, Julie. Good afternoon, and as always, thank you for joining us. I'll jump right into the quarter, and I'll kick off here in Vegas. When Las Vegas continued to see notable gaming market share gains in the quarter, driven by our incredible team and market-leading product and service, resulting in EBITDA growth on a hold-adjusted basis of 3% to $211 million. against a difficult comp. Demand in the casino was healthy throughout the quarter with solid increases in both drop and handle, leading to casino revenues that were up 10%. Hotel revenue was flat at $187 million, demonstrating that our plan to accept slightly lower occupancy in order to preserve ADR and maximize EBITDA paid off during the quarter. In fact, in August, the property set an all-time monthly EBITDA to completing the renovation of the fairway villas by the end of this quarter and to the opening of zero. I think it's continued to see notable gaming market share gains in the quarter, driven by our incredible team and market-leading product and service, as I mentioned. More recently, business in the fourth quarter has seen continued momentum with drop and handle both up versus the same prior period last year. We've also seen notable growth in REVPAR and strong retail sales. So with the fourth quarter off to a strong start, we are now turning our attention to F1. You can look at our published room rates for the event and see that we are once again pricing at a significant premium to the market. Looking further out, our group and convention business looks strong heading into 2026 on pace to grow both room nights and rate. I do want to note that as we begin the Encore Tower remodel in the spring, we will lose about 80,000 room nights in 2026. Pick up some of that in rate, but the remodel will present a slight recently demand in Boston has remained healthy in October with both drop and handle above last year. Macau also delivered very strong results in the quarter which were further aided by higher than normal VIP holds. The business generated 308 million in EBITDA including 23 million of VIP hold benefits. Tax volumes were particularly strong up 15% year on year despite the weather disruption near the end of the quarter. The cadence of golden week was a bit unusual this year in that we saw heavier volumes towards the tail end of the holiday and after the holiday period. Beyond Golden Week, volume has been strong with turnover and mass. The premium segment continues to lead the market in McHale. Last quarter, we discussed two new projects, an expansion of the Chairman's Club gaming area at Wynn Palace and a refresh to ensure we continue to take advantage of this ongoing demand. Both projects are moving along very quickly. The Chairman's Club expansion should be complete ahead of Chinese New Year and we are already completing the initial floors of the Wynn Tower room renovation now. While we expect some minor disruption into year-end from these projects, once complete they will further elevate our offerings at both properties. Wynn Almarjan Island continues to progress rapidly and we look forward to welcoming many of you to the site in less than a month. We're pouring the final two floors now and are on track to top out the tower ahead of our analyst event in December. We are also pleased to announce our first development on the Marjan Land Bank, adjacent to Wynn-Almarjan. The Janu-Almarjan Islands are world-class, and we're delighted to have them as a neighbor. From a structuring perspective, our JV, the same JV that owns Wynn-Almarjan, will own the property, and the Amon team will manage the asset. Given the recent success of condo sales in the UAE in general, and Rasahaima in particular, we anticipate our portion of the equity check for the project will be quite small, about $25 to $50 million. Beyond the standalone merits of the transaction, we also expect Janu's high-quality customers will be additive to win on Marjan Island. With the Marjan Land Bank, we have significant additional long-term development opportunities in the UAE. You can see more about this initial development in our quarterly earnings presentation. We remain on track for our target and opening date of Wynn-Almarjan Island and look forward to showcasing what we believe is the most compelling development opportunity in the industry. With no competing operations announced to date, Wynn-Almarjan Island will be the only integrated resort in what many analysts are predicting will be a $5 billion plus GGR market. Our future continues to be bright. The opening of Wynn-Almarjan Island and the free cash flow inflection that it will bring gives us confidence that our best days lie ahead. I'll now hand it over to Julie to run through some additional details on the quarter.

Thank you, Craig. At Wynn Las Vegas, we generated $203.4 million in adjusted property EBITDA on $621 million of operating revenue during the quarter, delivering an EBITDA margin of 32.8%. Unfavorable holds negatively impacted EBITDA in the quarter by just under $8 million. OPEX excluding gaming tax per day was $4.3 million in the quarter. up 3.1% compared to the prior year due to a bad debt swing and one-time expenses in repairs and maintenance. Otherwise, there were normal course ebbs and flows in OPEX. Turning to Boston, we generated adjusted property EBITDA of $58.4 million on revenue of $211.8 million with an EBITDA margin of 27.6%. Slot revenues were very strong, up 5%, and set a new record for Boston. We maintained our discipline on the cost side with OPEX per day of $1.16 million, up 1.9% compared to Q3 2024, 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 $308.3 million in the quarter on $1 billion of operating revenue, resulting in an EBITDA margin of 30.8%. Higher-than-normal VIP hold impacted EBITDA by a little under $23 million in the quarter. OPEX, excluding gaming tax, was approximately $2.75 million per day in Q3, up 7.6% year-on-year, with the increase driven primarily by the Gourmet Pavilion and normal cost of living expenses, as we called out last quarter. This quarter, we also saw the variable impact of higher business volumes and about $2.5 million of typhoon-related OPEX. In terms of CAPEX in Macau, last quarter, we initiated two projects, as Craig mentioned, an expansion of the Chairman's Club gaming area at Wynn Palace and a refresh of our Wynn Tower rooms at Wynn Macau. And together with other ongoing CapEx projects, we continue to expect to spend $200 to $250 million in total for 2025. Moving on to the balance sheet, our liquidity position remains very strong, with global cash and revolver availability of $4.6 billion as of September 30th. This was comprised of $2.8 billion of total cash and available liquidity in Macau and $1.7 billion in the U.S. The combination of strong performance in each of our markets globally, with our properties generating just under $2.3 billion 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. 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, Wynn Macau paid out approximately $125 million in dividends in Q3 after paying a similar amount in Q2. In addition, the Wynn Resorts Board has approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per share payable on November 26, 2025 to stockholders of record as of November 17. Our recurring dividend highlights our focus on and continued commitment to prudently returning capital to shareholders. In terms of CAPEX, we spent approximately $164 million in the quarter, primarily related to the Fairway Villa renovations and food and beverage enhancements in Las Vegas, concession-related CAPEX in Macau, and normal course maintenance across the business. In addition to that figure, we contributed $93.9 million of equity to the Wynn-Almarjan Island project during the quarter, bringing our total equity contribution to date to $835 million. We also continued to draw on the Marjan Construction Loan with a drawn amount to date of $583.7 million. We estimate our remaining share of the required equity, including the new-to-new project, is approximately $525 to $625 million. With that, we will now open up the call to Q&A.

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 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. To withdraw your question, you may press star 2. Our first question comes from Dan Pulitzer with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. First, in Las Vegas, another strong quarter. You know, can you talk about what you're seeing there versus a few months ago? You know, you guys have been taking share. You know, it sounds like the fourth quarter is trending well. But, you know, do you feel like the environment has improved as we've kind of moved out of the summer and you've filled in that group calendar? And then as you look out to 26, you know, what is your expectation there for growth, given that group is pacing higher?

I'll start, and then I'll ask Brian. And I think the, you know, the summer activity or the summer business environment has been well publicized. And, you know, we saw our business as we were going into the summer. We saw components of the business that we felt like we needed to react to. We reacted to that, and we talked about it a little bit, by really focusing on rate and not on occupancy. And then, of course, driving EBITDA, and we did that. On the last call, we were seeing things start to improve more broadly in Vegas, and certainly that was the case. And we also knew that by the time we got to October, we'd be in pretty good shape for the reason. So as we talked about, our sales team and our casino marketing, as well as yielding ADR,

as Craig mentioned, in a record August, delivering the last available holes over the summer, which is typical and par for the course. So really proud of what the team's done with their efforts. And as we move forward, we continue to focus on peak periods and weekends where we can take rate where we can.

And then just turning to the UAE, you know, you guys laid out a little bit over a year ago, a base case, a low case, base case, and a high case scenario for EBITDA there. And I think the high case was $460 million. So, I guess, look, the property certainly still is away from opening, but can you lay out or remind us what are kind of the puts and takes, you know, between the base case and the low case and the high end scenario? And obviously, you know, given that it doesn't seem like there's competitors there, where does that maybe put you right now?

Yeah. Look, there's a lot of puts and takes from the case, really across those cases. But the number one, by an order of magnitude, is GGR. And so really it comes down to how large the market will be and ultimately what our share of the market will be. As you rightly pointed out, our share of the market early on should be. We're not yet ready to revisit the numbers that we put out in our investor day, but you've seen sell-side estimates for the market as high as $8 billion. And so even if the market is a fraction of that size, the absence of near-term competition probably introduces some conservatism into our base case, but it's a greenfield market. And so what we really are focused on right now is getting open with the absence.

Got it. Makes sense. Thanks.

Thank you. Our next caller is John Ducree with CBRE. Your line is open, sir.

Hi, everyone. Craig, maybe to stick with Las Vegas a little bit, you talked about some of the stuff that happened over the summer, But, you know, one of those things that came up was the social media backlash on pricing. And you obviously cater to, you know, the highest end of the market. But, you know, curious your views on that impact in terms of visitation to Las Vegas as a whole. And specifically, although you're kind of luxury end of the market, have you seen any pushback on pricing? You obviously had a great quarter in holding rate. But, you know, curious if you've seen, you know, any change.

We have not. The first one, you know, I've been getting this question a lot. and Las Vegas on a tight budget. Our customer generally isn't the customer, but they are the type of customer who perceived value could not be higher. A small example, by the way, I had a patron email me several weeks ago about the difficulty of peeling the complementary oranges in our spa. And we love that. We love feedback. Well, we're unapologetic about premium pricing. We don't ambush patrons with unexpected charges. So contrary to what you might expect, our minibar prices are a fraction of some others in the market. We held out as long as we possibly could in charging for parking and really only began to do so when we were at risk of becoming the neighborhood parking lot. Even now, hotel guests park free, by the way. Yes, our customer pays a premium room rate, but we don't want them to feel nickel and dime. That's actually contrary to creating high perceived value. So because of that, we haven't seen... So lastly, while the current narrative is when did Las Vegas get so expensive, Las Vegas is actually chock full of low-price options and value. But historically, it has also been a town where one could escape one's worries for three days and experience world-class service in beautiful environments.

That's helpful, Craig. I appreciate those comments. And I, too, struggled with those oranges, so I'm glad you guys are going to get that taken care of.

Well, they're easier to peel.

Oh, good, good. They're already pre-peeled, I'm sure. We'll look forward to that. If I could ask the question on kind of the inverse of that, we here expect visitation to pick back up in Las Vegas more broadly, especially with the convention calendar picking up. And so your business is a bit uncorrelated, but should you also expect to see a little bit of uplift as visitation to the city comes back as a whole? Or would you say you're kind of just marching to the beat of your own drum right now in terms of where you're positioned in the market. I guess, is there more upside as visitation recovers for you in Las Vegas?

Yeah, of course. You really see it. Let's talk about high-end gaming building that particular –

Perfect. I'll leave it there. Thank you so much, Craig.

Thank you. Our next caller is Stephen Grambling with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, thank you. I don't know if you specifically quantify this, but we'd love to hear any additional call you could give on how to think about the disruption impact in Las Vegas, but also how to think about perhaps the return on some of these projects as we look beyond 2026. Are some of these generally maintenance, or do you think that there will be incrementally the job from a lot of these?

We'll talk to you more. We talk about is normal course maintenance been redone in a number of years, and we need to do that in order to continue to drive rate, continue to be competitive, and continue to deliver on our brand promise. The other changes, particularly in food and beverage, that we're making are absolutely ROI-driven projects. Even when we redo a room like we just did with Pisces and not too long ago we did with Mizumi, the incremental check average that we drive, the incremental covers that we drive are absolutely EBITDA-accretive. So it really is the ADRs that we've been delivering.

100%. Maybe turning to Macau very quickly, What are you seeing in terms of the competitive dynamics, particularly as the quarter progressed, given there's some shatter for some of your peers that there might be a little bit more promotions going on? And how do you generally think about margins going forward as you think about either maintaining price integrity or having to competitively respond? Thanks.

Sure. We thank you a notable uptick in promotional activity. But we have a really clear view, as I've said before, down to the basis point of how much incremental GGR market share we need in order to justify and fade an incremental percentage point of reinvestment. So we're monitoring that closely in real time. In terms of the specific impact that you can see on margins, as we have also said before, we view margin as an outcome of aggressively driving revenues relative to...

That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next caller is Robin Farley with UBS. Your line is open.

Thanks. Going back to the UAE for a moment, maybe I'm going to try to ask the question a different way. I don't know if I'll get any more of an answer, but what were you factoring into your base case when you originally laid it out? I think you mentioned the potential for two other competitors to be in the market by 2029. How should we think about what you were kind of factoring in for that competition in terms of impact sure

Robin you're a market that I believe if I'm remembering from the present market

size some of your assumption had assumed that some of the market would be driven by having those two other competitors or do you think the market size would still

be the same plus or minus sure we did not make an assumption with respect incremental of any incremental competitors. What we really look at is a tremendous amount of airlift, a very robust locals market, a small market geographically. You know, it's about 50 minutes from Dubai to the property. So those are all with great road infrastructure. So those are all the things that we do.

Thank you. If I could do one quick follow-up on Vegas, just for group for 2026. I wonder if you could give us a sense of group pace after Q1 just to get a sense of sort of underlying demand after the benefit obviously kind of rotating in just how that looks past Q1. Thanks. We don't

Thank you. Thank you. Our next caller is Brent Montour with

Barkley. Line is open, sir. Hi. Thanks for taking my question.

So in Las Vegas, I'm curious that up RevPar or that REPPAR growth that you guys saw so far in the fourth quarter. Is that all from mix and rate compression from group, or are you actually seeing some recovery in leisure occupancy?

Sure. You know, you mentioned group rooms obviously are contracted multiple years out and thus tend to carry a lower ADR. Brian, what would you add?

A great job yielding rates over peak demands. We have a little softness before, and the teams were already reacted and put plans in place.

Great. Thanks for that. And then a quick question on UAE, and you probably don't want to jump any guns here on what you want to say for the game plan there. But for a property like this, when do you start to go out and build excitement and buzz with some of the bigger global players in your database now or in the database that you want to have, and sort of is that sort of a next year, later next year thing, and then any insight on, you know, what you've learned so far from the acquisition in London to that extent?

The entire senior management team is already on board, key marketing leader. A region like this, that one-to-one marketing and player engagement, you obviously roll out much, much closer to the actual opening because to create awareness at this point, you're so far from conceptively marketing to the folks that we will want in the building on a one-to-one basis, and you should expect to see a lot more on the mass marketing side. Mayfair has been very interesting.

Our next caller is David Kass with Jefferies. Your line is open, sir.

Hi, afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to talk about Macau, where taking some share seems to be the high-level observation, The hold percentage was high. We've seen October GGR numbers come across in the mid-teens growth percentage. I'd love just your kind of state of the state. What's going on in that market? What's driving that growth? Is it a mainland fundamental dynamics in some way? Whatever you can share would be helpful.

Sure. Thanks, David. Yeah, you're right. I think they've been pretty good, and so I'm going to answer you in a somewhat philosophical topic that may not be consumer segments performing really well while others are performing more modestly. It's a consumer is evolving too, and frankly, you can see consumer tastes are, it's an exciting place to be, and we're very long-term bullish, but I think trying to pin ebbs and flows in the market to one particular factor, it's like trying to pin ebbs and flows in Las Vegas to any one particular factor.

I appreciate all that. Just one follow-up to that end. One of the observations we're seeing here in the United States is a bit of a bifurcation where the high end seems to be doing better than the low end. Is that unrelated, but is that a similar dynamic to what you're seeing out of China?

Sure. I think you see that. It's a premium-led market. It's a premium mass-led market, and I think that is absolutely the case. You also have a shifting industrial policy in China, effects on real estate. It's a very, very dynamic place.

Our next caller is Chad Bynum with Macquarie. Your line is open, sir.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to go back to Vegas. So occupancy, as we can see in the release, was down a couple hundred basis points, which was expected. But your slot drop up 7% and your table drop up 12% clearly shows that either the customers that were staying in your property were spending more per trip than what we had seen in prior periods, or maybe others are, I don't know, using other properties as dormitories and then coming over to your property. But can you add any additional color just in terms of the disconnect between the growth that you had in drop versus the number of people staying in your property?

for the quarter. Thanks. Sure. I'll start, and again, I'll ask Brian to weigh in. There's a lot that goes into attracting premium play. Fortunately, the growth that you're seeing is premium play, and disproportionately, it is lodgers. Double down on what we do really well. Okay, that's the service in the building, the amenities we have in the building, and also to improve even further certain aspects of our casino marketing function. Pretty significant growth in our gaming market share. And I'm super proud of it. And you're seeing the benefits of that in Q3. It really is that straightforward. It's not, you know, the mass floor that's driving that.

It's a premium experience. It's us continuing to invest in our facilities, in our offer of people, leaning into who we are, focused on our culture of service, premium rates, a three-night minimum, additional tranches.

Great, thanks. And, yes, F1 rates are impressively priced right now. And then just in terms of buybacks and how we should think about capital allocation, I know that was something that was becoming a little bit more recurring in the quarterly result. Julie, can you just give us an update in terms of how you're thinking about that from these levels? Thank you.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question. I mean, we operate, you know, we're always diligent in looking at how to allocate our capital. and we operate off the grid. You'll have seen we didn't do any buying in the quarter, but certainly when we see value, we'll be back into it, and we refuse to be overly programmatic here. We like to retain the flexibility.

Yeah, we've tried to be super explicit that we're not programmatic buyers of the stock. Sometimes if you buy for several quarters in a row, people seem to forget that. But we like to buy when people are unusually bare. And when we do buy, as Julie mentioned, bought with the move.

Thank you. Our next caller is Steve Wozinski. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, guys. So, Craig, I want to ask, starting with Macau, and go back to Golden Week, which I think you described it as unusual. And, yeah, look, we understand there was some weather headwinds early in the week and all that stuff. But wondering what you think kind of drove that unusual pattern, you know, meeting folks, especially the higher-end folks, stayed away. Then they came back, it seems like, in full force later in the month. So, you know, I guess the question is, you know, more around should we expect, you know, this type of behavior to kind of repeat itself going forward around this holiday or – and I know that's somewhat philosophical.

Yeah, no problem. I mean, we're – I think – and, you know, it remains to be seen. We will certainly think about Energy and May Golden Week, but we'll see. I mean, one event is not yet a trend.

Yeah, it makes sense. And then second, can I ask a question on Boston because you never get a question on Boston? Yeah, bring it on. Okay, so the property was obviously very stable. If I look at the drop on the margin side of things, wondering if that was more around promotions, You know, just trying to figure out if you guys had to promote more to drive stability around volumes, and that was part of the margin deceleration, or I'm just totally off base with that.

Definitely not. You really have in trying to drive the best.

Appreciate it.

Operator, the next question will be our last.

Thank you. And our final question comes from Steve Pozella with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open, sir.

Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for taking our questions. Starting off with a little bit of a longer-term question, you mentioned the free cash flow inflection as the CapEx cycle tapers off and UAE comes online. Can you talk about how we should think about the possible uses of the free cash flow in 2027?

Yeah, sure. We are all the best use of cash. Beyond that, we have to think before we really put – we will want to size the market and really, you know, satisfy ourselves that the market is what we expect and what I do. And so it will really be a question of where to deploy and what we return to shareholders. Kind of the – I hate to give you a plain vanilla answer, but that's really how we think about how to return capital. So we'll see how those two things play out. It will probably be a combination of all of them.

Okay, great. And then real quick, it was reported that the UAE would potentially offer one online gaming license per an emirate. Can you talk about if you would be potentially interested in one of the licenses?

Not really. I think it's really up to the emirates and the GCGR how and when.

Okay, great.

Well, with that, we'll bring the call to a close. Thank you for your continued interest in Wynn Resorts, and we look forward to updating you again early next year. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you for participating on today's conference call. You may now disconnect. And have a great rest of your day.