Chad Beynon: Okay. So, it didn’t — there was no move that we would say was kind of driven by the economy, housing, macro. This is just kind of the — getting back to the normal kind of environment.
Charles Protell: Yes, I mean look at our local properties. I mean those are flat on a year-over-year basis. We just talked about the Las Vegas assets being up. That’s where most of our rated play is between our locals market. So for us, the database, again, very healthy and we don’t see this trend slowing down.
Chad Beynon: Outside of the STRAT, because I think that’s kind of a one-off situation that we can model. Charles, you talked about Laughlin, the locals market, the tavern, slightly lower margins, given some higher expenses. Has that kind of plateaued in terms of expense creep? And if we’re kind of thinking about, let’s just assume a flat revenue environment, what does that do to margins or asked a different way, what do we need to see from a revenue growth standpoint to hold margins from a same-store basis going forward? Thanks.
Charles Protell: Yes. So, I think if you look, I think we have to break ours out by segment. So from a local perspective, we think we’re pretty flat in that regard. We think we’ve gotten to that point. I think on the tavern side, in the tavern this quarter, we faced with a 7% increase in labor largely due to minimum wage. There is one more increase in minimum wage through Nevada next year. That will be at a lower rate, because it’s at a higher base. So, there’ll be a little bit of pressure there, but we’re adding six taverns into the portfolio that we’re acquiring at the end of this year, beginning the next plus two developments. So, we expect growth from an overall EBITDA basis within that segment. And then if you look at the STRAT, I’d say, in general, it’s been fairly stable there.
If you think about the potential pressures around union labor there, we have 1,800 total employees. Out of that, only 850 or so are union. So, is not a big piece of our portfolio, having union labor, but it is some piece of our portfolio. We feel like we have good union relationships. So, we expect that to go fairly smoothly for us once that contract is ironed out with the bigger guys in the strip.
Blake Sartini: And in terms of impact there, Chad, to Charles point, we’ve been accruing for the potential added union expense since June. So, we’re pretty confident that we’ve mitigated that to this point obviously. And then once we have the conversations as Charles said, we’ve had a good relationship with them. So, we anticipate that going forward.
Chad Beynon: Great. Appreciate it. Thank you both.
Operator: The next question comes from John DeCree with CBRE Securities. Please go ahead.
John DeCree: Good afternoon, Blake, Charles. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just to kind of follow-ups to prior conversations. The first on occupancy recovery at the STRAT continues to march forward. When you look at the opportunity and kind of what you’ve seen in October, Blake, your comments were helpful. Is it still very much that the weekends are full and the occupancy recovery is needed midweek? And then is there — if that is the case, is there an opportunity to continue to drive price and customer mix on the weekend, just given how much entertainment and weekend demand the strip is still seeing?
Blake Sartini: Yes. So, I think that’s a pretty good way to look at the property. We still have a pretty significant deficit of midweek occupancy versus prior periods. And that is live space that when that fills in is a significant bump to the property’s performance. So, the property not having a significant amounts of banquet space is going to ebb and flow with kind of citywides more than other properties. But in terms of what we’re seeing, you referenced October, I referenced October, with no disruption, with still significant amenities being added, i.e. a $70 million Atomic Golf facility that we think will drive significant amounts of traffic through the property and other small renovations that I’ve talked about. We see the trajectory starting in September to be very positive.
