Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

It’s all in sync. So we build more hotels or we build more retail or anything, it drives the gaming win. We’ve got plenty of positions to fill and to grow those numbers. When you look at the slot number coming to Singapore and the win per unit and tables, you realize just how far Macao can get to. So, we never saw the investment in the concession being an ending point. We saw it the beginning point. We much believe that Macao in next 10 years will make a lot of money for us. We’re very bullish on the market and we’re thrilled to be there.Steven Wieczynski Okay, great. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.Rob Goldstein Sure.Patrick Dumont Thanks, Steve.Operator Thank you. And the last question today is coming from Dan Politzer from Wells Fargo. Dan, your line is live.Dan Politzer Hey, good afternoon, everyone, and congrats on the quarter.Rob Goldstein Thank you, Dan.Dan Politzer First, I wanted to touch on Macao.

Can you talk a little bit about the recovery level across the properties there, and which have been most impacted by room and labor constraints versus mass versus premium mass mix?And then, similarly with Londoner and the suite investments that you’ve made, what’s kind of been the kind of the early read out of the gate and your expectation on recouping that typical 20% return on those investments in terms of timing? Thanks.Rob Goldstein Grant, are you still awake? Grant, please take that.Grant Chum Yeah, sure. I think between the properties, Londoner clearly is the most impacted by the hotel room availability. So, you can see that the reported, like physical inventory, occupancy is only 46%, 47% for the property as a whole. And that’s the biggest repository of hotel rooms in our portfolio.

So, clearly the impact for that property was the greatest.But at the same time, it kind of flips into your — second part of your question. The portion that we were operating, especially the newer product on the north side of the building and the new suites, we’ve really had an exceptional customer response to the product. I think not just the excellence of the design and hardware, but also combined with the actual programing of the hospitality, and just the levels of service that bespoke hospitality that we’re offering, but doing so at scale.So in terms of those return questions that you asked, we see the early signs are very, very positive from the new product, including the new suites at Londoner hotel, and also the brand new Londoner Court, which is offering very different kinds of bespoke luxury hotel experiences for the customer.

But overall for the property, it’s a big property. We are hampered by the lack of hotel room availability during the quarter for sure, but, of the new product that we’re actually operating, the initial results are, I think, very-very pleasing.Dan Politzer Got it, thanks. And then just turning to Singapore. Maybe if you could talk a little bit about the puts and takes the reopening of China? And I know inbound travel from China has been a little bit slower to recover, but, I guess how do you think about that recovering over the course of the year? And then, similarly, China customer base that had been in Singapore, are you still seeing that customer, or have those — has that base gone back to China?Rob Goldstein Patrick?Patrick Dumont Thanks.

It’s a very interesting question. I think with the opening of China on January 8, there hasn’t been a huge influx of Chinese visitation in the early part of the quarter. But there is an ongoing ramp of outbound tourism from China, that we will be the beneficiaries from. And that’s something that we’ve been anticipating a long time. There is not the normal level of flights. There is not the, let’s call, the normal airlift capacity that you would expect during a normal run rate period, which they’re going to slowly ramp into. So across the year, our expectation is that, that visitation will recover. It’s such a strong market for Singapore, has been historically, and yet we’re able to execute these levels without that market really contributing.

So we’re very bullish on the opportunity of outbound tourism from China to support Marina Bay Sands and its ultimate growth to where Rob has mentioned earlier in the call and beyond.There is one other comment that I do want to make. We had a very interesting question from Steve just prior to yours about the level of investment that we’re willing to make in Macao. And I think we’re very optimistic about our investments there. It’s a high return environment. We’re very focused on continued investment there, not only through the fulfillment of our concession renewal, but also in general, to grow our non-gaming asset base.But the same thing was true in Singapore. I think we’re very focused on growing Singapore as a market. The opportunity there is very unique.

It’s a really high-value tourism market that has a different catchment area than Macao. We’re very excited about the Marina Bay Sands expansion. Although, just to sort of comment on it, kind of going down that vein, we have very high expectations for return on invested capital in both these markets. But when we first went into the Marina Bay Sands expansion in 2019 and we entered into a development agreement in April of 2019, a lot of things have changed. So it’s probably going to be a lot more expensive. The pandemic brought additional costs. There has been material — labor and material cost increases. There has been significant inflation globally, as everyone knows. It’s just overall market conditions.But I think from what you see in this quarter, is that the strength in the market is on full display.