Operator: The next question comes from Brandt Montour with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Brandt Montour: Hi. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. So just first wanted to circle back to Macau and ask Carlo’s question in a little bit of a different way. If we just look at sort of OpEx, excluding gaming taxes, for the fourth quarter, that number did step up a little bit. And I’m just curious, if you look at that on maybe a per day basis versus ’19 or however you look at that, is there onetime maybe events-related OpEx in that quarter? And what I’m really getting at is if you guys think we should be thinking about that sort of level as a run rate going forward.
William Hornbuckle: Kenny, maybe you could speak to this more intelligently, but I can tell you broad stroke, remember, the requirement we have, we have to spend $1.1 billion in 10-year commitment in OpEx driving tourism, and there’s about $900 million or so in actual capital expense. So we’ve got a little over $2 billion commitment to the government, of which the $1.1 billion is pure OpEx. And so a lot of the activity case in driving international tourism and driving tourism isn’t necessarily tied to the usual marketing programs that we’d think about in gaming.
Kenneth Feng: Okay. This is Kenny. As you know, like for the past year, with the new concession, we added another 200 tables. Of course, we added a little bit more FTEs. We have more daily table open hours. But in general, we are very, very tight regarding our OpEx control. You can see from our EBITDA margin, over the quarters of the last year, we are very stable, in the high 20s, along with our market share gains and the business growth. As Bill just commented, we do not have so much high-margin retail rental EBITDA, but our gaming EBITDA margin is really way up there in this marketplace. I can see for the next for these next couple of quarters, we should be quite stable with our margins.
Brandt Montour: Okay. That’s perfect. Thanks for that. And then circling back on digital and BetMGM specifically, I was wondering, Bill, if you want to comment at all on the sort of newly announced partnership with X, what you can say about how that deal came together, the structure of the deal, and anything from an economic standpoint that you can share and then what you expect the impact to be over time.
William Hornbuckle: Look, it’s interesting. It just started, as you know. So we have high hopes for it. We had literally 100 million people, when they flipped on X yesterday, day before, are going to be exposed to that offering and that opportunity. That team is probably much better positioned to give you some input on what they think the outcome is going to be. I can remember from the various presentations that if you captured about 0.1% of those folks, it was a significant uptick to the company, and it’s efficient. The way we’ve structured this deal compared to other even general bonusing, it’s an extremely efficient deal for us. So we’ll see. Our customers live there. But everyone was on X, I guess, but we particularly think the demographic fits well for what we do.
Brandt Montour: Great. Thanks, everyone.
Operator: The next question is from Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Chad Beynon: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the regional properties. I guess, more so in the current quarter, we’ve seen a number of public releases out there for January showing that there’s been some pretty significant declines. And it sounds like most of that is kind of chalked up to bad weather, and we’ve heard that from a lot of companies. So a) maybe if you’re willing to kind of touch on that given that many of your properties are in these areas that may have inclement weather in January. And then more importantly, is that core customer in the regional markets stable? Are we seeing any trends kind of rolling off in terms of that low end? Or does it still feel as good as you kind of look out to ’24? Thanks.
Jonathan Halkyard: Yes. I would say that certain of our properties were affected by the weather. Springfield comes to mind as one. Empire is another. But we also saw some pockets of strength in January as well. I would say both because of weather effects as well as the calendar a bit coming off of New Year’s, January saw some of those impacts in our regional markets.
Corey Sanders: Players are pretty stable from all age groups and all spend. During COVID, we actually eliminated a lot of that low end play. So in general, what we’re seeing in February, we’re pretty positive on. And we feel pretty comfortable that what you saw in January was a weather-related component of the business.
Chad Beynon: Okay. Great. Appreciate that near-term color. And then with respect to New York, is there any update in terms of the time line as we get through ’24, anything to speak to us about? Thanks.
William Hornbuckle: Yes, this is Bill. No, I wish there was. I know they’re going through some of these zoning things by all of the boroughs. I think, ultimately, we’re going to wait and see what happens. I suspect they’re going to wait and see what happens there. It may make a decision for them. And then in fact, they’ll come back to us with the round two questions, and then that gives our 90-day clock going. But we’re hopeful, by the middle of this year, we get something submitted and that by the end of ’24, something is awarded. But we don’t know anymore, unfortunately.
Chad Beynon: Yeah. Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it.
Operator: The next question is from Barry Jonas with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Barry Jonas: Hey, guys. As you think about the potential for A’s baseball stadium, how does that influence your thinking about incremental CapEx for your adjacent properties over the next few years?
William Hornbuckle: Very interesting question. We’ve been thinking about that, talking about it. For us, obviously, the place to invest capital, first and foremost, if in fact that all happens, is MGM. I mean it’s our brand. It’s our name’s sake. It’s on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard drop. It would literally be adjacent to the stadium, and it needs some love. It’s a 30-year-old property. We’re going to reinvest in the rooms this year. We’ve got some new show concepts. We’ve done a few restaurants. But the front end of the property, as you get closer to Las Vegas Boulevard, needs some attention and some reprogramming. We’re waiting to see where that lands. I have to believe, in the next 30 to 60 days, we should find out more.
I’ve been shown three versions of it now in terms of where it will actually sit on the site and how it will connect. Once it settles in, we’ll get serious about what we might want to do and how we might want to communicate with it, if you will, in terms of pedestrian traffic, et cetera. But that’s how to think about where we might go first is really MGM and see how it all plays out.
Barry Jonas: Okay. Great. And then just as a follow-up, you talked a bit about U.A.E., but maybe can you get into what the next steps are for gaming legalization there? And maybe also elaborate on how you could potentially participate in Abu Dhabi.
William Hornbuckle: As I think we suggested last year, we spent some time on the ground there, specifically in Abu Dhabi, trying to understand the license in general for U.A.E., but ultimately, the opportunity in Abu Dhabi. We believe it would be on the Yas Island. That opportunity still exists. To the extent there is a submission to be had, we may participate in that. Obviously, we have Dubai. We have our project there, which is an amazing project. It’s going to be over a $2.5 billion project without a casino in it. And so if and when both Abu Dhabi itself as the general license granter for all or any of the Emirates goes, and then ultimately, one by one, the Emirates say they would like it, we hope to be positioned either for Dubai or Abu Dhabi, but time to tell. And it may start with digital first, a lottery, potentially digital.
Barry Jonas: Great. Thank you so much.
Operator: The next question is from Robin Farley with UBS. Please go ahead.
Robin Farley: Great. Thanks. I just have two pretty quick ones. One is just if you could clarify, in the regional for Q4, I think it was $60 million, how much of that was just the strike, if we were trying to think about just the kind of nonrecurring piece of that $60 million decline? Thanks.
Jonathan Halkyard: Yes. The $60 million, roughly half is related to the strike and the other half to the National Harbor.
Robin Farley: Okay. Great. Thank you. And I don’t know if you said for Marriott, and I know it’s only been a couple of weeks, but did you give any metrics about what percent of room nights or kind of the dollar premium on rooms sold through Marriott, any color like that you could give? Thanks.
Jonathan Halkyard: We did give some expectations, I believe it was second quarter earnings call in August of last year, Robin. And although our implementation was delayed from October to a few weeks ago to January, our estimation of what the arrangement can bring us has not changed. So I’d just refer you back to those measures that we gave in August.
Robin Farley: Does that mean that it’s kind of too early to know what the last three weeks? In other words, like at the moment, no change in your expectations? Or are you seeing enough to say that it’s delivering those numbers?
Jonathan Halkyard: The answer is yes. It’s early days. But as I think Bill noted in his opening remarks, we’re very encouraged by what we’re seeing in the first few weeks.
Robin Farley: Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks.
Operator: The next question is from John DeCree with CBRE. Please go ahead.
John DeCree: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe a high-level question, to get your view on the consumer, so we talked a lot about the performance at your high-end properties in Las Vegas. I’m curious if you see similar trends or consumer trends at your regional properties, is it the high end and high tiers of the database that are driving performance there as well? Or might the business mix be a little bit more balanced? And realizing regionals have the same event draw that Vegas does, but curious if you have kind of a view on the segments of the database from a consumer perspective?
Jonathan Halkyard: Yes. It’s Jonathan. I’ll offer a couple of comments. The answer is yes, but really for different reasons. In the regional markets, I think, as Corey mentioned, we’ve really directed our marketing efforts, and to a certain extent, the property amenities themselves, to higher-worth guests. We’ve reduced our marketing investments and promotional investments on the lower end. And that really started in the aftermath of the pandemic, and it’s carried forward. So the fact is that the increases that we’ve seen in those regional properties are really predominantly from the higher average daily worth customers. But I say it’s the same effect for different reasons because in Las Vegas, what has been really driving this has been our special events, our focus on these customers through our branch offices and our own marketing efforts.
And obviously, the citywide events that are going on have skewed more toward that high-end luxury growth as well as our capital investment in our luxury properties, so same effect for different reasons.
John DeCree: Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate that color. And then maybe quickly on the growth CapEx plan this year. I think you listed a couple of the projects that go into that bucket, and you guys have this dialed in pretty tight by now. But is there anything that we should think about in terms of disruption? Are any of those projects large enough or the timing of such that we might want to think about any disruption at the assets?
