Online gaming: rolling a $10-billion dice – Boyd Gaming Corporation (BYD), Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS)

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Added luster for SHFL

SHFL entertainment Inc (NASDAQ:SHFL), on the other hand, is right at the cusp of what Nevada Gov. Sandoval called “the next frontier of gaming in Nevada,” as he signed Bill AB114 into law.

SHFL, a global gaming supplier, not only has a license to make online poker games in the state, but also has its headquarters and a manufacturing facility right in Las Vegas. Its other manufacturing facility is in Milperra, New South Wales, Australia. The company also manufactures gaming utility products such as automatic card shufflers, besides online gaming platforms.

The Nevada online gambling approval should definitely help polish Shuffle Master’s luster in the eyes of some analysts, who downgraded and cut price targets on its stocks in recent months. In its last quarterly earnings report issued last Dec. 17, the company had a quarterly $0.19 EPS, adrift by $0.01 in the $0.20 Thomson Reuters consensus estimate. Revenue for the quarter amounted to $73.30 million, which is higher than the $68.48 million consensus estimate.

At Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS), there has to be a 180-degree paradigm shift before this operator of casinos and integrated resort facilities can get on the online gaming derby. Its chairman, Sheldon Adelson, is strongly against online gaming, which he believes lacks the technological safeguards against underage players. Anyhow, the company is primarily drawing its success from its operations in Macau where its casino revenues during the 2012 fourth quarter rose 48% to $1.97 billion. For all of 2012, Macau generated $6.4 billion or nearly 58% of the company’s $11.3 billion total revenue.

So place your bets, folks

Shuffling the cards, it looks like both Boyd and SHFL have the winning hands with the Nevada online gaming development. Besides, if the foreseen up-to-$10 billion U.S. market on online gaming doesn’t totally pan out, the two have other properties to draw strengths from.

For instance, Boyd acquired Peninsula Gaming LLC last November, thereby expanding its footprint into Kansas and Iowa, as well as adding more markets in Louisiana. SHFL, for its part, has more up its sleeves besides its operations in Las Vegas and Australia. The company’s electronic gaming machines are also popular in the European and Asian markets, where online gaming has long been legal.

The article Online gaming: rolling a $10-billion dice originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Arturo Cuevas.

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