Paul J. Chakmak
Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Thanks, Keith. Hello, everybody. As noted earlier, unusually severe winter weather had a significant impact on our business outside of Nevada, negatively affecting EBITDA by about $10 million to $12 million. Despite these challenges, our operations performed well. Overall, wholly-owned property operating margins were essentially unchanged year-over-year, thanks to efficiencies in our business. Now let's get started by reviewing our Las Vegas Locals segment, which remains a positive story. Even though year-over-year comparisons are getting tougher, we posted our fifth consecutive quarter of EBITDA growth, led by strength in our destination business and continued efficiencies in our operations. While first quarter gaming revenues showed modest year-over-year declines across the market, we continued to maintain our market share and kept customer reinvestment steady with prior year levels. Our non-gaming amenities performed well during the quarter. This is partially a reflection of a strengthening market citywide. Visitation, room rates and occupancy are all improving, and we're also giving customers new reasons to choose our properties over the competition by actively refining our non-gaming amenities. We recently completed an extensive remodel of hotel rooms at the Gold Coast, as well as 800 rooms at the Orleans. These investments paid dividends during the quarter, as both properties showed solid gains in hotel revenues. As noted previously, we see more opportunities to drive further growth by directing our existing CapEx budget toward our non-gaming amenities. For example, a remodel of all 400 rooms at the Suncoast is scheduled to begin later this year. We will be refurbishing the Gold Coast meeting space this summer. The Orleans Hotel project will resume in 2015, covering the balance of the nearly 1,900 rooms at the property. And we are looking at numerous opportunities to reinvent and reinvigorate our food and beverage offerings. By giving customers new reasons to visit our properties, we are confident these investments will help sustain positive momentum in our Locals business. Our Downtown Las Vegas business generated strong EBITDA growth as we achieved our best first quarter in 5 years. We are successfully capturing more walk-in business from the Fremont Street Experience. Thanks to refinements to our product and increased visitation in the Downtown area. We also benefited from improved yields at our Hawaiian charter operation. Looking ahead, visitation to our Downtown property should pickup further, following the opening of the SlotZilla zip line on Fremont Street this past weekend. Customers end their ride right outside the Fremont's front door, creating an incremental new source of visitation for our Downtown business. Looking outside of Las Vegas, weather had a significant impact on our operations in the Midwest and South during the first quarter, as severe winter weather even reached as far South as the Gulf Coast. Factoring out the impact of weather, however, end results would have been much closer to year-ago levels. We are cautiously optimistic that our business in the Midwest and South is reaching a turning point. While casual play has remained soft, business from our top-tier customers is quite strong, and we believe that modest year-over-year EBITDA growth will begin in the second half of this year. One of the catalysts for this growth will be the introduction of our B Connected player loyalty program at the former Peninsula properties. We launched B Connected at Evangeline Downs and Amelia Belle in the last few weeks, and remain on track to complete the rollout by the end of the summer. And with the addition of B Connected, we are also launching Penny Lane at these properties. Based on the positive initial feedback that B Connected has received so far in Louisiana and the success of Penny Lane in markets across the country, we think these initiatives will be quite effective in driving growth at our 5 newest properties and increasing cross visitation with the rest of our nationwide portfolio. At Kansas Star, work is now underway on our Phase 2 expansion project. Our hotel joint venture at Kansas Star is currently adding 150 rooms, which will double the property's room count when completed this summer. Separately, we are investing $20 million in various non-gaming amenities, including meeting and banquet space and an equestrian pavilion. Scheduled for completion by the end of this year, we believe this project will further expand Kansas Star's appeal as a regional destination. To the East, Borgata was severely impacted by winter weather as well. With more than 40 inches of snow during the first quarter, Atlantic City's snowfall was more than 3x greater than last winter. Our feeder markets were hit hard as well. Philadelphia received nearly 57 inches of snow compared to just 8 inches last year. This, obviously, had a significant impact on customer volumes and was the primary reason for declines in both revenue and EBITDA during the quarter. EBITDA was further impacted by $2.5 million in higher utility costs. We continue to face higher property taxes as well, which reduced EBITDA by an additional $2.1 million when compared to the first quarter of last year. This is obviously not a new issue for the property. In fact, over the last 2 years, tax hikes have cost us almost $20 million in total. Moving to our online business. We remain quite pleased with our initial results. Together with our partners at bwin.party, we have led the New Jersey market every month since online gaming began, building a combined market share of nearly 40%. Like any startup business, we invested heavily in marketing and advertising. Of the $3.2 million operating loss reported by our online business during the quarter, about $2 million was due to onetime nonrecurring expenses. We are now adjusting these expenses to a more sustainable run rate, which had progressively improved our bottom line. We continue to make good progress refining the product and technology and enhancing our game offerings with third-party content from a variety of suppliers. And we've expanded our payment options for our customers, including our recent addition of Neteller, a popular prepaid account service. So to recap, we continue to make steady progress in our operations. Positive momentum is continuing in our Las Vegas business, driven by efficient operations and targeted reinvestment in the business. And factoring out weather, our operations in the Midwest and South would have performed much closer to prior year levels, strengthening our confidence that growth will resume in the region in the second half of 2014. And with our market-leading land-based and online products, we are well positioned at Borgata as well. Thanks for your time today. And now I'll turn it over to Josh.