Operator
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the MGM Resorts International Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Joining the call from the company today are Jim Murren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Dan D'Arrigo, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Bill Hornbuckle, President; Corey Sanders, Chief Operating Officer; Grant Bowie, CEO and Executive Director of MGM China Holdings Limited. Participants are in a listen-only mode. After the company's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please note, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Dan D'Arrigo. Daniel J. D'Arrigo - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Well, thank you, Keith. And good morning and welcome to MGM Resorts fourth quarter and full year 2015 earnings call. This call is being broadcast live on the Internet at www.mgmresorts.com and a replay of the call will be made available on our website. We furnished our press release this morning on a Form 8-K to the SEC. And on this call, we will make forward-looking statements under the Safe Harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. Actual results might differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements are contained in today's press release and in our periodic filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. During the call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures in talking about the company's performance. You can find a reconciliation of these measures to GAAP financial measures in our press release, which is available on our website. Finally, please note that this presentation is being recorded. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jim. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, thank you, Dan, and good morning, everyone. We hope to have a robust call today and answer any questions that you have and clear if any confusion, because we had a great quarter here at MGM in the fourth quarter and for the year. As you saw, our cash flows were up 15% above consensus year-over-year, that's actually three straight quarters of double-digit EBITDA growth and that also by the way represents the best fourth quarter we have had since our record quarter back in 2007 and the best cash flow year that we've had since 2008. Our fourth quarter margins on the wholly-owneds were up really remarkable 330 basis points in the quarter. CityCenter continues to shine. It had record cash flow in the quarter and for the year and our regional resorts also produced excellent cash flows in the fourth quarter and each had their best fourth quarter cash flows on record. Over Macau, Grant will talk about our achievements there shortly, but I have to say that I'm proud of the team's ability to really work through the market, enhance our operations and maximize the efficiencies there and you can see that, that has led to continued margin improvement. And through those efforts, we believe MGM China is really well positioned when the markets improve, but as you've seen before, we hold up pretty darn well during turbulent times there. On the Profit Growth Plan we talked about last year, I'm very pleased to say that we are ahead of schedule. We're now six months into it. We've made many accomplishments already thus far. I'm very, very proud of the incredibly difficult but excellent work that has been done internally here and they pour their hearts and minds into this program. In the back half of 2015, we really evaluated and thoughtfully initiated many ideas across every department within MGM Resorts, casino, food and beverage, hotel, and that means all of our domestic resorts. And as we've said before, we're going to be very transparent to you on our progress on this important initiative. So, I can say with pride that our PGP resulted in over $35 million of realized benefit to our property cash flows in the fourth quarter alone. That means, we've achieved over a $65 million in that short period of 2015 as a whole. We're very pleased to report that we're ahead of this plan, because as you recall, we previously guided to achieving about 10% or 15% of the $300 million of total cash flow by last year's yearend. We're very committed to this, and in fact, engaged and inspired by it. And we believe that our goal is very achievable, which is to realize about $200 million of the $300 million of cash flow by yearend this year, and to get the full $300 million, hitting the bottom-line in 2017. This, we believe, will help us achieve our 30% target for property cash flow margins by 2017. And as I said, we're well on our way to achieving that, and we're very confident in our ability to do it. Here at home in Las Vegas, we continue to see strength in the market, which of course MGM is both a contributor to that strength, and the single largest beneficiary. The Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority reported new record, as you know in visitation of over 42 million visitors that beat last year's record by 3%. By the way, that is an additional 6 million annual visitors on to the market since 2009. We expect the visitation to continue to grow this year in the marketplace and the hotel KPIs are all up. McCarran saw its fifth year of consecutive year-over-year passenger increases and we've seen seat capacity continues to rise this year and in fact, it's going to be up about 6% plus in the first quarter alone. With all the success Las Vegas has only recently enjoyed, it's very important to note that we are still below our prior peak levels as a city. The city is 9% below its prior ADR. It's 12% below its prior peak in RevPAR. MGM's wholly-owned Strip resorts are also below its peak levels by 7% and 10% in ADR and RevPAR, respectively. We clearly have more room to grow. In a country where many cities have not only met, but have significantly exceeded their prior peak RevPARs, it's Las Vegas' turn to take center stage. And of course, MGM is the best positioned, most leveraged company, in order to participate in that. And why will that happen? It's because we have literally no new supply growth in the near-term, unlike many major markets here in the U.S., and that of course helps the home team and MGM is the home team. We have solidified our position here in Las Vegas as the destination choice for large scale meetings and conventions. You know that citywide convention attendance grew dramatically last year up 13%, and I can tell you fortunately, we continue to see great strength in 2016 and 2017 and 2018. I think Dan will talk to that specifically, but suffice to say that when we completed our expansion to the Mandalay Convention Center, which really fully was only done this year. We had hoped for significant increase in our convention bookings for Mandalay. We're well ahead of what we had hoped for in terms of bookings into that very important convention center. That was preemptive on our part. We saw that the convention business was coming back to Las Vegas. We wanted to keep ahead of demand and I can tell you that we are very confident in our ability to fill and in fact outgrow that space over the next couple of years, which is why last year, late last year in December, we announced our plans to expand the ARIA's convention center. Demand there is remarkable, vastly exceeding the capacity that we have at ARIA. And because ARIA has been so well received and is literally the most sought-after conference facility in Las Vegas, we're adding 200,000 square feet to it and it will be very technologically advanced, it will be highly flexible, it will be the state-of-the-art in this marketplace, and it will be completed next year in early 2018 (09:44). I think that when you see this, you will know that ARIA with over 500,000 square feet of convention space, when it opens in 2018, I should say early 2018, we believe that you'll find a significant increase in ARIA's convention business as well. And of course, ARIA had a record in terms of cash flows in the quarter and the year. From a standpoint of what do we see in the market, people ask us this quite a bit, and so, we need to give you a couple of data points before we get into your questions. It's about creating experience this year, creating reasons to come to Las Vegas again and again. We've been at the forefront of that as well, of course. And before we report our next quarter earnings, many of you will be out here, because on April 4, we're going to debut the park that we've been building, which is spectacular, and we're going to be debuting the new arena. The new arena, with AEG, I think is the most highly anticipated project that we've seen in Las Vegas in over a decade. The response here has been incredibly overwhelming, not only from the public, but from the performers that are literally fighting one another to get gigs, dates into the new arena. Looking at a list of concerts that we are going to have this year, ranging from The Killers, to Garth Brooks, to George Strait, Guns N' Roses – that's for Corey, Janet Jackson – that's for Dan. We got a lot of sports events coming, because we're doing a bunch of fights, UFC contests, a lot more concerts, college basketball, et cetera, et cetera. And in fact, if you're wondering whether we can fill these facilities, you look to no sooner than the very first weekend, when we open up the new arena, when on that weekend, we'll have major events at both the new T-Mobile Arena, the MGM Grand Garden, and the Mandalay Events Center. And we're going to have over 50,000 guests, fully occupying those events, those arenas in one weekend alone. We think it's really the great time for us to leverage our strengths here in Las Vegas. We've been waiting for the market to be as robust as it is right now. We've been a bit jealous about the great strengths in cities like Orlando and Miami, Miami and Chicago. Las Vegas is pulling ahead now of many of those markets in terms of its growth, and we think that our ability as a leader in this market to meet and exceed the macro trends here, because of our capital investments is very, very high. We're excited about this Profit Growth Plan, which will enhance margins, yes, but also add to the overall profitability of our company as we continue to grow our portfolio outside of Las Vegas. And we are extremely pleased with the progress that we have made through maximizing our shareholder values, through the creation of MGM Growth Properties. On that front, we've made a lot of progress since we chatted with you last. We announced our all star team from the investment banking world, James Stewart and Andy Chien, they came in from Greenhill, they're the CEO and CFO, Wall Street veterans, deal junkies, really smart folks that are going to run MGM Growth Properties for us. James and Andy are perfect candidates to run this enterprise, given their backgrounds, their enthusiasm and we're proud to say that they and their families are moving from California, the tax state of America to Nevada, the state of business. We also announced our independent board members last week, that's important as well. We're very deliberate in finding folks that will be independent, be additive and be very knowledgeable in the field of real estate, which is why we brought in Tom Roberts, because of his governance background, Mike Rietbrock, who many of you know on this call, who consistently outshined me when I was an analyst on Wall Street and we've brought in an internal candidate that is tremendously knowledgeable in the REIT space, in the hotel space. Elisa is our Chief Analytics Officer. She came from Host Marriott and where she spent many years there literally, driving analytics and strategy for that company. They are going to be very instrumental in guiding the path of this soon-to-be birthed New York Stock Exchange public company. This is an exciting time for us. We are prepared to launch this company soon. We're not going to rush into anything, nor do we have to, but we certainly are getting ready and we believe it's going to be exciting for our shareholders at MGM Resorts, when they see the opportunities. Really on that last point, I'd have to say that though the transaction merits should be obvious, we look at this in terms of MGP, as truly an opportunity to grow that enterprise through acquisition, through the opportunities to acquire assets, either from MGM Resorts or from third-parties. We are noting with very great pleasure that trading multiples in the triple-net lease space have held up well. And I think that confirms our strategic thought process, when we went down this path last year. And we'll have more to talk about that in the coming months, but suffice to say, we're well on track. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dan. Daniel J. D'Arrigo - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Thanks, Jim. Looking at our fourth quarter and full year results, our fourth quarter was led by continued strength across our portfolio of domestic resorts. In Las Vegas, we achieved 2% and 14% year-over-year growth in fourth quarter net revenues and EBITDA respectively, primarily due to the outperformance of our non-luxury Strip resorts in the quarter. Fourth quarter wholly-owned non-luxury Strip cash flows were up 47% year-over-year. Our fourth quarter wholly-owned Strip margins increased 286 basis points as a result of strong hotel results as well as the positive impact from our Profit Growth Plan. These quarterly results are quite impressive, considering our table game revenue was negatively impacted by a lower hold percentage year-over-year. This impacted our wholly-owned Strip EBITDA by approximately $20 million in the fourth quarter versus last year, with most of that being felt at the Mirage, which was most impacted, which was roughly $14 million of the $20 million alone. Our non-gaming offerings remain a key driver of growth, particularly in our hotel business, as we continue to see strong demand from both convention and leisure segments. Our wholly-owned Strip properties achieved 12% RevPAR growth in the fourth quarter, exceeding our previous guidance. This was driven by an 18% increase in RevPAR, at our non-luxury resorts, and a 9% increase at our luxury resorts. Our convention mix as a percentage of total occupied room nights was an all-time fourth quarter best for our company. And for the full year, we were able to beat last year's record of slightly over 17%, as we achieved a record of about 18.5% in our convention room night mix. As you recall, we started the year with a goal to meet or exceed our previous 17% record. And throughout the year, our sales and yield teams have done an outstanding job of maximizing our convention space to reach this all-time record high in convention occupied room nights. And I think they're just getting started. Looking ahead, the demand for our resort portfolio continues to be strong. Our contracted forward bookings for 2016 are already approaching 100% of our goal. And we continue to be encouraged by the quality of the convention customers and the growing lead volumes. With this backdrop, we believe we're well positioned to beat last year's record high mix, while continuing to grow rate. We also anticipate wholly-owned Strip RevPAR growth of 6% in the first quarter. Our regional properties, as Jim mentioned, had another great quarter. Net revenue and EBITDA grew by 6% and 23% respectively, led by increased table game volume and hold with a backdrop of the improving domestic customer, property margins grew by over 400 basis points. Moving over to CityCenter, all four segments of CityCenter resort operations showed a year-over-year growth. ARIA led the way with the increase in EBITDA of 43% over the prior year, driven by higher table game volumes as well as hold and a 7% increase in RevPAR. Vdara cash flows were up 23% for the quarter, driven by a 13% increase in RevPAR. And as you saw in this morning's release, with the anticipated conversion of the theatre and the additional meeting space at ARIA, that resulted in about $20 million acceleration of deprecation in the fourth quarter. That $20 million will continue each month at CityCenter for the first four months of the year, until we take the theatre out of service. So, that will impact what MGM Resorts will pick up, in terms of that depreciation on your EPS modeling going forward of about $10 million a month for the first four months of this year. Looking at corporate expense in the quarter, it was approximately $15 million higher than we had previously guided, primarily due to costs incurred to accelerate some of the initiatives related to our Profit Growth Plan, as well as some expenses related to the relocation of certain entertainment shows. As we incur some addition costs on the corporate line item over the next couple of quarters, related to PGP and our MGM Growth Properties transaction, we expect our corporate expense to be roughly $70 million in the first quarter. Switching over to give you some guidance with respect to CapEx both in the quarter and for 2016, during the fourth quarter, we invested approximately $177 million in CapEx related to our existing domestic operations, bringing the full year total to roughly $490 million. On the development front, we invested $113 million at National Harbor and a couple of million – $2 million at MGM Springfield during the quarter, bringing full year CapEx on these developments to approximately $360 million for National Harbor and $35 million for MGM Springfield. During the fourth quarter, MGM China spent approximately $174 million, of which $171 million was related to MGM Cotai. That brings the full year spend at MGM Cotai to approximately $543 million for 2015. So, to help with your modeling for 2016, we expect our CapEx to be as follows: our wholly-owned domestic resorts will be approximately $440 million for maintenance and growth at our existing properties, as well as some corporate and also includes the expenditures to complete The Park, The Monte Carlo theater and the new Excalibur parking garage, to name a few. Our development projects in National Harbor, as we aim to bring that property online by the end of this year, we'll have roughly $670 million of spending there; in Springfield, as we begin to ramp up those construction efforts, will be approximately $125 million. Not to be outdone, Grant is going to spend some money as well, and he is looking at $1.6 billion to continue the construction efforts for MGM Cotai, and about $75 million of that number is related to MGM Macau. With that, I'll turn it over to Grant for his comments. Grant R. Bowie - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director, MGM China Holdings Ltd.: Thank you, Dan. Good evening, good morning. These calls come around pretty quickly. So, as we look at the past quarter, MGM China has consistently operated with agility and delivered through challenging market conditions and certainly, this quarter has been no exception. In the fourth quarter, MGM China recorded net revenue of $499 million, and an adjusted EBITDA of $140 million before license fees. This is a 2% increase sequentially quarter-to-quarter. We're able to grow our margins by a full 2 percentage points from the prior quarter, driven by cost discipline, and increased business mix from our main floor operation. In fact, our main floor business accounted for (24:14) in the fourth quarter, a record. We are seeing some stabilization in the market led by the mass segment and Macau mass – GGI has shown improvement for two consecutive quarters. Meanwhile, MGM has focused on continuing our growth and yielding our database and its efforts have driven an increase in the main floor player accounts for the quarter. The MGM China board today also announced that we are recommending a final dividend of $46 million and this is subject to shareholders' approval at the annual general meeting. As mentioned in our press release, for MGM Cotai, we've made a strategic decision to move the opening of the property. And this is based on current market conditions, the timing of other property openings. We now expect to celebrate the opening in Macau by the end of the first quarter of 2017 and importantly, there is no change in the current budget of $3 billion. We are working closely with our contracted China site and are confident we'll be able to deliver this quality property. This extra time is also important as it will allow us to further fine tune the offerings in what is a very rapidly evolving marketplace and ensure that we're able to capture all the efficiencies that are possible, while at the same time, presenting a spectacular product, offering what we all know of the unique MGM experiences to this market. I'd also like to conclude by saying that, as a Macau-based business, we recognize that our long-term success depends on our commitment to the whole community. Therefore, we have continued our focus on training and developing the local team, while our volunteer team in 2015 contributed 5,800 hours of community service and this is a record for our company. And while we've always been committed to buying locally, with more than 80% of our purchases from local businesses, in 2015, we took this to another level by taking the initiative to establish our MGM Small and Medium sized Enterprises committee, which is made up of local business owners and professional, to help us develop new and innovative ways to engage and work with the local small and medium-sized enterprises. We are very proud to be a Macau-China business and we look forward to further contributing to the development of Macau. And with that, I'd like to hand back to Jim. Thank you. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, thank you, Grant. I'd just say a couple of brief things and I want to get to your questions. We had obviously a busy year last year. The converted CityCenter started paying its first dividends. We announced a PGP plan, and as I said, it's tracking really well. And we of course announced a very transformational transaction when we announced MGP. Those actions last year, we believe set MGM up for another great year in 2016; got a lot to look forward to. We're off to a very good start in the first quarter. In the second quarter, we opened up the arena, The Park. Later that year, we're opening up a theatre at Monte Carlo. We have the opening at the end of the year of MGM National Harbor, which will be stunning. And moving into next year, of course, we have Grant's project in Macau, followed by MGM Springfield in 2018. We are well ahead of our plans as it relates to Profit Growth Plan, and we're dedicated to this being a way-of-life at MGM, improving margins, increasing efficiencies, driving revenue and cash flows, not only restoring the profitability that we had in 2007, but exceeding it because of the growth of our company, the scale and the way we operate. We're excited about MGM Growth Properties. We're going to have a lot more to talk about in the coming months. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to the operator, so we can get to your questions.