Matt Maddox
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
Thanks, Craig. And thank you for joining us today everyone. I'm sure everybody's glued to the television watching these exciting election results right now. So we'll get right into it on our results here. I'd like to start in Macau. So the third quarter in Macau was really very similar to the second. There wasn't a lot to talk about. We're still seeing roughly 8% to 10% of our visitor volumes compared to pre-COVID levels. And it was really – there was just not a whole lot going on. But as everyone has been seeing, the government of Macau with its deliberate approach and steadfastness has been working very hard to continue to open Macau. Macau was probably one of the safest places on the planet, hasn’t had COVID case in months and months and months. And everyone there is really excited to see the progress that's going on. So as an example, in the month of August in Macau, our EBITDA line was negative $40 million, because there was very little revenue and we were carrying our costs. Our team's doing a great job saving money where we can, being more efficient while protecting the local employment and all of our employees. However, in October, we started to see those trends change. So we went from 10% of our normal visitor volumes up to almost 30%, and it wasn't just over Golden Week, it was actually throughout the month. And in fact, I looked at our visitor data from November 2, 3, and 4, it went balanced, before I walked in here and we're seeing roughly 6,000 people a day come in the building, pre-COVID, that number was 18,000. So those trends that we saw in early October are continuing into November. From a revenue standpoint in October, mass drop on the table side was roughly 40% of our pre-COVID levels. And on the junket side, which everyone's been talking about the junket business, what's going to happen to it. Is it going to survive? Where is it going to go? Clearly it's changing. Clearly it will be, even as we come through this than it was before. But it's still very real. We saw 30% roughly between 25% and 30% in turnover compared to our pre-COVID levels in the junket space. So that activity produced actual positive EBITDA for us in October. So if you think about it, we went from a negative $40 million in August, which was normal, similar in July, et cetera, to a positive $6 million in October, quite a big swing. And what we are optimistic about in Macau is the way that everything has been handled there, it doesn't appear to be one step forward, one step backward, one step forward, it's been a very deliberate approach, very thoughtful. And it just feels like we are – and the market is just going to continue to get better. I don't know at what speed, I don't know what pace, but the overall mood, attitude and interjectory is quite good. In fact, looking in October at our retail sales, they were roughly flat with last year and our top five stores in Macau were up 25% compared to last year. So there's real consumer – pent-up consumer demand and it's just going to take time for the market to continue to open. But we feel really good about the current trajectory that's going on there. Moving to North America. As we talked about on the last call, we are not going to sacrifice our brand or our culture to make an extra few dollars here or there. That means, while we have significantly less staff approximately 7,400 less staff globally, now that we did pre-COVID, we are still operating at a five-star level in Macau and in North America. We are focused on making sure we have the highest room rates in the market. But we've also been focusing on making sure that we continue to breakeven or make money. And in Las Vegas, we made $20 million in the third quarter, both adjusted closer to $28 million. Some of the things that are encouraging that we're seeing in Las Vegas is we are taking share in the casino segment. We're seeing new domestic customers that we've never seen before, that previously were lifers at some of our competitors. And I think for all of the reasons that we've been laying out from our security protocols of checking everyone, when they walk in to our COVID to all of our restaurants being open, we're beginning to continue – we're not beginning, we are taking market share on the casino side. Slots in the market were down over 33% during the quarter and we were down 16%. Table drop was down about 35% in the quarter and we were down 25%. So we're just seeing more business. We're seeing higher end customers, not a lot, but we're seeing – I believe, we are gaining share on that front. In October in Las Vegas, we actually had our best month. We generated roughly $14 million of EBITDA in October. We had a little bit of hold lock in there maybe $2 million, but overall, it was a very good month. Now, as everyone on the call knows, Las Vegas has seasonality and we're coming in to the slow time. So COVID cases are picking up in the U.S. obviously, and November, December are quite slow in Las Vegas and have been heavily reliant on group. So our team – so October will not be repeated in November and September, but it shows that – when there is just a little bit of business with the way we've restructured our expense line, the amount of operating leverage that we have now revenue quickly converts into EBITDA. And our focus as things do get a little slower during the winter is to make sure that we stay EBITDA positive. That's what we're going to do in Las Vegas. And I would think – it's hard to tell, but I think Wynn Las Vegas probably was the most profitable integrated resort casino on the strip, or if not the most, it was definitely at the top of the list. So our strategy is working, we’re maintaining our brand, we’re maintaining our culture and we're making a little bit of money. Moving to Boston. Encore Boston Harbor is really starting to hit its stride. So we generated roughly $26 million in EBITDA, significantly more than we ever have in the past during the quarter. And our team has really learned how to be a super regional operator. We focus during the shutdown on how to run Encore Boston Harbor differently than we were, because clearly what we were doing was not quite right. And so we have – we've had a laser focus on the casino segment. And what it is that those customers want and how we're going to deliver it. And if you look at our results, slot handle per day, just overall volume per day was actually up over last year. It's pretty extraordinary, when you think about we 1,800 slot machines open during this third quarter, compared to 3,000 last year and volume was higher on a daily basis. Wynn per unit was over $400 on 1,800 units, so I think $407 compared to $219 last year. So Encore Boston Harbor is really starting to understand how and we are starting to understand what that market is, how to market to those customers and how to monetize there. Massachusetts recently just this week announced that starting over the weekend, restaurants, bars, casinos, et cetera, will need to close, COVID-related, starting at 9:30 at night. That's clearly a setback for us, but it's very temporary. And I'm sure it's the right thing to do from a health perspective. The government of Massachusetts has done a terrific job throughout all of this, managing this from Governor Baker to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. So we view it as a temporary setback, but it's really nothing that we're worried about because our business model is sound. And I think that we're going to continue to see increases in revenue and increase in EBITDA out of Encore Boston Harbor. Moving onto – one more topic, this is a new one for us. There's been a lot going on in the gaming world concerning sports betting and in particular online sports betting. We've been very focused on this topic for the last couple of years, but we've been admittedly quiet about it. In 2019, working with Craig Billings, who is helping me run this effort. We decided that we wanted to focus on product first. So how could we have the best product, because that is who we are when it comes to sports betting, online sports betting? We scoured the earth and we found a company in the UK called BetBull. And the Founders and the operators of that company, we had a great cultural fit. They were the Founders of Bwin and Party and understand this intimately and they’ve built a product in the UK, it was really very social. So the engagement that they had with their customers was quite extraordinary and therefore, their KPIs were really, really good. So when you see your friend making a bet, it will pop up on your phone. Do you want to follow your friend? It's very parlay heavy. It moves you into chat rooms quickly. It's fun. It's a lot of fun. And their user acquisition costs in the UK and their LTVs were quite attractive relative to industry standards. So we made an investment in that company in 2019 and began working on U.S. rollout with them. We then move forward and we acquired that company. We own 70% of that company now, and they are a fully integrated in, we have 150 people inside Wynn Interactive and we've begun our U.S. rollout. So quietly, we can now talk about it. We have signed market access deals in the United States in nine states that represents about 25% of the total addressable market. I think a lot of the analysts on this call say that that's roughly $20 billion to $30 billion. So we already have access to 25% of that. And we're in very active dialogue, definitive documentation in many cases on seven additional states, which represents another third of that market. So the way that we're going, we think that we'll have more than half of the total addressable market through market access deals, underway in winner active in fairly short order. We have launched WynnBET our product in New Jersey. We're learning a lot. We have product releases every two weeks and so far and Craig will talk a little bit more about this, our CPAs are quite good and it's encouraging what we're seeing. So we will be rolling out this product into various markets where we have access. And it's something that we have a lot of focused on. We've invested $80 million within – into that company to focus on user acquisition and continued development over the next few months. And we've had lots and lots of interest from various people wanting to co-invest, wanting to be a part of it. And what I've been focused on along with Craig is, we're going to build an amazing product and have a real business opportunity and roll it out. And that's where we are and feel very good that, while currently Wynn Interactive does roughly $20 million in revenue, that number is going to grow at a exponential rate as we move forward. So with that, I think I'll go ahead and open it up to Craig to talk a little bit more about the quarter.