When Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) won the concession to build Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, Sheldon Adelson, never one to be modest, said it would be the most profitable casino in the world.
I didn't question that would eventually come true, but in just its first full quarter of operations, Marina Bay Sands may just have achieved his lofty goal with $241.6 million in property EBITDA and $485.9 million in revenue. Wynn Resort's (Nasdaq: WYNN) Macau casino still has a shot when the company announces earnings next week, but it will be a tight battle.
Overall company results were incredibly impressive. The table below shows revenue, EBITDA and net income all exploding from the third quarter last year. Of course, most of this is from Marina Bay Sands, but all operations contributed positively.
|
Metric |
Q3 2010 |
Q3 2009 |
Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $1.91 Billion | $1.14 Billion | +67.3% |
| Adjusted Property EBITDA | $645.2 Million | $272.3 Million | +136.9% |
| Net Income | $265.2 Million | $20.1 Million | +1,219.4% |
Source: Las Vegas Sands press release.
I think everyone who watches this stock closely was expecting eye-popping numbers from Singapore, but to me the biggest surprise was in Las Vegas, where revenues were up 26.9% and adjusted property EBITDA was up 69% from a year ago. This flies in the face of MGM Resort's (NYSE: MGM) preliminary announcement, which pointed to falling revenue and EBITDA in the third quarter.
I combed through the press release looking for some sort of negative information and the best I could find was food and beverage revenue down 10.3% at Sands Bethlehem. And who really cares about that?
What can I say but "Wow!" for Las Vegas Sands? Earlier this week, I concluded Las Vegas Sands wasn't overpriced given its recent stock run, but maybe we need to adjust our expectations even higher. Next week we will see if Wynn and Melco Crown (Nasdaq: MPEL) can keep up with this outstanding performance. The bar has been set awfully high for the beginning of the casino earnings season.
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