Adelson abandons Vegas; Boyd salvages bad quarter

Sheldon Adelson may have flung $75 million at deciding who’s going to run the country for the next four years but he’s giving up on America. News broke yesterday that Las Vegas Sands is shopping Venelazzo for six billion. We’ve thought many unflattering things about Sheldon over the years but we never figured him to cut and run when the going got tough. At least he made shareholders happy: LVS stock hopped 5% on news of the sales feelers being put out. “Investor attention has focused on its Macau operations of late, but a sale in Nevada may point to trouble for Las Vegas casinos,” reported Seeking Alpha.

According to Credit Suisse‘s Ben Chaiken, the $6 billion price tag implies a 12X cash-flow multiple, steep for a Las Vegas Strip megaresort in these economically straitened times but not unreasonable. Added Chaiken, “this could make sense given [the] portfolio was trading below this even pre-Covid-19. Not clear who would buy,” he understated. Ah yes, there’s the $6 billion question. “These properties are trophy properties, they’re in great locations, there’s a lot of development going on so whoever buys the properties will have something great to work with,” said one pundit. But who has the big bucks to spare? And what will Sheldon do with the $6B if he gets it, “Macow [sic] is coming back, Singapore is coming back, maybe they’re looking into other Asian countries, and this sale will generate cash that will allow them to do that,” speculated one spelling-challenged analyst.