{"id":10061,"date":"2012-11-12T10:35:38","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T18:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=10061"},"modified":"2012-11-12T15:53:22","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T23:53:22","slug":"pinnacles-vietnamese-quagmire-caesars-south-american-pullback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/pinnacles-vietnamese-quagmire-caesars-south-american-pullback\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinnacle’s Vietnamese quagmire; Caesars’ South American pullback"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Friday, Pinnacle Entertainment<\/strong> tiptoed out with a little bombshell that may have detonated into your e-mail or stock portfolio. In brief: Vietnam<\/strong>‘s planned Ho Tram Strip<\/strong> casino resort is in deep shit. As a 26% owner of the project, Pinnacle is at least knee-high in the manure, too. Pinnacle stock fell 82 cents a share<\/a> after the news broke.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“Broke” would also describe lead investor Asia Coast Development Ltd<\/strong>. Not only can’t ACDL make the deadline for completing $175 million Phase I, project manager MGM Resorts International<\/strong> has advised ACDL that, even were Phase I to be finished, there’s no working capital left to run the place. Consequently, ACDL’s credit facility has been suspended. Also, the resort doesn’t have a gaming license nor are any regulations in place. Deutsche Bank<\/strong> analyst Carlo Santarelli<\/strong> concludes, “the ability of ACDL to open MGM Ho Tram has been placed in serious jeopardy and PNK is at risk of losing its $111 mm investment in ACDL in its entirety<\/em>,” adding that he expected the news to get worse before it gets better.<\/p>\n

\"\"A considerably more sanguine view was taken by Santarelli’s J.P. Morgan<\/strong> counterpart, Joseph Greff<\/strong>, who advised investors that the Vietnamese government was likely to come through with deadline extensions, though he noted that Pinnacle is on the hook to help cover the absent working-capital costs. However, due to Pinnacle’s strength in the St. Louis<\/strong> and Lake Charles<\/strong> markets, Greff concluded that the Ho Tram kerfuffle would be but “a minor drag” on the stock.<\/p>\n

Cash is king<\/strong> and nowhere more so than at financially wobbly Caesars Entertainment<\/strong>. The latter just liquidated an ownership stake<\/a> in Uruguay<\/strong>‘s Conrad Punta del Este Resort & Casino<\/strong> in return for $140 million from Chilean firm Enjoy<\/strong>. It also agreed to purchase a 10% slice of Enjoy, thereby enabling it to mine<\/a> South America<\/strong> for potential players. The official press release doesn’t explicitly state that Conrad and Enjoy players will be flowed into Total Rewards<\/strong> but strongly implies as much. As for Punta del Este, the Caesars garage sale continues …<\/p>\n

\"\"Caesars is spending<\/strong> some of that new “mad money” before it’s even been banked, chipping in $25 million more into<\/a> what is now Horseshoe Baltimore<\/strong>. The project cost will be upped to $400 million, as many as 110 table games are planned<\/a> and the 3,750-machine slot floor might be downsized (as happened at Horseshoe Cleveland<\/strong>). Some of the cost overrun — from an initial $300 million — isn’t entirely the fault of Caesars or Rock Gaming<\/strong>. The City of Baltimore<\/strong> balked at the initial project design (left<\/em>), which looked rather too much like a Target<\/strong> store or something of that ilk. Horseshoe Baltimore has literally gone back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Friday, Pinnacle Entertainment tiptoed out with a little bombshell that may have detonated into your e-mail or stock portfolio. In brief: Vietnam‘s planned Ho Tram Strip casino resort is in deep shit. As a 26% owner of the project, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[65,28,154,7,22,53,72,11,71,30,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10061"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10071,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10061\/revisions\/10071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}