{"id":10964,"date":"2013-06-17T11:28:48","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T19:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=10964"},"modified":"2013-06-18T09:38:41","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T17:38:41","slug":"pinnacle-folds-kansas-city-rebounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/pinnacle-folds-kansas-city-rebounds\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinnacle folds; Kansas City rebounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Wow. I am stunned. Despite defiant proclamations that he would fight the Federal Trade Commission<\/strong> in court, Pinnacle Entertainment<\/strong> CEO Anthony Sanfilippo<\/strong> capitulated in swift order. This morning, J.P. Morgan<\/strong> reported that Pinnacle had reached an agreement in principle to sell both its own Lumiere Place<\/strong> and Ameristar Casinos<\/strong>‘ Lake Charles<\/strong> project. The accord is subject to various other conditions (such as the assent of the Missouri Gaming Commission<\/strong>) but removes a huge obstacle to the Pinnacle\/Ameristar deal<\/a> and improves the prospects of closing the sale by its late-summer deadlin<\/a>e. Pinnacle describes interest in its package of properties<\/a> (which includes a Four Seasons hotel) as “pretty robust” already.<\/p>\n

It’s not clear what prompted Sanfilippo’s volte-face<\/em> but I suspect there was pressure from the Ameristar side of the table to get on with the sale instead of duking it out with the FTC. (Missouri<\/strong> regulators, after all, were likely to reach the same conclusion as the feds.)<\/p>\n

Strangely, Morgan analyst Joseph Greff<\/strong> had been queried by some investors about why Pinnacle wouldn’t rather unload\u00a0Ameristar St. Charles\"\"<\/em>(above)\u00a0or its own River City<\/strong>. Like, duh<\/em>! Clearly, these are people who don’t read monthly reports or they’d know that both of the aforementioned considerably outgross Lumiere Place. Greff thinks Lumiere could still fetch a $240 million, down from a previous estimate of $306 million. However, he thinks Pinnacle could recoup the $144.5 million already spent — soon to be $228 million — on the Lake Charles site by cutting a deal with Churchill Downs<\/strong>: estimated price, $245 million. Carlo Santarelli<\/strong> of Deutsche Bank<\/strong> differs with Greff on the some of the dollar figures but agrees that any uncertainty about the takeover is now removed.<\/p>\n

While we’re on the subject of Missouri<\/strong>, all four of the Kansas City\u00a0\"\"<\/strong>casinos bounced back in May, showing remarkable resilience in the face of Penn National Gaming<\/strong>‘s Kansas Speedway<\/strong> casino. Ameristar Kansas City<\/em> was flat with 2012, but lost no ground. Second-place Harrah’s North Kansas City<\/strong> was up 4%, while Penn’s Argosy Riverside<\/em> and Isle of Capri Casinos<\/strong>‘ Isle of Capri Kansas City<\/em> were up 2% each. In a month where the St. Louis<\/strong> market performed unimpressively (-5%), the news from Kansas City was all the more remarkable.<\/p>\n

An unexpected source<\/strong> of disappointment is Isle of Capri’s new casino in Cape Girardeau<\/strong>. Analysts were unimpressed by Isle’s most recent quarterly numbers. Santarelli forecast a “meaningfully slower than anticipated” growth in revenue for the casino. However, he remained bullish on the stock, hinting that Isle would be a takeover target for Penn National once the latter completes its REIT conversion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow. I am stunned. Despite defiant proclamations that he would fight the Federal Trade Commission in court, Pinnacle Entertainment CEO Anthony Sanfilippo capitulated in swift order. This morning, J.P. Morgan reported that Pinnacle had reached an agreement in principle to … 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":[40,28,7,85,84,39,69,30,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10964"}],"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=10964"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10974,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10964\/revisions\/10974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}