{"id":17314,"date":"2015-12-03T11:09:58","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T19:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=17314"},"modified":"2015-12-03T11:09:58","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T19:09:58","slug":"penn-charms-wall-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/penn-charms-wall-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Penn charms Wall Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

JP Morgan<\/strong> analyst Joseph Greff<\/strong> recently sat down with Penn National Gaming<\/strong> COO Jay Snowden<\/strong> and, of course, the big topic of conversation was Plainridge Park<\/strong>. Penn doesn’t see Wynn \"Plainridge\"<\/a>Everett<\/strong> — when it opens in 2018 — as a competitive threat, focusing more on Twin River Casino<\/strong>, in Rhode Island<\/strong>. Although Plainridge is doing a boffo $335\/slot win\/day, this was characterized as “weaker than expected.” New England Patriots<\/strong> fans were scapegoated and Penn’s solution is “continuing to build its database (up to ~135k) and ongoing operational tweaks,” which sounds like another way of saying there’s not much they can do. Besides, at a 20% return on investment, there’s really nothing to apologize for in its operational performance.<\/p>\n

Much talk was also devoted to the Tropicana Las Vegas<\/strong>, for whose performance Greff thinks Penn gets too little credit on Wall Street<\/strong>. The company has reduced the number of rooms booked through online travel agencies from 50% \"TROPICANA<\/a>to 40%, with the goal of getting that number down to 10%. ADRs are up — although lagging the Strip average at $100\/night and convention-related business is said to be better, as is cash flow (admittedly a relative compliment). Penn doesn’t expect room revenues to truly improve until the second half of next year. While room expansion is “likely” in any capex improvements, physical changes to the property won’t happen until 2017 or 2018.\u00a0Locals play at Penn’s two Las Vegas properties is described as “strong,” which may be why Penn execs “assume no cannibalization at The M Resort<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

Penn properties in Pennsylvania<\/strong> and West Virginia<\/strong> were described as “particularly” strong, while the company was said to be growing its market share in St. Louis<\/strong> and Kansas City<\/strong>. Customers are visiting more often and spending more, phenomena ascribed to “low gas prices\/higher disposable income, low unemployment, and modest wage growth.”<\/p>\n

If the Jamul Indian Village<\/strong> could close on a $460 million line of credit (it’s still justthisclose), Penn would get a big boulder off its back, \"Jamul\"<\/a>reducing the company’s leverage from 5X to 3.7X, as Penn is considerably out of pocket for Hollywood Casino Jamul<\/strong>. Elsewhere, the company plans to move aggressively into Illinois<\/strong> slot routes but is potentially taking a complacent attitude toward MGM National Harbor<\/strong>, assuming that MGM will go light on slots, whose revenues in Maryland<\/strong> are taxed at 60%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff recently sat down with Penn National Gaming COO Jay Snowden and, of course, the big topic of conversation was Plainridge Park. Penn doesn’t see Wynn Everett — when it opens in 2018 — as a … 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":[34,14,58,63,53,72,112,11,39,69,95,111,141,92,74,32,31,9,20,139],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17314"}],"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=17314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17316,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17314\/revisions\/17316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}