{"id":18132,"date":"2016-04-21T08:29:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T16:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=18132"},"modified":"2016-04-21T09:31:23","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T17:31:23","slug":"derek-stevens-latest-gambit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/derek-stevens-latest-gambit\/","title":{"rendered":"Derek Stevens’ latest gambit; Hard quarter for Sands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tilman Fertitta<\/strong>, move over. Derek Stevens<\/strong> is now downtown Las Vegas<\/strong>‘ biggest power player. Even though he has two operational casinos (The D<\/strong> and Golden Gate<\/strong>), plus one in mothballs (the Las Vegas Club<\/strong>), he’s expanded his acreage further by buying \"mermaids\"out three Granite Gaming Group<\/strong> properties, including Mermaids<\/strong>, as well as La Bayou<\/strong> and strip club Topless Girls of Glitter Gulch<\/strong>. So if you want to have a chocolate-dipped frozen banana, head on over to Mermaids before Stevens closes it (and the other two properties) on June 27<\/a>. Displaced employees will get first crack<\/a> at job openings at The D and Golden Gate.\u00a0\u201cWhile it will be sad to say goodbye to our family-run Fremont Street<\/strong> mainstays, it is an exciting time for Downtown Las Vegas as Derek Stevens continues to propel its evolution,\u201d said Granite CEO Steve Burnstine<\/strong>, as well he might, seeing as the fate of the two little casinos in question is no longer his problem.<\/p>\n

Frankly, I do not think they will reopen under Stevens’ auspices. They are small, tacky and would not be significant cash-flow contributors to Stevens’ growing casino armada. I predict a teardown-and-rebuild as part of Stevens’ larger project: the reinvention of the Las Vegas Club. As for the topless bar, nudie clubs are aplenty in Las Vegas, so I doubt the ecdysiasts will have trouble finding gainful employment elsewhere.<\/p>\n

* Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> reported quarterly earnings yesterday and the best performer, in terms of percentage increase in net revenue, was red-headed stepchild Sands Bethlehem<\/strong>. The company continued to take a hammering on the Macao<\/strong> front, where \"OB-BB375_Macau__20080221142644\"net revenue declined as much as 22% (Sands Macao<\/strong>) and as little as 5% (Venetian Macao<\/strong>). Las Vegas afforded a bright spot, up 2%. The big surprise, though, was star performer Marina Bay Sands<\/strong>, which went into a 23% downward spiral, while still grossing $604 million. What gives? Carlo Santarelli<\/strong> of Deutsche Bank<\/strong> chalked it up to the “luck factor,” which makes as much sense as anything, even though Marina Bay Sands<\/strong> operates under governmental restrictions arguably tighter than those of Sands’ Chinese casinos. VIP hold was meager, negating gains in slots, mass-market tables and room revenues.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, Sands announced it had achieved $60 million in cost cuts and was going to ameliorate the ongoing revenue decline with another $200 million in cutbacks (which may be easier said than done<\/a>). Santarelli opined that this would help “but will not fully temper continued market revenue \"Marina-Bay-Sands\"and market share declines\u200e, as new competition opens on Cotai<\/strong>.” JP Morgan implied that a selloff of the Singapore<\/strong> retail mall might be in the offing, as well as that recent results in Macao were a ‘dead cat bounce’: “We can\u2019t help but think that investors (and us, previously) are potentially confusing sequential improvements driven by seasonality with absolute, seasonally adjusted improving results.” Macao saw 21% less credit extended to high rollers and 8% less table play. Slots were off 5%. Greff called the quarter “reasonably solid,” while noting that monthly trends were “still volatile.” The future is seen as problematic, considering that new-casino supply is far outdistancing the pace of new infrastructure to ferry players via the\u00a0Light Rail Transit<\/strong> system\u00a0and the Hong Kong<\/strong>\u2013Zhuhai<\/strong>\u2013Macao bridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tilman Fertitta, move over. Derek Stevens is now downtown Las Vegas‘ biggest power player. Even though he has two operational casinos (The D and Golden Gate), plus one in mothballs (the Las Vegas Club), he’s expanded his acreage further by … 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":[155,51,62,95,12,108,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18132"}],"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=18132"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18142,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18132\/revisions\/18142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}