{"id":298,"date":"2009-03-04T21:32:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T01:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2009\/3\/4\/Wall-Street-swoons-for-Sands"},"modified":"2009-03-04T21:32:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T01:32:00","slug":"wall-street-swoons-for-sands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wall-street-swoons-for-sands\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street swoons for Sands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That must have been some mighty tasty Kool-Aid that <strong>Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> CEO <strong>Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> was ladling out at the <strong>Reuters Travel &amp; Leisure Summit<\/strong> yesterday. Had we not been hearing it from other news sources, one wouldn&apos;t put much credence in Adelson&apos;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/TravelandLeisure09\/idUSTRE5226AH20090303\">prediction of wider access to Macao<\/a> from mainland China, mainly because his recent forecasts of what Peking would and wouldn&apos;t do have tended to be dead wrong.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"450\" height=\"223\" src=\"\/userfiles\/Image\/marina-bay-sands.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>Marina Bay Sands: A 28% return on investment? Sheldon says that&apos;s a lowball figure.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>But what really staggered the imagination<\/strong> were the ROI projections Wall Street&apos;s making for <strong>Marina Bay Sands<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/Sands-Singapore-resort-on-apf-14536505.html\" class=\"broken_link\">in Singapore<\/a>. Putting cash flow anywhere between a half-billion and $900 million is a scattershot figure, to say the least. But even those seemingly giddy estimates are &quot;somewhat low,&quot; according to Sands&apos; grand vizier. Depending on which of three reported Marina Bay budgets is the correct one, here&apos;s how the ROI range would shake out &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>$3.2 billion (original)<\/strong>: 16%-28%<\/p>\n<p><strong>$4.5 billion (interim)<\/strong>: 11%-20%<\/p>\n<p><strong>$5.4 budget (alleged final budget)<\/strong>: 9%-17%<\/p>\n<p>Those are some extraordinarily optimistic projections for the most expensive casino megaresort in history (unless you count <strong>CityCenter<\/strong> as one property). But it gets better. The $743 million <strong>Sands Bethlehem<\/strong> project, <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/ap\/090303\/bethlehem_slots.html?.v=1\">in Pennsylvania<\/a>, is going to do a 17% return on investment, according to Adelson.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Let&apos;s hope he&apos;s right<\/strong>, because that&apos;ll mean we&apos;re busting out of this recession something fierce. Of course, Sands saved itself a pile of money in Pennsylvania by simply deferring its contracted retail mall and hotel until an unspecified future date. But if $743 million represents not the total cost of the project but what Sands has spent on the casino alone, that $800 million <strong>Don Barden<\/strong>\/<strong>Neil Bluhm<\/strong> behemoth in <strong>Pittsburgh<\/strong> may start to look like a paragon of frugality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That must have been some mighty tasty Kool-Aid that Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson was ladling out at the Reuters Travel &amp; Leisure Summit yesterday. Had we not been hearing it from other news sources, one wouldn&apos;t put much &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wall-street-swoons-for-sands\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[83,62,91,95,12,108,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298"}],"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=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}