{"id":3094,"date":"2010-05-07T12:04:17","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T20:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3094"},"modified":"2010-05-07T12:56:16","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T20:56:16","slug":"illinois-results-are-good-sands-are-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/illinois-results-are-good-sands-are-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois’ results are good, Sands’ are better"},"content":{"rendered":"

Praise be! Casino revenues in Illinois<\/strong> were actually flat (+0.5%) last month. It’s mainly a consequence of Penn National<\/strong>‘s Empress Joliet<\/em> being back in the fray, raking in $40 million. (You’ll recall that, a year ago, its pavilion was but a charred husk.) This wasn’t such good news for Penn’s Hollywood Aurora<\/em> or Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong>‘s casino in Joliet<\/strong>, which lost an average of 23% of business. MGM Mirage<\/strong>‘s Grand Victoria<\/em> came through unscathed, however.<\/p>\n

St. Louis<\/strong>-area casinos continue to lose business to Missouri<\/strong>, however. Both Penn’s Alton Belle<\/em> and independently owned Casino Queen<\/em> were down 10% and it’s certainly more than coincidence that Pinnacle Entertainment<\/strong> bolstered its Missouri-side arsenal with River City<\/strong> at that very time. At least the rollout of slot routes in Illinois continues to be a flop, buying some relief for the state’s long-suffering riverboats.<\/p>\n

\"\"Cap-and-trade at Sands<\/strong>. Combing through Las Vegas Sands<\/strong>‘ 1Q10 report and the first week of business at Marina Bay Sands<\/strong>, analysts at J.P. Morgan<\/strong> are generally bullish on the company. They’re not expecting Sands to move many of its Macao<\/strong> condo units this year but speedily growing VIP play at Venetian Macao<\/strong> (left<\/em>) generated that megaresort’s highest margins to date. Despite a negligible contribution from Sands Bethlehem<\/strong> (but a better-than-expected one from Venelazzo<\/strong>) the company surpassed cash-flow expectations … although there is some cannibalization at work, judging from the fact that Venetian Macao exceeded projections but both Sands Macao<\/strong> and Four Seasons<\/strong> undershot them.<\/p>\n

Morgan also stands by its prediction of $1.7 billion in gross gaming revenue for 2011, based on $400-$900 in daily slot win, and while its profit estimates are considerably lower than those of CEO Sheldon Adelson<\/strong>, JPM says it’s being “conservative.” Perhaps the most interesting disclosure was that Adelson has it in writing from Peking<\/strong> (or one of its Macanese vassals) that he can put 400 new table games — plus 100 e-tables — into his Cotai Strip\u2122<\/strong> casinos and swap out another 170 from existing resorts. This refutes scuttlebutt that Galaxy Entertainment<\/strong> was juiced in for 4\/5 of the 500 unallocated tables and brings the week at Sands HQ to an upbeat close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Praise be! Casino revenues in Illinois were actually flat (+0.5%) last month. It’s mainly a consequence of Penn National‘s Empress Joliet being back in the fray, raking in $40 million. (You’ll recall that, a year ago, its pavilion was but … 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":[28,14,7,62,11,39,69,95,30,25,12,108,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094"}],"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=3094"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3102,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions\/3102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}