{"id":8899,"date":"2012-04-27T12:20:48","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T20:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=8899"},"modified":"2020-04-04T19:50:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T03:50:23","slug":"polished-nugget-burnished-wynn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/polished-nugget-burnished-wynn\/","title":{"rendered":"Polished Nugget, burnished Wynn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In what might be called The Era of Deferred Maintenance, Landry’s Restaurants<\/strong> CEO Tilman Fertitta<\/strong> still believes in spending money to make money. That’s why he poured $150 million into the former Trump Marina<\/strong> and, consequently, the Golden Nugget Atlantic City<\/strong> has been seeing a reversal of its once-flagging fortunes. (Touch wood.) When your Marina District neighbors are Borgata<\/strong> and Harrah’s Atlantic City<\/strong>, it behooves one to keep up with the Jonses … which, needless to say, Donald Trump<\/strong> didn’t. “The number-one comment we heard from customers was, \u2018It looks like a hospital<\/em>,'” said Nugget GM Tom Pohlman<\/strong>, in what ought to be Quote of the Year.<\/p>\n

Unlike casino vulture Colony C(r)apital<\/strong>, Fertitta redid the place without encumbering it with a big-ass mortgage<\/a>, a business practice that was the unmaking of Colony’s gaming ambitions. And, as is his custom, Fertitta owns all the on-property revenue streams. Nugget execs freely admit that much of the new gambling revenue was purchased with free play and other promos. Given what a Trump dump the Marina is said to have been, if comp-lured customers like its new, Tilman-ized look and much wider range of amenities<\/a>, all those vouchers will have been a sound investment. Many upgrades similar to those just unveiled in Atlantic \"\"City will also be lavished on the Isle of Capri<\/strong> casino that will be converted to a Golden Nugget in Biloxi<\/strong> at a cost of $150 million. While Atlantic City remains at a tipping point, pending the full impact of Revel, Feritta is entering the Gulf Coast market at a propitious moment, with Mississippi<\/strong> seeing some of its best casino revenues in years. No disrespect to Steve Wynn<\/strong> but the Golden Nugget brand hasn’t had this much luster in decades.<\/p>\n

\"\"Respecting Wynn<\/strong>. That’s what J.P. Morgan<\/strong> analyst Joseph Greff<\/strong> did earlier this week, at a time when Wall Street<\/strong> has been falling all over Las Vegas Sands<\/strong>, and not without reason. Crunching many a number, he argued that even without Wynn Macau<\/strong> and its long-promised Cotai Strip<\/strong> sibling, Wynn Resorts<\/strong> still holds “two of the better positioned assets” on the Las Vegas Strip<\/strong>. Greff also likes Wynn’s relative lack of debt and argues that the stock is undervalued in comparison to Sands, Melco Crown Entertainment<\/strong> and MGM Resorts International<\/strong>. Contending that expectations for Wynn’s Macao operations are too low, Greff forecasts that the Cotai development (if\/when approved) will generate a 25% return on a $2.75 billion investment. You can’t redeem that large of a project cost anywhere near so fast in America. Heck, you can hardly even justify that big a budget stateside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In what might be called The Era of Deferred Maintenance, Landry’s Restaurants CEO Tilman Fertitta still believes in spending money to make money. That’s why he poured $150 million into the former Trump Marina and, consequently, the Golden Nugget Atlantic … 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":[65,60,3,28,42,14,7,85,62,93,35,12,32,9,129,19,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899"}],"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=8899"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26654,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions\/26654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}