Earnings Labs

MGM Resorts International (MGM)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 18, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the MGM Resorts International Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Joining the call from the company today are Jim Murren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Dan D'Arrigo, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Bill Hornbuckle, President; Corey Sanders, Chief Operating Officer; Grant Bowie, CEO and Executive Director of MGM China Holdings Limited. Participants are in a listen-only mode. After the company's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please note, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Dan D'Arrigo. Daniel J. D'Arrigo - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Well, thank you, Keith. And good morning and welcome to MGM Resorts fourth quarter and full year 2015 earnings call. This call is being broadcast live on the Internet at www.mgmresorts.com and a replay of the call will be made available on our website. We furnished our press release this morning on a Form 8-K to the SEC. And on this call, we will make forward-looking statements under the Safe Harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. Actual results might differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements are contained in today's press release and in our periodic filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. During the call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures in talking about the company's performance. You can find a reconciliation of these measures to GAAP financial measures in our press release, which is available on our website. Finally, please note that this presentation is being recorded. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jim. James Joseph Murren - Chairman…

Operator

Operator

Yes, thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. And the first question comes from Harry Curtis with Nomura.

Harry C. Curtis - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst

Hi, guys. And good morning, Jim. Normally, it's your custom to give some sense of what to look for as far as pricing both in the near-term and then, for the year. Can you give a sense of what you're seeing so far on the RevPAR front in Vegas? James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, maybe I'll start that since you called me out Harry, and then I'll turn to my left and my right. Dan gave a concept of RevPAR I think in the first quarter, didn't you, Dan, up 6%. That would be better than the RevPAR growth we had in the first quarter of the prior year, and it's because we were off to a very good start. CES was outstanding for us. We did well as a market. MGM I think picked up some share there. It set the tone for the first quarter on the convention side. We had tremendous bookings in 2015, in fact, this is a fun fact, I think. We booked an all-time record of a $0.5 billion of business last year for this year, next year, and that is pretty remarkable. 98% of this year is already on the books, as it relates to our convention business. So, booking in the year for the year will mean that we're going to have to be creative and move people around, and if anything that will add to RevPARs in that segment. We're seeing some good strength in the second half. We typically don't give guidance outside of the current quarter, but just because you asked, we're seeing good growth on the convention side in the second half of this year. Rooms are up significantly, ADR is projected to be up, revenue overall up. And a lot of that…

Harry C. Curtis - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst

Corey, just a quick follow-up. When you consider the business that's been done so far. Can you give us a sense of attendance, cancellations compared to history? Is there anything to indicate any softness?

Corey I. Sanders - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst

The – just looking at the fourth quarter, our attrition was 9%, which is usually lower than normal. Depending on what's convention, I would say the majority of them have showed increased attendance, there are a few that are flat, but in general if CES for example is an example, there is a nice little increase there.

Harry C. Curtis - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst

So, Corey, just attrition, I didn't understand the answer on that part. Was attrition 9%, is that good or bad?

Corey I. Sanders - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst

That's great. Our usual trend is about 10%, we've been running about 12%. So, 9% is excellent for us.

Harry C. Curtis - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Okay. Thanks, guys. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Harry.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Carlo Santarelli with Deutsche Bank.

Carlo Santarelli - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Hey, thanks guys. Dan, you provided a little bit of color on the table situation in the 4Q, in terms of the $20 million EBITDA impact. In the press release, you guys talked a little bit about slot revenue decreasing 3% in 4Q. The market I believe just from a GGR perspective was up like 6.5% or 7% in the 4Q. So, I'm wondering, if maybe you could reconcile some of the commentary in the press release regarding the accrual for slot points and how that might have made things a little bit distorted. Daniel J. D'Arrigo - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Sure, Carlo. I'll take that. The – our actual slot win in the quarter was up about 1%. And when you look at the year-over-year comparison on the revenue line item, we're actually down because of that prior year accrual adjustment to our slot revenue numbers. So, our win was actually up marginally, but for the revenue side of the equation, from an accounting standpoint, the tough comparison was really in the contra revenue account for slots.

Corey I. Sanders - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

And what I would add, Carlo, is a few things, one, we had fewer events in the Grand Garden from the year before and at Mandalay Bay. Two, I think with our bigger convention mix, we were – the year before, we probably pump that area a lot, especially the lower end casino side, which is probably not a great margin business. So, we were – we thought about not doing that in the fourth quarter this year. And then finally, if you look at some of our competitors' numbers, they obviously pumped up some of their rooms, which they didn't – haven't had in the past, which would improve the market's growth in the – in Las Vegas. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So, right. I think just to summarize that last point. So, I think what we're saying is that we had more slot promo activity in the fourth quarter of 2014. We did that to fill rooms in the fourth quarter of 2014 with much more convention business in the fourth quarter of 2015, which meant we pulled back on some of our slot marketing programs. And as a result, our slot margins and our profits were actually higher in the quarter.

Carlo Santarelli - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Great. Thanks, everyone. And then, Jim, if I could just ask a follow-up bigger picture, as you think about the company structure today, obviously several JVs and that will expand a little bit. Have you thought just bigger picture more strategically about anything that you might want to do going forward with some of the joint ventures, obviously some of which are levered, lower than the overall company that maybe it'll get full credit for et cetera. Have you thought anything along the lines of maybe the best way to address that as we're looking ahead? James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, we have – I think we view this as a marathon and we have a few legs, maybe it's a decathlon, because we have a few legs of this race. Number one, we need to be assured that we're making the right decision here with creating this triple-net lease REIT and we believe we are making the right decision. It's required a lot of our corporate finance, legal accounting work. We've made a lot of regulatory progress on this, and we feel like that is a priority to properly birth this new company, this UPREIT this year and make sure it's on a strong footing. And by the way, you'd have a great fourth quarter if you were to pull out MGP's properties in a great year. Its RevPARs, in fact, better than rest of the company. Its RevPARs in the fourth quarter up 12%, cash flow was up 17% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. For the year, MGP properties were up 7% in RevPAR, up 14% in cash flow. So, first order of business I think is to do that. The second, and this is on a parallel path, is to look at…

Carlo Santarelli - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

That's great. Thank you very much. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Carlo.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Joe Greff with JPMorgan.

Joseph R. Greff - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan.

I have two questions. One on PGP, and then, one on MGP, and I'm tired of initials here. On PGP, the $35 million of EBITDA contribution in the 4Q is certainly more than we – I think most were expecting. And I ask this question maybe in the context of maybe sort of expectations getting or not getting ahead of expectations. But, would you look at the quarterly contribution throughout 2016, to the quarterly contribution that you saw in the 4Q? How do we think about that or how are you thinking about that, Jim? James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. You want to have – we're going to ask couple of people answer that, because maybe, Dan, you can start on the quarterly, just to get a sense of pace on that. But we have a special guest star in Chris Nordling, who is running that program for us, and he could give you a little more color on why we're confident about our ability to perform there. Daniel J. D'Arrigo - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: So, Joe, you're right. And as Jim mentioned, we are ahead of where we thought we would initially be. We got out of the gate pretty quickly under Chris' leadership and the rest of the project management team's leadership. We were able to achieve in certain areas faster and quicker than we originally thought. Probably about half of the $35 million impact was from revenue ideas and initiatives, and the remainder were on the cost side of the equation. So, we think those are some of the quicker, easier-to-market initiatives that we're benefiting right now. I think what you'll see is that, that creates the baseline for us on a quarterly basis to kind of grow…

Joseph R. Greff - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Okay. And then, my question on MGP. Jim, you had mentioned, it's a vehicle to grow the acquisitions, whether it's MGM or others. That comment intrigued me or others part comment intrigued me. I know, it's early days, but is there a pipeline related to other acquisitions or non-MGM related assets that you guys might be looking at? James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I'm getting like a stare down from my lawyer across the table here. So, if I get muzzled, it's because of somebody else, but I'll give it a shot. Look, we could have dusted somebody off the shelf and inserted them in as a CEO of MGP, I could have done that, could have found someone we like that we know well, that have had a fine career in gaming, and given him a job and found some CFO that looking for work or something. These – those two hires should be very illustrative, very illuminating to you and to everybody. We were deliberate in our search. We looked at people in the triple-net lease space, we looked to people in the hotel REIT space, we looked at hotel operator space, we looked at former gaming people and the resumes of James and Andy speak for themselves in terms of their experience, transactional experience in gaming, lodging, hospitality, entertainment. They're in the prime in their careers and they're not sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. The Board that we put together, very deliberate in terms of a premier corporate governance person, a highly regarded Wall Street person, a highly experienced and regarded REIT executives now working for us. MGP is not going to be in my opinion in after thought some captive subsidiary of MGM Resorts. It will be, its…

Joseph R. Greff - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Joe.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Thomas Allen with Morgan Stanley. Thomas G. Allen - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hey. Good morning. Can you give any color on year-to-date gaming trends both in Macau and in Vegas? Obviously, we had Chinese New Year and we've had a couple of months behind us. So, any color would be helpful. Thank you. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I'll take Las Vegas, while Grant has another super quality. What time is there, Grant? Grant R. Bowie - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director, MGM China Holdings Ltd.: Just coming up 1 AM. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Oh, lovely. The things you do for our company, Grant, thank you again. The first quarter as I mentioned, not only off to a good start from a convention perspective, but we had the Super Bowl and I could say that we had a record sports book volume, during that period of time and we're in the midst of Chinese New Year now. So, it's really premature to give you an update except to say that we got a lot of people still in town. I'm not sure about the volumes, it might be down a bit, volume wise, but as I said, lots of people in town. Going into the year, we have a bunch of activities that are gaming related, a good fight coming up, when is the Canelo fight? Grant R. Bowie - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director, MGM China Holdings Ltd.: May. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: In May. We got a Pacquiao fight, he made some news, didn't he? We got a Pacquiao fight in April. We've got all the arena events. We have a young lady singing, I've never heard of. What's her name? Daniel J. D'Arrigo - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Ellie Goulding. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: What?

Sarah Rogers - Vice President-Investor Relations

Analyst

Ellie Goulding. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. But I hear she's great. So we have a lot of casino events. Yeah. I think it's – the colleagues here who have daughters made a point on that. So I would say that given the activity that we've seen at least early days really super early days in Las Vegas as it relates to Super Bowl which is a really good indicator of national play being – having that kind of national play was very rewarding, seeing what's going on in terms of our activities, I'd have to say that that's a positive. We know that our Chinese business has been down so we anticipated sluggish volumes during Chinese New Year's, but as I say we win and lose every day in that, so it's really early days on that part, but I have to say we're pretty pleased about how the year is beginning. So, I'll turn it over to Grant. Grant R. Bowie - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director, MGM China Holdings Ltd.: So, thanks, Jim. So, let's pick up probably from the start of the year, so I will pickup in January. We started to see some positive signs. I don't want to get carried away with it, but if you take in in even say our premium mass business, we were looking at like a 12% quarter-on-quarter growth. Historically what happens in the early part of Chinese New Year is quiet and it was particularly quiet but then we did see a big surge where we were seeing traffic comps that were 30% to 40% above than regular weekends which is a good sign because I don't think it's possible anymore just a method against previous Chinese New Year period. This Chinese…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from Felicia Hendrix of Barclays.

Felicia Hendrix - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Hi, there. Just wondering, and I'll throw this out for all or any of you. When we think about your performance for next year, just how should we think about the relative performance at the core properties versus the luxury properties? Do you expect both segments to contribute equally? We've seen some really strong nice recovery in the core kind of end of your portfolio. So just wondering how you're thinking about that for next year or this year I mean? Sorry. Daniel J. D'Arrigo - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: You want me to take that or you'd jump in? James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: We expect that to continue. I think it's important to – I have to take a step back because its stocks down, which we don't understand. The breathless headlines of losses in Macau are absurd. We wrote up MGM China by $3.5 billion in 2011, and we reversed some of that this year. And the other part of the mix was simply purely tax. On every other basis, we obviously exceeded anyone's expectations and the reason why I bring that up, is when you look at what even happened in the fourth quarter, it should be illustrative of what's happening. In the fourth quarter, we had a great fourth quarter here in Las Vegas. And even properties that didn't do as well as they did a year ago in many cases were well ahead of their budget. I mean I'm looking at the MGM Grand, crushed its budget in the fourth quarter by over $20 million. What's happening here in the first quarter is nothing but spectacular from a standpoint of looking forward into 2016. Our RevPARs are growing. I don't remember a time when we talked about…

Sarah Rogers - Vice President-Investor Relations

Analyst

Keith, we'll take the final question.

Operator

Operator

Yes. Thank you. And that comes from Robin Farley with UBS.

Robin M. Farley - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. Thank you. A couple of things just to clarify, and there were some overlapping calls. So I apologize if you said this in the first few minutes, but you'd previously talked about the MGM Growth Properties IPO being a Q1 event, is it still something that we can expect in Q1? James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: We didn't give a timetable. We said we're on track. So, which means that from the major points that we needed to get across – to get accomplished, I should say, one would be regulatory, made great progress there, not that there was as much to do for us as other companies. Second was with the SEC, tremendous progress there. The third was to work with our underwriters and our bankers to setup the capital structure and I think Dan and Jim Freeman and the team have done a really great job with very strong demand from our commercial bank partners. So we feel very, very good about the capital structure. And now it's a matter of working – finishing up the S-11, making that a public document, establishing a roadshow schedule, establishing teach-ins, none of which we can discuss with you today in terms of the timing, but nothing we said last November I guess when we talked about this has changed in terms of our timetable.

Robin M. Farley - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. That's great. Thanks. And a follow-up question about the Cotai opening being moved to the end of Q1, I know you said that or Grant said that, you weren't as worried about kind of when others are opening. Does that mean, if another property also got pushed to the very end of 2016, would you be comfortable opening within the same month or two as another property? Or would you think potentially, if there are delays in some of the other projects that are scheduled to open in 2016? Would it make sense to even push back past Q1 of 2017? James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, you want to take that? I'll maybe start, Grant, and then, you can jump in. We took this decision internally as just a smart financial decision. We didn't have to push this off a few months. We did so because we feel like it's in the best interest of the MGM China and the MGM Resort shareholders. It certainly benefits 2016 from a standpoint of less pre-opening expense in the back half of the year. It certainly allows us to reduce the amount of over time that we would have to incur, to rush to a deadline. And it certainly allows us to make sure that we have the best possible product when we open. There's no way of us knowing when the other guys are going to open and there's no way we're going to pace an opening based on somebody else's opening. That would set false precision, because we don't have their internal dialogue or timetable, they're not going to share it with us and if they did, it might not be correct because people have certainly missed published deadlines multiple times in the past. I think what's important from our standpoint is that we keep to our budget, which I'm proud that we're doing, that we produced a great product, that we open it when we believe it's ready. We open it from a standpoint of making sure that we thought about where the market is and what's happening and we don't open too soon because that would incur an awful lot of needless costs. And so, I think that brings you to our timetable and really the thought process to why it is the Board of MGM China felt that this was in the best interest of the shareholders.

Robin M. Farley - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. That's helpful. Thank you. Just my last quick one is, I heard the comments on Q1 RevPAR and that it's maybe not as big of an increase just because of the holiday shift which makes sense. Did you kind of give color on what full-year RevPAR, I guess we can assume it would be higher than 6%, but I don't know if you've said a number? James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: You want to tackle that, Corey?

Corey I. Sanders - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst

Sure. Yeah. I mean, if you look at what we did last year, last year first quarter, we did about 1.1%. It's usually one of our tougher quarters and with March flowing in there this year, makes it – I mean, with Easter flowing in there this year, it makes it a little bit harder. As we continue to press rates and continue to enhance our strategies, I would hope that we would continue to be able to grow RevPAR greater than that 6%. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. So...

Robin M. Farley - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. Thanks. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: What was our RevPAR last year in the first quarter, it's only like 1.5% or something.

Corey I. Sanders - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst

1.1% on the strip. James Joseph Murren - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. So, on the strip, we're only up little over 1%. The fact that we think we're going to up 6% this year and you saw what we did for the year, it certainly gives us some really good momentum going into balance of this year. That combined with the bookings that I talked about earlier in the call and the fact that we literally are almost completely booked out for 2016, which would require us literally because we know we're going to get in the year for the year, and we always do. It's going to mean that we're going to be able to move some people around and be more creative on our spaces, and that will have an impact. And really in the second half of the year, as we build momentum, is why we were able to feel comfortable giving you some second half guidance as well.

Robin M. Farley - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Daniel J. D'Arrigo - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Great. Well, thank you all for participating. We've run over a little bit, so we apologize for that, but we appreciate your participation today and we'll be around all day for any follow-up questions. So, thank you and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.