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Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS) reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the third quarter of 2025, with an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.78, surpassing the forecasted $0.61. The company also exceeded revenue expectations, reporting $3.33 billion against an anticipated $3.06 billion. Despite these positive results, the stock remained relatively stable in after-hours trading, with a slight increase of 0.16%, closing at $50.70. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains impressive gross profit margins of 79.36% and has received upward earnings revisions from 4 analysts for the upcoming period.
Key Takeaways
- Las Vegas Sands’ Q3 EPS of $0.78 exceeded expectations by 27.87%.
- Revenue reached $3.33 billion, an 8.82% surprise over forecasts.
- Stock repurchase of $500 million and a 20% increase in quarterly dividends announced.
- Strong performance in Singapore and Macao, despite a $20 million impact from a typhoon.
- Continued investment in Singapore with an $8 billion expansion plan.
Company Performance
Las Vegas Sands showed robust performance in Q3 2025, driven by strong results in both Singapore and Macao. Marina Bay Sands delivered significant EBITDA of $743 million, and Macao’s mass market revenue surged 25.4% compared to the first quarter. The company continues to capitalize on its dominant position in Singapore and is adapting its strategies to maintain competitiveness in Macao. InvestingPro analysis shows the company’s overall financial health score is GOOD, with particularly strong profitability metrics. The stock has shown impressive momentum, gaining over 44% in the past six months.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: $3.33 billion, up from a forecast of $3.06 billion.
- Earnings per share: $0.78, compared to a forecast of $0.61.
- Marina Bay Sands EBITDA: $743 million.
- Macao EBITDA: $601 million, despite a $20 million typhoon impact.
Earnings vs. Forecast
Las Vegas Sands reported an EPS of $0.78, significantly higher than the forecasted $0.61, marking a 27.87% surprise. Revenue also outperformed expectations, coming in at $3.33 billion, an 8.82% surprise over the projected $3.06 billion. This strong performance highlights the company’s ability to exceed market expectations consistently.
Market Reaction
Following the earnings announcement, Las Vegas Sands’ stock saw a modest increase of 0.16% in after-hours trading, closing at $50.70. This price movement reflects investor confidence in the company’s financial performance and strategic initiatives, despite the stock remaining within its 52-week range of $30.18 to $58.05. InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock is currently undervalued, with analyst targets ranging from $55 to $73.50, indicating potential upside. Get access to the comprehensive Pro Research Report, part of InvestingPro’s coverage of 1,400+ top US stocks, for detailed valuation analysis and expert insights.
Outlook & Guidance
Looking ahead, Las Vegas Sands is targeting a return to $2.7-$2.8 billion EBITDA in Macao. The company is focusing on high-growth markets and exploring global expansion opportunities, with significant investments planned for Singapore’s integrated resort expansion (IR2), including a new 15,000-seat performance venue.
Executive Commentary
CEO Rob Goldstein emphasized the strength of the Singapore market, stating, "Singapore has taken a whole new, we can’t figure out just how high is up. This thing just keeps getting stronger and stronger." President and COO Patrick Dumont highlighted the company’s strategic focus, noting, "We are a capital allocation story and a return to capital story."
Risks and Challenges
- Macroeconomic pressures and potential global economic slowdown.
- Regulatory changes in key markets such as Macao and Singapore.
- Competition from other global casino and resort operators.
- Potential impact of natural disasters, as seen with the recent typhoon in Macao.
- Currency fluctuations affecting international revenue streams.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of smart table technology on betting dynamics and the potential for market expansion in regions such as the UAE and Japan. Executives also addressed strategies for room allocation in Singapore and the influence of events like the NBA China Games on Macao tourism.
Full transcript - Las Vegas Sands Corporation (LVS) Q3 2025:
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Sands Third Quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. We will open the floor for your questions and comments following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Las Vegas Sands. Sir, the floor is yours.
Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Las Vegas Sands: Thank you, Paul. Joining the call today are Rob Goldstein, the Chairman and CEO, Patrick Dumont, the President and Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Wilfred Wong, Executive Vice Chairman of Sands China, and Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China and Executive Vice President of our Asia operations. Today’s conference call will contain forward-looking statements. We will be making those statements under the Safe Harbor Provision of Federal Securities Law. The language on forward-looking statements included in our press release also applies to our comments made on the call today. The company’s actual results may differ materially from the results reflected in those forward-looking statements. In addition, we will discuss non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measure are included in our press release. We have posted an earnings presentation on our website. We will refer to that presentation during the call.
Finally, for the Q&A session, we ask those with interest to please post one question and one follow-up question, so we may allow everyone with interest the opportunity to participate. The presentation is being recorded. I’ll now turn the call over to Rob.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: Thank you, Dan. Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. Marina Bay Sands delivered EBITDA of $743 million. We had forecast that MBS could do $2.5 billion annually. It turns out we were too conservative. We should easily exceed that figure in 2025. MBS is currently over $2.1 billion of EBITDA this year, with a quarter still to go. Mass gain in slot win was a record $905 million, reflecting 122% growth from Q3 of 2019 and 35% higher than last year. We are in the right place at the right time with the right product. Singapore is a highly desirable destination, and our product is superb. It’s difficult to find superlatives to describe the magnitude of this result. Operating performance at MBS is unprecedented in the history of our industry.
Macao delivered $601 million of EBITDA for the quarter, which reflects improvement in our financial results, but Typhoon negatively impacted our reported EBITDA by about $20 million. We have underperformed in the Macao market for the past few years. We believed that our buildings would be enough to compete favorably. We were wrong. We’ve adapted to the market and changed our approach in the second quarter of 2025 to enable us to be more competitive. Our mass market revenue jumped 25.4% this quarter, up from 23.6% in the first quarter of 2025. We expect additional share gains and EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter. Our assets remain the strongest in the Macao market. The Londoner is moving towards one plus billion dollars of EBITDA. We have meaningful opportunities for growth improvement throughout our Macao property portfolio. Importantly, the Macao market’s GGR is growing.
When you couple this fact with our assets and our recent marketing changes, we believe we’ll continue to improve in the fourth quarter and beyond. Let’s hear from Patrick.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Thanks, Rob. Macao EBITDA was $601 million. If we had held as expected in our rolling program, our EBITDA would have been lower by $2 million. When adjusted for a higher than expected hold in the rolling segment, our EBITDA margin for the Macao portfolio properties would have been 31.5%, down 160 basis points compared to the third quarter of 2024. We are focused on delivering revenue and cash flow growth at The Londoner and across the portfolio. Margin at The Venetian was 35%, while margin at The Londoner was 31.9%. We expect growth in EBITDA as revenues grow and as we use our scale and product advantages together with targeted incentives to better address every market segment. We see opportunity in every segment. Now, turning to Singapore, Marina Bay Sands’ EBITDA for the quarter was $743 million at a margin of 51.7%.
If we had held as expected in our rolling program, our EBITDA would have been lower by $43 million. With this quarter’s results, we are putting in place a new methodology for the theoretical hold percentage on rolling Baccarat play for the quarter. This new approach has been enabled by the introduction of smart table technology on our Baccarat games in Singapore. This technology has now been in place at our rolling Baccarat tables in Marina Bay Sands for over one year. Please see slide seven in the earnings materials for more detail. We have provided theoretical hold rates for rolling Baccarat play for the last five quarters at Marina Bay Sands. There will naturally be fluctuations in theoretical hold rates in any specific quarter driven by player betting preferences.
The record financial results of Marina Bay Sands reflect the high impact of high-quality investment in market-leading product and the growth in high-value tourism. We believe we are still in the initial stages of realizing the benefits of our investments in Marina Bay Sands. Turning to our program to return capital to shareholders, we repurchased $500 million in LVS stock during the quarter. We also paid our recurring quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share. Our Board of Directors has approved an increase in our quarterly dividend of 20% for the 2026 calendar year, or $1.20 per share per year, or $0.30 per share per quarter. In addition, during the third quarter and in July, we purchased $337 million of SCL stock, increasing the company’s ownership percentage of SCL to 74.76% as of today.
We believe our purchases of LVS equity through our share repurchase program will be meaningfully accretive to the company and its shareholders over the long term. We look forward to continuing to utilize the company’s share repurchase program to increase returns to shareholders. Thanks again for joining the call today, and let’s take some questions.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. The floor is now open for questions. If you would like to enter the queue to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. If listening on speakerphone today, please pick up your handset to provide optimal sound quality. Also, we ask each participant to limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. Please hold a moment while we pull for questions. The first question today is coming from Daniel Politzer from JPMorgan Chase. Daniel, your line is live.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. First, Singapore, I want to go back to the hold rate. You know, obviously you guys raised it to 4.2% for VIP. Is there any impetus or desire or potential to raise the mass hold? That one’s been going up too. I guess, one, is that directionally similar in terms of the benefit that you’re seeing from the smart table technology? Two, is that something you would ever give, you know, a hold range for?
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Yeah, I think right now what you’re seeing is a rollout onto the floor where we can get accurate rolling table data. We’re not there yet to give you data on the mass floor because remember, it’s a mix of games. It’s not just Baccarat. I think that’s an important point to note. The other thing is we don’t really normalize mass hold because of the volume of play, the bet size, and getting to the, you know, let’s call it the theoretical. For us, it’s much more meaningful to deal with the rolling program because of the volatility of the hold in that segment.
Got it. That makes sense. Turning to Macao, this is more of a high-level one. You know, The Londoner does seem like it’s turned the corner. You guys have been marketing broadly across the portfolio there. Can you kind of talk about that path back to $2.7, $2.8 billion of EBITDA that you kind of laid out as maybe a soft target last quarter? How are you pacing in terms of getting back there? Would you say that you need the market to pick up from here to get there, or can you do this independent of the market health?
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: I would say, Dan, you can’t do it independent of the market. You need market growth, which you’re experiencing, thankfully, in Macao. The overall markets, you know, it could be next year, $33 billion, $34 billion. We need, everyone needs market growth to make Macao numbers work better. We also had to make changes, and we’ve been making those changes for the last, I don’t know, four or five months and adapt to the market, which has, we did not participate, and we are now participating. Probably we’re halfway there, another half to go. I think when you marry the market growth to our assets, to our new marketing programs, yes, we can get to our target. It’s critical to the market growth. That’s essential for all of us. Otherwise, we’re just the same customers we’re circulating. You’re seeing with, you know, we’ve come off the bottom here. We’re growing.
We’re getting better. Probably 620 is the right number if you take out the typhoon. It’s a respectable quarter. It’s not our goal. Our goal, as you know, is to get to 2728. We’re not there yet. I think we’re making progress, and we’re going to keep putting down the, the team has to stay in sync with the market to deliver those results. Right.
Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China, Sands China: Yeah, I think this quarter what we saw was some of our reinvestment programs coming to fruition in terms of productivity across The Londoner, yes, because this is the first quarter we’ve had the full deployment of The Londoner grant rooms and suites. On the product side, that definitely helped us. To Rob’s point, in terms of our marketing strategies, responding to the market dynamics, we’ve obviously adjusted our reinvestment rates across the portfolio, not uniformly. Obviously, some of our smaller properties have had a bigger boost in our reinvestment ratios, as you can see. We’re seeing the results of that. You can see that, both year on year and sequentially, we are outgrowing the market for the first time in a long time when you look at the mass GGR.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: I think the weak links in our portfolio are in Parisian and Sands, especially. Parisian has come way off the highs and about 50% of it’s what it used to be because of EBITDA performance. I think we have a lot of value in that property. London, as you referenced, is fine. Venetian is okay. I just think we’ve got to come off the bottom in Sands and get that back to being competitive. It’s underway. It’s progressing. It just takes a lot of work and a lot of focus.
Got it. Thanks so much, and congrats on the nice quarter.
Thank you.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Shaun, your line is live.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. To everyone who wants to take it, I want to go back to Singapore because the smart table initiative is super interesting. Can we just unpack a little bit, though, about what’s the underlying betting behavior or change that would sort of be driving such a material increase? I mean, obviously, on your numerator, you know, this type of change in hold would suggest some sort of underlying behavioral change or mix change. Is it a mix of betters, you know, and maybe getting a more casual better, or is it a, you know, mix in, again, what, you know, what games or in what bets they’re making? I mean, historically, we think of Baccarat in particular as being extremely simple player banker.
How is the smart table piece evolving in a way that we’re seeing an actual underlying change in behavior? Thanks.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: Sure. Just to be clear, the smart table is just the scorekeeper, the umpire, the referee. It doesn’t make this stuff happen. What makes it happen is, as you alluded to, historically, Baccarat’s been at 2.85%. You know, when I began this industry, Baccarat was a boring game. It was a sub-3% hold percentage game. There was not much juice in it. It stayed that way for decades. What’s changed in Baccarat is not the smart tables. That’s the scorekeeper. What’s changed is the game itself offers a lot more opportunities to gamble different ways. It’s analogous to sports betting. When you have side bets and sports betting, the prop bets and side bets, honestly, the low percentage bets for the customer are playing in your favor. This is simply mathematics. This isn’t casual bettors. This isn’t syscape bettors.
This is just everybody gravitating towards side bets for their house advantage. That’s what’s happening here. I don’t think we tell you it’s 4.1% or 4.2%. That’s what these smart tables tell us. The scorekeepers said, "Hey, these guys are making these bets, and that results in this result." The game, as you alluded to, has changed dramatically from the old days where it was kind of a steady game. It’s a very interesting game now. Lots of opportunities to lose your money different ways. People, especially in Singapore, we’re seeing all levels, not just casual, but seasoned pros seem to want to bet these side bets. It’s become very powerful. In a company like ours, which is Baccarat dependent, it’s a powerful driver of revenue and EBITDA flow-through.
What you’re seeing in Singapore is simply not the smart table helping us, but the game deviations that help us and the customers willing to bet those deviations has driven this thing to 4% plus, which is astounding when you think back to what used to be a very boring 2.85% game for years. That’s a simple factor. This isn’t an anomaly. It’s just the way the market’s proceeding. I think you’ll see it happen in Macao as well. For this company, it’s a massive, massive change in the opportunity to make more money.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: I think you have to give credit to our gaming innovation team for their willingness to really look at the customer experience and add the opportunity to enhance that experience through some higher volatility bets, which the customers are actually using. It’s their preference, right? They could choose not to use them, but they seem to be very popular. They create a better gaming experience and better enjoyment in the game. We are very fortunate that our team continues to innovate and try these things. The market has received them quite well. I think the smart table technology system has helped us measure these bets better, but as a practical matter, it’s just as Rob Goldstein said, it’s about having the bets on the table and having the customers enjoy using them.
Very clear. Thanks. Rob, you kind of went where I was going to take it, which I think is the next logical place, which is the ability to expand these types of bets or this type of table to, you know, other markets, obviously Macao being the big opportunity. Can you just talk a little bit about either where you’re at in rolling that out, what segments? I would assume, given that sort of the junket-based VIP business is no longer a thing there, but perhaps in-house VIP or premium mass would have some real opportunities. Where are you at? What inning are you in? Just maybe super high level, is this technology or these bets proprietary to you all? I know there’s kind of open secrets in gaming, but are you developing these in-house?
There’s not like a third party that’s kind of brought these to you from a sort of just pure optionality perspective?
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: Yeah, we probably were the initiators. As much as a decade ago, we started this process with someone. We grew that team. The team has now expanded. We were the initiator. It’s not proprietary. We can’t, we don’t have control of people who can copy these bets. They are copying these bets, which, by the way, it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s good for the industry to grow. Yes, we’re moving towards this in Macao. Yes, the smart table technology will be there as well as a scorekeeper. As the Macao market has more opportunity, you’re seeing it happen already. I think you’ll see the perks go up there as well. It’s been more advantageous thus far in Singapore, but we are moving it into Macao, as is the Macao market. If you go look at the layouts now, they’re fraught with side bets all over the place.
In fact, some of the times you can’t find the flat bet. It’s so busy with alternatives. Yes, moving in that direction in Macao. No, it’s not proprietary. Yes, we did develop it. I think we’ve initiated it. The confusion is sometimes people think it’s a smart table, which is not true at all. The smart table technology gives you a better measurement stick to know how many bets they’re making on the side and what that means to the mathematics. I think what Patrick’s alluding to with the 4-1 or 4-2 is we have good evidence that this is not a, you know, a guess anymore or, "Gee, it should be this." For years, we wrestled with what’s the correct hold percentage. There is no correct hold. It depends on that quarter, what those people bet.
We could have a quarter that comes in at 5-1 or come in at 3-8. It depends on what the players at the table bet at that time, and every bet is calculated. Yes, it’s going to move towards Macao, and I think it’s very helpful for not just this company, but others to make the gaming more interesting and more diversified. I don’t think it’s tied to the high end, by the way. Mass customers love it too. Small betters, large betters. When you bet the sports book, the biggest prop betters are the small guys. They’re guys who are betting $100 a game. They love betting props. I think Baccarat is similar to sports betting in that regard.
Completely get it. Thank you both.
Thank you.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Stephen Grambling from Morgan Stanley. Stephen, your line is live.
Thank you. You’ve upped the dividend for next year, and you keep the pedal down on buyback. At the same time, you have the disclosure around CapEx is coming down as well over the next year. One thing you didn’t touch on, I guess, that you talked about in the past is just maybe a willingness to buy back some of the shares in Hong Kong as well. I’d love any thoughts that you have there or other capital allocation opportunities.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Oh, I think the best thing is we are a capital allocation story and a return to capital story. You know, you look at the company’s history. We’ve been very shareholder-friendly. We allocate capital with growth in mind. We invest for high returns. When those high-return investment opportunities aren’t available, we return the capital, and we try to do it through dividends in an approved manner and through share repurchases. I think that’s where you’re seeing us today. We did buy back SCL over the last little while. If you can kind of see where we’re at, we’re basically at getting close to the limit. We’re at 74.76%, I think the number is. You know, we can’t really go past 75%. I think for us right now, we’re kind of where we are at SCL.
Our goal is to continue to return capital both at SCL and at the parent company in a friendly way for shareholders. You’ll see us continue to do that.
Makes sense. Maybe changing gears a little bit, just going back to Macao, we’d love any further color you could provide on kind of characterizing the strength that we’ve seen in VIP. I mean, it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen this level of growth. Is that really just more semantics around where customers are preferring to bet, or is that a new customer who’s coming in?
Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China, Sands China: Stephen, let me take that. Yes, I think the VIP has outgrown the mass GGR over the last few months. In some cases, some months, it’s been very high rates of growth. I think it is driven by some concentration of super high-end VIP players, as well as increased liquidity in the market. This quarter, we haven’t participated as much in that segment, but we are going to be getting more competitive in that segment as well. Of course, we have introduced our re-enter the junket market this quarter. The growth of that segment in the past few months has also driven the rolling market. At this point, it still remains a low margin segment, which typically is going to stay around 12% to 15% of the overall GGR. We’re also focused on growing that segment. Obviously, the bulk of the profit growth is going to come from the non-rolling.
Helpful. Thank you.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question will be from Brandt Montour from Barclays. Brandt, your line is live.
Hey, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. I just want to double-click on that comment. I think that we all kind of see the premium mass led inflection since mid-year. It sounds like, and even looking at your slides, base mass per table was up nicely. I guess, Rob, for you, the question is that, you know, for the market to grow, you know, what you need the market to grow, 33%, 34%, you know, when you think about that growth, does that require a broadening out of the depth and breadth of base mass? Are you seeing early signs of that inflection for that particular cohort?
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: I think it’s impossible to say where it comes from. I’ll be honest with you. You know, the junket, the rolling, the non-rolling, the mass, it’s very hard to define. I think what’s important to see is happening. I mean, the market looks to me like it’s, we don’t know if October comes in. I would say it comes in 7%, 8%, 9% year on year, but it feels like there’s a stronger trend over there. Macao is recovering in different segments. Obviously, we like a base mass recovery, but there’s nothing on premium mass. I don’t have real insight to where it could come from. I just hope it comes. I think the key thing for all Macao, for all the operators, for profitability and growth is to see this GGR acceleration. Grant, maybe you see it differently.
Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China, Sands China: I think that’s right. It is obviously helpful, especially to us if the base mass grows faster because of our advantage in that segment, but also the margin structure in that segment is very favorable. I think if you look at this quarter, you’re right. Year on year, our base mass actually grew 18%. Part of that reflects the fact that a prior year, we had the closure of the Pacifico Casino, which is now The Londoner Grand Casino. If you look at sequentially, premium mass, we still grew faster than base mass, 11% versus 7%. Yes, I think the summer was positive for base mass. Again, I would characterize the bulk of the growth in this market, even in the non-rolling, is still dominated by the upper tiers of the value segment.
Okay, thanks for that. Just a quick question on Singapore. Obviously, really strong results in the third quarter in Marina Bay Sands. That was without the F1 race, which usually falls in September. It fell in October this year. You didn’t have that in the third quarter. What order of magnitude or how should we think about how impactful that event is that sort of has now moved into the fourth quarter for you this year?
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: First off, it’s a great event. It’s a great event globally, and it’s one of the most important F1 events. It’s phenomenally attended, and it really helps Singapore. We’re actually really supportive of it and involved in its presentation, so we’re very happy about that. As a practical matter, you can see the demand of Marina Bay Sands as a product, and that even with F1 in a different part of the calendar year, we continue to perform through that. I think F1 is helpful, something that we really enjoy having in Singapore. It’s great for visitation, and it increases the prestige of Singapore by having such a prominent race there. It drives a lot of high-value visitation, much of which ends up at Marina Bay Sands. We’re very happy about it. Where it falls in the calendar is okay. We’re fine.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: I got to say that in the last couple of years, when we’ve had all these people point to F1 or Taylor Swift or I don’t know, I don’t think it matters all that much. I think Singapore has taken a whole new, we can’t figure out just how high is up. This thing just keeps getting stronger and stronger. The reason to me is very simple. It’s the most favorable location for a lot of people high net worth to come to. Whether F1’s there or Taylor Swift’s there or whoever’s there that week, I think the place, the building is extraordinary. The place is extraordinary. The events certainly move the customers around. In the end, Singapore is the driver. That place is, you know, just well attended, well visited, very desirable.
It’s become the place to go to in Asia for people who want to gamble at a certain level. I think that’s really the real driver is the unique asset we’ve built, unique room product, and the gambling we provide there, the opportunity to gamble what you want, how you want. As much as I respect F1, I respect Taylor Swift, I respect all these drivers, I think Singapore has just gone to a whole new place. You see these numbers. I thought we were ambitious at $2.5 billion. We probably this year get to, I don’t know, $2.7 billion, $2.8 billion, $2.9 billion. I don’t know what it gets to. The numbers are there. It just seems like it’s getting more and more desirable for the high end of the market. Extraordinary results. I think no one could have seen these kinds of growths.
I don’t think it’s that tied to special events as much as it’s tied to the place itself.
Great. Thanks, everybody.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Robin Farley from UBS. Robin, your line is live.
Great. Thanks. Just going back to your comments about kind of what you hope to achieve in market share and premium mass, I know you talked about upgrading The Londoner would kind of give you the assets to do that. You said something earlier in the call about how you’re kind of only halfway there with what you hope to do or plan to do there. Can you talk a little bit about what other steps that you’ll be taking and sort of what timing when you think about that? Thanks.
Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China, Sands China: Hi, Robin. Let me take that. Yes, I think when you look at the progression in market share, you know, clearly we come off the bottom in Q1 when we were down at 23.5%, 23.6%. Now we’re two points above that, which is great. As Rob said, I think we’re only halfway through, if that. We started tweaking our programs and changing our marketing programs in the middle of the second quarter. That ramped up throughout each month in the third quarter, and you can see we were improving month on month within the quarter. I think it’s important that we’re also considering how each segment has its different requirements. We are marrying the tactical incentives with the product advantage that we have.
In The Londoner, you can see it very clearly, what we’re doing, not just Londoner Grand, which is nearly open, but also leveraging the other side of The Londoner on the super high end. We’re seeing good results there. I think in the smaller properties, we have adjusted our marketing programs, but also reset our distribution team as well in terms of our composition and the number of people. We should be seeing better results from the distribution side over the next two to three quarters, because so far what we’ve benefited most from is, I think, the launch of Londoner Grand married with these customer reinvestment adjustments. I think there’s still a lot to be done, but we’re confident that we’re going to be progressing month by month, quarter by quarter.
Great. Thanks. Maybe just as one follow-up on a different topic, I don’t know if we’ve heard your thoughts too recently on any potential opportunity in the UAE where there may be other licenses to give out. Is that something that LVS is interested in and kind of actively engaged with? Thanks.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: I really appreciate the question. You know, we’re always looking at opportunities to deploy capital and grow our business. I think you’ve seen us be very disciplined and be very patient. The UAE is a tremendous tourism market. There’s been billions of dollars in investment in the UAE to create tremendous tourism infrastructure. Some of the best hospitality and food and beverage products in the world are located there. It’s a lot of fun to visit. That being said, it’s not a market we’re looking at at this time, but we’re following it.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Lizzie Dove from Goldman Sachs. Lizzie, your line is live.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Clearly, you know, incredible results in Singapore again. You mentioned, you know, for this year, 2027, 2028, 2029, who knows? It feels like it’s broad-based, like you said, not tied to one event. How should we think about the long term? Is this sustainable? Can it, on a holistic basis, grow next year? How are you thinking about the kind of longer tail to this sustainability of growth in Singapore?
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: Lizzie, I’d say we’ve been wrong all along, for starters. We’ve under-forecasted this thing. We thought we were very ambitious at $2.5 billion. Like I said, we’re at $2.1 billion plus currently with a quarter to go. With a big quarter, you could do $2.8 billion, $2.8 billion, $2.9 billion. Is it sustainable? Hell yes. It’s very sustainable. You’re alone over there, and you’ve got one competitor, which is, you know, it’s a duopoly. It’s a market that has tremendous support from the government. If you’ve been in the building, it’s incredibly well done. I think the team did a great job of building out a one-of-a-kind asset. It’s very sustainable. The question I can’t answer is, does it get to $3 billion next year? If they’re $3.2 billion down the road, does it get to, I don’t know. We’ve been wrong all along. Here we are in 2025.
Had you said two years ago, we were delivering $700 million quarters back to back, I would have said that’s very ambitious. It turns out it was done easily. These last quarters came along pretty well. I don’t think anyone should question the longevity and sustainability of Singapore. If anything, what I can’t figure out is how deep is the well. I’ve been wrong and I’m pretty aggressive by nature in forecasting the demand over there. Slot win is going to break $1 billion, it looks like. These table wins are extraordinary. It’s coming at us from all sides. I think shrinking the building, having all suites versus mostly more rooms is a very good idea. I think it’s very sustainable. The question for me is not sustainability. It’s how high is up. Could this thing hit $3 billion, get to $3.2 billion? I don’t know.
I didn’t think you’d go from what we used to be a $1.6 billion asset pre-COVID to now it looks like a $2.78 billion asset post-COVID. It’s hard to forecast something that feels so powerful and right now feels to me like it’s got more growth to go.
Definitely. I guess on that subject, just one event, but making it bigger picture, on Golden Week, it looked like there was a lot of outbound visitation from China into Singapore. It was up a lot year on year. Curious what you’re seeing really, even just beyond Golden Week, of any changes in visitation trends and whether you are, versus Macao, seeing that kind of high-end, higher-end Chinese customer visiting Singapore at the expense of Macao and whether you think that might continue.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Yeah, we’re not really getting into the current quarter, but just overall, Macao and Singapore are very separate markets. Typically, the catchment area for Singapore is very focused on Southeast Asia, and Macao is primarily Hong Kong and China. Different businesses, different tourism base, different assets. You know, we’ll talk about this quarter on the next earnings call.
Got it. Thank you.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Joe Stauff from Susquehanna. Joe, your line is live.
Okay. Thanks. Good afternoon, Rob, Patrick. Just wanted to follow up, Patrick, on your comment about, hey, the opportunity in Singapore in particular is still essentially in the early innings. Obviously, you know, maybe an expansion of other questions. I wondered if you could just maybe talk about the second and third quarter, you know, the strength of the volumes, maybe the things that you learned that surprised you. As we think about the opportunity set going forward, I understand it’s hard to put a number to it. Maybe some of the bigger layers of opportunity, is it, you know, is it a strategy such that you’d expect to get a higher level of average spend? Is it geographical reach? Are there any puzzle pieces you can give us from that perspective?
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: There’s a lot there in this question. Bear with me. I’m going to try to get through it all. I think the first thing is the way we got to Singapore today in this performance was very deliberate. It started probably five years ago when we first started charting out where we wanted to go with the asset, given where we thought the direction of growth and high-value tourism would be. We started off by building a great customer experience by focusing on the physical asset, which took time to both design and then ultimately implement. We redesigned our service teams so that we could better service our customers in a more complete way. That was also a big lift. We focused a lot on how we sold, how we attracted customers by developing larger and more geographically spread out marketing teams and sales teams.
All of that came together with a very strong management group over time, with lots of investment, produced this result. This was not something that happened overnight. It was planned. It was a strategic decision. It was investment over many years in both human capital and physical capital, along with the philosophy with a service focus and a customer experience focus. We focused on a lot of different amenities, how we enhance our entertainment, how we enhance our retail mall, how we enhance our food and beverage, and how we bring it all together so that gaming customers can come in and get a lifestyle experience that can’t be replicated anyplace else. For us, that was really key. The question is, how do we grow the business more? First off, I think people are just getting to know the new Marina Bay Sands.
Remember, the renovation has not been done for that long. We have a lot of customers who maybe experienced Marina Bay Sands a decade ago and are now surprised by what’s on offer today. I think the other thing is the quality of tourists that is coming to Singapore is continuing to elevate. There are also a lot of people who are engaging in commerce out of Singapore, and that’s growing. We have a lot of people on the leisure and on the business tourism side that are experiencing Marina Bay Sands, and it’s only growing. I think segments that we look to in the future continue to bring high-value tourists in from different parts of the catchment area. We’re working on that. To be fair, at some point, we’re going to run out of capacity, and that’s where IR2 comes in.
Someone asked us earlier about how we feel about the sustainability of Singapore as a market for us. I think the biggest statement is that we’re investing $8 billion to continue to grow our presence there. That, to me, is the biggest signal that we’re very serious about long-term investment and the success of Singapore. I think for us, it’s going to come from continuing to attract high-value tourists, continuing to bring in high-value business and leisure tourism activities, great entertainment, great retail, continuing to lead in amenities, the investments that are necessary to stay at the forefront of tourism and attract high-value tourists from different markets. We’ll continue to grow. That was the strategy, and we’re executing it now.
Thank you for that. Maybe just a quick clarification. Earlier, in a response to a question on smart table deployment for the mass tables and games area of Singapore, are you six months or nine months behind the process that you went through with the rolling tables?
It’s not that we’re behind. It’s that we have it on some games and not on others. Remember, our casino floor has Baccarat, has Sic Bo, has a bunch of other different gaming products that are there, actually including craps. We’ve got different types of games out on the floor, and not all those games are ready for this digital table system. Over time, we’ll get there. Remember, we make most of our money from Baccarat, and the area with the most volatility was the rolling programs. We started there.
Understood. Thanks very much. Great quarter.
Thank you.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Chad Beynon from Macquarie. Chad, your line is live.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to revisit the comments around the reinvestment program. You guys have been very open and honest in terms of your strategy and your competitive strategy in the market. I guess here to date, in your decision to change that, have you seen any change with those competitors that maybe are now on a level playing field from a reinvestment strategy, and maybe they don’t have the product or the service that you guys have, and they could potentially step outside of the current zip code of what’s being provided to players? Or does it remain pretty rational? Thank you.
Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China, Sands China: Let me take that. I think in general, the competition remains intense, and we don’t foresee that to slow down. I think what you see is basically constant action and reaction. We have to stay very alert to those changes, which we are. Like what Rob said, we’ve got to be laser-focused on basically responding to the market with the right office. I think you can see the benefit of that change in our marketing strategy over this quarter, and that will continue. As to what other people are going to do and how they will respond, I think that’s just an evolving picture that we have to monitor. You would expect the market to continue to be very competitive. The positive aspect of the market is that we are seeing GGR growth, and I think that helps all of us.
It will stay competitive, and we’re very committed to staying ultra competitive here.
Thank you. Patrick, I know the digital gaming business, I guess the doors have been open or slightly open for the past couple of years. You haven’t made many moves, but now you’re officially closing that door or those windows. Why now? Are there any cost saves that we should think about for our models? Thank you.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Yeah, I think we looked at this for a couple of years. I think we just didn’t feel like it was something that we felt would be a good use of shareholder capital, so we shut it down. In terms of cost save, I think it’s just things that’ll come out of development expense that you would have seen in the last year, but that’s out now. It wasn’t super material.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Chad.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question will be from George Choi from Citigroup. George, your line is live.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: George, good morning.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Hi, George. Please check your mute button.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Sorry.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Go ahead.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Yes, sorry. I was on mute. Obviously, the encouraging COVID disclosure in Singapore is very, very solid. I’m just wondering, when will you do the same thing in Macao? Is there any significant difference in terms of the player behavior on how much they wager on the side bets that make you make a difference between how you do it in Singapore versus Macao? One thing to note is that our rolling volumes are much larger relative to our overall gaming win in Singapore, and there was a real focus there to begin with that. Also, the number of tables are smaller in Singapore than they are in Macao. I just want to highlight that, but I’ll turn it over to Grant to respond to the rest of the question.
Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China, Sands China: Yeah, George, just to reiterate the distinction Rob made, that the smart table technology, you know, helps us to understand what is happening at the table. Independent of that is the player propensity. You know, it’s not one leading the other. I think on the question of propensity to wager in the side bets in Macao, the mix is obviously smaller than in Singapore, but it’s also rising. It has contributed to enhanced house edge over the past several years. As you, of all of the people here, you are visiting all these casinos, and you can see the layouts are being reinvented every few months with additional side bets. That’s on the side bets. In terms of the smart tables, we in Macao have actually fully rolled out on the non-rolling background tables, all of the smart table technology.
We are in the process of completing the rollout in the rolling segment. Within the next few months, we should be able to gauge across the total background table pool.
Thank you very much. As a follow-up, now that we have a myriad of side bets at the background tables in both Singapore and Macao, I’m just wondering how do you strike a balance between improving the incremental excitement and experience for players from, you know, obviously these new side bets versus any potential cannibalization amongst the various side bets?
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: I think the great thing about it is all the original bets are there. If you, all the bets that people are used to are still on the felt. This is really just up to the player, just an option. It just gives them some additional volatility if they want to take it. For us, it’s really a player decision. In some cases, they take it. In some cases, they don’t, which is the reason why Rob in his remarks said in Singapore, you may see a quarter where we hold 5, or you see a quarter where we hold high 3s. It just depends on propensity and the preference of the player to want to make that wager. As a practical matter, the game just has more options. It doesn’t foreclose on the ability for them to bet in a more traditional manner.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: You want to flatbet, you can flatbet all day long. Bank player, tie pair. It doesn’t exclude those bets. It’s just like it’s no different for years than the Super Bowl. For years, people thought there was something different about the Super Bowl. All it was was they offered 2,000 side bets versus the usual bet the Packers or the Bears. All they’ve done here is expand the side bets. The usual bets are still there, traditional bets if people want to bet. It’s their decision whether to make that decision on what to bet. It’s not ours. We don’t dictate it.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: I think the important thing here to remember is that we are iterative in the way that we apply new bets on the felt. What you see today is after attempts to improve the game experience for people. We’re very focused on the experience. If players like it, that’s great, and we keep it out there and they use it. If it makes their trip more enjoyable, that’s fantastic. If it’s not something that’s preferred by the players, eventually it evolves itself out of the game. We’ve had a lot of different iterations of what’s on the felt. I would just view this as an enhancement to the gaming experience mechanism. They enjoy the volatility. They enjoy the additional bets, and they use them. As to how those bets will progress over time, players’ preferences may change over time.
You may see us have different side bets on the felt over time as players change what they want to do.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: That’s a very important point. It’s like a supermarket. We keep putting these on the shelves that sell and don’t sell. We’re constantly coming up with new bets all the time. We have a very important committee called the Make More Money Committee. The job is to find all new bets and deviations that this thing. If things don’t sell, we take it off the table and put something else to try it out. It’s evolving all the time. It’s not a static function.
Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China, Sands China: Thank you very much.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: George.
Thanks, George.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question will be from David Katz from Jefferies. David, your line is live.
Afternoon, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. With respect to Macao, one of the topics of conversation and one of the things that we’re tracking very carefully is events, whether they’re concerts or otherwise. Can you talk to us about your strategy around those? More specifically, I know it’s sort of maybe post the end of the quarter, but I’d love to hear any general comments, learnings, opportunities, etc., around the NBA China Games that were hosted and events in general. Thanks.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: I think first off, going back to early days of The Venetian with Rob, entertainment has always been front and center. I think it’s something that’s always helped us in the gaming business and the perception of the excitement around our properties. We’ve always been focused on providing high-quality entertainment and actually building the assets to support it. Many years ago, our Sands China Ltd. built the first arena in Macao for this very reason. We’ve been very dedicated to programming it and creating entertainment that’s been very successful over the years in creating opportunities for our patrons to have a great experience. I think you’ll see that as well in Singapore. We broke ground in mid-July on what we’re calling IR2 right now. Eventually, we’ll have a name.
We’re building a 15,000-seat live performance venue there that will be the most technologically advanced arena in Asia and provide a great customer experience for live performance. We’re always very focused on it. For us, I think it’s a very important benefit for our company to have that excitement that goes along with entertainment, but also gives our patrons something to experience in the environment as part of the lifestyle that we provide to them. In terms of the NBA, this was something we started working on many years ago. We’re very fortunate. The NBA is a great partner. They really pulled out all the stops. They were very supportive. I have to give credit to both the Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns for the support that they gave to the NBA China Games. They really showed up in force.
Their teams did a lot of charity events in the local community. They were great with the fans. Really, just an unbelievable experience. Our team was very excited because the reaction in Macao was very strong. I think just some of the goals we set out for this event was to create something that brought a unique form of entertainment to highlight Macao and to showcase the investment that we’ve made and how high-quality Macao is as a global tourism destination. I think that goal was achieved. The media coverage, the social media into China, the social media externally around the globe has been very positive. The teams played very competitively. I think it was a great format for the league. I think that benefits Sands China because of that collaboration. I think it created a lot of excitement for our patrons when they actually came to the games.
There was just outstanding visitation, and there was just a heightened sense of visitation around the business. In terms of the impact, again, we’ll talk about it at the end of this quarter. We’ll have better data. I think overall, it was a very strong success. We’re very happy with the results. I think our fans, the fans of the NBA, were very happy. I think we did a lot of things that helped the local community, which was also a benefit. Lastly, we think it was very beneficial for Sands China on a lot of different levels. I think the marketing value that was created for us was also very strong. A lot of benefit to it.
I also think we accomplished some of the goals that we set out in our concession renewal, which was to bring, let’s call it high-value sports, global sports to Macao, which I think we did very successfully. A lot of positive things all around. I don’t know, Grant, do you have any other comments or anything you’d like to add?
Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China, Sands China: No, I think that covers it very well. I think it did showcase Macao in a very, very faithful light. It was great for the city to have such a, I would say, strong visitation from different countries. As you know, the government has been very keen on pushing us to have international events, drawing visitors from different countries around the region and in the rest of the world. I think this event really highlighted the attraction of Macao as an international tourism destination, like Patrick said. I think we’re proud of delivering this first set of NBA China Games for Macao. I think we got a lot of positive praise, not just from the people who came from different corners of the world, but also very positive feedback from the local community.
Okay, thank you for all of that. Appreciate it.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question will be from John DeCree from CBRE. John, your line is live.
Hey, guys. Thanks for all the color and commentary so far. I wanted to ask a follow-up on kind of more of the strategic priorities outlined in your deck development. I know you gave some comments about the UAE specifically, but curious what you’re seeing around the globe, if there’s anything particularly interesting right now. I guess I’d specifically ask about Japan. You guys obviously looked at that in the past. The new Prime Minister, I think, historically supportive of IR. Curious if it’s worth another look at Japan and anything else that might be out there right now that’s garnering your attention.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Look, I think our strategic priority is to deploy capital in high growth projects. We’re always looking at those opportunities and always evaluating them to see if the returns are there with the appropriate factor of safety. I think for us, you know, as I said before, we’re looking at the UAE, trying to observe it and follow it. Obviously, Japan was something we were very interested in in the past, although that seems unlikely. There’s been talk about Thailand, which is something that we’ve expressed interest in in the past. We’re very patient, and we’re constantly looking. We’ll see what opportunities arise. As of right now, there’s nothing really to report.
Thanks, Patrick. That’s all from me. I appreciate it, guys.
Thank you, John.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. The next question will be from Steven Wieczynski from Stifel. Steven, your line is live.
Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Patrick, I apologize if I missed this in your prepared remarks. If we think about the 150 basis point decrease in your Macao margins, I’m wondering if most of that was tied pretty much directly to your change in marketing strategy or if that was just something else.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Yeah, I think it was a combination of marketing strategy and a little bit higher cost. I think the key thing for us is the way we get operating leverage and increased margin over time is by growing revenue. You said it all along. I think there was a question earlier that Rob answered about the size of the Macao market. If you look at the Macao market today, it’s growing. It’s growing both in the mass segment and in the VIP segment, which is very beneficial. I think we’re very positive on the Macao market overall. The way we’re going to grow EBITDA and grow margin is through revenue growth. We have a great team there, but we have a fixed cost base, so we need to leverage it. We need to get more volume in.
Okay. Gotcha. Rob, second question, if we go back to Singapore real quick, you’re at the point where you’re pushing almost $1,000 a night per room. I understand there’s more room capacity coming online in the next couple of years. This is probably a little bit of a higher-level question, but wondering, Rob, how you’re thinking about room rates, not only maybe now in your ability to still take price there, but maybe how you’re thinking about room rates once your additional capacity comes online.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: I think it’s kind of relevant, to be honest with you. Our goal is to not sell rooms, just give away people to gamble, because very honestly, that’s the business we’re in. You can’t spend the kind of money we spend in Singapore and charge, if you charge $1,000 or $2,000, or last time I checked, they’re not building $8 billion hotels anywhere. This is a gambling casino with a hotel attached to it. Our goal in Singapore, every night if we can, is to give these rooms away to people, high-value gaming customers that drive $3 billion, $4 billion, $5 billion of top-line revenue. That’s the business we’re in over there, to be honest with you. I don’t think we could squeeze the rates higher; I think we want to. The cash print is such a small offering. We’re mostly a comp house today.
The real goal is to not sell any rooms in IR1 or 2, but give them away to high-value gaming customers to drive that. You don’t make $3 billion annualized with hotels. It’s just that simple. It’s a very interesting dynamic over there. We shrunk the hotel. It’s working very well. It’s attracting the high-value casino customers. That is the focus, not the ADR. To be blunt with you. I tell you we fail. We sell rooms for $2,000, and it’s a failure. We’re not in the rooms business. We’re in the casino hotel business. Those rooms simply are there to attract those patrons to drive these ridiculously high EBITDA.
Patrick Dumont, President and Chief Operating Officer, Las Vegas Sands: Come visit. We’ll give you a free room.
Rob Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands: No free room.
Okay, thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Appreciate it.
Paul, Conference Call Moderator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.
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