Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Sands Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to hand the floor over to your host, Mr. Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.
Sir, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Joining the call today are Patrick Dumont, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Wilfred Wong, Executive Vice Chairman of Sands China, and Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of 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 laws. 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 pose one question and one follow-up, so we might allow everyone with interest the opportunity to participate. This presentation is being recorded.
I will now turn the call over to Patrick.
Thanks, Dan. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining the call.
I wanted to start with a few summary points. We remain confident in our long-term strategy in both Singapore and Macao, and we will continue to invest for future growth. We have a long-term view on economic growth in Asia.
We believe the trends of economic growth and wealth creation will continue into the future. Our goal is to position our property portfolio to capitalize on a growing demand of premium travel and world-class entertainment experiences in Asia. We are fortunate to have the balance sheet and cash flow strength to support our meaningful capital investment program.
Turning to our quarterly results, the high-end was softer in both of our markets this quarter, which negatively impacted our reported financial results. Despite this, we delivered strong financial results at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, generating an EBITDA of $590 million for the quarter. If we had held as expected our rolling play, our EBITDA would have been $4 million higher or $594 million.
Singapore remains an ideal market for high-value tourism. Our focus on creating unique and memorable entertainment and hospitality experience for our customers continues to generate industry-leading financial performance. We believe that growth in tourism in Singapore will continue over the long term.
Our financial results continue to reflect the elevation of Marina Bay Sands' structural earnings power following our significant product investments, suite renovations, service enhancements, and the execution of our premium customer strategy. Looking further ahead, we remain enthusiastic about the additional growth opportunities presented by our new development project in Singapore, which will be directly adjacent to Marina Bay Sands. It will meaningfully increase our premium suite capacity, service and entertainment offerings, and will include the introduction of a state-of-the-art arena envisioned to be the finest in Asia.
We remain on track with the development process and look forward to opening our new development in early 2031, subject to the required government approvals. Let's turn to Macao. We delivered $529 million of EBITDA for the quarter.
If we had held as expected in our rolling play, our EBITDA would have been $11 million lower or $518 million. Sands China's growth in gaming revenues and volumes meaningfully outperformed the Macao market overall. We are encouraged by our progress there.
Our market share of Macao mass gaming revenue reached 26.1% for the quarter, our strongest performance since the fourth quarter of 2023. When compared to the third quarter of 2025, we delivered growth in gaming volumes across all segments. Rolling volume was up 31% year-over-year.
Our non-rolling drop was up 11% year-over-year, and slot ETG handle was up 26% year-over-year. We believe these improvements are indicative of our progress in product and service level improvements. I would also like to highlight our approach to reinvestment in Macao has remained consistent over the last several quarters.
Our goal is to remain consistent with our reinvestment strategy going forward and to achieve greater profitability as revenues grow in the future. With respect to operating expenses, as we mentioned last quarter, we have elected over the last year to invest in additional table operating hours, increased sales, marketing and customer service personnel, and enhanced levels of customer service. We continue to believe these investments are critical to the achievement of our long-term objectives.
These objectives are providing outstanding service and hospitality to our customers and creating unique and memorable experiences. We are continuing to invest in Macao, and we are focused on the highest return projects over the next three years to create the best opportunities to increase cash flow. Through our capital investment program, we are reorienting our Macao portfolio to address the most profitable segments.
The renovation of The Venetian, which commenced in March, is progressing. We expect to have The Venetian refreshed and reintroduced by Chinese New Year 2028, along with new premium-focused gaming salons and related amenities. Macao remains the largest gaming market in the world, and we believe the market will grow and reach new heights in the years ahead.
We retain our goal of reaching $700 million in quarterly EBITDA and more over time as we fully implement our investment and operating strategies and as the Macao market grows in the future. Regarding our programs returning capital to shareholders, we repurchased $950 million of LVS stock during the quarter. We have now repurchased 19% of the company's outstanding shares over the last 12 quarters.
We have approximately $5 billion remaining on the $6 billion repurchases authorization from our board approved in July. We believe additional repurchases of LVS equity through our share repurchase program will be meaningfully accretive to the company and its shareholders over the long term. We also paid our recurring quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share during the quarter.
In addition, our board has approved a 20% increase in our quarterly dividend to $0.36 per share, beginning the first quarter of 2027. We also purchased additional shares of SCL during the quarter. The company's ownership percentage of SCL has reached 75.6% as of September 30, 2026.
We look forward to continuing to utilize the company's share repurchase and recurring dividend programs to increase returns to shareholders. Thanks again for joining the call today and for your interest in the company. Now let's take some questions.
Certainly. Everyone at this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time.
We do ask that while posing your question, please pick up your handset if you're listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Also, we ask each participant to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone.
Please hold while we poll for questions. Your first question's coming from Dan Politzer from J.P. Morgan. Your line is live.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my questions. Patrick, first off, I think in your prepared remarks, you alluded to some incremental softness in Macao and Singapore, particularly at the high-end of the market. Can you maybe break down how much of the recent step down you attribute to macro or cyclical factors versus any behavioral shift among that high-end customer base, particularly pertaining to some of the Chinese offshore wealth tax strategies or collections?
Thanks.
Yeah. First off, I do want to point out that there was softness at the high end in both of our markets. That was really the story for the quarter for us.
I think we made a lot of strides in the things that we were trying to improve and create better experience for our customers. But when the customers don't show up, it's a little problematic. I think to sort of address your question, in terms of Asia macro, there are a bunch of things going on globally that may have an impact on tourism visitation, how people think about tourism or just their spending during the quarter.
I also want to point out that the World Cup final was July 19, so that did happen. There are many things in the global environment generally that create a lot of uncertainty in the quarter. Just when uncertainty is introduced into people's lives and how they think about tourism, it may change their behaviors.
I can't really point to one thing that I would tell you that was the cause. We feel pretty confident that the future will not be impacted by this, just knowing what our customers like to do and how frequent they show up and what we have on offer. So we feel pretty good about how we're positioned.
We also don't base our decisions on these cycles. We have a long-term view on growth in Asia. We really believe fundamentally that the trends of economic growth and wealth creation are there, and we'll believe that they'll continue in the future.
That's really what we're focused on. But this quarter was definitely aberrational in that regard.
Got it. Thanks. Just on Macao specifically, you've been through several stages of improvement in Macao, right?
You improved your properties, you've been promoting a little bit more at a more competitive level, and now you've been investing in increasing your service. So where do you think you are in terms of the OpEx increases in Macao? Just given, obviously, there's concern on kind of the growth outlook for the market and where you sit in the expense structure.
Thanks.
First off, I think we're in early days in terms of our product repositioning, and I think that's really important. So as we get great product online and these high-value customers come to our properties because of it, the service will really matter, but that will also grow our revenues, our gross gaming revenue and our EBITDA. Just structurally, we're positioning ourselves to grow as we bring these products online, which address the segment that is there and that is strong.
We just don't have all the product that we want to address it. I will tell you that we're making progress as evidenced by our volume growth. The drag on our EBITDA was higher expenses, and the reinvestment strategy that we have, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, is consistent.
It is really as we continue to grow revenues, we will gain operating leverage and we will see more flow-through. Grant, I do not know if you have any other comments or anything you would like to highlight.
I think the most important point for the quarter is we are able to gain revenue share across all segments whilst controlling the reinvestment. As Patrick referenced, we have remained very consistent in the reinvestment strategy. We have optimized the program significantly over the last 9 months, and we have been able to gain share partly because we have been able to invest back into the customer experience, both in terms of service levels as well as our event calendar.
I think you are seeing some of the positive progress that we are making in that regard. With respect to operating expenses, I think we have talked about this before in the last quarter. We have been increasing our payroll as we have hired more gaming staff for the additional table hours as well as the sales distribution, and then also the hospitality staff to enhance the service levels.
We see now that this cost increase is embedded in second quarter and third quarter, and I would say that sequentially we are essentially flat in terms of fixed expenses, and we would expect obviously, the payroll would inflate by the cost of living adjustment allowances next year, but we do not anticipate significant increase in headcount from this point on.
Thanks so much for all the detail.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Lizzie Dove from Goldman Sachs. Your line is live.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. On Singapore, again, I am wondering in terms of your comments, has anything changed about what you see as the run rate quarterly for this business?
I know there was a period of time where it was $700 million hold adjusted, plus or minus. Has anything changed there? On the point of whether this is temporary or a change, more structurally, anything you can share in terms of cadence throughout the quarter, whether that got better post World Cup or even anything in terms of any October rebound?
Thanks.
Thank you. In our mind, nothing has changed. This is a $2.7 billion, $2.8 billion run rate property in my mind.
That is where we are focused. I think this quarter was aberrational. There were a bunch of things that happened in this quarter, that we thought were unusual.
Then I also feel like some of the sentiment out of the market for our highest end players, they did not visit. I think for us, this is something where product is still strong, response is still strong from the customers. We still have a view about that sort of baseline of EBITDA range that I just talked about, and hopefully growing from there in the future.
That is really what we are focused on. I think there was a particular softness in both July and September, just as you look across the quarter. But we feel pretty good about how we are positioned, going forward in Q4.
Got it. Then just one follow-up. Obviously, a really big repurchase number this quarter that's been ramping the last few quarters.
Is this the new run rate, would you say, as you still work through these challenges in Singapore, Macao, or how should we think about any changes in terms of capital returns?
Yeah. So first off, I just want to say that, we see meaningful value in both LVS and SCL equity, and we're going to continue to act on this belief. So you saw that in full display this quarter.
We intend to continue excess cash flow to shareholders, with the repurchases representing the larger portion of our overall capital return, so even more the dividends. You've heard us on prior calls. We've been focused on shrinking the share count over time.
It's because we see meaningful value in LVS and SCL that we're acting so strongly. We see really long-term value creation in our ability to compound earnings and free cash flow growth per share just by reducing the share count, particularly at current prices. Our free cash flow and excess cash balance provides flexibility for us to opportunistically increase the amount of share repurchase based on market conditions, and that's what we did this quarter.
For us, I think we really understand the importance of share repurchases, but we also understand the importance of maintaining our investment-grade rating, which we view as a competitive advantage. As you think about it, we intend to stay within what we articulated previously in terms of our gross leverage target of approximately 2 times to 3 times. But this is before the impact of any development-related debt.
When you think about share repurchases, we think about it like cash on hand, how do we think about return on capital, and how aggressive can we be based on the market, and you saw that this quarter.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is live.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking my questions. Patrick or Grant, whoever is right to answer this. I want to go back to Singapore for a moment and just ask, Patrick, you mentioned a couple of times behavioral changes out there.
I think one thing that jumps out in the numbers is mass market hold. The volume looks pretty good, actually, but the hold numbers set back to levels that we haven't seen in a couple of years. Is the behavior aberration that we're seeing just that perhaps people are not feeling as good about the market and they're getting up from sessions earlier or acting a little differently at the tables themselves, or is it more of, again, a direct traffic issue, and why would that be weighing on maybe that hold figure, given that, again, the volume numbers, even the VIP volume number wasn't that far out of whack relative to what we've seen in the last quarter or two?
Yeah. It's an interesting thing. I will tell you, over the last couple of years as we introduced the side bets, there was the opportunity for players to have a little bit more volatility, but for us to hold a little bit better.
I think what happened in Marina Bay Sands is we just didn't hold well during the quarter. If you look at that, it's very different from a year ago. That will impact our margin and our earnings.
That hold was meaningful. But the good news is, the door swings both ways, right? There are times like a year ago in that quarter where we held really strongly.
The great thing is the volumes are there, the customers are there. We had a lot of high-value patrons at our highest levels, just not show up this quarter at certain points, and you just don't get that revenue back. From our standpoint, volumes were good.
We missed some customers, but the hold did impact our quarter. The good news is in the future, hopefully it won't. That's the nature of our business, and when you have less offsetting play, the volatility on the bet size matters.
For us, having these very high-value patrons that come in Marina Bay Sands, it is a very specialized casino with the best patrons in the world, in our view, concentrated at the high end. There's volatility, both on the mass side and on the rolling side. If you go to page 11 in our deck, we lay out our expected hold, our smart table hold, and you can see that volatility.
That's driven to some extent, as we said on prior calls, by patron decisions and how they choose to wager. On the mass side, we didn't hold as well as we did in the prior year. It did impact us for the quarter.
Hopefully in the future, we'll continue to hold in a positive way.
Thanks for digging in on that. My follow-up would be, maybe Grant, your little bit longer term perspectives on what's happening as it relates to the offshore trust issue. I think this has been a very common topic discussed for perhaps a broader, weaker market environment.
My question to you is just, do you agree with that? Do you think this is changing behaviors over there? More importantly, do you think this is temporary or a moment in time as it relates to once that window kind of stops, which I think is in the next day or so, that perhaps behavior normalizes a bit with some of those mainland customers?
Sean, I think in reality, we've had many, many different policy changes, new initiatives that have, to varying degrees, impacted the Macao market to a greater or less extent over the years. I don't think we can make a judgment on the specific measures that you just referenced. What we can say is that during the quarter, the premium segment was a little softer, but there was also plenty of indicators, certainly in the Sands China portfolio, to indicate that the underlying demand is still very solid and very deep.
We had double-digit growth in patron count. We had high single-digit growth in property visitations. Like Patrick referenced, we had very strong gaming volume growth across all segments.
Of course, some of that is market share gain, but we see in our portfolio pockets of strength in all segments. This quarter, we were able to capture some of the super high in the premium mass. Unfortunately, we played a little unlucky, and that affected our Londoner hold percentage and EBITDA and margin.
Overall, we saw good progress there. We also experienced strong mid-tier and base mass growth in the properties that are more geared towards those segments. We were able to significantly outgrow the market at The Parisian and the Sands Macao.
Also by product segment, you can see that our slot ETG segment grew 18% year-over-year in revenue. That is double the rate of the market growth of 9% in the overall Macao market. Lastly, when you look at a weaker consumption backdrop in China, our retail tenant sales growth still achieved 10% year-on-year growth, and it was a mixture of strength in different luxury segments as well as the mass retail segments.
Overall, we see a lot of positives still in the underlying demand in visiting Macao and spending there. Yes, the spend per visitor, some of that has softened, particularly at the high end.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Brandt Montour from Barclays. Your line is live.
Hi, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the high end, just maybe more drilling in on Macao versus Singapore.
It's hard for us to tell how much overlap you have between the high-end guests at Macao versus Singapore. But are you seeing any differences in behaviors between those two sets of inbound consumers or players? Length of stay, booking lead time, sort of maybe differences in the exit rate coming out of third quarter that makes you more favorable on one toward the other here?
It's a great question. Just to highlight. Marina Bay Sands has a catchment area that is Southeast Asia.
If you think about who comes as luxury inbound tourists into Singapore, a lot of that is driven by Southeast Asian people who have been successful. So Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the surrounding areas, Cambodia, South Korea, and some Japan. The catchment area there is different from what you have in Macao, where the vast majority of visitors come from China or Hong Kong.
On the super high end, there's some back and forth, but not a whole lot of overlap. The sentiment was consistent in both, but we don't know if it's the same reason or say a multitude of reasons or different reasons. We just know that we had a lot of very high-end patrons who just weren't visiting as frequently.
That's what we saw this quarter in both places. I will tell you that this quarter, in our view, does not represent the true earnings power of our properties in both Marina Bay Sands or in Singapore. Excuse me, or in Macao.
Long term, this is something that we think is particular to this quarter, and we see strength coming out of it.
I think you covered it, definitely.
Thanks for that, Patrick. On Macao, thinking about the fourth quarter, just seasonally, last fourth quarter you had a hit from the NBA year one. This will be NBA year two this year.
I imagine that maybe there's been some refinement in terms of or maybe the question is, has there been some refinement in the way that you're setting up operations for that, and how does that affect how we should think about fourth quarter seasonality, all else equal, for the calendar?
Thanks for the question. First of all, the NBA event was a tremendous success this year. It was, across a number of categories, an even more successful Games Week than our highly successful one in 2025.
We will discuss the financials of that in January, but from all of the media, the social media and the reporting on the week, I think you can see just how successful it was for the entire city, across not just the excitement of the basketball, but also the activations we had across the whole resort, in the fan zone, in the MICE events, and all of the different brand partners that came to Macao to promote their product and services in Macao. If you talk about the seasonality of fourth quarter, typically it is a relatively stronger quarter for Macao because of the October Golden Week, and now also a lengthened Golden Week, as a result of the NBA Games Week. Then typically December will also be relatively strong.
So the seasonality would point to a stronger third quarter and stronger fourth quarter compared to the second quarter. As to how this plays out in the current market conditions, where we've had a few months of contracting overall GGR growth, that remains to be seen. But from a pure seasonality point of view, it is going to be typically a stronger quarter.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Robin Farley from UBS. Your line is live.
Thank you. That actually covered a lot of my questions about some of the dynamics between Macao and Singapore. I guess my only other question is, you talked about OpEx, increasing staffing hours at the tables, and hospitality and sales.
Given that maybe it is unclear, if it is not entirely clear what the factors are causing this softness, is that something you would revisit, those OpEx levels, to maybe be more in line with the trends here? Because I think it looks like October will be month number five, maybe, with year-over-year down in Macao. Just how do you think about those OpEx levels potentially needing to be adjusted?
Thanks.
We are actually focused on investment for growth, not on cutting our personnel that we just hired. I think we are very excited about the future of Macao. The way we are looking to make all this converge is we are underway in our investment cycle to renovate and create higher value products for our patrons, but we need the people to run them.
We need the team members to operate them to be successful. So we have hired those teams now so we can train them, get them up to speed, and make sure they are offering seamless, flawless service and focused on our customers and in our culture in a very strong way as the time the product comes online. It is a simultaneous story of capital investment to create the products from the rooms that we have, the suites that we have, and the space that we have in Macao, to a higher level to attract these higher value patrons.
At the same time, train and create the opportunities for them to be in our property and have the experiences they need to come back and to spend. So we have to do both. While we are carrying this additional OpEx, we actually view this as part of the additional investment we need in the future to grow and address the most important segments that are coming to Macao today.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Stephen Grambling from Morgan Stanley. Your line is live.
Thanks. Wanted to dig in on the CapEx plans a little bit, just starting with Macao. I am curious, how has your view of what is maintenance versus growth CapEx evolved and perhaps where you see ROI moving to and where the best returns may be had as you think about where you are spending?
Then on Singapore, a related question, as we think about the $8 billion spend and the potential returns on the next project, how do you think about bookends, both in terms of ultimate construction costs and returns and what might weigh that one way or another?
Steven, I will take the question on Macao CapEx. If you look at our portfolio, which is we started developing the buildings from 2004 to now, our depreciation charge is somewhere in the region of $750 million to $800 million. So spending around $300 million on maintenance CapEx is reasonable, and that is reflected in the deck on slide 21 of Dan's deck.
In terms of the development CapEx, if you look at our number for 2027, there are really three key projects that we can reference. Firstly, we have the highest ROI projects in there, which in our minds include The Venetian renovation, then as well as the Conrad renovation and rebranding into a Londoner-themed hotel. Those are the most critical projects for us if we are to continue in our product investment and elevation to capture the most important segments in the market.
Then there is a third flagship project, which is for the concession commitment, which is, as you know, we have a botanic garden project that we are looking to accelerate and bring into Macao earlier than we had previously anticipated. We are making good progress on design. It is going to be one of the most innovative and new tourism landmarks in Macao.
We are very excited to bring that forward and deliver that for the city over the coming years.
In regards to Singapore, I do not think there is a better market to deploy capital in scale in our industry at the highest spend. On page 29 of our deck, we laid out the MBS expansion project development costs. I do want to highlight that of the $8 billion, $2 billion is actually land premiums that in effect you can amortize over time.
We just wanted to include everything related to development. The other thing is, we are spending a very significant amount on an arena, which will be what we hope is the most important live entertainment venue in the region. It will be technologically advanced.
It will have VIP areas, hospitality areas that are more akin to what you would see at the top arenas in the U.S. versus ones that are in Asia, and that will be a differentiator. The other thing is, it will be integrated and connected to all the amenities of the Marina Bay Sands program. For us, the ability to use this arena not only for live entertainment and to draw tourism into Singapore, which has been evidenced by Taylor Swift and by other large performances that have occurred there, but also to use it as a MICE space and to use it for other forms of entertainment is very powerful.
When you look at the way we think about returns here, it will not only benefit the new developments and the new tower we are building, but it will also enhance the way that we draw high-value tourists into Singapore to benefit Marina Bay Sands, and actually the surrounding area and the Marina Bay precinct. The way we think about returns is that this will be very positive. If the market continues the way that it is today and we have these conditions, we believe this will be very successful.
We believe very strongly in the future growth of high-value tourism to Singapore because of the focus of the government there, and the work that they have done and their continued investment in great tourism assets and connectivity to the surrounding region. We think we are in a great position to take advantage of the, call it the structural benefits of being in Singapore and the long-term prospects for wealth creation in Asia and the importance of Singapore in that. For us, the returns we believe will be very strong, and we think that having the connectivity back to the arena from Marina Bay Sands and our MICE facility will only enhance those offerings as well.
Fair enough. That's helpful. Maybe one very quick follow-up would just be, how much of the construction costs are locked in at this point, or is there some wiggle room that could happen as we look closer to the opening?
Yeah, I think right now, I think what you're asking is there inflation because of the current market environment? We haven't seen it yet, but we're monitoring it closely. A good portion of it is locked in, but there's still a lot to buy, so we're being very thoughtful and very cautious now about the current conditions and how we look to approach some of the fit-out costs and some of the construction costs that we have to deal with.
Thank you. Your next question's coming from Steven Pizzella from Deutsche Bank. Your line is live.
Hey, good afternoon, and thank you for taking our questions. On reinvestment in Macao, can you talk about what you are seeing in the market from a competitive standpoint? Has that changed at all over the last couple quarters?
Thank you for the question. The market remains very competitive. That is no secret.
We, on the other hand, have continued to optimize our reinvestment program. That's been a focus strategy since the first quarter of the year. We are achieving sequentially, a lower level reinvestment and capturing higher market share.
We will continue in that effort. As Patrick said, we will remain consistent in our approach. We obviously have to respond if market dynamic competition and reinvestment levels change significantly.
At this point, we don't see it, but that's not to say the market is not competitive. It remains highly competitive, but we haven't seen significant escalation in the reinvestment levels, and that's why we've been able to do what we're doing, which is to optimize reinvestment, maintain or reduce, and at the same time, continue to gain market share.
Okay, thank you. That's helpful. Then just staying in Macao, wondering if you would be able to help us think about what the size of the World Cup impact was the last couple quarters as we think about the normalized run rates here.
Thank you.
Difficult to pinpoint. It's very clear that we had a sharper decline in June and July than we did in August and September. That's about all we can say at this point.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Peter Supino from Wolfe Research. Your line is live.
Good afternoon, everybody. A question about The Venetian renovation. I am wondering, as that renovation has progressed, have any of the renovated rooms returned to inventory?
If so, are you seeing any early impact, especially on higher value gaming activity?
I will tell you that anecdotally, the response has been very strong. I will let Grant give some additional comments, but I think for us, a credit to our design team and our development team for the high quality of work they are doing and their ability to identify what is advanced in the market and what the market feels is very luxurious and aspirational because the response has been very strong, not only in this renovation, but in other renovations we have been doing. We are very pleased about the progress of our capital investments and where our portfolio is headed in terms of aesthetics, design, and aspiration.
I will turn it over to Grant.
It is still very early days, but Patrick is absolutely right. We have received very strong feedback from the customers who have experienced the new suites, from a design, from a functionality. Of course, it is an iconic hotel suite layout that Sheldon brought to Macao.
It is famous for its spacious layout. Everyone knows this room, and that presents an exciting opportunity for us because when this is all fully upgraded and renovated and modernized, it is going to do even better than it has been doing in the last few years. If you look at the rooms out of inventory, we had about 400 rooms out this quarter.
It will increase slightly to about 500 next quarter as we continue to renovate, including the multi-bay Paiza suites. But the initial feedback from the rooms that have come back, which is around 600, has really, I would say, surpassed our initial expectations. And you can see also that we have been managing this renovation better in terms of customer mix, and we have seen that sequential improvement in mass revenue at Venetian versus second quarter.
So we will continue, and the team will continue to manage the rest of the program. But we are very excited at the prospect of having all of these new suites back by early 2028.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Steve Wieczynski from Stifel. Your line is live.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Good afternoon.
Patrick, two bigger picture questions for you. So first of all, you talked about your balance sheet at this point, your investment-grade balance sheet giving you somewhat of an advantage relative to some of your peers. So wondering with where overall gaming valuations currently are, which obviously is somewhat depressed, maybe give us your updated thoughts in terms of your appetite for M&A at this point.
I think we're really interested in buying more of our company. I think we have great assets. We're in the two best markets.
We feel really strongly about the future of the Asian economic growth and wealth creation story, and so our share purchases are focused on owning more of the great LVS assets that Sheldon built for us. We've been blessed with these assets that are in very privileged markets, very special markets with unbelievable catchment areas and just a huge amount of investment going on around them, and it's creating economic growth. For us, I think we're focused on owning more of LVS and not really focused on M&A.
Got you. Then Patrick, I think the answer is going to be no to this, but as you look at Macao today and where visitation levels are, spend levels are, do you think the market at this point has too much gaming capacity and is somewhat oversaturated? Or do you believe we are just essentially stuck in this bubble and the market is clearly down the road in a position to use the existing capacity that is currently in place?
First off, I think both markets would benefit long-term from more high-level hospitality capacity. I think that will only help both markets grow over time. I think when you think about Macao and you realize the number of hotel rooms that are there, and you realize that its catchment area is China and Hong Kong, it feels like it's undersupplied.
So from our standpoint, it's something where we have to focus on bringing more high-value tourists into the Macao market over time. The higher value segments and premium customers are out there in size, but they have to have the right experience available and know that it's there. It starts with great product, it starts with great service, and all the range of luxury amenities that we have.
In my mind, it's not that it's a capacity issue, it's that we have this great product, it needs to be globally competitive. Our high-end customers are very sophisticated. They know great hotel rooms.
They know great restaurants. They know great retail. They know great entertainment.
We have to present all of that to be competitive. For us, it's not a question about capacity being too small, it's a question about what type of capacity is there and how competitive are we globally for high-value tourists, and how do we invest to ensure that those tourists choose us over anyone else whenever they think about a trip. For a lot of these customers, it's pretty frequent.
They're very affluent, they travel a lot, they enjoy what Macao has, they love what Singapore has. For us, it's about making sure we capture their attention and we capture their tourism dollars. For me, it's not really a supply issue because all of the supply in Macao is not the same.
All the supply in Singapore is not the same.
Understood. Appreciate the color. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question's coming from David Katz from Jefferies. Your line is live.
Afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I know hypotheticals are not always the favorite choice, but listening to the commentary about buybacks and where the stock is currently trading and the lack of recognition for the future, is there any thought in the future to not having a public stock, right?
Given the strength of your balance sheet and the ability to do that and still fund your business, et cetera. Could we ever be in a world like that?
I do not know how to answer that question other than we are going to keep buying back shares. I do not think there is any interest at this time to take the company private. It is not something that we talk about.
In my mind, this is a company with a lot of growth potential. We are happy to have public equity. We think it is the right way to go.
We think it allows the public markets to ride along with us as we grow and create success over time. We are very happy with it. I think from our standpoint, the market is looking at us a certain way today, and we are very happy to have a repurchase program to take advantage of the share prices where they are today.
We will continue shrinking our share count and shareholder value. That is kind of what we are focused on.
Appreciate you addressing it. As my follow-up quickly, just going back to Singapore, I think you mentioned some of the elements that impacted the quarter being World Cup, a little bit of hold. Could you just go back and walk us through, because I think earlier on you said several issues were impacting Singapore and how are you seeing the competitive landscape, right?
You have one really. What are you seeing from your competitor in that market? Thank you.
So maybe I will answer the questions in reverse. I think Marina Bay Sands competes with every great tourism destination in Asia. The people that come to Marina Bay Sands and come to Singapore can go anywhere, right?
They are affluent. There are flights all over Asia. They are choosing Marina Bay Sands because of the experience we provide.
We compete with everybody. So, when you think about luxury, high-value tourism experiences, there is a lot of different places you can go. So the reason why we keep investing and the reason we are so focused on service, on high-quality amenities, great retail, great food and beverage, great entertainment, is because we have to out-compete everybody.
We have to get everyone's attention, and we have to make sure they want to come back. We have to do that every time they visit. For us, we do not think about a single competitor in our market, outside of our market directly.
It is everybody. We are competing with everyone all the time. The way we win is through the investments that we have made and that we will keep making.
That is why we are so focused on upgrading the facilities we have there all the time. That is why we are so focused on IR2, by adding the arena, by adding entertainment as a component of what we can offer, by increasing our MICE program. We are constantly remixing our retail.
We are constantly reinventing our food and beverage offerings. All of these things are designed to captivate the attention of our highest value tourists and the people who come to our building. So that is how we think about our positioning within Singapore and, to be fair, across Asia.
I think. Sorry, what was the other question?
With respect to Singapore in the quarter, you said several things. Talked about World Cup, talked about hold. Could you walk us through that list?
Oh, sure. Yeah. Sorry about that.
Yeah. I'll just go back to sort of the points that were made previously. We just had less visitation from our highest value patrons.
That was the primary driver. You can attribute it to World Cup. You can attribute it to some of the other things that are out there that I'm sure everyone reads.
We can't tell you which one it is. We just know that our highest value patrons visited less. And to be fair, we did experience some more hold.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Trey Bowers from Wells Fargo. Your line is live.
Hey, guys. I sound like a broken record on this, but wondering if you could just comment on the promotional intensity in Macao and if you are seeing any kind of opening up and, if no, if it is still very heavy promotions. What kind of breaks that cycle as we go forward?
Thanks.
I think we talked about that just a moment ago. The market remains very competitive. We see no letup in the reinvestment intensity.
However, we also do not see any major escalation, and that has allowed us to optimize our reinvestment levels. Whilst doing that, we are still gaining market share, and we will continue to do that. We will, of course, respond if we need to, if that level of competitiveness changes in either direction.
As to what actually will help the market to moderate the levels of reinvestment, it is primarily going to be a function of market revenue growth. We do see that there are some indicators where different operators will be looking to fine-tune their reinvestment levels, even in the current market condition, because the profit margin of the industry is simply not where it was. In a nutshell, nothing has really changed in the competitive intensity.
We continue to gain share and optimize reinvestment. If revenues make a big comeback in recovery levels, then we should see the reinvestment levels moderate naturally.
Great. As a follow-up, just one more on Singapore. I think earlier, Patrick, when you responded to the question about the investment, you kind of highlighted, one, you're building out a lot of space for your highest value customers, and I would think that's the tower.
Then two, you're building out things like the arena that would maybe appeal to that more mass table play, the non-rolling chip volume. One, is that kind of the right way to think about it? Then two, just in terms of that incremental tower appealing to that high value customer.
It would seem like if you experience a quarter like you just did, where sometimes those customers just don't show up. Maybe help us understand why you need that excess capacity. Is it there's incremental customers out there that you just need to entice to the property with something new and more exciting?
I'll stop there. Just help us kind of bridge that divide between those two competing directions. Thanks.
So, really appreciate the question. Our highest tiers of customers have been growing, both in Singapore and in Macao, and they're younger, and they're people we've never seen before. There's been a lot of wealth creation in Asia over the last 5 years.
A lot of the people who are creating this wealth want to experience travel, want to experience tourism, want to experience hospitality at the highest level. They want to experience great things, and they're coming to us. Our problem is, particularly during peak periods, we don't have enough capacity.
We see that today, never mind 4 years from now when this thing opens. Our goal is to really create the best hotel that's ever been created. We hope it's the best hotel in the world.
We've benchmarked against a lot of high-end properties, including our own. Our goal is to create something that includes wellness, that has a residential feel, and that feels very special and very unique in terms of its approach, in terms of its service levels. That will allow us to have more of these high-value customers show up more frequently.
If you remember, when we opened the renovation in early 2025, we took our suite count up from 132 to about 770. That allowed us to have this step function growth in earnings because we were able to accommodate these high-value patrons in a way that we never did before. They are out there.
Now we will have more of that capacity. In a quarter like this, as I said before, I believe this was aberrational. We had people who did not show up, but the good news is they are out there.
We have great products, we have great services, and now with this tower coming online in a little under five years, we will have the ability to have more of them in the building with more unique experiences and take advantage of the growth and wealth creation in Asia and the experiences that these wealthy people want to have. I will tell you that that arena is going to be very special, because if you look at the amount of entertainment tourism that Singapore does today, and the capacity of hotel rooms around us, and the great infrastructure to travel from all around Southeast Asia into Singapore, we feel that being able to program that arena will be a very powerful tourism driver and a very powerful MICE space. The good news is, depending on stage configuration, it has about 15,000 seats.
If the stage is really big, it will have a little bit less, but that is the idea. We will be able to put our highest value patrons in there in very special VIP areas. We will be able to have local Singaporeans have an unbelievable music experience and everyone in between, including our mass customers that show up.
We are very excited about that as an asset that will help create high-value tourism visitation, not only to our property, but also to Singapore.
Appreciate the color. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is coming from Timothy Chow from Citigroup. Your line is live.
Thank you, management, so much for taking my question. My first question is about actually the mass hold rate, because I see that, especially for Londoner and also Marina Bay Sands, the mass hold rate does seem unusually low. I understand that management doesn't really adjust for the mass segment for the hold rate.
I'm just wondering if would we say this is actually mostly luck driven or are we seeing shortening in both stay and players?
Thanks for the question. For Macao, yes, the lower hold experience at The Londoner was primarily due to playing unlucky at the super high-end segment of the premium mass. Then to be fair, in Marina Bay Sands, we also experienced some negative luck factor within the non-rolling drop.
Thank you so much for the color. The other thing is about the Chinese offshore trust issue and overall tightening of outbound investments, and the impact on both Macao and Singapore. I believe management has already touched on this topic a little bit earlier, but just trying to get more color from you, if I may.
Do you think the hit we are seeing now is something structural or temporary that we are still hopeful that the gaming appetite from Chinese players will recover soon? Thank you.
We don't have any specific comment on the tax issue. There is a confluence of many macro factors that are converging that can impact the demand levels. I think as Patrick has referenced very well, there's huge amount of demand creation through the wealth creation and growth over the past several years, and that will continue and that will positively impact both markets.
We're very confident of that, and that's why we continue to make the investments we're making in the product uplift, as well as the infrastructure and the service levels of our business. We continue in that strategy, and we are very confident that the demand cycle will come through in our favor over time.
Thank you so much for the color.
Thank you. That completes our Q&A session. Everyone, this concludes today's event.
You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.
Submit Feedback
US
IE
IN
AU
JP
BM
CA
