It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that casino operators are experiencing some of the roughest times most have ever had to deal with. The coronavirus pandemic has flipped the gaming industry, and plenty of others, upside down and left companies scrambling to figure out how to cover their bills. Wynn Resorts, which has already had to spend the past couple of years righting the wrongs committed by its founder and former CEO Steve Wynn, is facing new challenges because of COVID-19, and the road to recovery just got a lot longer. Its Wynn Macau subsidiary has reportedly substantial losses for the first quarter of the year, and the leak still hasn’t been plugged.
In a financial update submitted today, Wynn Macau announced that it saw a loss of $154.2 million for the first quarter. A year ago, it was able to happily report a profit of $190.6 million, so the difference is quite substantial. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interested, taxes, depreciation and amortization) stayed on the right side, though, and was right at $29.4 million. Still, despite being positive, it was a drop of 92.4% from the $386.5 million from the first quarter of last year.
Wynn Palace suffered the biggest decline in operating revenue, falling from $726.6 million to $259.5 million from Q1 2019 to Q1 2020. This marked a 64.3% decrease, which was slightly worse than what the Wynn Macau property reported. Its operating revenue went from $523.9 million to $229.5 million for a year-on-year decline of 56.2%.
The good news is that Wynn Macau has liquidity at its disposal to help offset the prolonged absence of casino traffic. According to JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd. analysts, “Wynn Macau had US$1.8 billion of available liquidity as of end-April. As discussed previously, daily operating expenses’ burn is US$2.4 million to US$2.6 million per day.” As a result, Wynn Macau’s liquidity “is enough to weather through 1.5-plus years of zero revenue.”