Caesars CEO leaving just as the company turns a profit

Casino operator Caesars Entertainment Corporation (CEC) is bidding goodbye to its CEO, just as the company begins posting actual profits.

On Thursday, CEC reported revenue of just under $2.2b in the three months ending September 30, a gain of 120% from the same period last year, while also posting a net profit of $110m versus a $433m loss in Q3 2017.

As always with CEC, one needs to get out a slide rule to gauge the actual financial picture, given the convoluted subsidiary shell game that CEC played for several years following the 2015 bankruptcy of its main unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co (CEOC), which was finally resolved late last year through a complex restructuring.

On an ‘enterprise-wide’ basis, which assumes that all the pieces of the CEC/CEOC puzzle were always in the same box, revenue was up only 2.9% and adjusted earnings were down 2.7% to $616m. And that’s including contributions from the Indiana casinos formerly belonging to Centaur Entertainment, which CEC acquired this year.