Caesars went bankrupt because it was part of a heavily leveraged buyout just before the last major financial crisis. It’s been ten years since the last major financial crisis, and Caesars has emerged from that near-death experience leaner, a little bit wiser, and hungry for growth. If it wants to survive the next financial crisis, the best thing it can do is stay conservative and lean out its balance sheet as fast as possible, balancing shareholder expectations and financial health, leaning a bit more heavily towards financial health.

This may not be possible, because shareholders may not stand for it. They want to see growth and they want to see it now, and so does Caesars management. I can’t blame them. Going for growth is fine as long as it’s cheap, but now is definitely not the time to incur more debt or risk for the sake of expansion. According to a report in Bloomberg published in July, expansion is exactly what Caesars is going for:

Las Vegas-based Caesars is chasing opportunities in Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Dubai, [CEO Mark] Frissora said. A planned casino in South Korea catering only to foreigners is still on track, he said, despite a Chinese restriction on travel to the country due to Seoul’s deployment of an antimissile system.

If this was just Frissora sounding off in order to generate some excitement about the company after a long, tiring, depressing bankruptcy, then fine. But expanding into these countries is going to be a problem when core markets in Las Vegas and Atlantic City are at risk of further deterioration.