Wynn Macau says it is losing more than US$2 million a day amid casino closures

Wynn Macau, one of Macau’s six gaming concessionaires, said the closure of the special administrative region’s casinos was costing it between US$2.4 million and US$2.6 million a day, most of it towards maintaining more than 12,000 staff.

The two hotels under the company, Wynn Peninsula and Wynn Palace (Cotai), as well as a couple of restaurants were open for the “few remaining guests” in Macau, Matt Maddox, the chief executive of Wynn Resorts, which operates these hotels along with Wynn Las Vegas and Wynn Boston Harbour, said in a fourth quarter earnings conference call on Friday.

The casinos will close for 15 days to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus after a hotel worker was infected locally, Ho Iat-seng, Macau’s leader, said on Tuesday. In a note published just after this announcement, investment research and institutional asset management company Sanford C. Bernstein said the news around the coronavirus and Macau gaming would get bleaker before it got any better, with stocks likely to be under pressure in the short term.

In a sign of near-term challenges the casino operators face, Melco Resorts said on Friday it was stopping a planned share purchase of Australian gaming and entertainment group Crown Resorts, which would have doubled its shareholding. Melco said, in light of the shutdown, it would “reassess all noncore investments to be made in 2020”.

Wynn Macau said it recorded a 11.7 per cent year-on-year decline in adjusted property Ebitda to US$348 million in the fourth quarter. The adjusted property Ebitda fell 12.6 per cent for 2019, from US$1.58 billion to US$1.4 billion. Meanwhile, the casino revenues from Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace fell 15.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2019, compared with 2018. The net profit for the quarter fell 2.1 per cent.

Wynn Resorts recorded a net loss of US$72.9 million for the fourth quarter, down from a net profit of US$464.9 million in the fourth quarter in 2018.