Two Way Hard Three | Las Vegas Casino & Design Blog

I just glanced at these numbers, but will study them later and listen to the call later. But from my first look, it appears that Venetian Cotai, did substantial business.

Well, Venetian Macau is doing very well, by about any standard you wish to measure it on. I was pretty surprised to see it running at 89% occupancy rates already, I am not sure if people realize this thing is in the middle of nothing, surrounded by construction sites all around as far as the eye can see in about every direction. The property did not make a boat load of money, but it made money, and its sure to make boat loads in the future. I don't know that Venetian will ever own the VIP market, but for the mass market, this place looks like its going to do very well. Imagine when Mirage opened in 1989, nothing had ever been built like it, and nobody had ever seen anything like it. Now lets move forward to 2008, the Venetian Macau is like that for Asians, many asians have never been to LV, and many never will, but going to Macau is very doable, and this property will be the property so see for people.

I think Wynn has been taking a wait and see attitude on Cotai. I think he intends on building there, but I think he wanted to see some full quarters from Venetian first, to see how it would do in its early stages. I don't think anyone ever doubted the success of Venetian Macau, but I do think, its doing much better much sooner, than most people expected. Its doing far more business, that I expected to see this soon. So hopefully once Wynn Resorts sees these numbers from LVS camp, they will move forward full speed with their Cotai property. I see no reason for him to wait, even if he started construction today, he's still 30 months away from opening it at the soonest. I think Wall Street was ok with Wynn waiting on Cotai, but after seeing these numbers, they are going to want to see some type of action pretty quickly.

You do have to wonder how LVS can keep up with all of their growth, they have property after property under construction, and spread all over the world, its just amazing, actually. Its going to take a ton of management to run and operate all these properties. I find their Singapore property to be the most interesting of them all.

Brian, didn't Steve Wynn say during the last Quarterly Conference Call, or in an interview with Steve Friess, that he was moving full speed ahead on Cotai? He wouldn't give any details as I recall, other than Wynn Cotai would be the "finest resort/hotel in the world" or words to that effect. I bet we learn more in the next month or two.

The LVS Call transcript is available at Seeking Alpha if you want to review anything you heard yesterday.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/63058-las-vegas-sands-q4-2007-earnings-call-transcript?page=1

Yes Wynn did say that, but he's been saying that for several quarters now. I think he was saying that to please the markets. What was really happening, is he was buying himself time to see how Venetian would really do this early on. After seeing these numbers, I'm sure he is ready to move full steam ahead now.

Wynn and LVS are both up over $7 currently, on a day when the market is down over 200 points, that is a good sign.