Caesars might sell a Las Vegas Strip resort next year, CEO says
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An exterior view of Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip Dec. 26, 2017.
Wednesday, May 5, 2021 | 9:07 a.m.
Caesars Entertainment still plans to sell one of its eight Las Vegas Strip resorts but will wait for the market to further rebound from the coronavirus pandemic before it does, the company’s chief executive officer said.
Caesars officials have said since the company’s merger with Eldorado Resorts that they plan to sell a Strip asset.
“We remain convinced that it does not make sense for us to market an asset until we can market it off the cash flow that we’re doing with it, not off a bridge to what we think we can do with it,” Caesars CEO Tom Reeg said.
Reeg said it’s possible a sale could happen in 2022.
A potential buyer, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, looked at a Strip property before coming to terms on a $650 million deal announced Monday to buy the Palms, according to its CEO, Laurens Vosloo.
Vosloo declined to say which Strip property the band was considering.
For the first quarter of the year, Caesars posted a net loss of $423 million after collecting $1.7 billion in net revenues for the three months that ended March 31.
The company recorded a net loss of $173 million during the first quarter of 2020.
In the Las Vegas market, revenues were down just over 39% year-over-year, from $822 million during the first quarter of 2020 to $497 million during the opening quarter of this year.
Caesars officials said they expect business in Las Vegas to continue to improve as the year goes on.
“The numbers don’t tell the story this quarter,” Reeg said. “We had Illinois and Pennsylvania still closed when we started the quarter. In Nevada, we didn’t have the state open to 50% until two weeks were left in the quarter, so we saw demand build through the quarter.”
In a memo following the earnings call, Carlo Santarelli, an analyst with Deutsche Bank, called the tone of the call “bullish,” adding that he has Caesars stock squarely in the “buy” category.
