Afternoon. My name is Mike, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Las Vegas Sands Second Quarter 2016 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Daniel Briggs. You may begin your conference.
Thank you, operator. Joining me on the call today are Sheldon Adelson, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rob Goldstein, our President and Chief Operating Officer and Patrick Dumont, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the call over to Mr. Adelson, please let me remind you that today's conference call will contain forward looking statements that we are making under the Safe Harbor provisions of federal securities laws. The company's actual results could differ materially from the anticipated results in those forward looking statements.
In addition, we may discuss non GAAP measures. A definition and a reconciliation of each of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures is included in the press release and also at the end of our earnings deck, which is available for your use during the call on our Investor Relations website. Finally, for those who would like to participate in the question and answer session, we ask that you please limit yourself to Please note that this presentation is being recorded. With that, let me please introduce our Chairman, Sheldon Adelson.
Thank you, Dan. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased we continue to execute our strategic objectives during the quarter and despite the diminished but continuing challenges in the Macao market, we again delivered a solid set of financial results with company wide hold normalized EBITDA reaching $954,000,000 This resilience and consistency in cash generation reflects both the strength of our business model and the geographic diversity of our cash flows, which in turn underpins our balance sheet strength. Accordingly, we can and will continue to return excess cash to shareholders while maintaining our ability to invest in new development opportunities. In Macau, our whole normalized EBITDA margin expanded in the Q2 by 160 basis points versus the prior year quarter and by 100 and 20 basis points compared to the Q1 of 2016, again reflecting our continued success in cost management.
At the same time, despite the significant year on year increase in competition on Cotai, Our 2nd quarter mass gaming volumes at both Venetian and Sands Cotai Central were more or less consistent with prior year. It is encouraging that in June, our Macau properties experienced a year on year increase in both mass gaming volumes and revenue, marking the 1st month of year on year growth in mass gaming since September of 2014. I was asked when I announced in January, why I thought the market was about to stabilize or that it was stabilized. This is a validation of my expectations at that time. June is the 1st month that we experienced year on year gains.
So I think stabilization appears to be here. I mentioned in January of last year that I believe we were seeing the first signs of stabilization in the Macau mass market. Our mass revenue growth in June despite the arrival of new competition on Cotai represents an important data point supporting the ongoing stabilization of the Macombas market. At Marina Bay Sands, quarter 2 adjusted property EBITDA was similar to prior year. MBS has continued to dominate the competitive landscape with its share of whole normalized EBITDA increasing to 70 4% in quarter 1 2016 versus 65% in quarter 1 2015.
Likewise, our share of EBITDA in Macao also continues to increase. On a trailing 12 month basis through March 31, 2016, Our share of EBITDA in the 6 operator market increased to 37%, up from 34% 1 year earlier. That's more than double our fair share. Because of our industry leading investments in MICE based integrated resorts in both Macau and Singapore, which places up in the pole position when it comes to emerging market opportunities, we are unique in the absolute scale of our cash flow as well as our dominant share of the industry's cash flow. Scale, diversity and critical mass allow us to outperform our competitors.
This unique ability to generate consistent and industry leading cash flow in turn underpins our balance sheet strength. That balance sheet strength is 2x net debt to EBITDA at the end of the second quarter allows us to stay fully committed to our development plans while continuing to return excess capital to our shareholders. Again, this is unique in our industry. Our retail mall portfolio in Asia is another unique differentiator. For 2015, the operating profit of our malls in Macau and Singapore reached US0.5 billion dollars I'm pleased to highlight that despite the downturn in luxury retail in Greater China, our Macao mall revenues still grew by 7% during the first half of twenty sixteen.
I'm extremely excited about the upcoming opening of Parisian Macau. We're well on track and I'm pleased to announce today that we plan to open the Parisian on the 13th September about 7 weeks from today. I have not a shadow of doubt that the Parisian will replicate the success of The Venetian as another themed iconic and must see integrated resort destination for Macau's visitors. The Venetian Macau remains the iconic must see integrated resort destination Macau welcoming over 30,000,000 visitors annually. That's almost as many visitors, 32,000,000 as the market as a whole.
Despite all the headwinds and challenges in the Macao market, the Venetian Macao produced $244,000,000 of EBITDA for the quarter, essentially flat against the prior year. I believe that this is another indicator of a stabilizing mass market in Macau. The positioning of the Parisian Macau caters well to both the current Macau market conditions and the long term growth trends in Chinese and Hong Kong tour. The Parisian will be a themed premium destination with the aspirational appeal of its public spaces, attractions and amenities is combined with affordable hotel accommodation, providing a complementary offering to the All Suite Hotel at The Venetian dotcom. Our preopening marketing efforts are progressing nicely and videos and promotional pieces featuring the social media have achieved well over 140,000,000 reads over the last month.
Our existing portfolio has clearly enabled us to hold our own amidst new competition And I'm extremely confident that with the opening of the Parisian, we will see growth in Macao. With respect to consensus and profit margin for our Macao operations, Rob and Patrick can elaborate on this later. Suffice to say that we are on track to meet or exceed the targets we set out for you previously. To recap, we achieved annualized savings of an excess of US250 $1,000,000 as we exited 2015 and we projected that we would achieve an additional US60 million dollars of cost savings during 2016. As of the end of June, we are well on track to meet or exceed those projections.
In addition, we will achieve approximately $140,000,000 of cost avoidance on an annualized basis with the opening of the accretion. Now let me give you some additional highlights of our results in Macao for the quarter. For quarter 2, hold normalized EBITDA in Macau was nearly US500 $1,000,000 down only 2% against the Q1. Despite the overall Macau gross gaming revenue, GGR declining sequentially by 8%. All normalized EBITDA margin in our Macau operations improved to 33.3%, an increase of 160 basis points against prior year, primarily reflecting cost efficiencies.
I'm pleased that since quarter 1 of 2015, we've been able to maintain high levels of market share despite new competition, while controlling costs, increasing labor productivity and continuing to invest in destination market marketing in China and in development programs for our local employees. Encouragingly despite the significant increase in gaming and hotel capacity compared with the prior year's quarter, Our 2 flagship properties on Cotai Venetian and Sands Cotai Central both held their own against the new competition in the mass gaming segment. Non rolling drop at Venetia was almost flat against the prior year, while SCC's non rolling drop increased by 3% against the prior year. Again validating our belief that the Macao mass market is stabilized. While competition in the hotel cash sales market has increased, particularly in weekdays and empty periods, we continue to benefit from the scale of our hotel room inventory.
In a market where peak periods, the weekends and holidays matter more than ever before, and where mass market customers generate the lion's share of future revenue and profit growth, We believe our capacity advantage will be further amplified when the Parisian opens. In the first half of twenty sixteen, Chinese public holidays represented 10% of the calendar days, but more than 20% of our With the completion of the Parisian, we will have almost 13,000 hotel rooms and 4 interconnected resorts, over 8 40 stores across 4 shopping malls, 2,000,000 square feet of meeting and exhibition space and 4 performance and event venues, including our Venetian Cotai arena, which can be utilized either for our MICE business or for major entertainment events. This is the only MICE based integrated resort complex of this scale in the world. Business and leisure visitors to Macau will be able to enjoy all of this and more under one roof at one destination without having to go outside to connect with 6 different properties. I believe this will help to increase the tourist average length of stay in Macau.
It is encouraging that the 1st 5 months of 2016 based on data provided by the statistics and census service of Macau, the number of visitors in Macau who stayed overnight at the hotel increased by 12% compared with the prior year, even though overall visitor arrivals decreased by 1% during the same period. I believe the Parisian Macau with its premium and iconic destination of beer coupled with affordable and plentiful accommodations will help drive sustainable growth in overnight visitors to the Cotai Strip. We remain fully committed to playing the pioneering role in Macau's transformation into Asia's leading business and leisure tourism destination. Our track record is being transformative, pioneers and MICE retail and entertainment speak for itself. In summary, we regard it as a privilege to contribute to Macau's success in realizing its objectives of diversifying its economy, supporting the growth of local businesses, providing meaningful career development opportunities for its citizens including through our Sands Academy and reaching its full potential as Asia's leading business and leisure tourism destination.
We opened the Sands Academy at the Adelson Advanced Education Center nearly 10 years ago in conjunction with the 2,007 opening of the Venetian Macau. We're extremely proud that tens of thousands of local Macau employees have received training, development and continuing education through our Sands Academy educational and development programs. We have steadfast confidence in both our and Macao's future success. Now moving on to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. We delivered a solid quarter at Marina Bay Sands with EBITDA of $357,000,000 Old normalized EBITDA was $320,000,000 and was impacted by lower table game revenues volumes.
The hotel continued its strong performance while our retail mall continue to outperform the Singapore market. Now on to my favorite subject, the return of capital to shareholders, the dividends. Early in the year, the Las Vegas Sands Board of Directors approved a 10.8% increase in our recurring dividend program for the 2016 calendar year to US2.88 dollars for the year or $0.72 per quarter. We remain committed to maintaining our recurring dividend programs at both Las Vegas Sands and Sands Jena. And we remain committed to increasing those recurring dividends in the future as our cash flows grow particularly with the opening of the Parisian.
At the same time, we will remain opportunistic in returning excess capital via our share repurchase program. While we chose not to repurchase any stock in the quarter ended June 30, we look forward to continue to utilize the stock buyback program to return excess capital to shareholders and to enhance long term shareholder returns in the future. Our industry leading cash flows, geographic diversity and balance sheet strength enable us to continue these recurring dividend and stock repurchase programs while retaining ample financial flexibility to invest for future growth and pursue new development opportunities. This is the conclusion of my prepared remarks. Thank you for joining us on the call today.
We're now prepared to take questions.
Your first question is from Joe Greff from JPMorgan.
Good afternoon, everybody. Sheldon, probably what intrigues most investors on this call are your comments on the math performance in June. Can you talk about how your mass segment performed relative to the market's mass segment performance? Was there a big difference between the base and the premium mass in June? And then while we recognize July is far from over, can you talk about whether that June mass segment performance has continued thus far into July?
Hey, Joe, I'm going to take that. It's Rob. Our business in June definitely ticked up. We're seeing strong. I think we're the lucky people to have all this capacity, time when capacity appears to be very important, the weekends and holidays, that's always been a summer trend for us and we're seeing it and we saw it in June.
So we saw a strong year on year growth for the first time in a while and very encouraged by it. I don't want to go into the numbers for July, I'll stay away from that. But I think June is beginning of the summer season. As you know, our model is predicated on size and critical mass. And that demonstrated very well for us the results in June because I think the weekend is very busy and that I believe that will continue this summer although we're not going to comment about July at this time.
But yes, we did see a nice uptick in June for the first time in a while.
Okay, great. Then my follow-up question is with regard to Parisian opening on 13th. I guess how much of a staggered opening is it? How much do you open with initially in terms of room capacity, gaming capacity, other non gaming capacity?
Yes, we're taking a different approach. You're opening it totally open everything. We've tried in a few different ways, but this time we have all the rooms, we have I think last time I talked to retail folks for us in Macau about 90% of the retail keys will be opened, the doors will be opened, the gaming floor is fully operational. I think we're going to have a pretty much 100% opening at this point unless something is off the rails with approvals, but we feel pretty confident that the building will look fully represented. And if you haven't seen it in person, it's pretty astounding.
The casino floor is terrific and the Eiffel Tower is already on. So we're in pretty good shape September 13.
Great. Thanks so much guys.
The next question is from Shaun Kelley from Bank of America.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Sheldon, I think in the prepared remarks, you mentioned something about cost avoidance for the Parisian. I was wondering if you could possibly give us a little bit more granularity about just the overall magnitude of costs you're expecting to shift and maybe how much shifted in the second quarter as a part of the preopening expense line?
Hey Sean, it's Patrick. How are you?
Hi Patrick, thanks.
A little more color, we're looking at about 35,000,000 quarter in run rate cost avoidance that will shift over to the Parisian when it opens. There's about call it $14,000,000 or $15,000,000 that we experienced in this quarter. So that's the run rate. That's how we got to $140,000,000 a year that we referenced in our prior earnings call.
Great. Thanks. And could you just give us maybe a
little bit of granularity on sort of the total employees that you think are going to sort of backstop that number?
You mean total magnitude of employees?
Yes, that will shift and then what you're sort of targeting for headcount to run The Parisian at opening?
It's about 3,500 context. We don't have the I'm not going to get into the exact specifics because that'll move around a little bit, but think of it about 3,500 employees would be the shiftable number.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from John O'Neill from CLSA.
Thank you. I'd like to just kind of dig into this June growth remark that was quite fascinating. As we think about and I think, Sheldon, you made this comment earlier that the customers staying at hotel year to date is up 12%. How do we think about spend per customer? What kind of trends are you seeing so far, especially in June?
Are you seeing any meaningful uptick in spend?
John, I'm not sure I'd break it up by it's Rob, by the way. I wouldn't break it up by spend for customers because we're seeing stronger occupancy, stronger overall visitation. I'm not prepared to break it up by customer spend, but clearly something good happened in June for us in the market. Our occupancy picked up. Our gaming floors are busy, especially weekends.
And again, we think the critical mass issue here, we have the capacity in the gaming side, the retail side, the lodging side to house the customers. This is, let's be honest, Macau is morphing into the world's greatest mass market. Our critical mass approach in terms of lots of capacity in all the dimensions we talked about are there. So we're going to anticipate when the customers are there. And I think it's starting to show through in June.
Hopefully, we'll see the rest of the summer. It's been a trend of hours in the summer as we do better. And June was the beginning of that trend. So I'm not sure it's spend per customer as much as we're getting more occupancy, we're getting better customers in the hotel obviously and we're seeing some positive uptick in the gaming especially in the mass segments and premium mass.
Okay. And if I can follow-up with your comments on market share, you guys have held your market share pretty well so far. What are your expectations for what your market share would look like when Wynn opens in the next 1 month? And also expectations for what the Parisian would do in mid September after you open? That's it for me.
Thanks.
We can't say what Wynn is going to do. The clippings that I read say that it's a 20 minute walk from the Venetian to the wind. We're hoping that he will do very well, But we don't know and either to see how many tables we're going to be getting. But we have the greater capacity because we have more tables from other properties that we can move over. I don't to we don't I can't answer your question specifically about why we feel stabilization, but we see no reason whatsoever to believe that it's going to reverse again.
So if June hit the bottom or was the pivotal turnaround point. This we have no reason to believe that it won't continue. The Eiffel Tower on the what do you call it, the supplementary information? Yes, in the slide deck.
The what? In the slide deck, the supplemental slide deck.
The slide deck. Supplemental slide deck showed in orange with the bottom, I think it was red of the IFL tower, the bottom. Page 13 in the slide. Page 13. I'm a little it should have been sorry, right on 2 thirds of it and sort of orange at the bottom.
But we copied the original Eiffel Tower from Paris with the sparkling lights and I think we did something that I'm not sure if they do there. We have a rainbow color that starts off with one color starting to move up, replaced at the bottom by another one and continue to replace all the colors of the rainbow. It is strikingly beautiful and I have no reason to believe that it isn't going to be watched by every person who comes to Macau. The Cotai Strip is my idea and when we finally put in a pedestrian overpass, it's my vision. We will have albeit fewer properties than what I originally anticipated, but we will have the greatest under one roof never having to go outside to go from one place to the other for all the mice space, the shopping, the restaurants, the hotel rooms, the casinos, nowhere in the world will there be 13,000 hotel rooms interconnected.
So this is going to be like the Venetian Macau, a must see destination. The Chinese people like theme properties particularly geographically 3 properties that is the main reason for the Venetian being the must see property that it is and will continue to be. And the main reason why the provision will also be another must see preference. Hope I answered your questions.
Thank you.
The next question is from Thomas Allen from Morgan Stanley.
Hi. Can you give us more color on the softness that you saw in the Singapore gaming volumes, both on the mass and the VIP side? And then any color on just the outlook for that property would be helpful. Thanks.
Thomas, it's Rob. Clearly, the VIP volume, I think, reflects a global phenomenon slowdown at the $5,000,000 plus customer. The rolling volume was very soft relative to the past at $6,000,000 $7.40 We held well, which was encouraging, but volumes are off and it's off primarily in that 5,000,000 plus high end rolling customer. I think that's reflected in Macau as well as Las Vegas and maybe that's a global slowdown. I'm not sure how to explain that, but we've always said super concentrated and we could see a bounce, but I would think that's going to be a tough segment for the foreseeable future.
On the mass table side, clearly, we missed our usual 4,748. That's the first time in 2 years we've missed getting to 4,748. The question is, is that a short term blip? Is that a 90 day miss? Or is that a trend?
We don't know at this point. That's the more interesting one to me. I think the rolling business speaks for itself and that's explained all throughout the world. This one is only explained to our prop, but we've kind of done very, very well in that segment. We'll stay hyper focused in that segment.
We continue to have salespeople and product against that segment. Is our focus. And I want to believe we'll return in July August, September back to 4,748, that's we want to be. Our goal long term is 5 a day. It's a blip that we missed for this quarter, but I don't believe it's a trend.
I hope it's not and we'll have to wait and see what the future holds. The property overall, I think the other confusing part to me is our slot business was up and our starting to actually improve the Q1, Q1 year on year. So that's encouraging. Our retail business remains flat or actually up a bit. Our hotel business is very strong, leading the market in ACR and occupancy and RevPAR.
So the other indicators in Singapore are pretty positive. The miss is purely in the table game side and primarily in the mass table side. So no way to give you an accurate prediction of whether that bounces back to 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, I'm sure hoping so. But other indicators are positive. Again, rooms, retail, slot machines, ETGs, all positive, as you identify the misses in the table green side.
Thanks, Rob. That was helpful. And then just my follow-up question on the Parisian. I heard your comments earlier that you're going to open everything up on September 13. But given the current operating environment and the new supply that's coming in close to the same time as you guys are opening.
How are you thinking about the speed of which you expect to ramp EBITDA at this property versus your prior property openings? Thanks.
My feeling is it's very positive for us. I think the Wynn property is going to be a must see and I think Parisian will be a must see. I think cumulatively the market is very fortunate. Cotai will be the beneficiary. If anything, the Peninsula will suffer because you're going to have to see that property of Steve Wynn's building I'm sure is a must see and I know the Parisian is a must see, I've seen it.
And I think those properties combined will create something. I know some people are concerned about so much product at once. It might actually be very much a catalyst for the market and for people in China and from Hong Kong and throughout the region to come to Macau. So it does 2 things, it transfers the business up to Cotai, which we have the majority of our assets on Cotai, that's encouraging. And frankly, it also creates a must see Macau event to have 2 properties, dollars 7,000,000,000 plus of capital at one time.
It's pretty amazing actually. It takes me back to days in Las Vegas late '90s when Venetian opened, Bellagio opened, Mandalay Bay opened on top of each other, knowing we blinked as the market was strong. I understand your concern and obviously some people are concerned too much at one time. You might argue that and you might argue that it's a catalyst for more growth in Cotai in particular and for more visitations to Macau. Maybe it's the magic elixir that takes this market to a different place.
No matter what happens short term, I again, I believe we're anchored in a very fine place. We're in the mass part of this business. Sheldon's vision is always critical mass, 13,000 sleeping rooms, all that gaining capacity, lodging capacity, retail capacity on Cotai, which is still the world's greatest gaming market, pretty positive, pretty powerful. I think long term, we do very well in Macao. We're very bullish in long term.
You can argue about the relative merits of all that capacity at one time. I'm going to argue positively and hope for the best, but I know long term we're in a very, very nice position in CO2. Happy to be there and happy to open the Parisian.
Thanks, Rob.
The next question is from Carlo Santarelli from Deutsche Bank.
Thanks everyone. Good afternoon. Rob, maybe could you talk a little bit about the mix on the hotel side in Macau these days and kind of the strategy of cash versus comp room here going forward as the new competition comes on, obviously as you guys open Parisian?
Sure. I think we're a little different than most people, Carlo. As you know, we've been doing this for a long time. We've been focused on selling cash rooms for quite some time because no one else in the market had to. Most people are junket and high roller driven and rolling customer driven.
So the focus of most of our competitors has been non cash. We've been forced because of the amount of rooms that we put in the market to be cash driven. We remain in that place. We've got a very, very experienced sales team. We're well represented throughout the region.
And I think that bodes very well for our future cash sales. As you know, the market's been there's so much new capacity. And frankly, there's been some people learning how to sell hotel rooms to Macao because it's not been necessary in the past. And that's caused some rate pressure. But we remain convinced that our mix will be heavily skewed to its cash customers.
And we'll take a focus that we will be heavily skewed to its cash customers and we'll take a focus that we do in Las Vegas, which is to watch the casino comp side. We want to reward better customers and but I think our mix will remain heavily skewed to cash. We saw a very strong second quarter in the mice business is ramping up. I think again competitors will start to take more of a definite second look at mice because they now have a lot of product to sell. Let's be honest, this is going to be a fight like Las Vegas was years ago, midweek is going to be a challenge, weekends will fill, midweek and holidays will be strong for all of us.
It's the weekends and the midweek where the challenge is. But with our sales team and years of experience selling into that China, Hong Kong regional Pacific Rim, I feel pretty confident we'll do fine. I know there's rate pressure today. I think that will subside once the capacity gets absorbed. We have a lot of confidence in the quality of competition and the quality of product.
And keep in mind, it's a lot of hotel rooms for any one time to absorb so quickly. But look at the size of the market and with a 1,000,000,000 people in China plus and Hong Kong and Korea and Japan, etcetera, I think it's absorbed and I think it grows. And I think we're going to lead the way in terms of rate and occupancy and product diversification. And again, I think you can't dismiss the heavy retail concentration and diversity of product we have in our buildings. We have retail pricing up and down from very reasonable stuff to very fancy goods.
We have hotel price, which is very diverse. We have gaming price, which is very diverse. And again, that is the strength of the LVS, not the strength of Sheldon's critical mass vision, I think bodes well for the future for us. So we're very confident we'll sell rooms in that market. I do think also the Parisian, the theming, look at that is right for the market, just like The Venetian was right for the market.
It was only 8, 9 years ago we opened The Venetian and people thought you couldn't fill 2,700 rooms and it was impossible people to be a white elephant and obviously worked out pretty well. I think the same thing will happen in time for all of us in Cotai. I feel pretty good about it.
Great. Thank you for that. And then if I could just ask a follow-up on the mass side. It looks like the base mass and the premium mass performed similarly from a year over year perspective in the quarter. Would you guys if we thought about premium mass today and the theoretical required to reach that desired status, Has that changed tremendously year over year in terms of what's being classified there?
Or are you strictly kind of using same table minimum thresholds, etcetera?
Carla, we're not using the table minimum threshold at all. We're giving you that split on Page 11 in the deck based on the geographic area of the tables on the floor. So we have a VIP area and a mass area, and we haven't broken out or changed whatsoever the methodology with which we're presenting that specific information.
Right. Great. Thank you, Dan.
The next question is from Felicia Hendrix from Barclays. Alicia Hendrix, your line is open.
Sorry, had you muted. Thank you for taking my question and good afternoon. Rob, my question is a bit of a segue from your last comments and it's on competition. So if the Parisian and Wynn are as successful as you all believe they're going to be, do you envision your competitors getting more aggressive in trying to maintain share? I think there's a premise out there now that everyone's going to stay rational, but what we see what's happening with the room rates, you mentioned that.
So I'm not sure why I understand there's a belief that the competition isn't going to heat up.
I think it has heat up already in terms of room rate. You're seeing competitive pressures in rates today and that's probably remained intact until there's more cash demand in the market. I think the great thing about a mass market as you well know it's not as predatory in terms of pricing. It's not like you do in the high roller business where a gambler is sought after by 16 different people. It's a little harder to identify and to see the mass market.
The most pressure you're going to see I think gives me room pricing. And I believe you're going to see with Wynn and Parisian 2 new products that might bring more people to the market. I'm hoping that they can elevate the game there because in the end we all win if more people show up. Will there be pricing pressure? I assume there will be with all the new products in the market, but will it be absorbed and eventually prices trade back up?
I think it will. You've seen an ebb and flow in Las Vegas. You've seen that in other markets where we compete. And right now in Las Vegas, I think the market keeps moving upward and moving together. I think that will happen at Cal.
Is there short term risk? Sure there is. But longer term, I think people will respect the products they have there, the quality of product. We're big believers in diversity of pricing, diversity of product. And frankly we think our retail enables us to do things that other people won't be able to do.
Our retail pricing and diversity, our lodging pricing diversity, our gaming pricing and diversity gives us a very unique advantage and plus it's all in Cotai and as Sheldon referenced, it's all connected. So competitors may have to get there and figure it out. I think we'll be in a pretty good place and I think that that market long term, perhaps the peninsula might be the difficult portion in terms of pressure. I think Cotai will be pretty successful in the short term and long term.
That's helpful. Thanks. And Sheldon, just for a minute, moving outside of Macau, I was wondering if you could update us on your expansion plans in Singapore.
What are
the latest specifics with your plans there and where are you in the process? And then can you also update on your plans for the arena in Vegas, maybe cost, timing, anything you can share there?
We don't have an okay from the full government of Singapore at this time. We're hoping after the summer when vacations are completed that we'll approach the government again, see if we can get a final answer there, which we don't have at this time yet. As far as Vegas is concerned, I'm going to refer that to Rob who's been negotiating with MSG Medicine Squigot.
Well, first of all, we're delighted with the deal. We think it's great that we have a rather nominal capital contribution in our partners providing the bulk of that. We also agree we have the I think the strongest booking people in the business on our side of this trade. So we're very excited about the prospect. We'd like to think we get in the ground sometime in early 'seventeen with an opening sometime late 'eighteen, early 'nineteen.
We're excited about the closest proximity to our building. But again, we're thinking it's probably of 18 month to 24 month build once they actually break ground and they're opening I saw them yesterday actually and they're opening to break ground Q1 of 'seventeen. So late 'eighteen and 'nineteen, we think it's very impactful for this end of the strip And we think we're the big beneficiaries of we get first dibs on certain amount of tickets. And we love the deal in terms of the quality of our partners this thing, MSG and the Azoff Group, we're very excited about it. So big impact for us down the road in that.
We think it elevates room rates and elevates this end of the strip. Our neighborhood gets much better with this arena.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The last question comes from David Katz from Telsey Group.
Hi, afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask and I we may have discussed around this a bit, but on your Slide 11, which I think is very telling, have you been have you told us whether it was an increase in volume of patrons or an increase in the spend per patron, more so one or the other that's leading to this uptick that you have in both segments?
On Slide 11, David, we're presenting the quarter over quarter, pardon me, Q2 2016 versus Q2 of 2015 and they're both down about 8 percent in our math business. We specifically called out the June month to help people understand that there was growth in June for the first time in 21 months across our portfolio. So we didn't specifically talk about whether it was more customers. Rob actually addressed this pretty well earlier. I'll hand it over to him.
I think we should what we're trying to reflect here is again June growth both in mass and premium mass is there. And we're not going to break I can't break out for you whether it's spend, I don't know the answer, I would spend per customer or more visitations. I would tend to believe, I would may have guessed to be more visitations because again, the summer season ramps up aggressively there. And hopefully, we'll see it in July and August, September as well. But I think we're seeing the dance point has returned to some strength for the first time in quite a while, which is very encouraging in June and we're sure hoping it continues throughout the summer.
And that's our story in a nutshell. It's an encouraging sign after a couple of years of discouraging signs.
You said it. And if I can ask just quickly about Las Vegas' hold percentage, which looks like it was low both years and markedly so. Where is there any particular reason other than luck as to why that would be? Is there a change in the tenor of mix of games or something like that?
No, I wish it was like that, but unfortunately it's just luck. It's just the customers won, we lost. And when that happens, the whole percentage, it's just a very hard thing to explain to people not in this industry. There has been a lot of bad luck for us in Las Vegas. We saw this in Singapore.
There was a belief out there we couldn't win in Singapore because we had a couple of bad years, but it bounced back and our long term hold is right where it should be. In the end, it all flattens out. We just had a pathetic run of bad luck at the high end of the tables. And keep in mind, Las Vegas doesn't have the volume. What makes Las Vegas frustrating is if you bring a couple dozen customers and they play lucky, you don't have the volume which offsets the volatility.
The reason Macau and other places tend to be more stable is there's just huge amounts of volume. Las Vegas, you're letting people gamble here, disproportionately high to the mix in the floor. When it runs bad it's pretty difficult. When it runs good it's really wonderful. But this is simply a highly concentrated bunch of gamblers who played lucky, nothing more, nothing less.
The mix has nothing to do with it. They're all playing baccarat at very, very high levels and hence volatility increases with high levels of gambling. And it's a business we're in, in Las Vegas and it's the good news is it's becoming more lodging focused. I mean if you see our numbers in Las Vegas, our ADRs are just terrific and our occupancies and RevPARs, If it wasn't for that lousy table, we had a hell of a quarter in Las Vegas. So we'll bounce back probably in the rest of the year and hold a whole bunch higher.
So apologize, but there's no magic to it. It's not a mix issue at all.
Appreciate it. Thanks very much. Nice quarter.
Thank you. Appreciate that.
Are there any other questions?
There are no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to the presenters.
I want to thank everybody for calling. And we feel we had a pretty good quarter and we are very happy that there was 1 month that hit the bottom. And I think we're going to be, as I said earlier, we have no reason to believe that's not going to continue. And we are very, very excited about the Parisian. I was just good a few weeks ago.
And I have to tell you it is undoubtedly one of the most beautifully decorated public spaces I have ever seen in any hotel in the world and I go to a lot of hotels and this is really, really magnificent, both from the outside with the Eiffel Tower and the rainbow colors moving up to the top. It's just going to be incredibly high demand hotel and a must see. So thank you all for calling and we look forward to giving you another good quarter, even better quarter coming up. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.