Good afternoon. My name is Chris, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Las Vegas Sands Corporation's Q4 2015 earnings conference call led by Mr. Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference, sir.
Thank you, Chris. Joining me today on the call are Sheldon Adelson, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rob Goldstein, our President and Chief Operating Officer and Patrick Dumont, our Senior Vice President of Finance and Strategy. 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're 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.
Please see today's press release under the caption Forward Looking Statements for a discussion of risks that may affect our results. In addition, we may discuss adjusted net income and hold normalized adjusted net income, adjusted diluted EPS and hold normalized adjusted diluted EPS and adjusted property EBITDA and hold normalized adjusted property EBITDA and constant currency results, all of which are 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. Please note that this presentation is being recorded. We also want to inform you that we have posted supplementary earnings slides on our Investor Relations website for your use.
We may refer to those slides during the Q and A portion of the call. Finally, for those who would like to participate in the Q and A session, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question, so we might allow everyone with interest to participate. With that, let me please introduce our Chairman, Sheldon Adelson.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. And thank you for the introduction, Dan. I am pleased we continue to execute our strategic objectives During the quarter and despite the continuing challenges in the Macau market, we again delivered a strong set of financial results with company wide whole normalized EBITDA reaching US1.70 billion dollars For full year 2015 and against the backdrop of 34% decline in Macao's gross gaming revenue, we generated company wide EBITDA of US4.200 million dollars This industry leading cash generation reflects both the strength of our business model and the geographic diversity of our cash flows and underpins our balance sheet strength. Accordingly, we can continue to return excess cash to shareholders while maintaining our ability to invest in new development opportunities. Our unique MySpace integrated resort business model positively differentiates us from our competitors in terms of both financial performance and economic contribution to our host jurisdictions.
In Macau, our adjusted property EBITDA was up 7% quarter on quarter, enabling us to finish 2015 with our best quarterly EBITDA for the year despite the arrival of new competition. Our quarter 4 EBITDA margin in Macau improved both year on year and quarter on quarter. In Singapore, Marina Bay Sands delivered another strong result on a constant currency basis and excluding the property tax refund. In the Q4 of 2014, Marina Bay Sands whole normalized EBITDA was up 12% as mass swim per day was up 6% and reached another quarterly record when measured in Singapore dose. The Venetian Macau is today the iconic must see integrated resort destination in Macau, welcoming over 30,000,000 visitors annually and when we calculate all the visitation to all our properties, we have an average of 2:one visitations from 30,000,000 visitors.
So we last year welcomed 30 sorry, 61,000,000 or 62,000,000 visitors. That's an average of 2 visits to anyone at one of our properties for each visit tour. Despite all the headwinds and challenges of 2015, the Venetian Macao produced US1 $100,000,000 of EBITDA for the year and was the only Macau property to exceed US1 $1,000,000 in EBITDA sorry, dollars 1,000,000,000 plus in EBITDA. Indeed, the only other integrated retail property in the world that earned more than $1,000,000,000 in EBITDA for 2015 is at our Marina Bay Sands. I've not a shadow of doubt that the Parisian which is to open later this year will replicate the success of the nation.
As another same iconic and must see integration to our destination for Macau's visitors. In Macau, our share of EBITDA in the 6 operator market has continued to increase to around 37% in the 1st 9 months of 2015, up from 34 percent in 2014. In fact, in quarter 3 our EBITDA share climbed to 38%. In Singapore, our share of EBITDA in the duopoly market increased to 68% in the 1st 9 months of 2015 up from 65% in 2014. Because of industry leading investments in Cowen Singapore, 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 was my plan when I conceived of the Cotard strip. There was in one of the clippings I read this week said that the visitation or the GGR in Cotai, which is my baby, was 60% and the peninsula was 40%, when it used to be virtually 100% for the peninsula. A retail mall portfolio when exit 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, Macao Mall revenues still grew by 4% in 2015.
We are also clearly differentiated by the strength of our balance sheet. The balance sheet strength at 1.7x net debt to EBITDA at year end allows us to stay fully committed to our development plans while continuing to return excess capital to shareholders. Again, this is unique in our industry. Now let me give you some additional highlights of our results in Macao for the quarter. The quarter 4 sales China EBITDA was US581 $1,000,000 up 7% over the prior quarter.
On a whole normalized basis, EBITDA was US555 $1,000,000 up 3% over prior quarter. We do see stabilization in gaming revenue trends. In the mass gaming segment, our non rolling drop was down just 1% over the prior quarter. Despite new competition that is predominantly focused on the mass market, Our VIP rolling volumes were actually up 5% over the prior quarter, outperforming the 2% sequential increase in the Macau market. We continue to benefit from the scale of our hotel room in Missouri.
In a market where peak periods, the weekends and holidays matter more than ever before and where mass market customers will generate the lion's share future revenue and profit growth. We believe our capacity maintenance will be further amplified. Weekends and public holidays, which represent about 1 third of calendar days, generate almost half of our EBITDA. I was in Macau in mid December to officiate at the opening of the St. Regis Hotel.
Despite adding 400 keys to our portfolio, our hotels were running at virtually full occupancy during the entire Christmas and Western New Year period. More importantly, the impact on our premium mass gaming revenue in the Himalaya Casino at Sandskotai Central has been very positive. Our win per unit is in Dragons Palace. The high limit area in Himalaya is running at about $16,000 since the St. Regis opening, an increase of over 60% when compared to the 2 months prior to the hotel opening.
We will continue to make investments in Sands Cote d'Az Center. In addition to the opening of the St. Regis Hotel, we will also be expanding the retail mall in the northwest corner of Sands Cotai Central and will open both Planet J and the Monkey King Theater Show during the course of 2016. When Planet J is launched, it will be a one of a kind attraction, drawing families from across the region and beyond. We are also planning to connect the Parisian to Sansco to Azimuth with an air condition walkover bridge equipped with airport style moving sidewalks.
In respect to cost efficiencies, we achieved approximately US250 $1,000,000 of savings in 2015, well in excess of our US200 $1,000,000 goal. Old normalized EBITDA margin in Macau improved by 130 basis points to 34.7%, primarily reflecting cost efficiencies. I'm pleased that since quarter 1 of 2015, we have been able to maintain high levels of market share despite new competition, while controlling costs and increasing labor productivity. We believe margin can continue to expand in the future and in particular as the Parisian opens. Rob will elaborate further discussion later.
With the completion of the Parisian, we will have almost 13,000 hotel rooms in 4 interconnected hotels, over 8 40 stores across 4 shopping malls with the potential to add several 100 more stores in future development phases subject to government approval. 2,000,000 square feet of meeting and exhibition space and 4 performance and event venues including our Venice Kota arena which can be utilized either for our MICE business or major entertainment. Business and leisure visitors to Macau will be able to enjoy all of this and more under one roof in one destination. In order to go to 13,000 hotel rooms, all these retail malls, all the individual stores, you won't have to leave the building. You'll be connected with air conditioned pedestrian walkways, a one of a kind in the world.
I believe this will help to increase the length of stay for Macau as well as reduce overcrowding issues in the traditional tourism hotspots in Macau. I'm encouraged that based on the latest government statistics, average length of stay for overnight visitors to Macau actually increased in 2015 from 1.9 nights to 2.1 nights to 2.1 nights. I believe this will further increase as we complete the next stage of our development on the Cotai Strip. We remain fully committed to playing the pioneering role in Macau's transformation to Asia's leading business and leisure tourism destination. Our track record in being transformative pioneers in mice, retail and entertainment speak for itself.
And no less important is the decade long effect effort we have made in developing and promoting the local talent that is necessary to operate and grow our business over the long term. In 2,004 only 7% of our 900 or so managerial staff were locals. Today, 86% of our 2,700 or so managerial staff are locals. In summary, we regarded 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 and reaching its full potential as Asia's leading business and leisure tourism destination. We have steadfast confidence in both our and Macau's future success.
Now moving on to Marina Bay Sands. We delivered another strong quarter at Marina Bay Sands which despite the impact of the stronger U. S. Dollar generated whole normalized EBITDA of $375,000,000 As I mentioned earlier, on a constant currency basis and including the property tax refund we received in last year's Q4, a whole normalized EBITDA increased 12%. Mass win per day was $4,600,000 when adjusted for the currency effect, our mass win per day was up by 6% year on year, resulting in our best ever quarter in mass gaming revenues when measured in Singapore dollars.
That strong performance was principally driven by the successful execution of our strategy to bring foreign premium mass customers to Singapore. Now on to my favorite subject, the return of capital to shareholders, Yay dividends. We announced last quarter that the Las Vegas Sands Board of Directors has 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 China. And we remain committed to increasing those recurring dividends in the future as our cash flows grow.
At the same time, we remain optimistic in returning excess capital via our share repurchase program. We bought back $60,000,000 of stock in the most recent quarter the most recent quarter. We look forward to continuing to utilize the stock buyback program to return excess capital to shareholders and geographic diversity and balance sheet strength enable us to continue these recurring dividend and stock repurchase movements while retaining ample financial flexibility to invest for future growth and pursue new development opportunities. Thanks again for joining us on the call today. And now we'll take questions.
Your first question comes from the line of Joe Greff from JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Good afternoon, everybody. Sheldon, in your prepared remarks, you referenced that you do see stabilization in the mass segment. Can you talk about how you define stabilization, how you're looking at or what specifically you're looking at to gauge whether there's stabilization or not in the Q4 and in the 1Q? And then I have a quick follow-up. Thank you.
Well, if you look, it's just 70 years of experience that I have in business. 70 years. So after I made that verbal prognostication, which very hard to do prognostications particularly about the future. And I said to the inquirer, the person who was not to the newspaper, but to the person who was asking questions of me that I thought we had either hit bottom in the mass market or we are bottoming out. Ever since I said that I've been reading the issues, I've been reading from analyst reports and from other since China reports that I get daily, other clippings, the people are starting to believe that and some of the numbers put out and experienced through December January indicate to me that that's the case.
It's not the case with every operator, every one of the 6, it is the case with us.
Okay, great. And then, Rob, can you just talk about your outlook for Las Vegas? I know it means up to less to you than Singapore or Macau. But I guess our view on Las Vegas right now, it's a pretty good environment for room RevPAR growth and non gaming spend. I guess maybe can you share with us what you're seeing on the gaming side, particularly given some of the recent turmoil in the equity markets?
One thing in Las Vegas, Joe, is I agree with you. The direction is positive. It's an ADR or RevPAR story more than a gaming story. We have 7,100 keys right now in this environment and we think we can do over $400,000,000 a year annually if the market sold up. All the segments are performing well, FIT, group, wholesale.
And I think it's been a strong year for the lodging side. Gaming is a mixed bag. We are very pleased with our mass slot and table business in the last quarter. We're seeing softness in the high end, the premium because it emanates from China and Asia. I agree with you that the market in Las Vegas feels good, it feels favorable and it's a RevPAR of ADR lodging story more than anything else and visitation keeps climbing.
I think Vegas has been on sale for too long and perhaps the market is responding favorably to the price. The price movements in the right direction are good for everybody and we're certainly participating. So we're in line with you on that. We agree.
Great. Thanks guys. Good job.
Your next question comes from the line of Felicia Hendrix from Barclays. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Rob, hi. Great. On The Parisian, you've now seen 2 properties open in the market, neither have moved the needle in terms of the impact to the market and you guys are obviously excited about the opening of your property.
So I'm just wondering as you have observed the performance of both properties, what learnings, if any, can you apply to The Parisian? And also, I think there's been recent headlines that Wynn Palace might be delayed past June. Wondering if that could have any impact on your opening date for The Parisian?
Sean, you want
to take that? Yes. I've answered this question in previous earnings calls that I don't want to tell people what mistakes they made because in case they expand, I don't want my competitors to correct it. So all I could say is we think we're doing it right. And if they're not going to expand like we will, then maybe they know something we don't know or maybe they don't know something that we do know.
Well, maybe I can rephrase. In your prepared remarks, you said Rob was going to touch more upon some of the exciting things that you were thinking about the Parisians. So maybe Rob could touch on that.
Was it something I said before?
You did. In your prepared remarks, you said you were talking about the Parisian and then you said Rob will have more to touch upon that later.
I said that.
So Rob?
Yes, we see it pretty simple. I was there last week and without commenting on other properties, the Parisian is unique. It emulates the theme approach of the Venetian, which as Shaul alluded to is $1,000,000,000 property. The Venetian might be the most the greatest return on invested capital in this industry. And the fact is we think being on Cotai as a mass product with the kind of elements and attractions that I think will appeal to mass Chinese visitors, I think it is unique.
And I think when you walk on the floor as I did and you see the room product and the mass product we've created there, it's pretty special. I'd be really surprised that the Parisian doesn't do very, very well out of the gate. It's also on Cotai, which is not big positive. As the migration moves from the Peninsula to Cotai, it's got that built in advantage of having that. And I just think we have the ability with a theme product, with our margin focus, with our ability to be on Cotai, with will be 13,000 sleeping rooms on Cotai.
The Parisian is part of a family of success on Cotai, I think will be very strong. But again, I think the physical product when you walk through it you see that Parisian look and feel, it feels a lot like another version of Venetian, which I think is inherent advantage that can't be copied. So we feel very bullish about it. And with the opening of Wynn and Parisian next year, that migration of revenue from Peninsula to Cotai continues. So yes, we feel very good about it.
And that's our quote. You also mentioned the wind delay, possible wind delay. I don't know more than you do about the timing of Wind Palace. So I think you have to ask the folks at Wind about that. I just don't know any more than I've read in the clippings.
It sounds like they're still shooting for a summer opening, but I don't know.
No, I was wondering if that if they were delayed, if it would affect your opening timing?
No. We want to open as soon as we can. I mean, we believe the product will do very well. The sooner the better and won't delay our opening at all. We plan to be open as soon as we can.
If that's September, October, whenever it is, we'll open the doors.
Okay. And then you saved more than you expected this year or last year in 2015. How should we think about cost savings in 2016?
We'll keep trying, but I think the bulk of the cost savings are there for you to see. I'm not sure where else we can continue to be judicious about spend. We can look at all the areas of marketing entertainment, payroll, gaming reinvestment, OpEx, non gaming OpEx. Obviously everything is on the table, but we did $250,000,000 all in this year and we just want to keep moving in that direction, but we are hoping for a growth in gaming revenues to make it less challenging on the cost side. So we feel very good about the teams achieved this year and we'll just keep looking for more.
But again, the lion's share is there.
Okay, great. Thanks so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Jones from Union Gaming. Your line is open.
Excellent. Thank you for taking my question. First, it's been about the 10 year mark on Marina Bay Sands. I was wondering if you could comment about what your plans are for the Marina Bay Sands Mall at this point?
Well, you're ahead of us, Chris, but we opened in 10. So it's been we're on a 6 year operation there.
Okay.
But But you're talking about 10 years from the time the license was granted.
Right. Yes.
Well, we're 6 years into operation and I think the mall numbers there just keep getting better. We're very, very pleased with how it's performed. On a currency adjusted basis, it's up again and about 7% both in profit and sales. So feel really bullish. I was there last week and the mall is pretty much been remerchandised by our retail team in a very favorable way.
It's I think there's some softness in the Singapore retail market, but we're not feeling it. Both our luxury and our mass sales are up and feel very good about it. And it just keeps getting better. And that's our take on Singapore retail.
And just my quick follow-up as it relates to just development, given that Japan is delayed a little bit, sort of a question mark, what are you guys thinking about other development beyond that, whether it be South America, Brazil or back in the United States and New Jersey, any comments there? Thank you.
Can I finish on the what Rob said? Orchard Road, according to the clippings, was down across the board and Marina Bay Sands, the shops at Marina Bay Sands was up, were 100% rented and notwithstanding that the most popular street in all of Asia, Orchard Road in Singapore went down, the Marina Base, the shops of Marina Base Sands went up.
Thank you. As it relates to development opportunities outside of Macau and Are there opportunities perhaps in Asia or the rest of the world?
We continue to lobby in 5 countries in 4 countries, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and the newly elected either President or Prime Minister of Taiwan does not offer a lot of optimism for changing the previously approved Taiwan Strait, legalizing gaming, enabling payment in the Taiwanese Strait to the mainland, which there was discussion of before. The current head of the government said, I don't know if it's Prime Minister or President, said that at least the clipping say that she is anti gaming and not pro gaming. So we'll cross off Taiwan as a potential for the time being. But the Asians don't move very fast. So we are watching it.
We have people in various places representing us and as soon as something happens there, we'll be right there paying attention to it. We are interested in Northern New Jersey, but right now we don't have going by interested in buying out a casino in Atlantic City. It looks like Atlantic City Well, Atlantic City operators will have the first option to apply within 60 days with a plus a $1,000,000,000 plus program to open in Northern New Jersey. If that doesn't work out or they don't provide the components that non Atlantic City operators can provide, it could be that the government will reach out outside of the Atlantic City operators. We feel that with a MICE focused, a convention focused marketing theme and development theme, our business model that we would be a prime candidate.
You mentioned Brazil. We haven't gone to Brazil, but we're contemplating doing that. We're in touch with somebody down there who's got a business going, some Americans and been going for many years. And so we're going to look at that. But we have some concerns about inflation and about the currency and about the economy there.
So we think it's potentially a very good opportunity. And outside of that, we are interested in Atlanta. And I read a clipping recently, last week that the State of Texas is interested in getting rid of the 8 liners whatever they call them, of which there are tens if hundreds of thousands of slots. They're everywhere. And the possibility if that exists that we would be a candidate for one of the main cities maybe Dallas and Fort Worth or Houston, which would be the leading candidates for us.
So wherever there's an opportunity, we're looking at everything. We don't miss excuse me, we don't miss one.
One follow-up comment to Sheldon about New Jersey, we'd very much be interested if they want real multi $1,000,000,000 resorts that create bonafide tourism and nice opportunities and not just simply over tax slot volumes. We don't do that. But if that opportunity is there, we'd be keenly interested.
Perfect. Thank you.
You said the English phrase, keen, keen. But king about that, king, excited.
Your next question comes from the line of Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Maybe a little bit more of a theoretical question, but I think all of the economists out there currently are pretty focused on what's going on in the currency markets. And I'm curious to get your thoughts a little bit on what do you see the impact of a weakening RMB being both sort of on the fundamentals that you've kind of gone through so far in Macau? And more importantly, I think if we were to see a more material devaluation in the future, what you think some of the fallout or potential implications for Macau and Singapore could be?
I'll leave it that up to Patrick to answer.
So it's a very interesting discussion. I think the hardest part about it that we've seen in the last quarter is the change in our purchasing power of Sing dollars. So that as you noticed in our financials, we actually show a currency adjusted result from Arena Bay Sands. So that's the near term impact from the changing of the RV and the devaluation. I think long term, it's really hard to call.
I think it's hard for anyone to figure out exactly what the impact will be and how the currency may continue to devalue. The only thing is we're looking at hedging programs. We're speaking to economists and doing our best to evaluate the impact of the business. But in terms of long term impact on our customers, it's hard to say. The valuation of the currency could impact manufacturing economy there and drive further growth in their economy.
There are other people who have different views. So right now, we're just studying it and hopefully we'll continue to grow our business in the face of any currency changes that may occur.
That's helpful, Patrick. Maybe just one follow-up on it. Do you guys think you saw any impact just to the typical mass consumer due to a weaker RMB in the Q4? I mean, putting it differently, do you think actually numbers could have been a little bit stronger if you hadn't had an RMB headwind or is it too difficult to tell?
Sean, it's Rob. My sense is that we can't we really can't discern that at this point. Our Q4, our mass revenues were fine. Our retail spend was pretty good relative to the market. I think it's early to tell.
I think it's more of my personal belief is more economic concerns. If the people gamble in Macau felt more comfortable or feel they're going to do well financially, It's like any place in the world, you gamble based on what you expect your earning ability to be. I think it's too early to make that decision about renminbi and customers. I think we are seeing the CAL get stronger, but I think it's really the key thing for most of our customers is how what I heard from our people in the last week is how is my job, how is my business, how is the economy doing, that seems to the focal point.
When the mass market comes into Macau, they don't know about the currency exchange. I mean they need to transfer the RMB and it's not an issue with the mass market. They're not foreign exchange fixated. Yes, there are people who deal internationally are fixated with foreign exchange, but those guys are in the VIP category. And but the mass market, they are in so many RMB, It's the same rate of about 8 to the U.
S. Dollar and they could buy, they could buy, the Macau currency or they could buy the Hong Kong currency and play with that. So I don't think that it has a big impact on the mass market.
Great. Thank you all very much.
You're welcome. Thanks Sean.
Your next question comes from the line of Carlo Santarelli from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Sheldon, bigger picture, if you think about your balance sheet and capital needs going forward, which obviously after the opening of The Parisian will lessen and you try and conceptualize that with some of the developments that you mentioned and the likelihood of them coming, What is a net leverage level that you feel comfortable running the business and obviously delivering the capital returns that you guys have and we expect you to continue
to? It's higher than what it is today. If we're at a 1.7, would I say 1.7 or 1.9? 1.7. You got to understand coming from a poor family that I come from, they have tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars property with debt, which I'm fundamentally debt averse.
At 1.7 times, it's like a fantasy to me. If I were younger, I could have dreamt that if I knew that I'd ever achieve this, I could have dreamt about that. But I never dreamt that I could be down at 1.7 percent and some of our debt is at sub 2%. And I think the highest of our debt is of our 1st lien properties like 2.5 something like that. So I'm extremely happy.
And so I think we're far away. I'd be comfortable in my minimum level of comfort, which is still large, is somewhere between 2.53 percent personally. But I'm going to listen to the Board of Directors.
Great. Thank you. And one follow-up maybe Rob.
They don't listen to me.
Rob, and I think Sheldon mentioned in the prepared remarks, you guys had already achieved 2 $15,000,000 I think on the prior call, you'd mentioned $175,000,000 with upside to maybe $230,000,000 or so. If you think about that 215 and the buckets where it's come from, could you kind of talk a little bit about how you've parsed through that if it's predominantly labor etcetera?
The biggest number is payroll, carload and the second biggest number would be marketing entertainment costs. The 3rd biggest number would be non gaming OpEx about 20% and the smallest would be gaming reinvestment in OpEx. So it's kind of evenly divided among those 4 categories. As a reference to Felicia, I don't know if we've got a whole lot more room to grow in that in those cost areas. At some point you start cutting into the muscle instead the fat, but we're comfortable we can maintain it and we're continuing to probe for more opportunities.
A lot of people have taken on the entertainment and other issues to be pleased to run 1st in Macau. We're happy to cede control of those areas and be a ticket buyer versus a entertainment purchaser. So we're a little more conservative. I think we again, the majority is out of the business now. So I wouldn't look for a whole lot more growth as far as cost cutting.
And also I should reference the fact we're carrying an awful lot of people and dollars being spent on payroll as we move into the Parisian. That will shift that will be a big shift away from the operating side, the overhead SCL once Parisian opens up in the fall.
We already got rid of the guy who used to have multimillion dollar losses on entertainment for major performance, we already got rid of it because he called those brand builders. We already have brands, so we don't do that. We don't make those mistakes anymore.
Your last question comes from the line of Robin Farley from UBS. Your line is open.
Okay, great. Thank you. I have two questions. One is with Chinese New Year approaching, do you have any kind of observations about whether you feel like there is sufficient liquidity in the junket system to keep the number of junkets that are active there through that period? And then I have a question about the Parisian as well.
Rob, I was there with a number of the junket groups last week. I do think there's sufficient liquidity and I do think we've got sufficient gaming capacity because we're going to increase our I saw the accounts this morning. We feel like it's a good run up as far as room bookings and reservations, lodging and casino for Chinese New Year's. And we do think the junkets, the ones that are still standing and we with some of the top people though, we feel actually they're in pretty good shape and there's sufficient liquidity. Obviously, some have folded.
I think more will fold later this year. But the people we're doing business with, we're very comfortable with and those who have stopped doing business are paying their bills and performing admirably. So I feel good about that.
Okay, great. Thanks. And then Put
the words out of my mouth. Sorry, unhygienic. I'm sorry.
And then on the Parisian, I know you said you hope to open as soon as possible. But can you just maybe clarify, at this point, are there any permits or anything, any gating issues open, whatever that may open, whatever that may be? Is there are there other things outside of just the progress of your construction?
Instead of listing all of those, we can list the handful of things that are in our control. The government wants I believe the government wants us to open as soon as we can. That's the indication. That's the indication that we're getting. And but I think we will open.
Look, I haven't discussed that at length with my staff, but I'm personally thinking about the possibility of an early opening and partial opening. We just turned over a 1,000 rooms to operations from the construction department to start installing furniture, fixtures and equipment, FF and E. It's amazing that 8 months before a scheduled opening, which we're scheduling for September, that we're turning rooms over to operations to provide the finishes and install the FF and E. It's never happened before, I don't think in any property. And so our power and the rooms are going very well.
So if we can finish a lot of those, maybe if the opportunity presents itself, maybe we could do a partial opening. The summertime, excuse me, but our schedule opening is mid September. Now that could change because of weather of foreign labor or the government. There's nothing there's no indication that there's any major obstacle that the government is interested in putting in our place to prevent our opening. And I'll just tell you that the reason we're successful is because we build something different and interesting.
Beyond that, I won't give in because I once saw a movie about Houdini. It said that he didn't disclose his secrets. So I'm taking a hand out of there.
Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you.
No further questions?
No further questions at this time, sir.
Is that me? Well, we can either stop or give you answers without questions.
Thanks very much for your time.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.