Behalf of the company are Steve Winn, Matt Maddox, Scott Peterson and on the phone, Ian Collin, President of Wynn Macau and Robert Gansmo, CFO of Wynn Macau and Robert Gansmo, CFO of Wynn Macau. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
Before we get started, I just need to remind everybody, we will be making statements under forward looking statements under the Safe Harbor of Federal Securities Law. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Steve Winn.
It was very nice to have this call again. We moved up our date because we wanted to get the information out as soon as possible, so that you would know where we fit in the scheme of things. I think the numbers speak for themselves. We had a fine year. We even did better in Las Vegas, went from 2.40 or so to 2.70.
And I think that most of you, if I can anticipate some of the questions, would be asking what about Las Vegas. And we took a a careful look at January February because in these calls, we're always late for the quarter, but we're in 1. And I know that you'd like guidance on what we're seeing. And indicators, I've been fairly pessimistic in the past. If there was a recovery underway, it was dampened by the fact that there was a great deal of capacity added to Las Vegas at exactly the wrong moment.
City Center and Cosmopolitan added 9,500 rooms, almost 10,000 rooms to this inventory at a time when the city could least was at least able to accept that inventory. And in spite of that, our room rates are up a little. Our Our occupancy is okay. Our convention bookings are ahead of last year. I'm saying that these indicators are pointing up slots are still weak, but the indicators about visitation and room rate and convention bookings, which are very important for the mid week period, are pointing up.
Now having said that, I want to say that it's still very lackluster and disappointing, but I think that 11% is surely better than 10%. We were a company that said 10% was not going to be better than 9%, and we repeated it several times in this forum that we're having today. However, I'm going to say I think 11% is better than 10%. And if that's good news, then so be it. As far as China goes, Macau, that market is very robust.
And we're looking forward to getting underway with our new hotel in Cotai, which we finished designing. And I even have shown some pictures of the project. It's far the best thing we've ever done. And it's a breakaway property. It represents another generation of this phenomenon that we've come to know as the integrated resort.
It's an iconic building. I think of you in the analyst community will have a chance to see it now. Matt will show it to you when you come to Las Vegas or in some form or another, Samantha, we'll begin to show our competitors and everybody else what we've got in store for them. I think that's about it for now, Matt. Ian is on the phone.
I'll be glad to let my colleagues add their take on what's going on. The purpose of these phone calls is to answer questions and to the best of our ability give people a chance to know what to expect in our industry and with our company in particular. Matt, Ian, you're in Macau. Scott Peterson is here. We're all here.
Do you have anything
to add, Matt? What's your take on with the Chinese New Year in Las Vegas surprised us? We did not we had said to ourselves, okay, the Asian got real got real strong choices closer to home in Macau. Fewer of them are coming. And in spite of that, we had the biggest Chinese New Year we've ever had and Saturday night was the biggest night in the history of this building in terms of table win.
I mean we went over $16,000,000 at the tables alone. And in China, we had a night we'll all remember in my 40 odd year history. We had a casino table win of in excess of 46,000,000 dollars and slots and tables in 1 24 hour period. These kinds of things tend to stick with you. Of course, that has a lot to do with luck, I want to add hastily.
It sometimes goes the other way. A casino that can win tens of 1,000,000 of dollars can also lose tens of 1,000,000 of dollars and frequently does. With that, I'll let Matt add his comments or Ian.
Steve, I think you covered it. That's a good opening summary and I'd suggest we just open it up for questions.
Thank you.
Your
Just wanted to ask start maybe with Macau, Steve. Obviously, the results, particularly on the volume side were pretty incredible. But we've gotten a number of questions from investors, I think particularly recently as it relates to the junket and credit environment in Macau. So whether it's you or Ian, could you give us your sense of just kind of what is the latest on maybe the credit side there and your sense of junket repayment, junket liquidity and how
those relationships are doing right now? Okay. I'll be
glad to. And I think it's
the Macau, the credit balances outstanding with our associates in the junket business are very large. We in our own account, on our own account reserve 3% or 4% for bad debt. This is my let's see, 1973 is my 48th year, 30 8th, 39th year or something like that, 40 years. And we've never ever in the history of my company, both Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts have ever exceeded our reserve. We're very conservative about credit.
And our relationships are managed with the junket operators in exactly the same way. 1 of our parent company Board members is Linda Chen, who is the Chief Operating Officer in China and the President of Wynn International. When Linda graduated from Cornell University, I think she's on the call or if she isn't, she's close by. On the call today. Well, she's close by in China.
And Linda came to us straight from Cornell. She built in 1980 9. And she's been running our affairs internationally and of course guiding credit decisions in many respects for all that time. And she is a very conservative woman. And speaking of conservative women, Marilyn Spiegel, our President of our American Operations would be on the call today, but she I moved the call up and she was caught unaware of the schedule change and her daughter is having LASIK surgery to make her take on Las Vegas.
But as far as credit goes, we are conservative. We do not I stress that. We do not, and we do not, and we do not, we do not, we do not, and we do not, we do not, we do not, we do not, we do not, we do not, we do not I stress that, we do not and never have used credit as a marketing technique. You will see that in Macau and thinks they can jack up the credit. They do it.
They and thinks they can jack up the credit, they do it, it backfires, they get fired and the next idiot comes along and takes their place. Credit can't be used as a marketing tool. We give credit to people to accommodate them, people who are well deserving of it and that's how we regard credit and that's probably the reason why in 40 years we've never had the need to exceed our reserve. I hope that's responsive enough for you.
That's helpful. And just kind of following up on that, you did take a looks like a $13,000,000 bad debt provision in the quarter, Matt. Was that mostly in Macau or was that you kind of start across the two properties?
No, 11 of the 13 was in Macau and really that was a function of business volumes. So, if you look at we had significantly more business volumes, in particular, in our direct program in the 4th quarter and our just the way our calculation works, the aging calculation, that was the $11,000,000 came out. So it was not additional reserve. It was purely based on business volume.
We had such a jump in volume, we had to do it. Now our auditors if we're generous in our reserve or we're extremely conservative as we usually are, comes the last day of the quarter and they get with Scott or Robert Gansmo with Scott Peterson in Las Vegas or Robert Gansmo or Matt and they say, uh-uh, we see the collections, you got to adjust the reserve.
And just so you know, Sean, our reserve as a percentage of receivables is 47% right now in Macau, which is very, very comfortable.
How does that compare to the other operators do you think, Matt? Much higher.
That's helpful. And just one last one since you mentioned the direct business. Could you give us a sense of just kind of what your percentage is all right kind of indirect versus junket based VIP for the quarter and kind of how you think about that mix going forward? And that's it for me. Thanks everyone.
On a volume basis, it's always between 10% 15% and it was closer to the lower end of the range based on turnover for the quarter, both in the Q4 of 'nine and the Q4 of 2010. So, it's growing. The direct business is growing, but our junket business as we add junket has been
growing faster. We've been adding junket operators and we've got 1 or 2 more coming this spring. 2 more potential Yes.
We have 24 additional tables.
Yes. And I think that's it for a while, but we've got 2 junket operators coming on stream that you'll see in the Q2.
Great. Thank you very much.
Your next question is from the line of Joe Greff with JPMorgan.
Good afternoon, everybody. Steve, you talked earlier about the Cotai project being a breakaway property. I was hoping maybe you can give us a sense maybe internally maybe how that design development has evolved? And then if you can give us any sort of sense of your view on timing with respect to conversations you're having with the government that would be helpful? And then I have a couple of follow ups for Matt.
Well, it's taken me a little over a year with D. Ryder Butler, my design partner to draw the building. There's 2 of us to do it. And then Roger Thomas comes along and makes it look beautiful on the inside. When I say it's a breakaway property, this structure, this building and its arrangement would never ever exist in the Las Vegas market.
It would only be for Macau. It's designed as a result of our experience, which is maturing as time goes by to make the building extremely user friendly, convenient and beautiful with the people that we cater to, our junket operators, the public, all of our restaurants are organized in a way to be an entertainment and theater. Each of them is basically a theater with entertainment. The entertainment quotient of the hotel that we're a thing a thing you have to see to understand, but everybody who's seen it, they all have the same three letter response. They go, wow, there's no building that looks like this, there's no building arranged like this in the history of our industry.
We've always been sort of credited with leading the way in terms of the design of these facilities. And for Dee Butler and I and for Roger Thomas, this is a whole other level that we've gone to. And we could only have gotten there because we have 40 years of experience. We could only get there, because we've been in Macau for the past 9 years since the concession was constantly, happen in the happen in the Enclave, in the special administrative region. When we get this guidance from the government about entertainment and non casino attractions, we pay very close attention and we act accordingly.
That helps us again tailor the property to Macau. This building that we're going to show everybody in no way resembles anything that anybody's ever seen before. And I think that there's a limit to the verbiage that you can attach at a moment like this. It really needs a picture and a floor plan to explain it. But follow-up questions for Matt?
Matt, yes. Follow-up questions for Matt?
Matt, yes. I was hoping if
you can help us break out the cash balance between Macau and Apparent. Another question is the corporate expense was higher than what we had modeled and presuming that relates to the revenues and cash flow is tracking way above where people yourselves have modeled if you can help us understand what that corporate expense run rate level from here might be? And then we're getting questions about the table hold impact in Macau on EBITDA. If you could help us sort of understand that, but I'm kind of coming up with a math that would suggest that favorable table hold added somewhere between $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 of EBITDA in the quarter. If you can help us understand that, that'd be great.
Sure.
So, the at twelvethirty one, about half of the cash is apparent, little more than half. And the rest of the subsidiaries mainly Wynn Macau of the $1,300,000,000 If you look at corporate expense, we had corporate development activities actually that were ramped up in the 4th quarter. I would say a better run rate closer to the 3rd quarter, which was excluding stock based comp around $18,000,000 as the run rates going forward. So we just had some development activities in the Q4. And your what was
your final question, Joe?
The favorable hold impact on
EBITDA in Macau in the Q4? I mean, you can we never calculate that for you guys. You know
the range and you can see what we can we never calculate that for you guys. You know the range and you can see what we held. So, I'll let you
do that. Okay. Thanks, guys. Sure.
Your next question is from the line of Mark Drun with Morgan Stanley.
Hi, guys. Just one quick follow-up on Joe's question on Cotai. Do you guys have any rough range of when you could potentially
have Joe asked that question. I didn't respond. The government officials, Secretary Tam and Chief Executive, Fernando Choi themselves testified before the LegCo. And it was reprinted in the newspapers that the Macau's new property and SJM and MGM. And so we've had confirmation from the government about their desire that we go forward, remembering that in China, it's a country far older, far more established than the United States and things move at their speed.
And they're very meticulous about everything. And so we tend to have gaps while we wait for approvals. And but always that government is consistent. They tell you what to expect, what they're going to do and what they want you to do. And I met with I meet with them every time I'm there once a month and all my conversations have been confirmed what I've just said to you.
And I'm hoping that we can get started in March or April at the latest. It's a landfill, as you know, at Cotai. And so there's remediation that takes place for the foundation work that adds 6 or 7 months to normal construction time. But we're so in love with this building that if the government permits it, we will work more than one shift and make up time. I hope that answers your question.
But there is no issue about whether we're going to build the hotel or not and the government has said so.
Understood.
Your next question is from the line of Carlo Santarelli with Wells Fargo.
Hey, guys. If I could just follow-up on that, Steve. If I understand your timeline, could we expect possibly an opening in 2014? And then I just had maybe one follow-up on Macau. Thanks.
I think late 2014, early 2016 would be my best guess. But again, I have to wait for the government to give us the green light. These are not things that are under my control nor should they be. There are a lot of things that go into the development decisions in Macau at point with this government. They're very self conscious about how they want that city to proceed and what role we are to play in that procession.
And so you end up sitting there quietly waiting for the guidance and for the leadership to make up their mind on when and how you should proceed. They're very specific about all of this. And in a way, you perhaps get impatient, it's a very satisfying environment to be in, because you always know where you stand. I like that personally. I find that very comforting.
Understood. Thank you. And then I know you obviously gave a little data point there on Chinese Year, but could you guys maybe characterize what you're seeing obviously in January February to date in some of the trends in Macau?
Everything is up in Macau and Las Vegas, and we're also being lucky. Thank you. That's a gate that swings both ways. Thank you. We held in Las Vegas, what, 22% for the year.
We're always within our range. At the end of the day, I've been doing this for a long time and it always goes it always straightens out. We have quarters that are down and quarters that are up. But if you take a look at our history, our casino organizations managed to get their share of the revenue, the appropriate share for all 40 years.
Yes, 22% for the year in Las Vegas. And then in Macau on the VIP side, it was a 3% and then 23% in the mass casino for the year.
Right on the button. Great. Thank you,
guys. Your next question is from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank.
Hey, good afternoon. Can you just remind us what percentage of your business in Las Vegas is convention, maybe what you expect there this year? And do you think the convention gambler is as good as your non convention gambler? Do you see the gaming revenues kind of going back in line with the convention business?
What I would say about the convention business is definitely we will book more room nights on the convention side. North of and 22% of our room nights will be convention this year. And that was as low as 13% in 2,009. So it's going in the right direction. And that's even before the recession, that number was always between 22% 25%.
So now it's a question of rate. In terms of the gambler, that's really not where we're going to see the gaming revenues. The convention business is the midweek business and you feel it much more on the non gaming side.
Okay, great. And then just a question on comps. We know your competitor next door has new comping policy at least for the middle end of the market. Is that something you guys look at or not at all?
We heard about it. We don't I can't say that I understand exactly what they're doing, not because it's particularly arcane, but because we don't we can't make any money next door. We can only make it here. So we have enough trouble controlling our comps in our own building. I'm sure they're pretty sophisticated bunch next door.
I'm sure if they change their comp policy, they've rationalized it in terms of their own experience. And I didn't get nor have I ever had the opportunity to discuss it with those people. We don't enjoy a dialogue with them.
But we've always been one of the most conservative in town in terms of comps and we're very steady with that. And so nothing has really changed on our side. There was
a period when MGM and viability of these properties, naturally, the management gets hungrier and hungrier to try and gather up customers. And invariably, they pick up the stuff that the top hotel has rejected. And so, you see that the it's sort of a negative process, because as you go down the ladder, getting them. This invariably leads to getting them. This invariably leads to financial instability and a change of executives, sort of like the credit thing I said earlier.
Okay. I think that's all I got to say on the subject.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Your next question is from the line of Harry Curtis with Nomura Securities.
Good afternoon. I've got a couple of quick questions. First, Steve, to what degree did the infrastructure improvements in the region in Asia impact how you design your building and the balance between the VIP and the mass segments? And then secondly, going back to Vegas, 2 years ago, holding a conference or convention in Vegas was toxic. And Steve,
when you speak to
your friends who are CEOs, I'm just wondering if you're sensing whether or not any of that ice is thawing and do they are they beginning to see the relative value that Vegas offers?
Matt, what did you say?
So Harry, I think just on the convention side, we've definitely seen a people have relaxed in terms of worrying about coming to Las Vegas.
You mean when the President said Exactly. The business about doesn't want people going on jackets to Las Vegas. Well, we had unintended consequences to that statement as you know. I remember I'm not going to mention the company, but one very large insurance company had a huge piece of business with us. Just the hotel bookings were in excess of $5,000,000 And when President said that and the revenue would have been in excess of $10,000,000 When the President said that, this company had nothing to do with TARP or government bailouts at all, very healthy powerful company.
And the Chairman called to apologize that he didn't want to appear to be profligate. And so he was going to unfortunately pay 3,500,000 a forfeiture fee and canceled this $10,000,000 piece of business. We were just consulate over this occurrence and immediately called Harry Reid and started whining to Harry. As I say, those were unintended question, you mentioned something about infrastructure, right? Right.
The second part of your question, you mentioned something about infrastructure.
Can you
clarify that question? I'm not sure I understand it.
Well, the expansion of the rail system by 2015 or thereabouts the bridge connecting
Oh, you're talking about the stuff that they're going to do, the bridge you're talking about Cotai?
Right.
And Macau, the bridge from Lantau Island across the Pearl River Delta. Oh, my goodness. It's a cataclysmic event. It's 20 minutes from downtown Hong Kong. It makes Macau and Zhuhai suburbs and Shenzhen of 1 giant metroplex with about 40 1,000,000 people.
The impact of that bridge, which has been greenlighted by the central government is incredible. I'm not sure that any of us understand how big that impact is. And it splits as you know the way it works. You come from downtown Hong Kong and you go to Disney World, Walt Disney Land on Lantau Island and the bridge to Lantau Island from Hong Kong is only a few meters long. And then you get to Disneyland and then you keep going.
And on the north side of Lantau Island, it's a horizontal long finger that points towards Zhuhai in the Pearl River Delta on the north side of the island is the airport at Hong Kong, the beautiful incredible Norman Foster Airport. And then the end of that island just past the airport is 18 miles across shallow water, maybe 18 or 20 feet deep. And it crosses the Pearl River Delta heading towards the peninsula that is Zhuhai and Macau. They're going to build this road, this bridge very much like I think what you'd see in the Florida Keys. And at that point, it's all one city.
And that's and I think there's rail and of course, the central government of China is connecting all the major metropolitan areas with high speed rail. It's quite incredible to see. And the influence on future movement of the humans is powerful and enormous. And so the only thing we can say, we try to understand it, because we want to make projections and give guidance to you. And it's such a big deal that it's hard to do.
We'll undoubtedly underestimate its impact.
But do you think that there are design implications like expansion opportunities beyond your initial footprint that this cataclysmic event gets you thinking about more towards 2017 beyond?
Yes. And we've left room in our plans to add more facilities, so that we can service the needs that the government explains to us properly. Again, you always want to be in a position to follow the lead that you get from the government. They're very, very planning oriented. And as I say, that makes life a lot simpler for us, because we know what to expect and they publish and give us formally and informally guidance on these matters.
We reflect flexibility in our plans, so that we can respond appropriately.
That's perfect. Thank you.
Your next question is from the line of Robin Farley with UBS. Great. Thanks. Obviously, these results speak for themselves, but I had a question kind of forward looking. First is, I'd love to hear what the corporate development activity you talked about in Q4 that was a little bit more than usual.
And then secondly, specifically on Japan, I would just be curious what your thoughts are about how that might roll out in terms of timeframe and what you could
do there? Robin, I don't know that anyone is in a position to make a prediction about Japan. Everybody is paying very careful attention. Corporate development that Matt mentioned earlier, I think I'd rather talk about deals we make rather than those that we don't. And that's sort of a, I think, a healthy attitude to have.
I don't want to fill a conference call with wild statements, hopefulness and promises that we can't keep. I know that it's a popular thing that some of our competitors have done. We don't do that. So we'll do our corporate development activity. When they mature and they represent real business opportunity or decisions that have been taken by the company formally, probably not a healthy thing to speculate.
We spend money in order to position ourselves. And I think that's what that's our job. We get paid for that. I think that's what we owe our shareholders. But I don't know that we owe our shareholders or anybody else, and that sort of thing.
It's just the kind of thing that probably a good to avoid.
Okay, fair enough. Thanks. Your next question is from the line of John Oh with CLSA.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I have a couple of questions. I'll start off with in the Q4, we've seen a pretty steady recovery of our revenue share. Wondering how much of that can be attributed from the impact of the additional
that Junket grew, our own program under Linda Chen's direction and Frankie Zhao's direction grew, our general casino activity grew, our slot machines grew, our hotel room rate grew and our poker grew. It's been across the
board. So there was no specific spike that came as a result of that additional junket?
I'm happy to tell you that it was straight across the board. The property, the 1,000 room Wynn Encore building is very well received by our customers. The Encore building, in particular, which the market for a couple of years. We had gained insight. It was reflected in the design and execution, yet another echelon, another plateau of that sort of thing.
Okay. And I guess thinking of just your business segments between direct and junket and also to a certain extent the mass market, what do you see as the low hanging fruits from this year that you expect the the strongest form of growth?
What do you think, Matt or Ian? We could talk about Las Vegas, we could talk about Scott Peterson is here. He is an expert on the low
hanging fruit.
Peterson is here. He is an expert on the low hanging fruit. Robert Gansmo is on the call. Are you there? I am indeed, Steve.
There. There is that fine, gentlemen. I'm particularly proud I have to add this, I'm particularly proud about the depth of our financial area of our company. I've been doing this for 40 years and I've never been in the company of such talented men and women as we have now. So I think maybe Scott Peterson and Robert Gansmo should be to weigh in on this
one. I mean, in terms of areas of opportunity for growth in 2011, I mean, we're continuing to see improvements in domestic business. And so we're seeing lots
of opportunities there. Obviously, Matt already
talked about the opportunities there. Obviously, Matt already talked about the convention opportunities that we have here in Las Vegas. We're expecting that to really help us on the room side this year.
You raised rates? Yes. We raised rates. We have just remodeled the entire wind facility. Wind facility.
We spent we've pumped into Las Vegas $200,000,000 last year between the Beach Club, surrender and the total remodel of Wynn. We upgraded all of our rooms. We did a number of things. We redid Baccarat and has been very well received. So those were things that we were able to do.
We have 3 percent of our rooms out between 2% and 3% of our rooms still under remodel. We finish by April, by the end of April. And the amount of rooms that are out of order suites and villas is down to 2% or 3% now. So it really doesn't matter a lot. It did over this past weekend with Super Bowl.
Where else do you think, Scott?
Well, I mean, again, as you referred to, it's 1st full year now of operation of Surrender and the Beach Club. So we'll see some improvement there just because it's
a full year. I think also In spite of competition.
In spite of competition. I think in the second half of twenty ten, we also made some good improvements in the way we're operating the facility. So, I think that we'll see some improvements in expenses. I mean, I think overall, where we're at right now in the Q4 is where we are. But compared to earlier in the year and in past years, I think we've made some dramatic improvements.
So, Robert, what do you think looking at your operation in Macau?
Well, Steve, I think that Encore gave us a huge boost and that came on April 21. So, we haven't seen a full year of Encore's capabilities with us yet. And there's actually still room to grow there. So, especially on the weekends, we were always capacity constrained with the rooms. And so adding the 4 14 rooms and suites really helped us out.
Another thing that we've done is, as everybody's mentioned, we've added some junkets. And in fact, we continue to modify our floor to increase capacity with both our VIP and especially also our high limit mass areas. That's been extremely well received. The boutique feel associated with the Encore Casino has really been a boost to our win per unit.
Robert, just for a second, I want to clarify for the people on the call. We in Encore, we added what looks like a general casino area on the corner facing MGM and the Arc, our neighbors, as a door on the corner. And whether there are 27 games in there, Robert? Yes, 25 games. 25 games.
And they're in a space that is enclosed. It's not a junket room, ours or anybody else's. And how does the win per unit in that environment compare to the win per unit in the rest of the General Casino? You share that on this call?
Yes. I got to tell you that those games over there, we start when we started out and opened up because of its positioning across the street from MGM, we thought that perhaps we needed some lower limit games, some $100 games. And what we found was the customer presence there was demanding that we raised the limits. And so now you won't find a game that's less than $500 In fact, you might have a difficulty finding that from time. You got $500 games, dollars 1,000 games, dollars 2,000, dollars 3,000 games in there.
And on a win per unit basis, it's almost 3 times the amount in the Q4 and 2.5 times for the full year compared to the general casino.
Now there is an interesting piece of information. The Chinese market responds to intimacy. So now we have piece of mathematics that impacts the design part of our company that I'm so involved with. We have a phrase that we use with a smile on our face called learning from LISBOA. And for many years, Stanley's operation under the direction of Ambrose Soh and Lewis Ng and others was a series of small spaces that were added on and added on and added on until it became sort of a Warren's Nest of 1 space added on to another.
Now ordinarily, you would say, well, that's an awkward way to build a building. Of course, it represents many, many years of expansion as the market grew. But we looked at that and said, but the Asian player is used to intimacy, used to smaller spaces. They seem to be comfortable in it. So when we designed Wynn Las Vegas Wynn Macau rather, we chambered our casino, something you would never do in Las Vegas.
We chambered it. We put columns and that were not structural to break up the space into 14 and 16 game units and we draped those columns with tie back drapes to give them more of a sense of enclosure. We did the air conditioning, the HVAC, the heating ventilation air conditioning in such a way that we could separate them with a rail or finally with a partition without interrupting the business. We gave ourselves the opportunity to break down the space that was received very well and the performance of Wynn Macau from the day that it opened was superior to its competition. Then when it came time for Encore, we actually built spaces that were smaller on purpose.
And you just heard what Matt said, what's the multiple?
3.5 times in the 4th quarter and 2 point 5 times for
the year. And I have to say, if any of the Lisboa. I mean, it's very good to visit your competitors to see what they're doing. And from those visitations, get some sense and guidance on what you should do when you design a building. It's Macau, it's not Las Vegas.
And instructive to remember that. That's the low hanging fruit. Increasing yes? I have
one thing, Steve,
because I didn't
want to sell our slot trend short. Maryland's put a high priority on really she thinks there's a lot of opportunity in our slot revenue.
That is we think we can do better.
Absolutely. Scott, it's been a lot of work. I mean, I'm meeting with her several times and a whole team is meeting with her.
So I think there's
some low hanging fruit there too.
And that's going to be
a lot of that's going to go straight to the bottom line.
Yes, we've restructured our slot operation for 2011.
We're in
the a follow-up question, Matt alluded to the percentage of about 10%
to Matt alluded to the percentage of about 10% to 15% being direct versus junket. With 2 additional junkets that will be coming in spring, how should we see that ratio?
With 2 additional junkets, you'll probably you could see that ratio come in go to the lower side for sure. But the direct business is still up well over 50% for the year and is continuing to grow, but Linda grows them 1 customer at a time.
So, Ian, do you have anything to add to that? You're the boss.
To just the general market and our opportunity this year, you don't get a lot of transparency in the investment community and what we do behind the scenes, but we're the employer of choice. We're first out of the gate to recognize where our employees livelihoods need to be improved. We invest a huge amount of money behind the scenes in training and development. We have a massive learning and advancement program in an a massive learning and advancement program in an ever shrinking employment market. We've weathered 9 new casino property openings, 4 of which claims to be better than Wynn, and we continue to be at the vanguard and at the front of quality in a very, very tight labor market.
So there's a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to keep us ahead of everybody. Our employees recognize that. And there's great consistency in the service delivery of Wynn Macau. And we've seen areas like the mass market where everybody's gone promotional and have banners or casinos. We've maintained reaped the rewards of that both in slow times and in busy times.
If I can add to what those points that were so well made by Ian. Last month or about 6 or 8 weeks ago, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao came to Macau and said that he hoped that the prosperity that the resort industry was enjoying in Macau would be shared by the workforce. That was the line employees, all the non executives' salaries and the cost of living increase by 6%. We were first to do that not because we wanted to be first, but because we respond directly that we are humble, proud and grateful to be allowed to be part of that scene. And the way you do that in China is to take good care of your employees.
And I guess finally, are we still aiming for a $2,500,000,000 price tag for Vinco Thai? And could you also share with us what is the latest date for construction to commence in order to meet the timeline of 2014 or late 2014 opening?
Now that the plans are finished, it's in the hands of wind design and development to create a construction budget. And that process has just begun. And I'm not quite ready to say, but I think $2,500,000,000 is a comfortable number for us. We'd have no compunction about spending that kind of money on the facility with all of its entertainment potential. Entertainment potential.
And so and as far as I mentioned a few minutes ago, as far when we get started, that's up to the government. They'll tell us. And I expect that it's not very far away.
Okay. Thank you, everyone.
Your next question is from the line of Janet Brashear with Sanford C. Bernstein.
Thank you. I'd just like to follow-up on a few earlier points. First on the topic of credit, you said that credit is looser now than in past times perhaps and abundant in the market. And also you reiterated that your practice is to be extremely cautious. I'm wondering if you're seeing credit being extended too freely elsewhere in the market.
And if so, what impact that would have on the market as a whole?
Do you want to answer that Robert or Ian? Sure. I mean, we take
a lot of time to understand our customers. We don't use our credit as a marketing tool. We're conservative in our reserve methodology because we don't want to get whipsawed. I think that I can't say for sure how the other operators make their judgment calls, but it appears that credit for a time, if you go back a couple of years, was overextended. It also appears that some of the operators may have more liberal decision making processes with respect to credit than we do.
Well said. I would
not say that our credit has loosened. I would say that our business volumes have increased. We've made our we've kept our reserve methodology the same throughout and we'll continue to do so in the future.
And we
wouldn't be correct. We continue to be very prudent about junket partnerships. We have more people interested than we require and we add very organically. We're very careful in our due diligence And the relationships we have with our junket partners are through partnerships. We're very, very careful in how we vet people and whom we allow on property.
And looking at the rest of the market, one would say that that may not be the case in certain properties, but certainly Wynn Macau, we're conservative and careful. And we've benefited from very close engagement, be seen in our results.
Okay, thanks. Excuse
me. When I said that we've been Excuse me.
When I said that we've been
lucky, I want to make it clear. We've only been holding 1.9% in Macau. So if you see our market share this month, it's going the other way for a few weeks. And those things get corrected, as I say, and we'll get to 2.9% or 3% and our market share will pop back up as it always does, no matter what the other guys are doing.
Okay. Thanks. I also wanted to follow-up on the infrastructure question that we were talking about earlier. As traffic continues to grow in Macau, the visitation traffic, the people flowing in and new supply is moving very slowly, do you foresee a point where the current infrastructure starts to become a barrier to growth and where your gaming positions max out?
No, I don't. To give you a short answer, I don't. I think there's a lot of capacity and I think that the infrastructure will handle it. If you're asking me about that the impact of the bridge, again, as I said earlier, it's hard to imagine what it's like when it's 20 minutes in a car from Hong Kong to and maybe 40 minutes, 35 or 40 minutes from Shenzhen. I can't and the rail service, I mean, these things are so strong.
We're in a bit of a quandary about that. I don't know how Ian feels about it,
I think if you look at the very peak times that happened in the city over the Golden Week holidays, everybody manages to get in. We're able to handle incredibly high volumes. I think the infrastructure side of things is a bit talked about. There are good things happening in the next 18 to 24 months. We have the pecan ferry terminal goes through a considerable expansion.
The Ganbe border gate is increasing capacity of daily arrivals by up to 60%, and there's more ferry services being put online to Macau. So the market seems to be able to handle the additional customer arrivals. So I don't foresee an imminent problem. And the beauty of Colasai coming on stream in late 'fourteen, early 'fifteen is the monorail system will be up and running from the the government have reacted as more taxis in the marketplace. Macau is a small city.
When it's very busy, it does get a little bit choked at key times, but that's the same everywhere in the world.
We're right next door to the airport. We're the closest hotel to the monorail, as Ian just mentioned, goes around two sides and the main stop is in our front door. Great.
If I could get you to speculate on one more impact in the market, Galaxy Macau opens sometime in the near future. What impact would you see that having broadly across the market?
Well, they've done a very I talked to Mike Mehta, the boss combination of several offerings, a company that specializes in spas and rooms of that sort. So it's a complex building with a lot of bells and whistles attached to it. So I expect that it's going to be well received. It's certainly the most ambitious and far reaching of the Galaxy properties. So I expect it's going to be a big lift for them.
It should be good for the market too, because the market does not have enough hotel Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
See it. It's next month.
Thank you. Your next
to ask about Las Vegas. We've obviously come through an unprecedented set of circumstances in that market and obviously the path to recovery to some degree is unprecedented also. Can you talk about how your cost strategies, how you're thinking about cost strategies in the next 12 to 24 months? I know there were instances of reducing labor in particular and if you could sort of talk about that topic and give us some color that would be helpful. Thank
you. Sure. I mean, look, we are running at around 9,300
FT feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet
feet feet Es right now and we think that that is a good run rate for even if business volumes do increase. So our fixed cost right now, we feel pretty comfortable with and any increase in cost should really be more on the variable side. So that's the beauty of these hotels with operating leverage. As things get better, your margins get better.
Scott? Yes. We've learned a lot in the last year and a half. I mean, since Donica were opened and with the troubled times that the world went through, we had to look at ourselves and we went back and changed a lot of things and we got smarter and we're ready to start taking advantage of that.
And Marilyn came along.
And she's opened up a whole new set of eyes.
And we have a sort of an inbred culture here and we look at each other all the time and we're sort of like minded men and women. And it's nice to have someone else with a fresh why? Yes, why you do that? And sometimes we don't have a very intelligent answer. But Maryland has focused us in some ways that are surprising and very refreshing.
Would you be able to talk about any specifics as to what her perspectives are and what categories she's brought a new look?
Well, I remember one conversation I've had with Marilyn was about 6 weeks after she came. She came to my office and said, Steve, we have the tremendous success with nightclubs and our very popular hip restaurants. I think our Steakhouse SW is the most successful restaurant in Nevada. She said, the public taste has changed. We have a 5 star restaurant, a Michelin star restaurant, a 5 Diamond restaurant in Alex, but people don't want to sit for 3 hours and eat dinner that way anymore.
I'd rather repurpose that restaurant. I know that you love the idea that one of the restaurants has got all those Michelin Stars and we've got 3 of them in the building, but this one in particular, this gourmet kind of restaurant, she said, I'm not sure that we can't use that space more effectively in another way. And frankly, I would never have questioned that restaurant on as just a simple example of that was something that she brought to my office that I would have missed. There's been more of that sort of thing. We tend to be siloed to use her word.
Siloed in the sense that each department sort of is is complete unto itself. We decentralize authority, because we think that we want to put our best people right in the touching a customer every day. We don't have a big layered structure. Well, that's good. That's good in one way.
We don't have a lot of vice presidents and floaters that go in food and beverage and other departments. But on the other hand, that management style tends to miss some chances for sharing of employees, like making runs to the warehouse. Each restaurant had a runner, why not have a runner isolate each operation so much unto itself. It's good that you think about it the way you do, but Marilyn said, I think that in the process, you may be spending some money you don't have to spend. And I found that very interesting.
And she used that word siloed in the sense that you have a self contained tube that doesn't look outside itself turns out that we could make a change like that without sacrificing one spec of quality of service or responsiveness to our guests. And I welcome that sort of thing as did Matt and Scott and the rest of us. And I think we're all one family here, so that sort of spills over to Ian. Ian comes from the Peninsula operation in Hong Kong and he wasn't so siloed. I don't want to put words in
your mouth. I'm 10 years
in 3 star hotels, so I'm used to working with a tight budget.
You started with 3 star hotels. When's the last time you were in 3 star hotel, Ian?
Oh, I stay in 3 star hotels. I like the ad. Stay in them.
Come on, you got to make people think we're not paying you enough.
Thank you for that. May I ask just one more quick one, please, which is I think on if we went back several conference calls, I believe you said that it would be a very long time before you would develop anything in the United States again. And I wondered if you still think that's true?
I don't. Still think it's true. I changed my mind. You have. Okay.
Thank you.
You're welcome. I think that will do it. That was the
last question. So thanks everyone for joining us.
Bye bye.