Las Vegas Sands (NYSE:LVS) released second-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Wednesday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Summary
Las Vegas Sands reported strong financial results at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore with an EBITDA of $689 million, despite softer tourism demand and the impact of the World Cup.
Mass gaming revenues at Marina Bay Sands grew 5% year-over-year, and a strategic focus on premium customer service and hospitality experiences is reinforcing structural earnings power.
In Macau, Sands China recorded $430 million in EBITDA, affected by a low VIP rolling hold, but showed strong growth in gaming volumes across all segments.
The company is investing in premium suite capacity and service enhancements, with ongoing renovations at The Venetian and new development projects aimed at long-term growth.
Las Vegas Sands repurchased $787 million of its stock during the quarter, with a new $6 billion share repurchase authorization, emphasizing a commitment to returning capital to shareholders.
Management remains confident in reaching a $700 million quarterly EBITDA target in Macau, supported by continued investments in high-value segments and product upgrades.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Las Vegas Sands second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. We will open the floor for your questions and comments following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Las Vegas Sands. Sir, the floor is yours.
Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, Paul. Joining the call today are Patrick Dumont, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Wilford Wong, Executive Vice Chairman of Sands China; and Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations. Today’s conference call will contain forward-looking statements. We will be making those statements under the safe harbor provision of federal securities laws. The language on forward-looking statements included in our press release also applies to our comments made on the call today.
The company’s actual results may differ materially from the results reflected in those forward-looking statements. In addition, we will discuss non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measure are included in our press release. We have posted an earnings presentation on our website. We will refer to that presentation during the call. Finally, for the Q&A session, we ask those with interest to please post one question and one follow-up question so we might allow everyone with interest the opportunity to participate.
This presentation is being recorded. I’ll now turn the call over to Patrick.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining the call. I just want to start out by saying our strategic priorities remain clear and consistent. We will continue to invest with discipline with the fundamental objective of creating meaningful shareholder returns over the long term. Turning to our current quarter, we again delivered strong financial results at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, generating EBITDA of $689 million for the quarter. If we had held as expected in our rolling play, our EBITDA would have been $37 million lower, or $652 million.
That performance was achieved despite the seasonally softer tourism demand that exists in both Singapore and Macau in the second quarter of each calendar year. There’s another factor to note. There was a decrease in visitation to both Marina Bay Sands and our Macau properties by our high-value patrons during the World Cup football tournament. It was very noticeable in June given the trajectory of the businesses in both markets earlier in the quarter.
Despite these headwinds, mass gaming revenues at Marina Bay Sands grew 5% for the quarter compared to the second quarter of 2025, which highlights the resilience and underlying strength of the business. Singapore remains an ideal market for high-value tourism spending and our focus on creating unique and memorable entertainment and hospitality experiences for our guests continues to generate outstanding financial performance. Our results this quarter reinforce our view that Marina Bay Sands’ structural earnings power has been elevated following our significant product investments, suite renovations, service enhancements and the successful execution of our premium customer strategy. We remain confident that our market-leading product, service and focus on driving high-value tourism will enable us to create unrivaled hospitality experiences for the world’s most discerning customers and deliver additional growth at Marina Bay Sands in the years ahead. As I shared last quarter, the company’s fundamental operating strategy relies on three critical pillars: our people, our product and our service.
When we get these three pillars optimized, as we have in Marina Bay Sands, we are positioned to drive high-value tourism to the market and to create outstanding financial and operating performance. We remain excited about the growth opportunity presented by the Marina Bay Sands expansion. The expansion will meaningfully increase our premium suite capacity, service and entertainment offerings, including the debut of a state-of-the-art arena envisioned to be the finest in Asia.
We remain on track with the development process and look forward to opening the expansion early 2031, subject to the required government approvals. Now let’s turn to Macau. Our $430 million in EBITDA for the quarter was negatively impacted by the exceptionally low VIP rolling hold of 1.35% for the quarter. If we had held as expected in our rolling play, our EBITDA would have been $87 million higher, or $517 million for the quarter. The actions that we have taken to improve our service levels and the customer experience are clearly achieving some early success.
We are encouraged by our progress during the second quarter. Sands China’s growth in gaming volumes meaningfully exceeded the growth in gaming volumes in the Macau market overall when compared to the second quarter of 2025. We delivered strong growth in gaming volumes in all segments. Our rolling volume was up 73% year over year, our non-rolling drop was up 15% year over year and our slot and ETG handle was up 30% year over year. Sands China’s mass gross gaming revenue grew 8% for the quarter year over year, twice as fast as the overall market’s 4% mass GGR growth for the quarter.
Sands China’s total GGR grew by 4% for the quarter compared to second quarter of 2025, while the Macau market’s total gross gaming revenue was flat for the quarter. If we had held as expected in our rolling play, Sands China’s total GGR growth would have been 14% year over year. Sands China’s VIP rolling chip volume share reached a market-leading 26% in the quarter. Turning to our reinvestment strategy, we have been optimizing reinvestment levels since the beginning of the year.
I wanted to highlight our approach to reinvestment has remained consistent over the last several quarters. Our approach has not changed. If you look at the metrics, reinvestment as a percentage of revenue did increase during this quarter. The increase as a percentage of revenue was driven by changes in business mix and lower hold percentage on our non-rolling play. Our goal is to continue to remain consistent with our reinvestment strategy going forward and to achieve greater profitability as revenues grow in the future.
With respect to operating expenses, we have elected over the last year to invest in additional table operating hours, increase sales, marketing and customer service personnel, and enhanced levels of customer service. The increased investment in operating expenses related to our efforts should begin to level off in the second half of 2026. These investments are critical to the achievement of our long-term objectives of being able to service our customers to the highest standards and to create unique and memorable hospitality experiences for our guests.
We remain steadfast in our belief that successful execution of our initiatives will support growth in both revenue and profitability over time. The growth in the Macau market remains primarily driven by the premium segment. The competition in that segment remains intense, and luxurious suite product coupled with outstanding service levels are critical to success. We remain singularly focused today on matching that suite and room product with the service levels that the most discerning and valuable customers in Macau increasingly demand.
We retain our goal of reaching $700 million in quarterly EBITDA and beyond over time as we fully implement our investment and operating strategies and as the Macau market grows in the future. I want to turn to the product pillar in Macau. As I highlighted last quarter, we are focused on investing in the highest-return projects over the next three years in order to create the best opportunities to increase cash flow. Renovation of The Venetian rooms and suites commenced in March and work is progressing.
While we have some product coming back into inventory across the work period, our target is to have all 2,900 rooms and suites completely refurbished and reintroduced by Chinese New Year 2028. We will also introduce new premium-focused gaming salons and related amenities as a component of The Venetian investment program. The meaningful patron volume growth we have seen in The Londoner and Grand Suites at Four Seasons provide support for these investments.
It’s important to note that the work we envision will not create significant disruptions throughout the portfolio. The scale of our portfolio will allow us to serve customers in other properties and elsewhere in each resort while work is in progress. Nothing we are doing as we invest in the portfolio over the next several years will hinder our ability to use our scale advantages to outperform in the non-premium segment. Should spending in that segment accelerate in the future, we will use our scale advantage and product advantage, together with service level improvements and targeted incentives, to effectively compete in every market.
We expect growth in EBITDA and EBITDA margins as revenues grow over time. Turning to our program to return capital to shareholders, we repurchased $787 million of LVS stock during the quarter. We also paid our recurring quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share. We have now repurchased 16.3% of the company’s outstanding shares over the last 11 quarters. Our Board of Directors recently increased our repurchase authorization to $6 billion. We believe additional repurchases of LVS equity through our share repurchase program will be meaningfully accretive to the company and its shareholders over the long term.
While we did not purchase any additional shares of SCL during this quarter, we do continue to see value in both the LVS and SCL names. The company’s ownership of SCL remained at 74.8% as of June 30, 2026. We look forward to continuing to utilize the company’s share repurchase program to increase returns to shareholders. Thanks again for joining the call today and for your interest in the company. Now let’s take some questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you would like to enter the queue, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If listening on speakerphone today, please pick up your handset to provide optimum sound quality. Also, we ask each participant to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please hold a minute while we poll for questions, and the first question today is coming from Lizzie Dove from Goldman Sachs.
Lizzie, your line is live.
Lizzie Dove, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
Hey, thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to ask as it relates to, you know, performance, whether it be in Macau or Singapore, kind of, I guess hard to kind of parse it out, but how much of it you think is kind of macro or consumer driven? You know, to the extent there was also maybe some World Cup impact versus just, you know, execution or kind of missteps or investment needed in the property, there’s probably a lot to unpack there. But any kind of details on that would be would be helpful.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Yeah, sure. First off, I just want to start out by saying this quarter doesn’t represent the true earnings power of our properties. A low hold had an impact. World Cup had an impact. You mentioned investment for growth in the future. If you look at some of the things we’ve invested in recently, Londoner Court, what we’ve done at the Grand Suites at Four Seasons, the customers are there and the productivity is there if the product is right and the service is right.
So we feel like our investment programs position us well for future growth. This quarter was not what we wanted to see, but when you think about the 517, given the hold normalization, we feel pretty good about where we’re headed given the growth in volumes across all segments. To me that’s just a signal of the effect that the new service model is taking, that we’re now able to service the highest level of patrons at a higher level. And so while we didn’t get the hold that we wanted this quarter, the volumes were there, the visitation was there.
And even though World Cup had an impact, we felt like we’re headed in the right direction.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
The market was tracking very well in Macau in April and May and SCL, our gaming volumes were very strong. In fact, May was an all-time high for us in SCL in terms of monthly mass GGR. June was clearly softer and there was some impact from World Cup. But as we look overall for the quarter, we see very strong underlying trends across all of our different gaming segments. VIP rolling segment we were gaining share significantly during the quarter, up 73% year over year, whilst the market was flattish.
In terms of our table games and non-rolling, we were impacted somewhat by the lower hold percentage, especially in June, and then in slot and ETG we clearly outperformed the market with 21% revenue growth for the quarter. So overall, if you take account of the lower hold percentage in our rolling and the business mix, we’re able to achieve gains in every segment in the market share year over year and remain consistent in terms of market share sequentially, with very similar reinvestment levels once you adjust for those hold percentage factors and business mix sequentially.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
And I do want to come back to MBS as well. I just want to highlight that this was an incredibly powerful quarter in several of our segments. But the key is we were impacted by a World Cup there as well given the high-value nature of our patrons. And, you know, I think as we look to that asset in the future, we see a very strong market, very strong visitation. And, you know, for us, we’re going to continue to invest there because we see the long-term potential of growth in Singapore given what we see today.
UNKNOWN Analyst
Got it. And just to follow up on that, maybe just to stick with Macau for a second, you know, appreciate you said this is not where you want to be or could be. And I know in the past, you know, you’ve talked about 700 million in quarterly EBITDA. Last quarter it, you know, then 600 came into the mix and now I guess, you know, this is maybe a bit of a one-time quarter, but closer to 500 million on a hold-adjusted basis. And so I know you don’t give guidance, but is anything you’re seeing in the market or on a company-specific, you know, basis changing how you think about what that right run rate is for Macau at least over the next kind of year
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
No, I think our target is still the 700 million. I think historically what we’ve always seen is that 2Q has always been our softest quarter. And so we talked about that on our last earnings call, that this quarter had some seasonality built into it, and so we saw that here. But I also think that if we held better, we’d be having a little bit of a different discussion in certain things. So I think for us, we look to the progress we’re making in the market.
If you sort of look at the growth that we’ve had year over year, if you look at the fact that we did this through the World Cup cycle, I think there’s some positive things there that we look to. And I think our goal is to do 700 million. And I think we have some work to do to get there. But we feel like the process in place for us to keep working to head in that direction. We know what we need to do.
UNKNOWN Analyst
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from Dan Pulitzer from J.P. Morgan. Dan, your line is live.
Dan Pulitzer, Analyst at J.P. Morgan
Hey, good afternoon and thanks for the question. First, I wanted to start from Singapore. Obviously you talked a bit about World Cup and seasonality there. You know, given where the property is, and I think we’re kind of anniversarying that first big quarter there. Do you feel like you’re at a place where, you know, the property maybe reverts back to historical seasonality and broadly, just in terms of the seasonality discussion, can you just remind us how you think about it for Macau as well while we’re on the topic?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Yeah, sure. I think what we said before is the big step function in growth in Singapore was the switch from the suite product from the room product. So we went from 135 suites to 770. And so that was the step function in terms of our product pillar to be able to accommodate the substantial growth that you saw in run rate. We also added a significant service component. So credit to the team there for revamping our service model, adding new food and beverage, and of course, very importantly, the service levels on the casino floor, as well as some of the novel games, as well as just the overall presentation.
So all those things came to bear that allowed us to have the growth that you saw. Now the growth is going to be based on yielding and more incremental growth as we continue to invest in the property that’s there. So there are still things that we’re doing that we think will create growth over time, particularly in patron types that are higher value. But I think for us looking forward in Singapore, it’s going to be about continuing to serve these customers.
We have a very strong base there and visitation matters for the highest end customers, particularly at the highest end. It is concentrated. We’ve talked about that before. And whether it’s World Cup or other things, some of those people weren’t in the building this quarter. And when they show up, we do incredibly well. And when we play favorably, our margins look like extraordinary. And when some of those people don’t show up in scale and they don’t play in high volume and we don’t hold very well, our margins can look less.
But we’re heading in the right direction. I don’t know that there’s a gaming business that grows forward in a straight line. And I’d like to believe that this business is heading in the right direction. And to be fair, we’re also seeing the benefit of a lot of wealth creation in Southeast Asia. So we feel very good about the long-term prospects of both our investment and the trajectory of the business there.
Dan Pulitzer, Analyst at J.P. Morgan
Got it. And then I suppose on Macau, just talking a little bit more about that 700 million quarterly EBITDA run rate and kind of the path to getting there. Can you maybe give a sense of the capital or the timeframe, the capital that you have to still commit or the timeframe that you think is reasonable to kind of get to that level? Obviously this quarter wasn’t ideal, but, you know, how should we think about kind of the path forward towards that 700?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
So I think first off, this quarter was impacted with seasonality, we talked about that. You know, we see it. There was the World Cup impact that we just mentioned. But I also think for us, as we continue to invest and get higher-value patron-fulfilling inventory, we’ll be able to grow our market share and grow our revenues. And so for us, this is what we talked about. We talked about a multi-year investment strategy as we updated our portfolio there and invested for the highest value premium segments that we do really well in.
That’s a very deep part of our database. And so nothing’s changed from our strategy, from our approach and from the timelines that we talked about before. Grant, I don’t know if there’s anything else that you want to add.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
I think in terms of capital projects, we have still a long way to go in terms of ramping up Londoner. It’s done very well so far. As you can see, both Londoner and Four Seasons, even for this quarter, we’re above where we were in 2019 on a normalized basis. So that’s a very positive evidence of how the product upgrades can drive the revenue growth and market share gains. Secondly, we are very focused on the upcoming completion of the Venetian renovation, which would take us all the way, as Patrick referenced, to early 2028.
But we should start to see the benefits of those new suites as we progressively get more critical mass of new suites throughout 2027. And certainly by the end of that, we’re going to have a completely new hotel in, I think, what is still an amazing property for people to visit, but with an entirely upgraded refreshed product, both in hotel and also in parts of the premium gaming sections.
Dan Pulitzer, Analyst at J.P. Morgan
Thank you so much.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Thanks, Dan.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from Sean Kelly from Bank of America. Sean, your line is live.
Sean Kelly, Analyst at Bank of America
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Patrick or Grant, maybe just a comment on sort of the nature of the growth in the premium segment you’re seeing in Macau. You know, this is, you know, pretty significant hold volatility, you know, we’re seeing at some of the properties, and just kind of curious if this is going to be the nature of the market a little bit moving forward, just given concentration in, you know, a smaller and smaller set of customers, or if this is a little bit of an outlier and, you know, really want to chalk it up a little bit more to that just in terms of activity and maybe the concentration of what you saw driving this kind of hold volatility, because we tend to think for LVS in particular sort of averages out across a much bigger base of business. Clearly we didn’t see that this quarter.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
So I think what’s really important is we have product and service now that allows us to attract the most important patrons in both markets. That’s a big step. The good news is sometimes we get that play in Singapore, sometimes we get that play in Macau, sometimes we get it in both. Sometimes we have a lot of it, sometimes we have less of it. Sometimes when we have less of it, the volatility works against us, given the number of decisions and the bet size and the volatility during the quarter of measurement.
The good news is we take this business and over time it really works in our favor. This is the largest hold adjustment we’ve ever had in the history of Macau. And the good news is it happened after the pandemic, at a time when a lot of people thought high level VIP play wouldn’t show up in Macau. And now we’re earning it. So over time we believe that things will—there’s an old expression, right? The gate of luck swings both ways. And we’d like to believe that over time by taking this play and providing the right service and keeping these patrons playing with us over time that we’ll be more successful.
And so the play is very concentrated. The other thing is for some of these patrons, we tend to think about it across both of our properties, right? Do we have the right amount of offsetting play across our entire portfolio of properties? So for us, I think the important thing is the most asserting patrons want to stay with us and play high volumes with us. Bad thing is we got beat really bad this quarter and we actually got beat on the mass side too.
There’s a belief in gaming that goes back a long time that when customers play lucky, they continue to strengthen their bond and relationship with you because over time they’ll eventually lose. And so I think for us customers, winning is an investment in future marketing and gives us the ability to retain high value customers over time. This quarter didn’t work in our favor. Hopefully in the future it will.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
I think the fact is, Sean, if you look at both VIP rolling and the premium mass segment, we have gained significant amount of market share at that very top end given all of the strategies we’ve deployed since May of last year. So yep, there’s no secret we have done huge gains in VIP segment against a flat market this quarter. We’ve come from a position where we were number four in the rolling segment a year ago and now we’re number one with 26% volume share.
And part of that share gain is coming from the super VIP segment where we’re also very successful in the Marina Bay Sands property. So that’s the VIP segment. And then in terms of the premium mass, we all keep saying that the Macau growth is driven by the premium segment in the current environment. And within that, yes, there is some very high end premium mass play which is available to capture and we’ve been capturing more than a fair share of that in the last six months.
And unfortunately this quarter the luck just didn’t play our way. But we are gaining the customers, we’re gaining the volume and they will be back and the luck will even out in the end.
Sean Kelly, Analyst at Bank of America
Perfect, thank you both. And then as my follow up, maybe just a quick high level one on sort of—Patrick, I think you mentioned the run rate and the investments being made on the operating expense side in Macau. Just a quick thought on Singapore. Is this a general good run rate as we’re expecting to see a little bit more of incremental gains on the top line? Will that be matched relatively closely with sort of investments on the bottom line or just how is the operating or run rate, operating expense looking there?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
So first off, we’re really happy with the 50% EBITDA margin at Marina Bay Sands and we have a fixed cost base there that’s really focused on providing the highest levels of service. We can do really, really well with more visitation from high value patrons and their play. We can also see higher margins when we have higher volumes from those patrons and things happen to go our way on the gaming table. So in quarters past we’ve seen higher margins because we had a lot of great play and that play was favorable.
Look, in the long run we’re really happy to make these investments to attract and keep our highest levels of patrons. We’re going to continue to invest in things necessary to support great experiences for our patrons, really at the highest levels. And look, sometimes from time to time some of these customers require provisions, sometimes they require some promo. But as a practical matter, this is a great business and we believe in the margin structure over time and just broadly we believe that we have a significant opportunity to continue to invest and optimize and grow as we have, given the strong customer interest that we have and just the growing amount of patrons that we see coming out of Southeast Asia that are high value tourists that want to go to Singapore. So we’re going to continue investing behind this thesis for the long term.
Sean Kelly, Analyst at Bank of America
Thank you.
Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, Sean.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from Stephen Gramling, from Morgan Stanley. Stephen, your line is live.
Stephen Gramling, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Thanks. I just want to go back to that to make sure I understood it correctly. So I think that your promo was down sequentially, still up year over year. Is it down sequentially predominantly because of, you know, the World Cup and maybe those customers not showing up and they tend to require higher reinvestments? So we haven’t quite seen a change in the promotional environment yet or has it even potentially ratcheted up? Just curious if there’s any kind of, you know, way to dig into that and what you’re seeing, the competitive environment.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
Stephen, just to clarify, in Macau, our reinvestment level sequentially remained flat. So second quarter versus first quarter, when we adjust for the hold percentage and the difference in business mix year over year, we see obviously a higher level of reinvestment because we only started to adopt a more aggressive reinvestment strategy to adjust to the market in the second half of last year.
Stephen Gramling, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Right. But you had the World Cup in there, which I imagine if you’re not having some people that require higher reinvestment, maybe that would suggest that perhaps it’s even ticking up sequentially, just as we think about the underlying. So are you seeing any change in the competitive dynamic if you kind of pull back the onion a bit?
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
There’s no change in either our approach or the reinvestment levels when you look at it sequentially. And as we have been doing since the start of the year, we’re looking to optimize the level of reinvestment into all of these customer ADT segments. And what we’re finding, as we were successful in first quarter, is that we’re able to adjust some of those reinvestment levels and still achieve the market share gain. So as we look into the second half, we’ll continue that process of optimization.
And we aim to achieve a higher level of gross margin from this high level of revenues.
Stephen Gramling, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Okay, fair enough. I’ll jump back in the queue. Thank you.
Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
Thanks, Stephen.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from Robin Farley from UBS. Robin, your line is live.
Robin Farley, Analyst at UBS
Great, thanks. I wanted to go back to a comment that you made during the call where you said that reinvestment would level off in the second half and just wanted to make sure that I’m understanding that correctly—leveling off, meaning it’ll be flat year over year, or that the rate of increase in the second half would be about the same rate of increase year over year we saw in the first half and not a higher rate of increase.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
Just to clarify, Robin, there are two different topics here. One is the reinvestment and the other is the operating expenses. So for reinvestment, what we’re looking to do is to continue to optimize the reinvestment percentage as a proportion of actual revenue. And that process has started since the beginning of the year. We’ve had some success in this and we’ll continue that into the second half. In terms of Patrick’s comments on operating expenses, we have had some OPEX growth during the first half of 2026, but we do expect the rate of OPEX growth to moderate into the second half.
We’ve been investing in the table operating hours, in the sales network, distribution, and also in the service elevation. But the big step change in those investments have largely happened. And what we expect into the second half, into 2027, is a more moderate rate of OPEX growth. And we should therefore be able to achieve some operating leverage on the EBITDA margin as revenues grow.
Robin Farley, Analyst at UBS
And is that saying that the second half rate of increase in OPEX will be similar to the first half?
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
Slower.
I mean, this could be slower.
Robin Farley, Analyst at UBS
Thank you. I just wanted to clarify what, you know, leveling off, just to make sure I understood. And then can you talk a little bit about, I mean, I don’t want to get too focused on like the very immediate term, but obviously the World Cup, you know, you’ve talked about that impacting visitation. Are you seeing, you know, bounce back, pent up demand or is it just back to normal levels? In other words, you know, are you seeing a clear sign that that was just during the World Cup and how things look now versus that period?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
I do want to point out the final was on Sunday. So I’m not really sure yet how we think about it. I will tell you that this was quite an unbelievable sporting event. The level of success, the World Cup in the US is really, really remarkable. I think the earnings that they generated were record. The attendance might have been record. I think the involvement with the broader field really captured a global phenomenon. And it was something that I think a lot of people went to.
And unfortunately a lot of our high value patrons are followers of a lot of the players and a lot of the teams with representation at a World Cup or are from countries that participated. And it just drove a lot of tourism away from our two core markets, our two markets. And so, you know, we’re obviously very optimistic about the long term, but also we think, you know, we think our patrons want to come back to doing what they’re doing. So we look forward to seeing them back in our properties, looking forward to seeing them back in our markets.
And we’ll go from there. But it’s a little early to tell you about any snap back given that everything ended only a few days ago.
Robin Farley, Analyst at UBS
Thanks very much.
Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
Thanks, Rob.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from Brandt Montour from Barclays. Brandt, your line is live.
Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays
Great. Thanks everybody. The mass drop stat that you guys gave, 15% in the quarter, would you be willing to break that out by month in the quarter?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear the question. Could you say that again, please? Sorry about that.
Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays
So mass table drop in the quarter was up 15%. You highlighted that, Patrick, in your prepared remarks. Would you be willing to break that out by month just so we can get a sense of how your performance was trending—Sands, sorry, ex hold—before World Cup started.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Yeah, I would just say we typically don’t do that, but just directionally, we were impacted in June.
Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays
Okay. And then in your slides, you have a slide about the Macau airport passenger volume. It took a big step back in the second quarter, more in line with last second quarter. Right. This is, we know that the seasonally weak quarter, but, you know, the first quarter this year had a big step up, unlike last, you know, prior years. And so it almost would seem like that capacity had taken a structural, a structurally higher step up since COVID. You know, just curious if when you talk to your partners or your contacts in the transportation division, is that temporary?
Is that seasonal? Do you expect it to sort of rebound? Is there something that you think drove that?
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
So I just wanted to clarify. You’re referring to slide 39, where we talk about the Macau airport monthly passenger volume.
Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays
That’s right, 39.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Yeah, it’s… Look, I think if you look at it, if you look at it, it’s not too much different from 2Q25, just sort of highlighting the fact that there is seasonality in visitation to Macau. That’s kind of what my takeaway from that would be. Grant, I don’t know if you have anything else you’d like to add.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
Yeah, I think you can see clearly second quarter is seasonally softer. And in the second half we had the much higher levels of passenger volume. It’s fair to say international visitation during the quarter, but especially June, did slow down for a number of reasons, but also affected by the World Cup in June. So I think it’s not a surprise to see that the airport passenger volume is not as strong as the second half of last year.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
And this is just one airport too, obviously. There’s the Hong Kong airport, which isn’t reflected here. There’s the Zhuhai airport, which isn’t reflected here. These carriers are trying to make money, obviously, and there’s a lot more money to be made when people are traveling than when you have those very soft periods, April and June. So part of this is just supply and demand with respect to what those people are doing. Thanks for the question.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from Chad Bingham from Macquarie. Chad, your line is live.
Chad Bingham, Analyst at Macquarie
Afternoon.
Thanks for taking my questions. First, on capital allocation, your buybacks were again at an elevated pace for the second quarter in a row. Can you talk about availability or appetite to stay at this pace versus reverting to maybe where you were in ’25?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
So first off, we see meaningful value in both LVS and SCL equity and we’re going to continue to act with this belief, and so you see that on display this quarter. I think for us, share repurchases are a great way to return capital. They shrink the share count, they are accretive for EPS, and we have a very strong view about repurchases given where the equity is today. And if you look at the board, the board has been very supportive — we’re very appreciative.
They just approved a $6 billion authorization, and our goal is to use it. So I think for us, we see a lot of long-term value in the investments we’re making. We feel very strongly about the markets that we’re in, and so we’re going to continue to be aggressive in the way that we think about the value of our equity and how we repurchase stock. Thank you very much.
Chad Bingham, Analyst at Macquarie
Appreciate it.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from George Choi from Citigroup. George, your line is live.
George Choi, Analyst at Citigroup
Thank you very much for taking my questions. If I remember correctly, you guys started optimizing your player reinvestments in June of last year. Are you comfortable with the way it’s going now versus your competitors? And I guess more importantly, do you believe you can get back to the EBITDA market share that you used to attain without changing your current player reinvestment strategies?
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
Thanks, George, for the question on reinvestment. Yes, we started to make a step change in our reinvestment levels from the second half of last year. And as we have gone through the last four quarters, we’ve been able to be more efficient in the way we reinvest, especially at some of those higher-end customer segments. And I think the first half of this year you’ve seen that we’ve been able to continue to gain share whilst staying at a lower level of reinvestment versus fourth quarter of last year.
So we’re happy how it’s working out, but we will stay alert to how the market environment adjusts and we’ll stay close to the market. But the goal is most definitely to continue to optimize into the second half and to earn a higher gross margin from this higher level of revenue.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
You know, and I appreciate the question. Our goal is to get back to our EBITDA market share and that’s why we’re investing. But in order for us to do it, we need to see some market growth. We need to continue with our reinvestment program and the approach that we’re taking today, and we need to see the high-value product come online in the way that we’ve seen with the Londoner Grand, the Londoner Court and the Grand Suites of the Four Seasons. So as we continue the Venetian renovation, as we work through the rest of the properties that we’re planning on investing in, as we get that higher-value product, as Grant mentioned earlier, as we continue to have the highest level of service, we will have the opportunity to grow back to that level of EBITDA. That’s what our goal is.
George Choi, Analyst at Citigroup
Thank you very much. And as a follow-up, we noticed that you have a very strong lineup of events and concerts in Macau for the next several months, which is very encouraging. Just wondering, how would you describe the current level of competition on getting top-tier artists to perform at your Venetian and Londoner arenas versus other venues in Macau?
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
Thanks, George, for that question. The competition in entertainment content is fairly intense across the region, so it will be acts that are stopping in Asia where Macau as the destination is competing against the other cities in the region. That hasn’t really changed versus the last two years. Within Macau there are obviously more entertainment acts going on and therefore there is competition for similar acts. However, as you just highlighted, we have a very strong lineup into the second half and we feel very good about our event calendar, able to drive all segments of the business, and we’ve seen some positive impact from these events in the first six months of the year. But the second half looks very strong for us, especially as we build into August, September, and then obviously culminating in the NBA games in October.
George Choi, Analyst at Citigroup
Thank you very much for the color.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from Trey Bowers from Wells Fargo. Trey, your line is live.
Zach Silverberg, Analyst at Wells Fargo
Hi, it’s Zach Silverberg filling in for Trey. Thank you for taking our questions. The first one on MBS: theoretical VIP hold on slide 11 ticked up quarter over quarter despite, you know, a change in mix on visitation, you know, as you called out in June. Can you kind of unpack that a little bit? What drove, you know, the theoretical hold to tick up quarter over quarter despite, you know, these changes?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Well, first off, Zach, welcome to the Las Vegas Sands earnings call. Thank you. So in terms of the 4.2%, as we talked about last quarter, who shows up in the building and how they play really matters for our theoretical hold percentage. And we talked about last quarter with our $18 billion worth of rolling volume — which, as you mentioned, is on page 11 of our earnings slides — you can see that we held 3.6. That was actually a barbell where we had many of our patrons who play to a higher level of hold theoretically, and then a few patrons who were very concentrated who played to a high volume at a lower theoretical hold.
In this case, you can look at our volumes of $9.3 billion, which were exceptional in any consideration for a 2Q. But note that the players who were in the building played more of the side bets, played more of the higher-value bets with more volatility, and that’s what generated the 4.2% theoretical hold for the quarter.
Zach Silverberg, Analyst at Wells Fargo
Thanks. And for my follow-up, just following up on Robin’s question earlier on Macau OPEX, how do you guys know how to strike the right balance between OPEX and kind of the rolling volume share gains you’ve seen? I guess, in other words, is there an opportunity to lean in more on the service levels if you’re still taking this high-end share?
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
You have to divide between the different components of the additional headcount that we’ve invested in. First of all, the biggest headcount increase has come from our investment in additional operating hours in table games, and that actually feeds all segments of the market and obviously leverages our scale advantage with our 1,680 tables. So first off, that’s a multi-segment investment. In terms of the sales, distribution and the service elevation, those are more targeted at the premium segments — but not only the rolling segment, also into the premium mass table games.
And all three components have started to benefit our revenue capture, but certainly position us much, much better for the future as we bring on some of these product upgrades in the portfolio as they progressively complete over the next two years. So we’re very happy that we’ve made the step changes in the investments in table hours, sales and service elevation. The bulk of those additional investments have already been made, but we’ll continue to tweak and add as needed in accordance with the market growth opportunities.
Zach Silverberg, Analyst at Wells Fargo
Thank you.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
Thanks, Zach.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from Joe Stauff from SIG. Joe, your line is live.
Joe Stauff, Analyst at SIG
Thank you. Patrick, I was wondering if you could — sorry, one follow-up on World Cup. I was wondering if you could possibly size the World Cup impact in July relative to what you saw in June.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Sorry, sorry, I can’t. We just had a lot of people who weren’t there. It really captivated the whole world. And if you sort of follow Southeast Asia and the Asian region, European football is the most popular sport. That and basketball are the two most popular sports. And so I think, you know, just anecdotally, we had a lot of people not around last Sunday and ended on Sunday. So, you know, let’s talk again in 92 days and we’ll let you know what happened.
Joe Stauff, Analyst at SIG
Fair enough. And then at MBS, you know, like Dan was asking earlier, we’re a year into the launch of the new renovations. Is there any way or measure you can give us in terms of the new customer development — where you are in that, in terms of, you know, again, kind of like the highest-end number of population set that you have? Where are you in that development? Are you early? If there’s any sense you can give us in terms of that. It’s been a year, so you probably see some patterns, but just wondering how much is left.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
So I think it’s early days yet in the market for high-value tourism in Southeast Asia. If you look at the population size, if you look at the economies in the countries in our catchment area, where our tourists come from and where the tourists that come to Singapore come from, there is a huge amount of foreign direct investment, there is a huge amount of wealth creation and there are a lot of young people who are becoming very successful as entrepreneurs.
And many of those people want to come to Singapore. And so we are the beneficiary of Singapore’s status in Southeast Asia and Asia in general as an incredibly desirable tourism destination for high-value tourists. The most successful people in Asia are coming to Singapore and they keep growing and their wealth keeps compounding. So you have the benefit of our patrons creating more wealth over time for themselves and growing within the MBS ecosystem.
And then you have a lot of new patrons who we’ve never seen before, who are very successful in our catchment area, showing up because they want to experience the great things that MBS has on offer: entertainment, hospitality, food and beverage, most very importantly retail. That’s a huge component of our customer activity and of course gaming. And all of these things come together and create a very unique, high-level experience. We also have a lot of customers who are very successful who are also MICE customers.
You know, where we’re located, and Singapore’s focus on MICE tourism and facilitating trade and business creates a lot of opportunities for very high net worth people to have MICE interactions on our property and then return again and be leisure patrons or do both. So we think we’re in very, very early innings of the Marina Bay Sands story and, to be fair, of the story of Singapore’s success as a center of trade and business. So we’re very excited about the long-term opportunity there, about the investments we’re making and about the patron profile that we have and how so many of them are young and how they’re creating wealth and how economies are developing in and around Singapore, all throughout Southeast Asia.
UNKNOWN Analyst
Thanks, Patrick.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from David Katz from Jefferies. David, your line is live.
David Katz, Analyst at Jefferies
Hi everyone. Thanks for including me. Appreciate it. I wanted to just get a long-term perspective on, you know, capital spending in Macau. I’m looking at your slide 21 and I see you have, you know, 600 million next year and the year after. You know, what should we think about being included in there? And as we look out longer term, is that a rate that you expect you can continue to maintain and work your way across the portfolio in Cotai as you’ve been doing?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
So the reason why we show that CapEx on top of the maintenance is to invest for growth. So as we talked about before and I said in the prepared remarks, we have looked for the highest-returning, highest cash flow generating projects that we can undertake in the near term to begin to grow the business and head towards, as Joy described, as George described, our previous levels of EBITDA and our previous EBITDA share. We’re very focused on growing this business and the way we have to grow this business is through investment in the three pillars we talked about.
And one of those pillars is great product. And we’ve shown success and we’ve shown meaningful returns on the capital we’ve deployed in product to address our high-value premium mass and super premium mass segments and on the rolling segment at the higher VIP level, which you see in our volumes in Macau. And so we intend to invest to create the opportunity to grow the business. And that’s why you see that number there. So we’ll continue for a bit, we’ll keep going, but we’re going to see returns from this CapEx or we wouldn’t be doing it.
David Katz, Analyst at Jefferies
Okay, fair enough. And just one detail. Apologies if you’ve already mentioned it. I can go back and look it up. Did you tell us how many rooms are out at the Venetian? And, you know, we should expect out per quarter just so we can get our model set up the right way.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
Yeah, David, it’s approximately 400 keys out of inventory on average for the second quarter. And you can assume that figure will fluctuate between 4 to 500 every quarter between now and into 2027.
David Katz, Analyst at Jefferies
That’ll work. Thank you very much.
OPERATOR
Thank you. The next question will be from. The next question will be from Steve Wojcinski from Stifel. Steve, your line is live.
Steve Wojcinski, Analyst at Stifel
Yeah. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Just one question for me. So, Patrick, you talked a lot so far about the reinvestment rate in the Macau market for yourselves, you know, but wondering if you could comment on your peer group as well in terms of maybe what you’re seeing out there across the entire market and how you guys are thinking about the rate of reinvestment for the whole market. Or maybe a better way to ask that is when could the entire market maybe start to slow that reinvestment rate down?
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
So I think, first off, I think, you know, our approach isn’t changing. As we, as I mentioned before in the prepared remarks, as Grant said earlier, going to continue to approach this the same way. And I think what we’re seeing in the market now is some stability, some movement. But I think in the long run, as the market grows, there will be less pressure and people have the opportunity to make more money. But Grant, I don’t know if there’s anything else you want to add.
Grant Chum (CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations)
I think that’s exactly right. As revenues grow in the market, there will be some kind of decompression on the need to continuously elevate the reinvestment levels. The competition environment hasn’t really changed for the past several quarters. And as we’ve continuously said on this call, our approach has been very consistent, especially since the start of the year, and we’ll continue to look to optimize that reinvestment. But we are cognizant of any changes in the market as well. So we will be adjusting in accordance with that. But at this stage, we don’t see any significant change in the competitive landscape as far as reinvestment is concerned.
Steve Wojcinski, Analyst at Stifel
Okay, great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Thanks, Steve.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And the next question will be from Steve Pazela from Deutsche Bank. Steve, your line is live.
Steve Pazela, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
Hey, good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for the question. Just one from us. Following up on the World Cup one more time. As you look back at historical World Cups versus this one, is there any reason that this year would have had a higher impact versus past World Cups? Could it be what’s driving the market this year? The location of the US or any thoughts on that? Thank you.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Yeah, thank you. Really appreciate the question. A couple of thoughts. So first off, this World Cup had a larger number of teams participating. So that was maybe one factor. Being in the US, given the infrastructure and tourism infrastructure here, including airports, hotel rooms and the ability to, you know, attract tourists from all over the world, was another benefit for the World Cup. Maybe not for visitation to Macau and Singapore, but definitely for the World Cup.
I think just the increase in viewership of European football globally over the years probably hasn’t hurt, and the star power of some of the players that were participating. There are some players there that are really of note and generational talents and this might be maybe their last World Cup or their first World Cup. So there was a lot of interest. And I think, you know, most importantly, the last World Cup was really during the pandemic. It was ’22.
Visitation to both Macau and Singapore was very different. Transit around Asia was very different. And so it’s very hard for us to have a comp to look at and understand what the impact could be on a run-rate basis. So I think you had two things here. You had an extraordinary sporting event that captivated the world, and that was one part of it. And then the other part is we didn’t really know what would happen because we haven’t seen a World Cup in more than eight years in a normal run-rate environment.
Steve Pazela, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
And there’s prediction markets that weren’t there four years ago, too.
Patrick Dumont, Chairman and CEO
Thank you.
Steve Pazela, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
Appreciate it.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And that does conclude our Q&A session for today. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It does also conclude today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.
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