Las Vegas Sands Corp chairman Sheldon Adelson says the group is to double the amount it previously announced it would invest in some of its Cotai infrastructure in the next few years. The news came in prepared comments issued with the group’s third-quarter earnings on Wednesday. Group-wide quarterly profit was almost flat, at US$571 million, compared to US$569 million in the prior-year quarter. Nonetheless, the firm confirmed it would pay a quarterly dividend of US$0.75 per common share on December 27, to shareholders of record on December 18.
The group also confirmed on Wednesday that the board had authorised a US$0.08 increase in the company’s recurring common stock dividend for the 2019 calendar year, which it said was its seventh consecutive annual increase, raising the annual dividend to US$3.08, or US$0.77 per share per quarter. Net revenues at the group’s Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore, and at the Las Vegas operating properties fell year-on-year in the three months to September. In Singapore, such revenues were US$766 million, compared to US$789 million in the prior-year period, while in Las Vegas, they were US$379 million, compared to US$387 million a year earlier. But in Macau, such quarterly net revenues rose 13.1 percent year-on-year, to just over US$2.15 billion, compared to just over US$1.90 billion a year earlier. Mr Adelson stated in the prepared remarks regarding the Macau market: “We remain supremely confident in the future opportunity in Macau, and have therefore elected to meaningfully increase the scale of our investments in the Four Seasons Tower Suites Macao, St. Regis Tower Suites Macao and The Londoner Macao, which will now total US$2.2 billion in investment through 2021.”
The current Macau gaming rights of the group’s local unit Sands China Ltd are due to expire in 2022. In October last year, Las Vegas Sands had said it would spend US$1.1 billion over the following three years on its Macau infrastructure, with the bulk of that figure – approximately US$700 million – to be used for rebranding the Sands Cotai Central property into The Londoner Macao.
