MLCO - Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited (MLCO) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-04-30 13:07:10 ET

Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited (MLCO)

Q1 2024 Results Conference Call

April 30, 2024 08:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Jeanny Kim - Senior Vice President, Group Treasurer

Lawrence Ho - Chairman and CEO

Geoff Davis - EVP and CFO

Evan Winkler - President

Kevin Benning - SVP and COO

Conference Call Participants

George Choi - Citi

Ricardo Chinchilla - Deutsche Bank

John DeCree - CBRE

Praveen Choudhary - Morgan Stanley

Vitaly Umansky - Seaport Research Partners

Ronald Leung - Bank of America

Joe Greff - JPMorgan

Colin Mansell - CBRE Institutional Research

George Choi - Citi

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in the First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call of Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited [Operator Instructions]. Today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Jeanny Kim, Senior Vice President, Group Treasurer of Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited. Please go ahead.

Jeanny Kim

Thank you, operator. And thank you for joining us today for our first quarter 2024 earnings call. On the call are Lawrence Ho, Geoff Davis, Evan Winkler; and our Property Presidents in Macau, Manila and Cyprus. Before we get started, please note that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provision of federal securities laws. Our actual results could differ from our anticipated results. In addition, we may discuss non-GAAP measures. A definition and reconciliation of each of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the earnings release. Finally, please note that our supplementary earnings slides are posted on our Investor Relations Web site. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Lawrence Ho.

Lawrence Ho

Thank you, Jeanny. And thank you all for joining us today. We have had an eventful year so far. We've had a shift in management. Our sales force has been restructured. We've knocked down walls and started reconfiguring our gaming areas and opened several new retail outlets at Studio City, to name a few highlights. On the financing side, we paid down another $250 million in debt, raised $750 million in bonds and extended the maturity of our $1.9 billion revolving credit facility, significantly reducing our refinancing risk in 2025. We had a slow start in January but we recovered in February in part due to Chinese New Year. And the improvement in our performance in March and April reflects the steps that we've taken towards regaining our leadership position in premium mass. Melco Macau's first quarter [indiscernible] property EBITDA reached 89% of 2019. In March, both COD Macau and Studio City recorded the highest mass table games dropped ever. And in April, we continued to gain market share, recording the highest daily gaming revenue since Macau's reopening in January 2023. We remain extremely optimistic about Macau's continued growth potential. Various initiatives recently announced by the Chinese government, such as the multi-entry group tour visas between Macau and Hengqin, the new cities added to the IVS program in March. easier online visa application process for residents of China's 20 largest cities, as well as the proposed connection of Shenzhen to the Macau Zhuhai bridge, increases accessibility to Macau and enlarges our customer base. We are confident that we will maintain our market leading position based on the quality of our properties and our continued efforts to enhance our services and offerings....

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