July 24–If Las Vegas Sands Corp. officials need more evidence why they should build another hotel in south Bethlehem, they need only consult their own earnings report.
Sands Bethlehem’s 302-room hotel posted a record occupancy rate of 92 percent for quarter ending June 30, even while commanding a nightly room rate of $154.
Consider that the average occupancy rate for the 5,800 hotel rooms in the Lehigh Valley is 66 percent, with an average room rate of $94.
“The Sands hotel numbers are huge,” said Michael Stershic, president of Discover Lehigh Valley, the regional tourism promotion agency. “The demand is huge. People want that full casino experience.”
Those numbers are particularly relevant now as Las Vegas Sands drafts a master plan that is to determine how much it will invest to expand in Bethlehem in the near future. Sands Bethlehem officials have said the plan may include another hotel tower, a convention center and a retail complex anchored by a Bass Pro Shops.
The encouraging hotel numbers came as part the latest Sands Corp. filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, showing otherwise disappointing earnings for the world’s largest casino company.
China’s crackdown on corruption continued to push down revenues for Las Vegas Sands Corp., but its smallest casino in Bethlehem continues to be its best-performing casino over the previous year. While the corporation’s second-quarter revenues fell 19. 4 percent to $2.92 billion, Sands Bethlehem’s net revenues of $137.5 million for the quarter were a 9 percent increase over 2014.
It’s EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization — rose 22 percent to $34.1 million.
With China regulations restricting the high rollers that can travel to Sands casinos in Macau, and its casinos in Las Vegas reporting slight declines over 2014, Sands Bethlehem is the company’s only growing casino.
Still, company CEO Sheldon Adelson quickly put all that in perspective. His casinos in Macau and Singapore helped the company post a second-quarter EBITDA of $1 billion, with revenues in Asia easily dwarfing those raised in Bethlehem and Las Vegas. They only seem disappointing now because the company’s record-breaking profits in 2013 were like nothing any casino company has ever seen.
“The other guys can’t catch up to us. That train has left the station,” Adelson said. “We are different. We originally envisioned the difference. We built the difference.”
Sands Corp. stock opened Friday at $55.73, down from more than $87 in March 2014.
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