To say that Q2 2020 was one of the worst quarters in the history of land-based casinos is something of an understatement, as the recent earnings report from the Las Vegas Sands Corporation lays out in excruciating detail.
For the three months ending June 30, 2020, Sheldon Adelson’s company saw an astonishing 97 percent drop in revenue over that same period in 2019. In real money terms, that means that the company somehow managed to pull in $98 million during Q2. That number sounds pretty great right up until you hear that they earned something more like $3.334 billion during that same period last year.
Those low numbers aren’t all that surprising when you consider the fact that the Las Vegas Sands’ key casino proprties were closed from mid-March until the end of June.
Sands Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein reflected on the bad times in an earnings call earlier this week and, as reported in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, expressed deep misgivings about the prospects for bouncing back anytime soon. He told investors, “Of all (our markets, Las Vegas, Macao and Singapore), I view Las Vegas least favorably. Las Vegas, especially our company but really the whole city, is dependent on group, convention and banquet segments’ return. I see nothing that indicates that 2020 will return at all.”
His boss Adelson, the billionaire political activist, was considerably more upbeat on the matter saying that he has, “unbridled optimism that people will travel again.”
That’s likely true. But until there is an effective COVID-19 vaccine that’s widely distributed, Las Vegas, Macau and every other place with wide casino exposure is likely to be suffering pretty badly.