Las Vegas Sands’s long-running renovation and reinvention of Sands Cotai Central into The Londoner is causing “disruption” in the company’s Macau numbers. That was the lead takeaway from a “well-attended” dinner with J.P. Morgan analysts and top Sands executives.

Senior Vice President of Finance Dan Briggs and Vice President of Investor Relations Alistair Scobie were present for the event, hosted by Morgan analyst Joseph Greff. Greff came away broadly optimistic about Sands’s prospects and kept an “Overweight” rating on the stock, which was trading at $44.86 a share Tuesday morning.

Greff’s expectation was that Sands’s Macanese business would grow more slowly than its competitors, but that its position would improve in the late autumn as construction upheavals settled. He also felt that strong results from Marina Bay Sands in Singapore would help drive improved investor outlooks heading into 2025.

Sands is currently investing $1.2 billion in the second phase of the Londoner makeover. This has resulted in 2,500 to 3,000 hotel rooms being out of service (compared to 600 in the first quarter) and renovation of the casino itself.

The company has coped with this by redirecting table-game action to other Sands-owned casinos in Macau. The Macanese promotional environment was described as “competitive,” but not escalating.

Greff said that Sands “doesn’t see a scenario or need to increase its reinvestment rate once the new casino, arena, and an additional 1,000 suites at the Sheraton are back on line.” The company also believed it would increase its mass-market play during the summer, given players’ seasonal traditions. The analyst stood by his projection of $600 million in Macau-derived cash flow for Sands this quarter, saying that Wall Street’s consensus of $635 million was “a bit aggressive.”

As for Singapore, Sands “sees this market steadily grinding higher from here on organic growth trends,” following a tourism boost in the first quarter driven by looser visa rules in China. Sands is targeting an even higher-end customer with the suite product in its new Marina Bay hotel tower slated for an early 2025 completion.

While Sands brass continued to plan a $500-million-per-quarter share buyback from both Wall Street and the Hong Kong bourse (where the stock has suffered of late), “we sense that there is a preference for the more liquid parent-company listing.”

On domestic fronts, New York City’s pace “remains a point of frustration,” while Texas is also a long-haul prospect. Greff cautioned that the Lone Star State “will take time (we would point to a historical and vocal anti-gaming political base, but we’d also note that these things can change over time).”

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