Red Rock Resorts, Inc. (NASDAQ:RRR) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Wieczynski: Okay. And then, Steve, you mentioned that Durango is up to already up to — on pace to exceed your internal return projections. So this is somewhat of a hypothetical question. But as you guys start to think about additional projects down the road based on what you’ve seen so far at Durango, do you start to increase your return projections based on some of the — maybe the learnings coming out of Durango — or is Durango such a one-off type asset that its return profile might be totally different than anything else you do across the valley. And I hope that question makes sense.

Stephen Cootey: Yes. I’m not sure we believe Durango is a one-off. We love the area. And as Scott mentioned, I think Lorenzo talked about, the enterprise district is growing about 3x faster than the rest of the Valley. That actually includes some of our other development properties, namely Cactus and Insparada. So in general, like I don’t think anyone is more bullish on Las Vegas than we are. I mean population continues to grow at a 2.3% clip. We’re getting 38% of our residents from California in addition to population growth, you’re actually seeing net income growing or discretionary income growing about 8% and expect it to continue that way through 2029. So we view all of our opportunities in special. We have 6 of them. I think the team right now is going through entitling and getting these properties ready.

And right now, we’re just enjoying the growth of Durango. The team is doing a fantastic job really ratcheting down and making the property more efficient. And at the end of the day, we’re looking forward to that property being one of our highest margin properties in the system and then getting returns they’re at or in excess of what we’ve experienced in the past. And as I alluded to on the call, I think we’re seeing that happening much quicker than 3-year time line that we’ve previously given guidance to.

Lorenzo Fertitta: Yes. Stephen, go ahead. Saying kind of similar to what Steve said, but we remain confident that building out the portfolio of undeveloped land over the next 10 years, we’re going to be able to kind of grow into that historical return on investment with what Steve is around 20-ish percent. 20% levered return on correct. We’re not saying that’s going to happen year one, but by year three, we get there. I think what Steve obviously has said in his comments is that we’re well on our way, maybe ahead of schedule a little bit on Durango. But when you look at the overall portfolio, we’re still confident we can get to that 20% return on these greenfield projects. And we’re not in a position to say that we think we’re going to get more at this point, but we think that 20% return is pretty solid. So…

Operator: The next question comes from David Katz with Jefferies.

David Katz: Just to tap on to the end of that last discussion. I’m not sure that we got a ton of commentary about what’s next. And I know that you have occasionally talked about looking at Durango, maybe Inspirada, maybe something else. Is there any update that you can share? Any thoughts you can share around what’s next for Red Rock?

Lorenzo Fertitta: I mean I think first up is going to be North Rork, probably around the end of the third quarter, beginning of the fourth quarter of this year. And then as we’ve always said, we are actively working on plans for an expansion at Durango, which will be in a position to go forward if we decide to by the end of the year or the beginning of next year. And then we’re working on plans at Inspirada to have that in a position to make a decision when we want to go forward. And that — those plans should be ready, what the run in.

Scott Kreeger: I mean, we’re finishing up all the entitlement and all the plans that we have costing on the project by the end of the year, and we’ll be able to kind of… At that point… Communicated to everybody kind of what our timing is and what our budgets are. In addition to that, we’ve seen that we’ve been able to generate great return on investment by reinvesting in our current existing portfolio through building high-limit areas for both tables and slots. We’re really happy with the results there. We’re definitely seeing the benefit of between Belly Ranch and Santa Fe as well as we talked about Red Rock in the past. So we’re going to continue to focus on those as well. I think part of the issue that we have here is in these projects in a place to where we have tight budgets type plans so we can get these things going is really what we’re focused on right now.

And we should have information for you guys on what we said for timing and budgets in the near future. So…

Lorenzo Fertitta: Yes. And I think it would be interesting if anybody is out here in the next several months or whatever to take a look at the new race and sports book at Sunset, and we’re going to open a yard house there. And it’s really turned out. I think the customers are going to accept it and be really happy with time.

Steve Wieczynski: I appreciate that. And if I can just follow up, is one of the potential for mutations sort of both expansion and Insparada. And does that sort of change steve any of the kind of leverage commentary? Or are those sort of happening at different times?

Stephen Cootey: I mean what we’re saying it’s an option, I think, David, we’re very cognizant of the balance sheet. And as we said, leverage is peaking has peaked, and we’re looking to delever the balance sheet for that next stage of growth.

Operator: The next question comes from Barry Jonas with Truist Securities.

Barry Jonas: Wondering, are you still actively looking to sell any of your undeveloped land banks here?

Scott Kreeger: Yes. This is Scott. So I think we’re in the same position as we mentioned in the last call, where we have 2 pieces of land that are actively being marketed. One would be the Wawa Westin, which is essentially 100 acres of contiguous land just off the strip. And then there’s a portion of our Cactus development site, which is a total of 128. There’s about 40 acres of that site that is noncritical to what we want to do there. And so we’ve got that actively marketed as well. And then we do have a small entitled parcel in Reno as well, which if the right offer came about, we’d be interested in selling as well.

Barry Jonas: Got it. Great. And then just as a follow-up, more clarification. I noticed in the deck, your convention and meeting space is 231,000 square feet. I think that’s down like 8%, 9% from the last deck. So is that sort of 20,000 reduction or a function of construction or anything else?

Scott Kreeger: We’ll have to check. It shouldn’t be down, Barry.

Operator: The next question comes from Dan Polizer with Wells Fargo.