The CEO for Caesars Entertainment said Tuesday that the company remains interested in selling one of its Strip properties.
Speaking during a quarterly earnings conference call, Tom Reeg said a potential sale could happen soon.
Caesars officials have been vocal in the past about the desire to unload one of their eight Strip casino properties.
“Nothing has changed there,” Reeg said. “I expect that sale to take place in 2022.”
Caesars officials were upbeat during the 45-minute call, partially because of a strong second quarter for the company’s Las Vegas segment.
For the three months that ended June 30, Caesars reported net revenues of $855 million for its Las Vegas properties.
Reeg added that Las Vegas margins were higher in July — which falls in the third quarter for Securities and Exchange Commission reporting purposes — than in June.
The second quarter net-revenues figure for Las Vegas marked an increase of more than $700 million from the same quarter in 2020, a year dramatically disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Though rising COVID-19 numbers in Southern Nevada, and in other parts of the country, have led to a return of an indoor mask mandate in Las Vegas, Reeg said he’s not overly worried about business levels in the city.
“The mask mandate came into being less than a week ago, so this is all happening in real time,” Reeg said. “What’s going on right now with the mask mandate is far less onerous in terms of restrictions than what we have dealt with in the last quarter. I don’t know what impact that will have on group (business) coming back.”
Reeg said second-quarter hotel occupancy percentages in Las Vegas have been in the “low-to-mid 90s” lately.
“We fully expect that to remain through the current situation with the delta variant,” Reeg said.
Companywide, Caesars reported net revenues of just over $2.5 billion during the three months that ended June 30. Per share, the company reported earnings of $0.48 during the period, which beat most analyst expectations.
Caesars shares closed the trading day Tuesday at $86.78, up $0.28 for the day, but down from a yearly high of $111.70 on June 8.