Full House Resorts saw a modest improvement in its Q3 results, driven by Mississippi’s Silver Slipper Casino and Hotel.
Full House Resorts hailed Q3 2018 as a solid quarter, with the company seeing a modest 0.7 percent rise in net revenues.
Full House reported that net revenues for the third quarter increased to $44.0m from $43.7m in the prior-year period. Net income for the quarter improved to $1.6m, up from $800,000 a year earlier.
“The past few months have been eventful ones for our growing company,” said Daniel Lee, president and CEO of Full House Resorts. “We continue to benefit from property investments made over the past two years, as seen in this quarter’s solid results. We also recently completed several more investments.”
The company currently operates five casino resorts in Colorado, Indiana, Mississippi, and Nevada.
Leading the chart in terms of net revenues by property was the Silver Slipper Casino and Hotel in Lakeshore, Mississippi. Net revenues at the property were $17.9m, a rise of around $1.5m on the year before.
“That’s the best net revenue that we’ve ever had in the property’s entire history. Gross gaming revenue was its best quarterly figure since it’s first year of operations back in 2007 and it missed the record by about only $200,000. Guest counts were the highest for any quarter since the first year of operations,” stated Lewis Fanger, the company’s SVP, CFO, and treasurer, speaking during the Full House’s Q3 earnings call.
Full House is currently planning an expansion to the property, which will see the company build a second hotel tower over the Gulf of Mexico.
“It is pretty complicated to build that out over the water because of the regulatory structure. The water bottoms are actually owned by the state of Mississippi, so we need to arrange a long-term lease with the state and we’ve got some very preliminary discussions with the state about that,” Lee explained.
“We also will need a variety of environmental approvals and core of engineering approvals and so on.”
Second highest in terms of income was the Rising Star Casino Resort in Indiana which recorded net revenues of $12.2m during the quarter, a three percent fall on the prior year period.
“At Rising Star, we did show some signs of strength as well, despite our revenue decline,” Fanger continued. “We have a great new general manager there, Ben Douglass, he transferred over from our Stockman’s casino. “He has really gone in and reinvigorated every bit of the processes over there from our labour levels to how people are performing tasks, marketing and efficiencies just going down the line.”
At Bronco Billy’s Casino and Hotel, net revenues remained flat at $7.5m for both the third quarter of 2018 and 2017. “We continued to be impacted on the labour side from the minimum wage increase,” Fanger clarified.
Meanwhile combined net revenue for the company’s northern Nevada properties – Stockman’s Casino in Fallon and Grand Lodge Casino in Incline Village – fell three percent year on year to $6.4m.
“Stockman’s had a stable quarter versus the prior year. We continued to be excited by that market because of the growth that’s happening over at the nearby naval base,” added Fanger.
“And then Grand Lodge, if you recall in the middle of last year, we opened up a renovated casino, a pretty significant renovation and we’re seeing the tremendous affects of that renovation now.”
