Las Vegas Sands Corp. Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Sands' second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen only mode. We will open the floor for your questions and comments following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Daniel Briggs, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Sands. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Paul. Joining the call today are Patrick Dumont, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Wilfred Wong, Executive Vice Chairman of Sands China, and Grant Chum, CEO and President of Sands China and EVP of Asia Operations. Today's conference call will contain forward-looking statements. We will be making those statements under the safe harbor provision of federal securities laws. The language on forward-looking statements included in our press release also applies to our comments made on the call today. In addition, we'll discuss non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measure are included in our press release. We have posted an earnings presentation on our website. We will refer to that presentation during the call.

Finally, for the Q&A session, we ask those with interest to please pose one question and one follow-up question so we might allow everyone with interest the opportunity to participate. This presentation is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Patrick.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the call. I just want to start off by saying our strategic priorities remain clear and consistent. We will continue to invest with discipline with the fundamental objective of creating meaningful shareholder returns over the long term. Turning to our current quarter, we again delivered strong financial results at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, generating EBITDA of $689 million for the quarter. If we had held as expected in our rolling play, our EBITDA would've been $37 million lower, or $652 million. That performance was achieved despite the seasonally softer tourism demand that exists in both Singapore and Macau in the second quarter of each calendar year. There's another factor to note. There was a decrease in visitation to both Marina Bay Sands and our Macau properties by our high-value patrons during the World Cup football tournament.

It was very noticeable in June, given the trajectory of the businesses in both markets earlier in the quarter. Despite these headwinds, mass gaming revenues of Marina Bay Sands grew 5% for the quarter compared to the second quarter of 2025, which highlights the resilience and underlying strength of the business. Singapore remains an ideal market for high-value tourism spending, and our focus on creating unique and memorable entertainment and hospitality experiences for our guests continues to generate outstanding financial performance. Our results this quarter reinforce our view that Marina Bay Sands' structural earnings power has been elevated following our significant product investments, suite renovations, service enhancements, and the successful execution of our premium customer strategy.

We remain confident that our market-leading product, service, and focus on driving high-value tourism will enable us to create unrivaled hospitality experiences for the world's most discerning customers and deliver additional growth at Marina Bay Sands in the years ahead. As I shared last quarter, the company's fundamental operating strategy relies on three critical pillars: our people, our product, and our service. When we get these three pillars optimized, as we have in Marina Bay Sands, we are positioned to drive high-value tourism to the market and to create outstanding financial and operating performance. We remain excited about the growth opportunity presented by the Marina Bay Sands Expansion. The expansion will meaningfully increase our premium suite capacity, service, and entertainment offerings, including the debut of a state-of-the-art arena envisioned to be the finest in Asia.

We remain on track with the development process and look forward to opening the expansion early in 2031, subject to the required government approvals. Now let's turn to Macau. Our $430 million in EBITDA for the quarter was negatively impacted by the exceptionally low VIP rolling hold of 1.35% for the quarter. If we had held as expected in our rolling play, our EBITDA would've been $87 million higher, or $517 million for the quarter. The actions that we have taken to improve our service levels and the customer experience are clearly achieving some early success. We are encouraged by our progress during the second quarter. Sands China's growth in gaming volumes meaningfully exceeded the growth in gaming volumes in the Macau market overall. When compared to the second quarter of 2025, we delivered strong growth in gaming volumes in all segments.

Our rolling volume was up 73% year-over-year. Our non-rolling drop was up 15% year-over-year, and our slot and EPG handle was up 30% year-over-year. Sands China's mass gross gaming revenue grew 8% for the quarter year-over-year, twice as fast as the overall market's 4% mass GGR growth for the quarter. Sands China's total GGR grew by 4% for the quarter compared to the second quarter of 2025, while the Macau market's total gross gaming revenue was flat for the quarter. If we had held as expected in our rolling play, Sands China's total GGR growth would've been 14% year-over-year. Sands China's VIP rolling chip volume share reached a market-leading 26% in the quarter. Turning to our reinvestment strategy, we have been optimizing reinvestment levels since the beginning of the year.

I wanted to highlight our approach to reinvestment has remained consistent over the last several quarters. Our approach has not changed. If you look at the metrics, reinvestment as a percentage of revenue did increase during this quarter. The increase as a percentage of revenue was driven by changes in business mix and lower hold percentage on our non-rolling play. Our goal is to remain consistent with our reinvestment strategy going forward and to achieve greater profitability as revenues grow in the future. With respect to operating expenses, we have elected over the last year to invest in additional table operating hours, increase sales, marketing, and customer service personnel, and enhance levels of customer service. The increased investment in operating expenses related to our efforts should begin to level off in the second half of 2026.

These investments are critical to the achievement of our long-term objectives of being able to service our customers to the highest standards and to create unique and memorable hospitality experiences for our guests. We remain steadfast in our belief that successful execution of our initiatives will support growth in both revenue and profitability over time. The growth in the Macau market remains primarily driven by the premium segment. The competition in that segment remains intense, and luxurious suite product coupled with outstanding service levels are critical to success. We remain singularly focused today on matching that suite and room product with the service levels that the most discerning and valuable customers in Macau increasingly demand. We retain our goal of reaching $700 million in quarterly EBITDA and beyond over time, as we fully implement our investment in operating strategies and as the Macau market grows in the future.

I want to turn to the product pillar in Macau. As I highlighted last quarter, we are focused on investing in the highest return projects over the next three years in order to create the best opportunities to increase cash flow. Renovation of Venetian rooms and suites commenced in March and work is progressing. While we have some product coming back into inventory across the work period, our target is to have all 2,900 rooms and suites completely refurbished and reintroduced by Chinese New Year 2028. We will also introduce new premium-focused gaming salons and related amenities as a component of the Venetian investment program. The meaningful patron volume growth we have seen at The Londoner and Grand Suites at Four Seasons provide support for these investments. It's important to note that the work we envision will not create significant disruption throughout the portfolio.

The scale of our portfolio will allow us to serve customers in other properties and elsewhere in each resort while work is in progress. Nothing we are doing as we invest in the portfolio over the next several years will hinder our ability to use our scale advantages to outperform in the non-premium segment, should spending in that segment accelerate in the future. We will use our scale advantage and product advantage together with service level improvements and targeted incentives to effectively compete in every market. We expect growth in EBITDA and EBITDA margins as revenues grow over time. Turning to our program to return capital to shareholders, we repurchased $787 million of LVS stock during the quarter. We also paid our recurring quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share. We have now repurchased 16.3% of the company's outstanding shares over the last 11 quarters.

Our board of directors recently increased our repurchase authorization to $6 billion. We believe additional repurchases of LVS equity through our share repurchase program will be meaningfully accretive to the company and its shareholders over the long term. While we did not purchase any additional shares of SCL during this quarter, we do continue to see value in both the LVS and SCL names. The company's ownership of SCL remained at 74.8% as of June 30, 2026. We look forward to continuing to utilize the company's share repurchase program to increase returns to shareholders. Thanks again for joining the call today and for your interest in the company. Now let's take some questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you would like to enter the queue to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad now. If listening on speakerphone today, please pick up your handset to provide optimum sound quality. Also, we ask each participant to limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please hold a minute while we poll for questions. The first question today is coming from Lizzie Dove from Goldman Sachs. Lizzie, your line is live.

Hey, thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask as it relates to performance, whether it be in Macau or Singapore, I guess hard to kind of parse it out, but how much of it you think is macro or consumer driven, to the extent there was also maybe some World Cup impact versus just execution or kind of missteps or investment needed in the property? I know there's probably a lot to unpack there, but any kind of details on that would be helpful.

Yeah, sure. First off, I just want to start out by saying this quarter doesn't represent the true earnings power of our properties at SCL. Hold had an impact. World Cup had an impact. You mentioned investment for growth in the future. If you look at some of the things we've invested in recently, Londoner Grand, Londoner Court, what we've done at The Grand Suites at Four Seasons, the customers are there and the productivity is there if the product is right and the service is right. We feel like our investment programs position us well for future growth. This quarter was not what we wanted to see. When you think about the 517, given the whole normalization, we feel pretty good about where we're headed, given the growth in volumes across all segments.

To me, that's just a signal of the effect that the new service model is taking, that we're now able to service the highest level patrons at a higher level. While we didn't get the hold that we wanted this quarter, the volumes were there, the visitation was there, and even though World Cup had an impact, we felt like we're headed in the right direction.

Got it. Oh, sorry. Go on.

The market was tracking very well, in Macau in April and May. SCL, our gaming volumes were very strong. In fact, May was an all-time high for us in SCL in terms of monthly mass GGR. June was clearly softer, and there was some impact from World Cup. As we look overall for the quarter, we see very strong underlying trends across all of our different gaming segments VIP rolling segment, we were gaining share significantly during the quarter, up 73% year-over-year, whilst the market was flattish. In terms of our table games and non-rolling, we were impacted somewhat by the lower hold percentage, especially in June. Then in slot and ETG, we clearly outperformed the market with 21% revenue growth for the quarter.

Overall, if you take account of the lower hold percentage in non-rolling and the business mix, we're able to achieve gains in every segment in the market share year-over-year and remain consistent in terms of market share sequentially with very similar reinvestment levels once you adjust for those hold percentage factors and business mix sequentially.

I do want to come back to MBS as well. I just want to highlight that this was an incredibly powerful quarter in several of our segments. The key is we were impacted by World Cup there as well, given the high-value nature of our patrons. I think as we look to that asset in the future, we see a very strong market, very strong visitation, and for us, we're going to continue to invest there because we see the long-term potential of growth in Singapore given what we see today.

Got it. Just to follow up on that, and maybe just to stick with Macau for a second. Appreciate you said this is not where you want to be or could be. I know in the past you've talked about $700 million in quarterly EBITDA. Last quarter, then $600 came into the mix, now I guess this is maybe a bit of a one-time quarter, but closer to $500 million on a hold-adjusted basis. I know you don't give guidance, but is anything you're seeing in the market or on a company-specific basis changing how you think about what that right run rate is for Macau, at least over the next year or two?

No, I think our target is still the $700 million. I think historically what we've always seen is that Q2 has always been our softest quarter. We talked about that on our last earnings call, that this quarter had some seasonality built into it, we saw that here. I also think that if we held better, we'd be having a little bit of a different discussion in certain things. I think for us, we look to the progress we're making in the market. If you look at the growth that we've had year-over-year, if you look at the fact that we did this through the World Cup cycle, I think there's some positive things there that we look to. I think our goal is still the $700 million, I think we have some work to do to get there.

We feel like the process in place for us to keep working to head in that direction. We know what we need to do.

Thank you. Thank you. The next question will be from Dan Politzer from JPMorgan.

Dan, your line is live.

Hey. Good afternoon, and thanks for the question. First, I wanted to touch on Singapore. Obviously, you talked a bit about World Cup and seasonality there. Given where the property is, and I think we're kind of anniversary-ing that first big quarter there, do you feel like you're at a place where the property maybe reverts back to historical seasonality? Broadly, just in terms of the seasonality discussion, can you just remind us how you think about it from Macau as well while we're on the topic?

Yeah, sure. I think what we said before is the big step function growth in Singapore was the switch from the suite product from the room product. We went from 135 suites to 770. That was the step function in terms of our product pillar to be able to accommodate the substantial growth that you saw in run rate. We also added a significant service component. Credit to the team there for revamping our service model, adding food and beverage, and of course, very importantly, the service levels on the casino floor, as well as some of the novel games, as well as just the overall presentation. All those things came to bear that allowed us to have the growth that you saw.

The growth is going to be based on yielding and more incremental growth as we continue to invest in the property that's there. There are still things that we're doing that we think will create growth over time, particularly in patron types that are higher value. I think for us, looking forward in Singapore, it's going to be about continuing to serve these customers. We have a very strong base there. Visitation matters for the highest-end customers, particularly at the highest end, it is concentrated. We've talked about that before. Whether it's World Cup or other things, some of those people weren't in the building this quarter. When they show up, we do incredibly well. When we play favorably, our margins look extraordinary.

When some of those people don't show up in scale, they don't play in high volume, and we don't hold very well, our margins can look less. We're heading in the right direction. I don't know that there's a gaming business that grows forward in a straight line, and I'd like to believe that this business is heading in the right direction. To be fair, we're also seeing the benefit of a lot of wealth creation in Southeast Asia. We feel very good about the long-term prospects of both our investment and the trajectory of the business there.

Got it. I suppose on Macau, just talking a little bit more about that $700 million quarterly EBITDA run rate and the path to getting there. Can you maybe give a sense of the capital or the time frame, the capital that you have to still commit or the time frame that you think is reasonable to get to that level? Obviously, this quarter wasn't ideal, but how should we think about the path forward towards that $700?

I think first off, this quarter was impacted with seasonality. We talked about that. We see it. There was the World Cup impact that we just mentioned. I also think, for us, as we continue to invest and get higher value patron-fulfilling inventory, we'll be able to grow our market share and grow our revenues. For us, this is what we talked about. We talked about a multi-year investment strategy as we updated our portfolio there and invested for the highest value premium mass segments that we do really well in. That's a very deep part of our database. Nothing's changed from our strategy, from our approach, and from the timelines that we talked about before. Grant, I don't know if there's anything else that you want to add.

I think in terms of capital projects, we have still a long way to go in terms of ramping up Londoner. It's done very well so far. As you can see, both Londoner and Four Seasons, even for this quarter, we're above where we were in 2019 on a normalized basis. That's a very positive evidence of how the product upgrades can drive the revenue growth and market share gains. Secondly, we are very focused on the upcoming completion of the Venetian renovation, which would take us all the way, as Patrick referenced, to early 2028. We should start to see the benefits of those new suites as we progressively get more critical mass of new suites throughout 2027.

Certainly, by the end of that, we're going to have a completely new hotel in, I think, what is still an amazing property for people to visit, but with an entirely upgraded, refreshed product, both in hotel and also in parts of the premium gaming sections.

Thank you so much. Thanks, Dan.

Thank you. The next question will be from Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Shaun, your line is live.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Patrick or Grant, maybe just a comment on sort of the nature of the growth in the premium segment you're seeing in Macau. This is pretty significant hold volatility, and we're seeing it in some of the properties. Just kind of curious if this is going to be the nature of the market a little bit moving forward, just given concentration in a smaller and smaller set of customers, or if there's a little bit of an outlier and really want to chalk it up a little bit more to that, just in terms of activity and maybe the concentration of what you saw driving this kind of hold volatility. We tend to think for LVS in particular, sort of averages out across a much bigger base of business. Clearly, we didn't see that this quarter.

I think what's really important is we have product and service now that allows us to attract the most important patrons in both markets. That's a big step. The good news is sometimes we get that play in Singapore, sometimes we get that play in Macau, sometimes we get it in both. Sometimes we have a lot of it, sometimes we have less of it. Sometimes when we have less of it, the volatility works against us, given the number of decisions and the bet size and the volatility during the quarter of measurement. The good news is we take this business, and over time, it really works in our favor. This is the largest hold adjustment we've ever had in the history of Macau.

The good news is it happened after the pandemic at a time when a lot of people thought high-level VIP play wouldn't show up in Macau, and now we're earning it. Over time, we believe that things will. There's an old expression, right? The gate of luck swings both ways. We'd like to believe that over time, by taking this play and providing the right service and keeping these patrons playing with us over time, that we'll be more successful. The play is very concentrated. The other thing is, for some of these patrons, we tend to think about it across both of our properties. Right? Do we have the right amount of offsetting play across our entire portfolio of properties? For us, I think the important thing is the most asserting patrons want to stay with us and play high volumes with us.

Bad thing is we got beat really bad this quarter, and we actually got beat on the mass side, too. There's a belief in gaming that goes back a long time, that when customers play lucky, they continue to strengthen their bond and relationship with you, because over time, they'll eventually lose. So I think for us, customers winning is an investment in future marketing and gives us the ability to retain high-value customers over time. This quarter didn't work in our favor. Hopefully, in the future, it will.

Very helpful. Just to add to that.

Sorry. Yeah, Grant. I think the facts have shown, if you look at both VIP rolling and the premium mass segment, we have gained significant amount of market share at that very top end, given all of the strategies we've deployed since May of last year.

There is no secret, we have done huge gains in VIP segment against a flat market. This quarter, we've come from a position where we were number four in the rolling segment a year ago, and now we're number one with 26% volume share. Part of that share gain is coming from the super VIP segment, where we're also very successful in the Marina Bay Sands property. That is the VIP segment. In terms of the premium mass, we all keep saying that the Macau growth is driven by the premium segment in the current environment.

Within that, yes, there is some very high-end premium mass play which is available to capture, and we've been capturing more than a fair share of that in the last six months. Unfortunately, this quarter, the luck just didn't play our way. We are gaining the customers, we're gaining the volume, and they will be back, and the luck will even out in the end.

Perfect. Thank you both. As my follow-up, maybe just a quick high-level one on, Patrick, I think you mentioned the run rate and the investments being made on the operating expense side of Macau. Just a quick thought on Singapore. Is this a general good run rate as we're expecting to see a little bit more of incremental gains on the top line? Will that be matched relatively closely with sort of investments on the bottom line? Just how is the operating or run rate operating expense looking there?

First off, we're really happy with the 50% EBITDA margin at Marina Bay Sands, and we have a fixed cost base there that's really focused on providing the highest levels of service. We can do really, really well with more visitation from high-value patrons and their play. We can also see higher margins when we have higher volumes from those patrons and things happen to go our way on the gaming tables. In quarters past, we've seen higher margins because we had a lot of great play, and that play was favorable. Look, in the long run, we're really happy to make these investments to attract and keep our highest levels of patrons. We're going to continue to invest in things necessary to support great experiences for our patrons, really at the highest levels.

Look, sometimes from time to time, some of these customers require provisions, sometimes they require some promo. As a practical matter, this is a great business and we believe in the margin structure over time. Just broadly, we believe that we have a significant opportunity to continue to invest and optimize and grow as we have, given the strong customer interest that we have and just the growing amount of patrons that we see coming out of Southeast Asia that are high-value tourists that want to go to Singapore. We're going to continue investing behind this thesis for the long term.

Thank you. Thanks, Shaun. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question will be from Stephen Grambling from Morgan Stanley. Steven, your line is live.

Thanks. I just want to go back to that to make sure I understood it correctly. I think that your promo was down sequentially, still up year-over-year. Is it down sequentially predominantly because of the World Cup and maybe those customers not showing up and they tend to require higher reinvestment, so we haven't quite seen a change in the promotional environment yet? Or has it even potentially ratcheted up? Just curious if there's any way to dig into that and what you're seeing in the competitive environment.

Steven, just to clarify, in Macau, our reinvestment level sequentially remained flat. Second quarter versus first quarter, when we adjust for the whole percentage and the difference in business mix. Year-over-year, we see obviously a higher level of reinvestment because we only started to adopt a more aggressive reinvestment strategy to adjust to the market in the second half of last year.

Right. You had the World Cup in there, which I imagine if you're not having some people that require higher reinvestment, maybe that would suggest that perhaps it's even ticking up sequentially, just as we think about the underlying. Are you seeing any change in the competitive dynamic if you pull back the onion a bit?

There's no change in either our approach or the reinvestment levels when you look at it sequentially. As we have been doing since the start of the year, we're looking to optimize the level of reinvestment into all of these customer ADT segments. What we're finding, as we were successful in first quarter, is that we're able to adjust some of those reinvestment levels and still achieve the market share gain. As we look into the second half, we'll continue that process of optimization, and we aim to achieve a higher level of gross margin from this higher level of revenues.

Okay. Fair enough. I'll jump back in the queue. Thank you. Thanks, Steven. Thank you.

The next question will be from Robin Farley from UBS. Robin, your line is live.

Great. Thanks. I wanted to go back to a comment that you made during the call where you said that reinvestment would level off in the second half, and just wanted to make sure that I'm understanding that correctly. Leveling off meaning it will be flat year-over-year, or that the rate of increase in the second half would be about the same rate of increase year-over-year we saw in the first half and not a higher rate of increase?

Just to clarify, Robin, there are two different topics here. One is the reinvestment and the other is the operating expenses. For reinvestment, what we are looking to do is to continue to optimize the reinvestment percentage as a proportion of actual revenue, and that process has started since the beginning of the year. We have had some success in this, and we will continue that into the second half. In terms of Patrick's comments on operating expenses, we have had some OpEx growth during the first half of 2026, but we do expect the rate of OpEx growth to moderate into the second half. We have been investing in the table operating hours, in the sales, network distribution, and also in the service elevation.

The big step change in those investments have largely happened, and what we expect into the second half into 2027 is a more moderate rate of OpEx growth, and we should therefore be able to achieve some operating leverage on the EBITDA margin as revenues grow.

Is that saying that the second half rate of increase in OpEx will be similar to the first half?

Slower. Means it's going to be slower.

Thank you. I just wanted to clarify what leveling off, just to make sure I understood. Then, can you talk a little bit about, I don't want to get too focused on the very immediate term, but obviously the World Cup, you've talked about that impacting visitation. Are you seeing bounce back, pent-up demand, or is it just back to normal levels? In other words, are you seeing a clear sign that that was Just during the World Cup and how things look now versus that period. Thanks. I do want to point out the final was on Sunday.

I'm not really sure yet how we think about it. I will tell you that this was quite an unbelievable sporting event. The level of success of the World Cup in the U.S. is really remarkable. I think the earnings that they generated were a record. I think the attendance might have been record. I think the involvement with the broader field really captured a global phenomenon, and it was something that I think a lot of people went to. Unfortunately, a lot of our high-value patrons are followers or a lot of the players and a lot of the teams who had representation in the World Cup are from countries that participated, it just drove a lot of tourism away from our two core markets, our two markets.

We're obviously very optimistic about the long term, but also we think our patrons want to come back to doing what they're doing. We look forward to seeing them back in our properties, looking forward to seeing them back in our markets, we'll go from there. It's a little early to tell you about any snapback, given that everything ended only a few days ago.

Yeah. Thanks very much. Thanks, Robin.

Thank you. The next question will be from Brandt Montour from Barclays. Grant, your line is live.

Great. Thanks, everybody. The mass drop stat that you guys gave, 15% in the quarter, would you be willing to break that out by month in the quarter?

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear the question. Could you say that again, please?

Sorry about that. Mass table drop in the quarter was up 15%. You highlighted that, Patrick, in your prepared remarks. Would you be willing to break that out by month just so we can get a sense of how your performance was trending ex-hold before World Cup start?

Yeah, I would just say we typically don't do that, but just directionally, we were impacted in June.

Okay. In your slides, you have a slide about the Macau airport passenger volume. It took a big step back in the second quarter, more in line with last second quarter, right? We know this is a seasonally weak quarter, but the first quarter this year had a big step up, unlike prior years. It almost would seem like that capacity had taken a structurally higher step up since COVID. Just curious, when you talk to your partners or your contacts in the transportation division, is that temporary? Is that seasonal? Do you expect it to sort of rebound? Is there something that you think drove that?

I just want to clarify, you're referring to slide 39 where Yeah talk about the Macau Airport monthly passenger volume?

That's right, 39. Yeah. Look, I think if you look at it's not too much different from the second quarter of 2025.

Just to sort of highlight the fact that there is seasonality in visitation to Macau. That's kind of what my takeaway from that would be. Grant, I don't know if you have anything else you'd like to add.

I think you can see clearly second quarter is seasonally softer, and in the second half, we had much higher levels of passenger volume. It's fair to say international visitation during the quarter, but especially June, did slow down for a number of reasons, but also affected by the World Cup in June. I think it's not a surprise to see that the airport passenger volume is not as strong as the second half of last year.

This is just one airport too. Obviously, there's the Hong Kong airport, which isn't reflected here. There's the Zhuhai airport, which isn't reflected here. These carriers are trying to make money, obviously, and there's a lot more money to be made when people are traveling than when you have those very soft periods, April and June. Part of this is just supply and demand with respect to what those people are doing.

Great. Thanks for the question.

Thank you. The next question will be from Chad Beynon from Macquarie. Chad, your line is live.

Afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on capital allocation, your buybacks were again at an elevated pace for the second quarter in a row. Can you talk about availability or appetite to stay at this pace versus reverting to maybe where you were in 2025? Thanks. First off, we see meaningful value in both LVS and SCL equity, we're going to continue to act with this belief.

You see that on display this quarter. I think for us, share repurchases are a great way to return capital. They shrink the share count. They are accretive for EPS, we have a very strong view about repurchases given where the equity is today. If you look at the board, the board has been very supportive. We're very appreciative. They just approved a $6 billion authorization, our goal is to use it. I think for us, we see a lot of long-term value in the investments we're making.

We feel very strongly about the markets that we're in, we're going to continue to be aggressive in the way that we think about the value of our equity and how we repurchase stock.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you. The next question will be from George Choi from Citigroup.

George, your line is live Thank you very much for taking my questions.

If I remember correctly, you guys started optimizing your play win investments in June of last year. Are you comfortable with the way it's going now versus your competitors? I guess more importantly, do you believe that you can get back to the EBITDA market share that you used to attain without changing your current play win investment strategies?

Thanks, George, for the question. On reinvestment, yes, we started to make a step change in our reinvestment levels from the second half of last year. As we have gone through the last four quarters, we've been able to be more efficient in the way we reinvest, especially at some of those higher-end customer segments. I think the first half of this year, we've seen that we've been able to continue to gain share, but whilst staying at a lower level of reinvestment versus fourth quarter of last year. We're happy at how it's working out, but we will stay alert to how the market environment adjusts, and we'll stay close to the market. The goal is most definitely to continue to optimize into the second half and to earn a higher gross margin from this higher level of revenue.

You know what, I appreciate the question. Our goal is to get back to our EBITDA market share, and that's why we're investing. In order for us to do it, we need to see some market growth. We need to continue with our reinvestment program and the approach that we're taking today. We need to see the high-value product come online in the way that we've seen with the Londoner Grand, the Londoner Court, and the Grand Suites of the Four Seasons. As we continue the Venetian renovation, as we work through the rest of the properties that we're planning on investing in, as we get that higher value product, as Grant mentioned earlier, as we continue to have the highest level of service, we will have the opportunity to grow back to that level of EBITDA. That's what our goal is.

Thank you very much. As a follow-up, we noticed that you have a very strong lineup of events and concerts in Macao for the next several months, which is very encouraging. Just wondering, how would you describe the current level of competition on getting top-tier artists to perform at your Venetian and London arenas versus other venues in Macao?

Thanks, George, for that question. The competition in entertainment content is fairly intense across the region. It will be acts that are stopping in Asia, where Macao as a destination is competing against the other cities in the region. That hasn't really changed versus the last two years. Within Macao, there is obviously more entertainment acts going on, therefore, there is competition for similar acts. However, as you just highlighted, we have a very strong lineup into the second half. We feel very good about our event calendar, able to drive all segments of the business. We've seen some positive impact from these events in the first six months of the year. The second half looks very strong for us, especially as we build into August, September, obviously culminating in the NBA games, in October.

Thank you very much for the color.

Thank you. The next question will be from Trey Bowers from Wells Fargo. Trey, your line is live.

Hi, it's Zach Silverberg filling in for Trey. Thank you for taking our questions. The first one on MBS. Theoretical VIP hold in slide 11 ticked up quarter-over-quarter despite a change in mix on visitation as you called out in June. Can you kind of unpack that a little bit? What drove the theoretical hold to tick up quarter-over-quarter despite these changes?

Well, first off, Zach, welcome to the LVS earnings call.

Thank you. In terms of the 4.2%, as we talked about last quarter, who shows up in the building and how they play really matters for our theoretical hold percentage.

We talked about last quarter with our $18 billion worth of rolling volume, which as you mentioned, is on page 11 of our earnings slides. You can see that we held 3.6. That was actually a barbell where we had many of our patrons who play to a higher level of hold theoretically, and then a few patrons who were very concentrated, who play to a high volume at a lower theoretical hold.

In this case, you can look at our volumes of $9.3 billion, which were exceptional in any consideration for a 2Q, but note that the players who were in the building played on more of the side bets, played more of the higher value bets with more volatility, and that's what generated the 4.2% theoretical hold for the quarter.

Thanks. For my follow-up, just following up on Robin's question earlier on Macao OpEx. How do you guys know how to strike the right balance between OpEx and kind of the rolling volume share gains you've seen? I guess, in other words, is there an opportunity to lean in more on the service levels if you're still taking this high-end share?

I think you have to divide between the different components of the additional headcount that we've invested in. First of all, the biggest headcount increases come from our investment in additional operating hours in table games. That actually feeds all segments of the market, and that obviously leverages our scale advantage with our 1,680 tables. First off, that's a multi-segment investment.

In terms of the sales distribution and the service elevation, those are more targeted at the premium segments, not only to rolling segment, also into the premium mass table games. All three components have started to benefit our revenue capture, certainly position us much, much better for the future as we bring on some of these product upgrades in the portfolio as they progressively complete over the next two years. We're very happy that we've made the step changes in the investments in table hours, sales, and service elevation. The bulk of those additional investments have already been made, we'll continue to tweak and add as needed, in accordance with the market growth opportunities.

Thank you. Thanks, Zach. Thank you.

The next question will be from Joseph Stauff from SIG. Joe, your line is live.

Thank you. Patrick. Sorry, one follow-up on World Cup. I was wondering if you could possibly size the World Cup impact in July relative to what you saw in June?

Sorry, I can't. We just had a lot of people who weren't there.

Yeah. It really captivated the whole world.

If you follow Southeast Asia and the Asian region, European football is the most popular sport. That and basketball are the two most popular sports. I think, just anecdotally, we had a lot of people not around.

Understood. It ended last Sunday.

It ended on Sunday. Let's talk again in 92 days, and we'll let you know what happened.

Fair enough. At MBS, like Dan was asking earlier, we're a year into the launch of the new renovations. Is there any way or measure you can give us in terms of the new customer development, where you are in that, in terms of, again, kind of like the highest end number of population set that you have? Where are you in that development? Are you early? If there's any sense you can give us in terms of that. It's been a year, so you probably see some patterns, but just wondering how much is left.

I think it's early days yet in the market for high-value tourism in Southeast Asia. If you look at the population size, if you look at the economies in the countries in our catchment area, where our tourists come from, and where the tourists that come to Singapore come from, there is a huge amount of foreign direct investment, there is a huge amount of wealth creation, and there are a lot of young people who are becoming very successful as entrepreneurs. Many of those people want to come to Singapore. We are the beneficiary of Singapore's status in Southeast Asia and Asia, in general, as an incredibly desirable tourism destination for high-value tourists. The most successful people in Asia are coming to Singapore, and they keep growing. Their wealth keeps compounding. You have the benefit of our patrons creating more wealth over time for themselves and growing within the MBS ecosystem.

You have a lot of new patrons who we've never seen before, who are very successful in our catchment area, showing up because they want to experience the great things that MBS has on offer. Entertainment, hospitality, food and beverage, most very importantly, retail. That's a huge component of our customer activity, and of course, gaming. All of these things come together and create a very unique high-level experience. We also have a lot of customers who are very successful, who are also MICE customers. Where we're located and Singapore's focus on MICE tourism and facilitating trade and business creates a lot of opportunities for very high-net-worth people to have MICE interactions on our property and then return again and be leisure patrons or do both.

We think we're in very early innings of the Marina Bay Sands story and, to be fair, of the story of Singapore's success as a center of trade and business. We're very excited about the long-term opportunity there, about the investments we're making, and about the patron profile that we have, and how so many of them are young, and how they're creating wealth, and how the economies are developing in and around Singapore, all throughout Southeast Asia.

Thanks, Patrick. Thank you. The next question will be from David Katz from Jefferies.

David, your line is live.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for including me. Appreciate it. I wanted to just get a long-term perspective on capital spending in Macau. I'm looking at your slide 21, and I see you have $600 million next year and the year after. What should we think about being included in there? As we look out longer term, is that a rate that you expect you can continue to maintain and work your way across the portfolio in Cotai as you've been doing?

The reason why we show that CapEx on top of the maintenance is to invest for growth. As we talked about before, and I said in the prepared remarks, we have looked for the highest returning, highest cash flow-generating projects that we can undertake in the near term to begin to grow the business. Head towards, as George described, as our previous levels of EBITDA and our previous EBITDA share. We're very focused on growing this business, and the way we have to grow this business is through investment in the three pillars we talked about. One of those pillars is great product. We've shown success, and we've shown meaningful returns on the capital we've deployed in product to address our high-value premium mass and super premium mass segments.

On the rolling segment at the higher VIP level, which you see in our volumes in Macau. We intend to invest to create the opportunity to grow the business, and that's why you see that number there. It will continue for a bit. We'll keep going, but we're going to see returns from this CapEx, or we wouldn't be doing it.

Okay. Fair enough. Just one detail, apologies if you've already mentioned it. I can go back and look it up. Did you tell us how many rooms are out at The Venetian and we should expect out per quarter just so we can get our model set up the right way?

Yeah, David, it's approximately 400 keys out of inventory on average for the second quarter. You can assume that figure will fluctuate between 400-500 every quarter between now and into 2027.

That'll work. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question- Thank you The next question will be from Steven Wieczynski from Stifel.

Steve, your line is live.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Just one question from me. Patrick, you talked a lot about, so far, about the reinvestment rate in the Macau market for yourselves. Wondering if you could comment on your peer group as well in terms of maybe what you're seeing out there across the entire market and how you guys are thinking about the rate of reinvestment for the whole market. Maybe a better way to ask that is, when could the entire market maybe start to slow that reinvestment rate down?

I think, first off, I think our approach isn't changing. As I mentioned before in the prepared remarks, as Grant said earlier, we're going to continue to approach this the same way. I think what we're seeing in the market now is some stability, some movement, I think in the long run, as the market grows, there will be less pressure and people will have the opportunity to make more money. Grant, I don't know if there's anything else you want to add.

I think that's exactly right. As revenues grow in the market, there will be some kind of decompression on the need to continuously elevate the reinvestment levels. The competition environment hasn't really changed for the past several quarters, as we've continuously said on this call, our approach has been very consistent, especially since the start of the year. We'll continue to look to optimize that reinvestment, we're cognizant of any changes in the market as well, we will be adjusting in accordance with that. At this stage, we don't see any significant change in the competitive landscape as far as reinvestment is concerned.

Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Steve. Thank you. The next question will be from Steve Pisella from Deutsche Bank.

Steve, your line is live.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for the question. Just one from us following up on the World Cup one more time. As you look back at historical World Cups versus this one, is there any reason that this year would've had a higher impact versus past World Cups? Could it be what's driving the market this year or the location of the U.S., or any thoughts on that? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Really appreciate the question. A couple of thoughts. First off, this World Cup had a larger number of teams participating, so that was maybe one factor. Being in the U.S., given the infrastructure and tourism infrastructure here, including airports, hotel rooms, and the ability to attract tourists from all over the world, was another benefit for the World Cup, maybe not for visitation to Macau and Singapore, but definitely for the World Cup. I think, just the increase in viewership of European football globally over the years probably hasn't hurt and the star power of some of the players that were participating. There's some players there that are really of note and generational talents, and this might be maybe their last World Cup or their first World Cup, so there was a lot of interest.

I think, most importantly, the last World Cup was really during the pandemic. It was 2022. Visitation to both Macau and Singapore was very different. Transit around Asia was very different. It's very hard for us to have a comp to look at and understand what the impact could be on a run rate basis. I think you had two things here. You had an extraordinary sporting event that captivated the world, and that was one part of it. The other part is, we didn't really know what would happen, because we haven't seen a World Cup in more than eight years in a normal run rate environment. There's prediction markets that weren't there four years ago, too.

Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. That does conclude our Q&A session for today. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It does also conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.