It’s official: Boyd buys Cannery; Massachusetts’ agonizing dilemma

Confirming the worst-kept secret in Las Vegas, suddenly acquisitive Boyd Gaming announced that it was buying out Cannery Casino Resorts. The price ($230 million) was cannery-pictoward the lower end of Wall Street had predicted for the deal and means the Boyd is getting Cannery at an industry-standard multiple of 7X EBITDA (as opposed to the crazy 13X cash flow it paid for Aliante Casino). That takes some of the sting out of the problem Boyd will facing when it starts competing with itself on the Boulder Strip. There, Sam’s Town and Eastside Cannery are only a (long) block apart, separated by a KOA campground. At least the original Cannery (shown) is seven miles from Aliante, ameliorating any North Las Vegas cannibalization. “We view the transaction favorably,” wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli, as well he might, given the Boyd had picked up two casinos for $115 million each, a bargain in today’s market.

Boyd will be funding the Cannery deal from cash on hand, dipping into the proceeds of a March bond sale. Like Santarelli, JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff thought the deal made sense, although he added that “we wouldn’t be surprised if there is additional capital investment in the property (unlike Aliante).” Boyd isn’t commenting on the deals until samstown-pic2today’s earnings call. Greff enumerates the original Cannery’s assets as “an 80,000-square-foot casino, a 200-room hotel, five restaurants  and five bars, a  30,000-square-foot entertainment  venue, and  a 14-screen  movie  theater.” As for Eastside Cannery, it brings “a 64,000-square-foot casino, more than 300 hotel rooms, five restaurants and four bars, 20,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space, and a 250-seat entertainment lounge” to the table. It’s a fresher property than Sam’s Town, has a better casino layout, as well as a nightclub, so it is in some ways the younger, hipper option for Boulder Strip denizens. We’re still scratching our heads a bit about the pricey Aliante deal but the Cannery acquisition looks to be made of win.

* Just as the Massachusetts Gaming Commission was getting around to considering Neil Bluhm‘s $677 million Brockton casino proposal, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are asking the MGC to put the brakes on and perform an economic-impact study. One of their concerns is the effect of a competing Mashpee Wampanoag casino in Taunton, which is going to get built whether the state approves it or not, both on Brockton and Penn National Gaming‘s Plainridge Park racino. A Bluhm-brocktoncommissioned study said (predictably?) that there was enough revenue to go around for everyone. A Mashpee-commissioned study from the highly credible Spectrum Gaming group foresaw a tribal casino taking a $28 million bite out of Bluhm’s revenues. The MGC stands to collect more taxes (25%) if it votes for Bluhm, slightly less (17%) if it chooses Taunton — and nothing from Taunton if both casinos move forward.

“The state may do a cost-benefit analysis and say, ‘We’re getting 25 percent off a $200 million-per-year casino, and we could be making 17 percent off a $500 million casino,’’’ says casino expert Clyde Barrow, who predicts the MGC will drop Brockton like a hot brick. “They’re in desperate need of economic development,” says Bluhm of the city, but the casino vote there was bitterly close and the MGC may not want to forego the bird in the hand (Taunton) for the one in the bush (Brockton). They know a tribal casino is coming, so why ride its jetstream?

* Things are looking up a bit in Atlantic City, where casinos are expected to hire 2,400 employees — mostly seasonal, it is true. However, 600 of those hirings are expected to be permanent, an augury of confidence in a more-stable casino market.

* Vegas-fixated Thrillist hits the target with this litany of every type of denizen you’re likely to encounter either in downtown Las Vegas (some more likely there, like buskers) or on the Strip. Yes, even douchebags got a mention … just barely.

This entry was posted in Atlantic City, Boulder Strip, Boyd Gaming, Cannery Casino Resorts, Downtown, Economy, Massachusetts, Neil Bluhm, North Las Vegas, Penn National, Regulation, Taxes, The Strip, Tourism, Tribal, Wall Street. Bookmark the permalink.