STEVE WYNN: 'In my 45 years of experience I've never seen anything like this before'
Wynn's "this" is Macau.
And what he is seeing is what happens when the Chinese government turns its back on your business.
Wynn made these comments on a conference call following another quarter of dismal earnings. His company's stock fell 7.5% as he spoke.
Spoke, angrily.
Wynn's third quarter earnings missed analyst estimates of $1.03 billion in revenue, delivering $996.3 million. At the same time last year - while Macau's slowdown was also quite apparent - the casino hauled in $1.3 billion in revenue.
"The decline was the result of a 37.9% net revenue decrease from our Macau Operations and a 3.9% net revenue decrease from our Las Vegas Operations," said Wynn in its release statement.
To paint the picture even more clearly, in the first quarter of this year, Wynn's Macau revenue fell 32% from the same time a year before.
In the second quarter, they fell 35% from the same time a year before.
This is getting worse.
For over a year the Chinese government has been cracking down on gambling in Macau, the world's biggest gambling center. The government has stepped up the monitoring of debit cards in the territory, placed cameras in VIP rooms, limited the number of tables allotted to new projects, and scared off high-rollers concerned with getting ensnared in President Xi Jinping's wide reaching anti-corruption drive.
"Almost half the business of VIP is gone and may be shrinking... it's caused us to review our credit policies and relationships with junket operators," Wynn said on the call.
What astounded Wynn on the call, though, was something more specific than the general environment. On March 25th, 2016 his company will open another property in Macau. But like his peers who've opened up new casinos since the crack down started, he has no idea how many tables he'll be allowed to put inside the property.
This spring casino firm Galaxy opened a $3 billion casino project. The company expected to be allotted 400 tables. It got 150.
Galaxy wasn't the only company to suffer from this.
"The notion that someone who has spent $2.5 billion, and I'm talking about Melco now, doesn't know how many tables they're going to have ... weeks before opening is preposterous."
Wynn called this turn of events an "aberration." In his case, that word might be an understatement. Macau once made up 77% of Wynn's revenue and, not counting its upcoming project, it only has two properties - one in Las Vegas and one in Macau.
Wynn's peers, like MGM and Las Vegas Sands, have more properties in locations unaffected by Macau's misery.
Las Vegas, for the record, is not one of those unaffected places. Macau's malaise has found a way to spread there.
"Any drop in our earnings in Las Vegas is a result of a drop in our Asian baccarat business," Wynn said on the call.
"If anything the problems in China are causing us to refocus our energies in America."
There's really nothing else Wynn can do.