Inside Asian Gaming

September 2010 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 63 Briefs Shuffle Master 3Q revenue up 14% Las Vegas-based gambling equipment provider Shuffle Master said its net income was US$5.8 million, or 11 cents per share, in the three-month period ended July 31, up from net earnings of $5.6 million, or 10 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 14.2% to US$51.5 million from $45.1 million. ShuffleMaster told investors the sales of automated card shufflers into Delaware and Pennsylvania, which added blackjack and poker tables during June and July, increased 15% in the quarter. The company said it now has 6,588 shufflers leased to casinos around the world, a 16% increase from a year ago. More shufflers were leased to casinos in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Singapore, In a statement, Shuffle Master Chief Executive Officer Phillip Peckman said the company saw several of its electronic table games removed by casinos in Pennsylvania to make way for live gaming. However, substantially more shufflers were placed to offset the loss of the electronic tables. Roth Capital Markets gaming analyst Todd Eilers told investors he expected Shuffle Master to benefit from the gaming expansion in Pennsylvania and Delaware. He suspected that New York’s racetrack casinos could soon allow the use of products like Shuffle Master’s electronic gaming tables. The recently imposed cap on live gaming tables in Macau also bodes well for the company’s electronic variety. Nevada gaming revenues down in July Nevada gaming revenues fell 4.9% year-on-year in July—their fifth consecutive monthly decline. On the Strip, casino gaming revenues in July all but matched the figure collected in the same month of 2009. Strip casinos collected US$461.3 million in July, which was about $12,000 more than the year ago number. The State Gaming Control Board said casinos statewide won US$829.7 million from customers in July, compared to $872.7 million in July 2009. In Clark County, casinos collected US$693.4 million in gaming revenues during July, 5% less than a year ago. Downtown casinos saw gaming revenues decline 19%, casinos in North Las Vegas suffered a 23.6% decline, gaming revenues from Boulder Strip casinos were off 16.9% and the casinos in the Balance of Clark County suffered a 12.7% revenue decline. Nevada gaming revenues have now recorded year-on-year declines in six of the seven months that have been reported in 2010. Helped by a 32% increase in February (boosted largely by Asian players during Chinese New Year, which fell on 14th February this year), Strip casino gaming revenues are up about 4% through July. Luxor’s casino floor under review in Vegas “The tower of Pisa leans. The sphinx of Egypt has lost its nose. And the Luxor pyramid on the Strip may be compacting itself, like the spine of a person with osteoporosis,” reported the Las Vegas Review- Journal ’s Joan Whitely. The Clark County building division in mid- July ordered the Luxor to vacate a section of the pyramid building’s basement level, which holds various offices not open to the public. The order came after Lochsa Engineering did a study for MGM Resorts International, which owns the hotel-casino. MGM hired the firm when county inspectors, in March, found two unfinished support columns in the pyramid’s basement. Lochsa determined the two unfinished columns were not part of the building’s original plans. But MGM completed the columns anyway and is now evaluating how to further strengthen the structure. Lochsa also looked at the “load bearing capacity” of the pyramid’s casino level—which is over the basement. Ron Lynn, the county’s top building official, wrote MGM Resorts a letter dated 30th August, ordering an engineer to visually inspect the entire casino level and to review the original load calculations. “The Luxor casino level has been through a series of modifications since its initial construction,”Mr Lynn wrote.“This, combined with the building’s unusual configuration and recent field review, establishes the need to conduct an evaluation… of the existing floor area.” The LAX nightclub, on the casino level, now occupies some of the floor slab in question. The letter also asks the resort company to “provide details of any required corrective action”by the endof September. MGMResorts has already submitted some of its corrective plan, company spokesman Gordon Absher said. But he declined to describe the proposed fix until all proposals are approved by the county. The structural issue involving the pyramid, which opened in 1993, does not affect the Luxor’s two nearby step-shaped guest towers, which were added later. In 2005, the Luxor—along with other hotel-casinos in the Mandalay Resort Group—was purchased by MGM Resorts International, which was then known as MGM Mirage. In 2007, the company undertook a major renovation of the Luxor, installing some new amenities—including LAX—and de- emphasizing some of the Luxor’s interior Egyptian touches. In early 2008, the Cathouse, another club on the Luxor casino floor, temporarily shut down two months after opening for structural repairs of its second-story loft, which had shifted. Mr Absher said the Cathouse incident was not connected to the present structural issue. Downtown Las Vegas Luxor Las Vegas