Caesars Entertainment's CEO Tom Reeg said the company still has plans to sell one of its eight Las Vegas Strip resorts, but it will wait for the market to further rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic before it does, according to Las Vegas Sun.
Since the company’s merger with Eldorado Resorts, Caesars officials have said they seek to sell a Strip property. “We remain convinced that it does not make sense for us to market an asset until we can market it off the cash flow that we’re doing with it, not off a bridge to what we think we can do with it,” Reeg said, adding that a sale could possibly happen in 2022.
For the first quarter of the year, Caesars posted a net loss of $423 million after collecting $1.7 billion in net revenues for the three months that ended March 31.
Caesars officials said they expect business in Las Vegas to continue to improve as the year goes on. “The numbers don’t tell the story this quarter,” Reeg said. “We had Illinois and Pennsylvania still closed when we started the quarter. In Nevada, we didn’t have the state open to 50% until two weeks were left in the quarter, so we saw demand build through the quarter.”
However, the company noted positive numbers in terms of occupancy rates in Las Vegas. “Total occupancy for Q1 was 63%, with weekends at 85% and mid-week at 52%. March total occupancy was 77% and April was 84%,” President and COO Anthony Carano said on a conference call this week, as reported by Market Watch. “Weekends in Las Vegas are sold out for the foreseeable future.” Reeg said that Caesars expects the 84% occupancy rate in April to improve in May and June.