Previously oversaw Asian gaming research with UBS Investment Bank
A superficial assessment of Las Vegas Sands' performance would balance chop in the Macau market with breathtaking results in Singapore and conclude that the company has had mixed results nearing the second full year of Grant Chum's reign over the six properties.
Mixed results? We would disagree.
As CEO and President of Sands China, and as company vice president in charge of Marina Bay Sands, Chum represented a departure of sorts from the company model of running business strategy out of Vegas and Singapore and corporate diplomacy out of Macau.
In early 2024, when Chum replaced LVS Chairman and CEO Robert Goldstein as Sands China CEO and Dr Wilfred Wong as President, operation of LVS's interests in Macau and Singapore - that is to say, its engine rooms - were for the first time placed in the hands of a single next-gen executive not hailing from the US.
But Chum was no neophyte. His investment banker and humanities background - he was a star student at Oxford University - meshed with the latter Sheldon Adelson era to produce a rising executive who was tailor-made for the revenue and policy shifts that Macau has undergone in the last 10 years.
Sceptics may look at the latest quarterly results for Macau, note the year-on-year retreat in casino revenue at The Venetian, The Parisian and Sands Macao, and argue that The Londoner's 55% year-on-year jump in revenue (to just short of the Venetian figure) factors in the latter property's casino and hotel revamp.
LVS executives have acknowledged that there is room for improvement. But Sands China still grew net revenue by 7.5% to US$1.9 billion, with adjusted property EBITDA up 2.7% to US$601 million in a market and political environment that de-emphasises casino theatrics and ups expectations on cost-intensive, non-profit, non-gaming attractions and community investment.
LVS' strongest suit - its appeal to the Chinese and Southeast Asian mass markets - is a powerful weapon but not one that can obtain optimum results in a Macau market whose natural size and uncommon intensity have been constrained as a matter of government policy since it peaked in 2013.
In this kind of market, competition is much tighter, much keener and more predatory, with greater effort not always linked to greater return. Nor is greater effort necessarily rewarded in political terms, even when there are results to show for it.
But when the weapon is allowed to be fully deployed, as it has been in Singapore, the results have been epochal. After two extraordinary quarters at Marina Bay Sands, the third quarter delivered more than US$1 billion in casino revenue, inviting observers to reconsider the potential the city can claim for growth.
The Singapore results enjoyed a hold rate whose expansion has sparked a debate on resetting theoretical hold and the role side betting plays. But we should note the nuts-and-bolts metrics of rolling chip and mass volumes, which increased year-on-year by 38% and 20%, respectively - remarkable numbers given the received wisdom in some quarters that Singapore is a maturing market.
The Singapore and Macau results point to Chum's judicious management of two very different regulatory environments, with distinctive government definitions of success. If there was a test to pass, Chum has passed it with ease: Where the shackles loosen, as in Singapore and to some extent at The Londoner, there is ample evidence that the company's choice of Chum is a long-term strategic coup.