Although casino companies on the Las Vegas Strip have been predicting an autumnal “inflection point,” it’s not showing up yet, Truist Securities analyst Barry Jonas said. He published his findings in an August 26 analyst note.
After surveying Vegas room rates into October, Jonas noted that rates were “lower as expected, with early October not much better just yet. Our latest LV Strip room survey continues to highlight a choppy summer, while our early look into October is not all that encouraging.”
Jonas did note that week-by-week comparisons showed improvement as booking windows shorten. He said that casino companies are looking to November for a customer turnaround, but the data isn’t in yet.
“While the summer weakness was largely previewed by operators,” Jonas continued, he said that a critical query for investors in Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International was whether a turnaround would occur.
Truist’s tracking of MGM room rates showed them to be down six percent on weekdays and seven percent over the weekends. Caesars fared worse, falling 18 percent on weekdays and 12 percent on weekends.
Jonas observed that the two companies were coming off a soft third quarter, with MGM fading four percent and Caesars 10 percent in July. During August, MGM enjoyed a midweek vault of 22 percent, but weekend rates softened 27 percent. Caesars didn’t experience a midweek bounce, being down 18 percent on weekdays and 13 percent on weekends.
The trend continued downward in September, Jonas wrote, with MGM falling 17 percent midweek and 18 percent on weekends and Caesars down 13 percent on weekdays and eight percent on weekends.
Jonas didn’t break out discrete midweek and weekend numbers for October. So far, MGM is plunging 14 percent to Caesars’s 12 percent decline in room prices. “Overall, operators remain positive for Q4 and 2026 given the stronger event/convention calendar,” the Truist analyst noted.
Stand-alone casino hotels were seen to be doing better than their larger brethren. Wynn/Encore, Venetian/Palazzo and Fontainebleau were all cited by Jonas in this respect.
These high-end properties were up eight percent overall and spiked 16 percent in October, “consistent with higher-end consumer behavior trends we’ve been seeing this year.” However, a waiving of resort and parking fees wasn’t helping Resorts World Las Vegas, whose room rates slid 13 percent from 2024.
Budget customers might be migrating to locals-casino hotels. Rates at Station Casinos properties and others were up 11 percent. Wrote Jonas, “The locals market appears to be very well positioned amidst favorable population trends and we expect our recently upgraded [Station] to continue to benefit with some of the best-in-class properties in the locals market.”
Explaining Truist’s methodology, Jonas wrote, “The survey tracks leisure rates (not casino or group) and we use the lowest available room prices which can include some suite/deluxe rooms when a standard room is sold out. While this can potentially skew year/year comparisons, it also can improve the survey’s directional correlation to actual results,” exclusive of resort fees.