Must-have casino stocks for your 2025 portfolio
Here are the top casino stocks investors should hold onto this year.
While many casino stocks struggle with economic uncertainty, two luxury operators stand out for investors seeking growth potential in 2025. Chad Beynon, analyst at the Macquarie Group, joined TheStreet to discuss his top casino stocks to invest in — and which casino stocks investors should avoid entirely.
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Full Video Transcript Below:
CHAD BEYNON: We like Wynn (WYNN) resorts right here. This is the the Cartier of casinos right. This is the luxury property. If you can afford it, you will choose when they have two beautiful properties in las Vegas. They have two assets in Macau. And they're building the first Casino ever in the UAE. They also have a property in Boston. So they have seen really strong improvements in terms of hotel rates and Casino levels. We like where the company is from a leverage standpoint. They have about four times debt to EBITDA leverage. They've been buying back stock and looking to improve margins. The stock kind of round tripped in 2024, I would say, mainly because of what we saw in China, the fits and starts of the recovery in China.
Obviously that is more of a negative part of the story right now, but I think that will recover. But yes, as we look at Las Vegas, I think that luxury customer is very insulated at this point. And they love the Wynn property. They love the experience, the product, the service. The cost per day to run one of their assets is well over $1 million. And that's an experience that people really like. You're not seeing that at other properties on the strip. And then the second one would be MGM (MGM) resorts. Their collection includes properties like the Bellagio, cosmopolitan and mandalay bay, and a number of others. But those are the two companies we kind of like that mid to higher end for Vegas, because if we do experience a slowdown in the us economy, I think those individuals still want to go out to the sphere.
Go to a concert. You know, go to a Las Vegas Raiders game. And then when we have the the baseball team, the athletics moving to las Vegas in a couple of years, I think that's even going to bring, you know, more customers to those high end properties. We want to see growth. We want to see exposure to that high end. I think the companies that aren't innovating, aren't growing, are probably going to be the ones that are more challenged at this level. I think the market is rewarding companies with growth, with deleveraging opportunities.
So I'd say the ones that are kind of standing still at this point are the ones that aren't going to see, you know, a benefit. Clearly, with interest rates hopefully coming down at some point. You know, that should help the overall valuations of these companies. But it's the ones that are standing still, not taking advantage of the growth in digital, not taking advantage of, you know, synergy opportunities through mergers and acquisitions. Those are the ones we'd stay away from at this point.
