“It was a very good fourth quarter [of 2025], but the comparisons weren’t very straightforward,” said Full House Resorts President Lewis Fanger, launching the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
The centerpiece of the call was the performance of The Temporary at American Place in Waukegan, Illinois. Fanger reported that it recorded an 11 percent revenue improvement in the fourth quarter alone, yielding $32 million in revenue for the quarter and $124 million for the year. He said he was confident the as-yet-unbuilt permanent casino could double The Temporary’s cash flow.
“The pace of growth actually increased as the year progressed,” Fanger said of The Temporary’s performance. “We continue to believe our market remains under-penetrated,” with the nearest competitor 45 minutes away.
Foundation drawings for the permanent American Place “should be done imminently,” Fanger said, paving the way for the start of construction. He reported that Full House was progressing nicely on obtaining financing, but he could offer no details yet. The Illinois Legislature, he added, was considering an 18-month extension of The Temporary’s license.
“We’re looking at an all-encompassing solution” to financing The Temporary, Fanger said, rather than diluting its equity. CEO Dan Lee prefaced that by saying it’s too early to go into details, but he’s confident of a permanent-casino opening by early 2028.
As for the double-digit revenue increase, Lee said, “We kind of stubbed our toe in Colorado. We had a great team from Day One in Illinois. We have the only casino in the whole region that made the Chicago Tribune’s list of the best employers. People matter.”
Fanger added that the Waukegan database was growing now as fast as it did six to nine months earlier. “We’re closing in on 125,000 names in the database. And we’ve done it without hurting the competition,” Lee interjected.
Slower progress was reported from Chamonix, Full House’s Cripple Creek resort in Colorado. Its management team is now “fully formed,” Fanger said, with a new finance director and assistant general manager having been hired.
The new team, Fanger said, has increased revenue at Chamonix by five percent during their tenure. Guest visits in the top tier of Chamonix players (who average $200 in losses per night) were said to be up 20 percent in the first two months of 2026. Fanger added that the group business “continues to pick up steam,” tracking toward an eventual goal of 55 large events per year.
Lee was queried about a slowdown in revenue growth in Chamonix, which went from 19 percent in the first half of 2025 to seven percent in the third quarter and two percent in the fourth trimester. “The prior-year numbers were kind of artificially inflated by bad marketing,” responded Lee, chalking up the apparent slowdown to tough year-over-year comparisons. “You’ll see revenue growth pick up going forward.
“We’re in the right place. We’ve built the right product,” Lee continued. But Chamonix needs to continue to improve efficiency, he contended, noting that its third-party housekeepers were cleaning nine rooms a day rather than the desired 14. Lee argued that if Chamonix had more clean rooms, more of them could be comped to players.
“We had a Mexican restaurant that was pretty terrible, to be honest,” the CEO resumed. He said he had empowered the new food-and-beverage director to clean house, and now that restaurant has reopened and is much improved. “If you got into the minutia, just about every [metric] is trending the right way.”
The Temporary at American Place, Lee continued, had zero curb appeal at present, “but a lot of people drive by.” Chamonix presented the reverse problem.
Asked if Chamonix should be sold as more of a down-market property, Fanger replied, “We have meaningful growth across every segment. An upper-tier customer will come to us and only us.” Lower-tier players, he said, were as likely to favor the competition. “We’re very early in the optimization process,” Fanger added.
Cash flow at Biloxi’s Silver Slipper casino was another source of Lee dissatisfaction. He described it as “off a little bit, about flat. It should be in the high teens,” since the Silver Slipper did revenue of $70 million year in and year out.
Lee said he turned over the Silver Slipper executive team for the first time in 15 years. “This is a pretty saturated market and it’s not a particularly wealthy one,” he said of the Gulf Coast.
The CEO called for greater efficiency at the Mississippi casino, saying, “It’s a cash cow that should be making more.” As an example, $19 million in annual cash flow was, he said, “not out of the question.”
Lee also sounded less than pleased with the casino-relocation bill that came out of the Indiana Legislature. “This is a long and rapidly evolving process,” he emphasized. “We make money at Rising Sun. Not a lot of money, but we always have.
“The original locations that they legalized were the wrong locations,” Lee continued. He also evinced unhappiness with the trio of referendums that the legislature had approved, with Indiana regulators eventually picking the final winner. He said he was already looking forward to the next legislature.
