Shares of Bally’s Corp. traded sharply downward on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, March 5, losing 23.5 percent of their value. The stock closed at $12.99 on Wednesday, having closed at $17.00 the day before.
Fifteen minutes after the market closed, Bally’s executives canceled their earnings call, shortly before it was to have begun. No reason was stated for the cancellation.
Perhaps the brightest spot for Bally’s in its ensuing fourth-quarter earnings release was North American interactive revenue. It rose 24.4 percent from late 2023 to achieve $41.5 million.
Overall revenue, however, slumped 5.1 percent to $580.4 million for the year-ending quarter. Casino revenue was down 5.2 percent to $324.4 million. And despite a 11.3 percent bounce in United Kingdom interactive revenue, international digital takings slid 9.1 percent to $214.5 million.
While not counted toward quarterly revenue (the acquisition closed in the first quarter of 2025), the Queen Casino & Entertainment winnings were highlighted in the company’s press release. The four properties generated fourth-quarter revenue of $57.6 million and $15.2 million in cash flow.
CEO Robeson Reaves called 2024 “a transformational and transitional year.” He emphasized the demolition of the Tropicana Las Vegas and the Queen Casino merger, along with the groundbreaking for Bally’s Chicago.
“Reflecting the now-completed strategic transactions, the four complementary Queen casinos are poised to continue their rapid growth as they benefit from inclusion in a broader domestic gaming portfolio, with Bally’s benefiting from the expansion and diversification of our geographic profile,” Reaves said in the release.
“We emerged from these transactions significantly stronger, with the financial and operating wherewithal to continue to drive growth,” the CEO continued. He added, “Fourth-quarter segment results reflect the underlying stability in the domestic regional gaming environment offset by several ongoing pockets of relative weakness, which are inherent across any broad property portfolio.”
To wit, fourth-quarter casino-derived cash flow of $80.9 million reflected a 14.6 percent decline. Reaves blamed higher costs and lower revenue.
The CEO called the performance of temporary Bally’s Casino, at Chicago’s Medinah Temple, “consistent with prior quarters, as they remain below our expectations, though we’re hearing from customers that they’re increasingly excited by what is starting to happen a few blocks northwest at the permanent site.”
Other weak spots included Bally’s Lincoln Casino Resort in Rhode Island, plagued by nearby traffic disruption, and Bally’s Atlantic City. The latter’s performance has been dimmed by the departure of the relationship-marketing team.
On the bright side, Reaves was able to point to improved numbers at Bally’s Kansas City. He credited a new high-limit-gambling room for the uptick.
Looking overseas, Reaves lauded ongoing potency in the U.K. and bemoaned “ongoing weakness in certain non-UK markets.” Player retention and revenue-optimization efforts were cited as reasons for the upbeat British performance.
Bally’s also had to withstand the departure of divested Asian interactive businesses “and certain other international markets to a new independently managed company.” Consequently, Bally’s will only record licensing revenues from these markets. Still, Reaves said, “Revenue grew 12.9 percent versus the prior-year quarter, demonstrating the strong underlying financial performance of this business that is now focused primarily on regulated European markets.”
North America online business was brighter still for Bally’s. Despite a $12.3 million negative return on investment and the transition to a new platform, interactive assets improved their performance by nearly 25 percent. This included new online business in Rhode Island, which Reaves said clawed back some of the terrestrial revenue lost in Lincoln. “During the quarter, we launched the Monopoly Casino app in New Jersey to very healthy customer response and launched our Bally Bet online sports betting platform in Tennessee.”
Casino division President George Papanier inherited two conversions of riverboat casinos into land-based casinos: Belle of Baton Rouge and Queen Casino Marquette, and evinced satisfaction with the progress of both.
Regarding the planned Bally’s-branded megaresort in Las Vegas, Papanier said, “Bally’s progresses on the realization of a more fully fleshed-out integrated-resort master plan for the remainder of our extremely valuable site.”
Concluded CFO Marcus Glover, “Bally’s 2.0 is very well positioned to deliver enhanced value for all of our stakeholders that are invested in the company’s future.”
Bally’s ended the quarter with $3.3 billion in long-term debt and $171.2 million cash on hand.
