So expansive were the responses given by Full House Resorts CEO Dan Lee and CFO Lewis Fanger that relatively few questions were taken from Wall Street stock analysts.
Fanger led off the call by saying, “We do have a lot of positive things to talk about.” One of them was a 21 percent improvement in the cash flow at Silver Slipper in Biloxi, aided by $2 million in new cost savings.
Chamonix, the company’s troubled megaresort in Colorado, had a new general manager, Brandon Lenssen, brought over from Bally’s Black Hawk. Revenue at Chamonix was up 34 percent, said Fanger, but expenses “grew at a similar pace.”
New growth will take time, Fanger emphasized, especially as Chamonix is pursuing customers new to the Cripple Creek market. Several million dollars, he continued, have been saved, whether by insourcing some work or using social media in a more-targeted fashion. A new chief marketing officer starts at Chamonix next week, analysts were told.
Lee said the second quarter of 2025 is better at Chamonix so far, moving toward profitability, but revenue must keep growing. “We found a lot of low-hanging fruit” in terms of costs, like a $1.5 million pop-up buffet.
“I fired three people in about 10 minutes,” Lee said of an early 2025 executive bloodbath. “I was pretty ruthless.” Among the causes of Lee’s wrath was the discovery that Chamonix chefs were selling crab meat to competing restaurants.
“The guy we had was in way over his head,” said Lee of Lenssen’s predecessor, when queried on his responsibility for the discharged Chamonix management team. Lee sent an undercover consultant to study Chamonix secretly for a week, then overtly for another week, “and then I fired the management team.”
The CEO explained that the initial Chamonix management had been promoted from Bronco Billy’s and had never opened a property of Chamonix’s scale, nor run one like it. “The fault is on me,” he concluded.
He likened the situation to the hypothetical of opening Bellagio with the Gold Strike Laughlin managers. They were led at the time by a young Bill Hornbuckle. The latter, Lee said, went on to be a “very competent” CEO, but had he tried to run Bellagio when it was new, he would have failed.
Lee said the Mirage Resorts properties he opened all had birthing pains and Chamonix “will be on an upward trend from here.”
The Temporary at American Place in Waukegan was reported to have had a record month in March, its first $10 million-plus. The American Place database had risen to over 100,000 names and the casino had added a poker room. Also, Fanger noted, the company was paying down its revolving credit line, using what he described as “excess cash.”
“Marketing has changed pretty dramatically in the last few years,” mused Lee, now being predominantly database-driven. “We were probably behind the curve on that.”
At present, Lee is focused on the design of the permanent American Place, using an architectural firm that worked on The Venetian and The Palazzo in Las Vegas. “Frankly, we went to town studying Durango. I spent so much time back of the house, they thought I worked there.”
Lee also disclosed that he had hired Bill Richardson, late of Gold Strike Resorts, now in construction in partnership with Yvette Landau. “He was the guy who built [Park MGM],” along with Mandalay Bay before being bought out by then-MGM Mirage. Latterly, Richardson had been involved with the construction of Durango Resort and Fontainebleau Las Vegas.
Landau and Richardson will be co-project managers in Waukegan (whence Lee and Fanger were calling). “There’s not a lot being built in Las Vegas right now,” Lee said, so expertise was available for American Place.
“We’re studying the bond market carefully,” Lee remarked of financing for American Place. “Everything was going great until people started talking about tariffs, then all hell broke loose.”
But Fanger thought that the bond markets would be open to Full House sooner than he expected three weeks earlier. Lee stressed that there was no deadline for opening the permanent casino, but he’d like to debut it by August 2027, so as not to idle the workforce from the temporary facility. If it looked like the Illinois Legislature wouldn’t extend the temporary casino’s lifespan, Lee said he had a marker in the form of $20 million a year in tax payments that he could call.
As for costs, Lee opined that there are all manner of ways to get around tariffs, much as iPhones are now being imported from China by way of India into the United States.
Nor is he worried about a recession. “It’s a union job, so the wages are somewhat set. The subcontractors will be a little hungrier if there’s less being built.” Not only was Full House said to be helped by a weak dollar, it was not being hurt by the falloff in international tourism. “If someone from Europe wanders into one of our casinos, our jaws drop open,” quipped Lee.
One recent benefit to Full House came from Louisiana, where the highest court ruled recently that historical horse racing machines were not permissible, undercutting 15 Churchill Downs-run slot parlors in the New Orleans area and helping Silver Slipper.
