An eventful first quarter for Vici Properties led to an uneventful earnings call. It was over in 44 minutes.
CEO Edward Pitoniak joked, “I had a bet with my colleagues that somebody would use the term ‘quiet’ to describe the quarter and a couple of folks did. But I managed not to blow a gasket.”
The first quarter of 2026, COO John Payne remarked, was the first such period in which Vici recorded two consecutive quarters of $1 billion-plus deals. This included the $144 million purchase of casinos in Alberta, the closing of Clairvest Group’s Northfield Park takeover, and the $1.1 billion acquisition of Golden Entertainment’s assets, bringing with them a “deeply rooted loyal customer base.” Regarding the latter, Payne said Vici and Golden would be working together to identify potential asset purchases, as well as how to diversify Golden’s revenue stream.
Early in the call, Pitoniak reiterated the value and durability, as he saw it, of experiential real estate, Vici’s field of specialty. He said that it was the company’s key differentiator from other REITs and that it means struggling with issues of relevance and obsolescence.
“Real estate investment insights are always cultural insights,” Pitoniak explained. “Spending trends support our thesis,” he elaborated, pointing to a 65 percent increase in consumer spending on experiences since 2019. Gaming, lodging, and sports assets were consistently up 5.2 percent across the 2023-25 period, he added.
Pitoniak said Vici’s job entailed managing secular, cyclical, and idiosyncratic (or unpredictable) effects on real estate. He said Vici strove for assets that could be insulated from cyclical shifts, easier to control than secular or idiosyncratic ones. “If you get secular tends wrong, it’s hard to overcome.” But in Las Vegas, he concluded, “secular is long-term.”
Recent performance improvements in Las Vegas, Payne said, reflected “operators continuing to address the value proposition. There are plenty of demand drivers.
“Las Vegas is going through a transition,” Payne continued. “They’re also going to get the bumps over the coming years of new attractions, which always benefited the market” in the past.
No discussion of Vici has been complete without speculation on the future of Caesars Entertainment and its master leases. Regarding the former, “Caesars has not confirmed anything and everything that is being talked about is rumors,” said Pitoniak, closing down that line of inquiry.
He did elaborate that Caesars’s regional casinos were benefiting from recent capex and were also reemphasizing database marketing. “It’s key to remember that so much of that database is generated by the regional spokes of its hub-and-spoke system,” the CEO said. Payne added, “This is a business that ebbs and flows. Capital is absolutely an important part of what drives the business, but it’s not everything.”
Asked about Vici’s deal pipeline, Payne responded that it was “not much different than in the past couple of quarters. We continue to look at opportunities in the casino space,” as well as helping existing tenants add amenities.
Regarding one of its tenants, Century Casinos, CFO David Kieske observed that a strategic review was ongoing at that company. “The asset coverage is very strong. We feel good about the assets and the folks on the ground.”
As for the future of Atlantic City and casinos in upstate New York, Kieske said that was a question for the tenants themselves, not Vici. “It’s something our tenants will continue to monitor.”
