Wall Street Bets is a roundup of recent notes from analysts covering the gambling industry.
Jefferies’ David Katz on August 23 looked at a possible deal between Boyd Gaming and Bally’s:
“According to a story posted on Vital Vegas, Boyd is considering partnering with Bally’s on the former Tropicana Las Vegas site near the A’s stadium, which modestly pressured the shares (-2% since posting). The companies have not commented on the report. Although we expect Boyd to contemplate any reasonable opportunity, we believe this project is outside the usual scale and risk tolerance for Boyd, given the scale of Las Vegas Strip development ($3 billion+) and the challenges of ramping a single property on the Strip without an existing database. We take the modest pressure from the market as in line with our view, which is that the project is low likelihood for Boyd as a prominent player.”
Truist Securities’ Barry Jonas on August 19 looked at the Las Vegas Strip:
“Our latest Las Strip survey is showing a choppy Q3 after Q2 finished positive. A strong July is followed by a softer August/September, which somewhat ties to Q2 earnings commentary and follows our thesis of an improving but not “hockey stick” recovery. Encouragingly, our early read into October shows positive momentum with strong trends across all cohorts (even at low-end). We remain positive on the overall Strip environment and think trends will continue to improve over time. While Caesars M&A and MGM’s potential M&A mean their stock performance may hold more than uneven market fundamentals, Wynn rates look to be outperforming.”
Macquarie’s Chad Beynon on August 17 summarized the second quarter for gaming companies:
“Gaming companies generally delivered positive 2Q results with Regionals and Online averaging 1% and 3% beats, respectively. 2026E EBITDA consensus estimates were broadly unchanged for regionals/online, and -2% for Large Cap. But conversely, Large Cap stock performance outperformed the other sectors at -1% over the last month while regionals was close behind, but online stocks were -6%. The “EBITDA minus stock move” framework highlights a dispersion in stock reactions relative to fundamentals. This was most pronounced at the online level given a group average of 7%, suggesting shares underperformed relative to fundamentals and EBITDA estimates that were relatively unchanged post-print, which we believe could be due to positioning as public data indicated low hold during the quarter, or in the case of Rush Street likely reflecting some profit-taking following strong year-to-date gains. Genius Sports was the outlier in the group as the stock move meaningfully outperformed fundamentals, driven in our view by improved investor sentiment on the Legends acquisition.”
