Wynn Resorts CEO touts company’s safety

300 employees have tested positive for virus

Wynn Resorts Ltd. had around 300 employees test positive for the coronavirus, about 2 percent of nearly 17,000 since the company began testing, Wynn CEO Matt Maddox said Tuesday.

“To put that in perspective, we performed 16,750 tests and 98 percent have come back negatives,” Maddox told investors during an earnings call.

He said 10 contact tracers on staff determined that the virus was contracted outside the resort. Maddox said he has regular phone conversations with health experts.

“Each week, I sit with and talk to the head of global health security and pandemic research and her team from Georgetown University, going through our protocols and everything we’re doing,” he said. “Just last week, talking about these numbers, her response was, ‘Wynn is probably the safest place outside of home that your employees and your customers go during the day.’ That’s part of our brand. That’s who we are and that’s what we’re going to live up to.”

Maddox said he’s particularly proud of the company’s testing capabilities.

“Not only did we test all of our employees before they started, but we developed an algorithm where we surveil our staff and we test randomly 500 to 600 people every couple of weeks and with 10 contact tracers in house,” he said.

Maddox said the roughly 300 employees that were positive were notified immediately by the contact tracers and it was determined that 99 percent of those 300 employees were exposed outside of Wynn.

The company opened Wynn Las Vegas and Encore in early June and reopened its Encore Boston Harbor property in Massachusetts on July 12.

The company reported a net loss of $3.5 million, $6.14 a share, on revenue of $85.7 million. That compares with

net income of $116.1 million, $1.44 a share, on revenue of $1.658 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Maddox said operating revenues in Las Vegas were $64.9 million for the second quarter, an 86 percent decrease from $464.1 million for the second quarter of 2019. Adjusted property cash flow from Las Vegas operations for the second quarter of 2020 was negative $75.6 million, compared to $137.4 million for the second quarter of 2019.

The Las Vegas operating loss for the second quarter doesn’t include the impact of $56.4 million of expenses related to the company’s

commitment to pay salary, tips and benefits for all of U.S. employees from April 1 through May 15.

He said the company’s cash burn is between $1.5 million and $2 million a day.

Wynn shares, traded on the Nasdaq, were down 30 cents,

0.4 percent, in light-volume trading Tuesday. After hours, shares rose 26 cents, or 0.4 percent, to reach $73.01 a share late in the afternoon.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @Rickvelotta on Twitter.