The board of Wynn Macau Ltd on Thursday approved an interim dividend of HKD0.70 (US$0.09) a share for the six months ended June 30, 2014. The dividend will be paid on September 23, the casino operator said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Last year the company had declared an interim dividend of HKD0.50 a share.
In Thursday’s filing, Wynn Macau said profit for the first half of 2014 dropped by 1.23 percent year-on-year to HKD3.65 billion. The company reported operating revenue of HKD16.2 billion in the six months ended June 30, up by 8.8 percent from a year earlier.
Casino revenue increased by 9.7 percent year-on-year to HKD15.4 billion in the period, accounting for 94.6 percent of total operating revenues.
Operating costs rose 9.3 percent from a year earlier to HKD12.3 billion, on the back of higher staff costs. Costs with employees increased by 28.8 percent to HKD1.5 billion in the first six months of 2014, Wynn Macau said.
“This increase in staff costs was primarily due to general salary increases and the new 2014 bonus plan for non-management employees,” it added.
The casino operator had 256 VIP table games as of June 30, 2014, down from 285 a year earlier. It also had 200 mass-market table games and 613 slot machines.
Renovation works for new VIP gaming rooms “resulted in a reduction in the number of table games and slot machines” during the period, Wynn Macau said. “We expect to complete this renovation before Chinese New Year of 2015.”
The company also said that as of June 30 it had invested about HKD8.7 billion of the estimated HKD31 billion cost of Wynn Palace, due to open in 2016. The company announced on Wednesday that it is nearly doubling the 2014 annual cap on billing of design services for the Cotai property that are provided by a connected company called Wynn Design and Development LLC.
