Sands China new US$2bln unsecured loan facility
Macau casino operator Sands China Ltd said in a Tuesday filing that on the same day it had entered into a loan facility agreement for US$2 billion in revolving unsecured credit.
Bank of China Ltd Macau is the agent for a syndicate of lenders, said the announcement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The general revolver portion of the loan facility allows for a United States dollar component and a Hong Kong dollar component. The credit facility is available until July 31, 2023.
Sands China said that in connection with the new facility, an existing secured credit facility of VML U.S. Finance LLC, an indirect subsidiary of Sands China, had been terminated.
On the third-quarter earnings call of Sands China’s parent Las Vegas Sands Corp in late October, it had been announced that the capital budget for infrastructure work at some of Sands China’s Cotai properties was being doubled to US$2.2 billion, from the US$1.1 billion announced a year earlier.
A total US$1.35 billion from the new budget would be for the conversion of Sands Cotai Central to a themed property called the Londoner Macao – the work to start in “2019” rather than the “late 2018” previously mentioned by the group – with “phased completion throughout 2020 and 2021”.
An aggregate of US$400 million would be spent on the St Regis Tower Suites Macao, with approximately 370 new luxury suites ranging in size from 1,400 square feet (130 sq metres) to 3,100 square feet, to come online.
At the Four Seasons Tower Suites Macao, there would be an expansion of the suite inventory “with approximately 290 new luxury suites, ranging in size from 2,000 sq feet to 4,700 sq feet”.
With both of the latter projects, the firm said during the earnings call that “work is progressing,” with “anticipated completion in first quarter 2020”.
Sands China’s president and chief operating officer, Wilfred Wong Ying Wai, said last week that the conversion of Sands Cotai Central into the Londoner Macao should start after the next Chinese New Year holiday, which falls in February 2019.
In other developments on Tuesday this week, parent Las Vegas Sands told the Nasdaq in New York it was increasing the base salary of its president and chief operating officer Robert Goldstein by 32.4 percent. Such salary would rise from US$3.4 million to US$4.5 million, with effect from January 1, 2020, stated the filing. Mr Goldstein’s contract was also extended until the end of 2024; it was previously set to expire on December 31, 2019.
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