New York headquartered real estate investment trust Vici Properties has lauded its 2019 portfolio additions as the firm eyes further expansion throughout the current year.
The latest properties to enter the company’s stable came after Vici secured the land and real estate assets of Century Casino Cape Girardeau and Century Casino Caruthersville in Missouri, as well as the Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort in West Virginia, from Eldorado Resorts, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $277.8m in cash.
Total revenue for the quarter rose a little over five cent from $226m to $237.5m, including $19.9m associated with tenant reimbursement of property taxes that are no longer recorded as revenue. Excluding this, revenue for the quarter increased 15.2 per cent.
On a full-year basis revenue dipped slightly from $898m to $894.8m, including $81.2m associated with tenant reimbursement of property taxes, without which a growth of 9.6 per cent would’ve been felt.
Edward Pitoniak, CEO of Vici, explained: “In 2019, through the great work of our team and through the unstinting support of our stockholders, Vici continued to transform itself and its sector. We announced $4.9bn of acquisitions, representing all arms-length gaming net-lease transactions among publicly-traded companies, and we raised $2.6bn of equity, including the largest-ever REIT follow-on offering of primary shares.
“Vici completed its inaugural unsecured notes issuance in November 2019, enhancing our balance sheet and laddering our maturities while replacing the Caesars Palace CMBS secured debt with unsecured debt, marking a key step on our path to an investment grade rating.
“We increased adjusted EBITDA by over 17 per cent, or $124m, to $847m, yielding 100 per cent flow-through on our 2019 adjusted revenue growth of approximately $124m. We also raised our dividend for the second consecutive year, maintained a solid, low-levered balance sheet and doubled our roster of best-in-class gaming operators by adding Hard Rock International and Century Casinos as tenants.
“Our 2019 total return performance of 43.2 per cent puts VICI in the top position amongst gaming net lease REITs and top three amongst all triple net lease REITs for 2019 total return. We increased our total enterprise value by over 45 per cent, to $15.5bn on December 31, 2019, meaning that in just over two years we have become the third largest American triple net REIT by enterprise value.”
Following the close of the reporting period Vici confirmed its previously announced $843.3m Jack Entertainment purchase that sees the firm acquire two Ohio-based entities.
The firm has secured 100 per cent of the membership interest of two subsidiaries of Jack Ohio, which owns the casino-entitled land and real estate and related assets of Jack Cleveland Casino, and the racing and video lottery-authorised land and real estate and related assets of Jack Thistledown Racino, located approximately 10 miles southeast of downtown Cleveland in the city of North Randal.
