By Nate Wolf

Casino stocks long associated with the Las Vegas Strip were climbing Tuesday, but it wasn't Sin City that grabbed investors' attention.

Wynn Resorts, Las Vegas Sands, and MGM Resorts International were all among the top 10 performers in the S&P 500, buoyed by spending data from Macau, a special administrative region of China and one of the world's largest gambling hubs.

Gross gaming revenue in the enclave, nicknamed the "Las Vegas of Asia," climbed 19% in June from the year prior, Macau's Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau reported Tuesday. The monthly spike helped lift gaming revenue 4.4% through the first half of the year from 2024.

Las Vegas Sands stock was climbing 9.3% on Tuesday, while Wynn was rising 8.6%. MGM was up 6.7%.

Major American casino brands have built up multi-billion-dollar businesses in the former Portuguese colony, but it wasn't clear how they would rebound from a disappointing start to the year.

Las Vegas Sands, which has six hotel and casino properties in Macau, reported $1.7 billion in revenue from its operations there in the first quarter of 2025, down from $1.8 billion a year earlier. Wynn and MGM, which have smaller but still sizable operations in Macau, also saw regional revenue declines in the quarter ended March 31.

"This is a competitive market that is not growing as we anticipated," Las Vegas Sands CEO Robert G. Goldstein said on a conference call in April. "We can perform better despite the challenging macro environment."

That macro environment may be improving. Macau's quarterly tourism data already had shown promising signs for casinos. Visitor arrivals in the first quarter of 2025 increased 11% from the year prior, while the hotel occupancy rate climbed to 90.1% from 84.9%, according to Macau's Statistics and Census Service.

Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com

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July 01, 2025 12:52 ET (16:52 GMT)

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