Las Vegas Sands stock on pace for highest close in two years

Yahoo Finance Live checks out surging shares of casino operator Las Vegas Sands as the gaming industry is reporting a post-pandemic recovery.

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: --one of the outperformers in today's action, looking at gains of just about 3%, so off the highs of the session. It was on track to close at the highest level in about two years. We'll see whether or not that holds here in the final couple of minutes.

But the casino giant's rebound is gaining momentum, driven really mainly by the high-end gaming in Macau. In a statement, CEO Robert Goldstein saying, quote, "a robust recovery across our markets is now underway."

The Street was pretty pleased with the results that we got. Citi calling the bounce back in business, quote, "powerful," while Morgan Stanley also saying that the results were well above its expectations.

Now, these results here from Las Vegas Sands pushing some of its competitors higher. We have seen some of those gains given up here in the final hour of trading, but Wynn is holding on to that trade to the upside here, up just around 8/10 of a percent. But clearly, Allie, whether or not we're seeing movement in some of those competitors today to the upside, a recovery here within this sector obviously good news all around.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Oh, absolutely. I think it illustrates this postpandemic recovery that we've been seeing.

You wonder how these companies will fare if the economy were to enter a recession. But like you were saying, analysts appear very bullish across the Street. The stock has 16 buys, three holds, zero sells. That's according to Bloomberg data.

And CEO Robert Goldstein had this to say on the earnings call. Quote, "while travel restrictions and reduced visitation continue to impact our financial performance during the quarter, a robust recovery in travel and tourism spending across our markets is now underway." And he said he remains enthusiastic for what's to come in 2023 and the rest of the years ahead. So that's pretty optimistic rhetoric coming from this company.

DAVE BRIGGS: And you've got to love the numbers that continue to come out of Vegas. Now, last year they did 38.8 million visitors. That was just shy of the 42 million that visited in 2019, and all estimates are they're going to top the 2019 number this year. February, they were just 3% off. So it looks like a plus 2019 visitor number.

And by the way, one casino, Marina Bay in Singapore, did $549 million in revenue in the last month. That is an all-time record. So yeah, healthy times to be in the gaming business.