Billionaire James Packer has stepped down as chairman of casino company Crown Resorts.
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Packer, who will take on a new role as executive director, will be replaced as chairman by Robert Rankin, a former Deutsche Bank executive in London who left that job in November to become chief executive of Packer’s private company, Consolidated Press Holdings.
“Crown remains my number one business priority and passion”. “I think our main focus is Sydney, Vegas and Melbourne, but in the right circumstances we would stretch for Japan as well in partnership with Melco Crown”. “Crown has a pipeline of resorts globally and this is where the majority of my time will be spent”. He considers the online gambling segment one that is to provide his company with “great potential” for a future global growth.
Shares in Crown, half-owned by Mr Packer, initially fell nearly 6 per cent in early trade, marking its biggest intraday loss since the global financial crisis in 2009, before paring losses to close down 43¢ or 4.18 per cent to $13.09.
While Crown lost a bid to develop a $2 billion casino complex at Brisbane’s Queen’s Wharf in July, it has a raft of other casino developments in the works: Macau’s Studio City complex due to open in October; the Las Vegas Alon resort in 2018; and Crown Sydney by the end of 2020.
The declining Macau earnings pushed Crown’s normalised net profit, which removes volatility linked to big spending gamblers, down 19 per cent to A$518.7 million, missing analysts estimates of A$531 million.
On a normalised basis, profit fell $525.5 million, down 17.9 percent. “I look forward to working closely with him”, Packer said. Nonetheless, Crown did post strong performance in Australia raking in AU$947 million in earnings, up by 4 percent.
The full-year results included significant items of $61.3m consisting of asset impairments relating primarily to Crown’s investment in Cannery and costs associated with the proposed project in Sri Lanka, which has now been discontinued.
Crown Resorts’ annual profit has slumped 41 per cent as the mining downturn affects its Perth casino and weak trading conditions in Macau hurt its joint venture operations.
“No project is more important to me”, Mr Packer said.
“Macau is now experiencing a hard period which has adversely affected all casino operators”, Crown Resorts said.
Gross gaming revenue in the Macau market fell by 26.8% over the past year and in the six months leading up to June declined by 37%.
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Crown is also hopeful Japan will push ahead in opening up its casino industry, although any liberalisation of the market is unlikely to come until 2016.
