Melco Resorts & Entertainment Limited has announced a major corporate reshuffle of its flagship properties in Macau and Manila that has resulted in the sudden departure of City of Dreams Property President Gabe Hunterton.
Hunterton will be replaced by current Studio City Property President David Sisk at City of Dreams, with City of Dreams Manila President Geoff Andres returning to Macau to take over at Studio City. Completing the shuffle, Kevin Benning – the former Vice President of Gaming Operations at City of Dream Manila – has been promoted to Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at City of Dreams Manila in place of Andres.
“The redeployment of our senior operating management across our integrated resorts is aimed at optimizing our operating excellence,” explained Melco Resorts Chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho in a statement.
“We are leveraging on key individuals who all have demonstrated their expertize in managing and delivering strong growth. They have proven their innovative spirit in various geographical locations across the Melco group. We are confident that the cross-fertilization of new ideas and management initiatives will ensure that all our integrated resorts will continue to benefit from performance improvements.”
While Melco Resorts didn’t address the specific reasons for Hunterton’s departure, brokerage Sanford C Bernstein suggested that operational and marketing issues in the mass and premium mass segments under his watch were responsible.
“While Hunterton was in the role for only a year, under his leadership the property had undergone considerable operational and marketing issues in mass (premium mass in particular),” said analysts Vitaly Umansky, Zhen Gong and Cathy Huang in a note sent on Wednesday night.
“Hold rate in mass has been a considerable issue partly due to operating changes introduced by Hunterton.”
Sisk, who was appointed Property President at Studio City upon joining Melco Resorts in 2016, has been responsible for driving the successful growth of the property to date, Melco said, adding that he is “a veteran casino financial and operations executive with over 25 years of experience with major casino developers and operators, including Sands China (Macau), Wynn Resorts, Resorts World Sentosa (Singapore) and Caesars Palace.”
Andres, with 30 years of experience in the gaming industry, was appointed as Property President and Chief Operating Officer of City of Dreams Manila in November 2015 where he was responsible for driving significant performance improvements.
Benning joined City of Dreams Manila in March 2016 with Melco noting that he has overseen all of its casino, marketing and advertising operations since.
He was previously Vice President of Casino Marketing for Resorts World Sentosa and acted as Executive Director of Marketing Operations for Sands China Limited.
Discussing the movements, Bernstein said that, “For now we are giving these management changes the benefit of the doubt, but we would need to see improvement at CoD in 2018.
“CoD is now a turnaround story in our view (with a catalyst coming from Morpheus) as Q4 will confirm considerable problems, which in our view accelerated these management changes. CoD has underperformed other Melco properties since Hunterton took over in January 2017, especially in mass GGR and mass hold rate.
“While CoD Macau has underperformed in mass, both Studio City and Philippines continued to show reasonably good ramp up.”
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