Boyd Gaming posts
profit in turnaround

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Boyd Gaming Corp. reported a net profit of $9.3 million, or 15 cents a share, for the three months ended March 31, a turnaround from a net loss of $77.7 million, or $1.27 a share, in the same period last year.

The latest quarter, the third in Boyd's fiscal year, showed revenues of $250 million, up 14 percent from $219.2 million in the year-earlier quarter.

The big difference in profit was largely due to a write-down in the 1997 quarter of $136 million connected with the poor performance of the company's Sam's Town Kansas City operation. Still, operations by themselves showed substantial improvement, the company said.

Taking the 1997 write-down out of the equation, Boyd's 1997 third-quarter earnings would have been 10 cents a share, so the 1998 quarter showed a 50 percent improvement in operating results.

Boyd's downtown Las Vegas properties popular with Hawaii residents, including the California and Fremont hotels, did particularly well in the latest quarter, almost doubling their earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and before corporate expenses, the company said.

"The downtown properties were the standout in Nevada," the company said. They had revenues of $50.8 million in the latest quarter, up 15 percent from $44 million in the year-earlier quarter.

Boyd's figures for the downtown properties include revenues from Vacations Hawaii, a Honolulu travel agency specializing in Las Vegas junkets which was acquired by Boyd in 1995.

That company had revenues of $7.8 million in the latest quarter, up 66 percent from $4.7 million in the 1997 quarter.