MGM Resorts International

MGM Resorts International is an American gaming and entertainment company that operates 16 domestic casinos, two casino resorts in Macau through its ~56% stake in MGM China Holdings, and an expanding digital gaming business across international markets, generating $17.5 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. The company leases the real estate of all its domestic properties under triple-net agreements — primarily with VICI Properties — following the landmark 2022 MGP/VICI transaction that made MGM Resorts one of the world's largest asset-light gaming operators.

This is a story of a company that owns irreplaceable operating assets but very little real estate, whose core Las Vegas franchise is navigating a post-pandemic digestion while its most promising growth levers — Macau, digital gaming, and the Osaka integrated resort — are each, in their own way, years from fully paying off. The company has been a prodigious buyer of its own stock, retiring nearly half its shares over five years, and its management is among the most seasoned in gaming. But the balance sheet carries $6.1 billion in net debt and $1.8 billion in annual lease obligations, which means even modest revenue softness translates into outsized cash flow compression.

The file turns on whether the market is fairly discounting the trade-off between MGM's durable competitive advantages — scale, brand, loyalty data, and a portfolio of properties that collectively occupy the best sites on the Las Vegas Strip and in Macau — and the very real financial leverage that makes the equity sensitive to even normal cyclical fluctuations. At an enterprise value of roughly 7.3 times trailing EBITDA, the market is pricing the business as a steady-state cash compounder. Whether that is right depends on the pace at which Las Vegas stabilizes, Macau keeps delivering, and the digital business stops losing money.