Las Vegas Sands (LVS) sees increased Mainland traffic and capital coming to Macau (1Q05 conf call quotes)

Las Vegas Sands (ticker: LVS), owner and operator of casinos in both Las Vegas, and Macau, China, released Q1 2005 earnings results yesterday. President and COO Bill Weidner and EVP Brad Stone discussed the
company's Chinese operation on their Q1 2005 conference call. Key quotes and a comment:

EVP Brad Stone

....And we continue to see that growth as more provinces (of Mainland China) open up immigration and as the amount of money that's allowed to take across the border (to Macau) has expanded.

President and COO Bill Weidner

....Generally, seasonality, as far as mass traffic, foot traffic during the traditional times, the July, August, into September time periods…..

As far as new provinces overall, only 2% of the total 175 million people who were allowed last year to come to the border, only 2% of those 175 million people actually took advantage of the cross border. There are now 200 million, 220 million people that are allowed to come to the border without a visa.

EVP Brad Stone

....Additionally, we will be doing a lot more -- be more aggressive in terms of database marketing where available to us. Again, you have to be careful in China. You have to be -- you're very restricted in terms of the messages you can send into Mainland China, so we're conscious of that. But those types of programs we believe are going to be a little more unique. Certainly there are people that give away cars and have contests.

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)

Comment: The increase of Chinese mainland tourists heading for Macau is good news for China Unicom (ticker: CHU) which recently beat out four rivals to win Macau's first CDMA license.