Stansberry conference; Alibaba stock pitch; Vegas is packed; My complaint letter to Wynn Resorts
1) The 2021 Stansberry Conference & Alliance Meeting in Las Vegas wrapped up yesterday, and I'm flying home this afternoon.
It was a great event: There were many interesting speakers and stock ideas, plus it was fun catching up with old friends and meeting dozens of Empire Financial Research subscribers, whom I gave signed copies of my book, The Art of Playing Defense, as you can see in this picture:
2) The most intriguing stock idea I heard of was Chinese tech giant Alibaba (BABA), which was pitched by Brett Eversole, the senior analyst for my friend Steve Sjuggerud, who just celebrated the 20th anniversary of his True Wealth newsletter at Stansberry Research.
I've never invested in China because I consider it outside of my circle of competence, but Steve knows the country and its markets well. In fact, here's a picture of us at the Great Wall of China with a few dozen of our subscribers who joined us at the Stansberry Spring Summit in Beijing in May 2019 (Steve is in the back center, and I'm in the back a little to the left, highlighted by the red arrows):
The government's crackdown has cut many Chinese tech stocks in half. But Steve argued that the selloff is overdone and recommended two ways to profit from this: First, buy a basket of stocks in the sector via the KraneShares CSI China Internet Fund (KWEB) and/or shares of Alibaba (BABA).
He presented a slide like this one, showing that Alibaba's stock is currently trading close to its lowest level ever on both enterprise-value-to-sales and price-to-earnings multiples:
3) Las Vegas is absolutely booming! The flights out here and back were oversold, and when I booked my roundtrip ticket back here in two weekends to run the 24-hour World's Toughest Mudder in the nearby desert, I had to pay $800 for basic economy tickets.
The theater for The Beatles LOVE show by Cirque du Soleil that my friend Glenn Tongue and I went to on Monday night was packed:
And the Lionel Richie concert I was thinking about going to last night was sold out. (Yes, he's still alive and kicking at age 72!) When I tried to buy a ticket on StubHub and VividSeats, even when I waited until showtime, good seats were more than $400, and the worst seat in the house was still over $200, so I skipped it.
4) The Wynn and Encore hotels – both run by Wynn Resorts (WYNN) – were at full capacity, yet are understaffed, which resulted in a terrible check-in experience on Sunday night. (Enrique later e-mailed me that he too had "the worst check-in experience I've EVER had at a hotel!")
A friend of mine commented:
This is the crossroads where low labor availability meets a business where 90% of the operating income is generated by its casinos in Macau.
At least Las Vegas Sands (LVS), which also generates most of its profits in Macau, stopped pretending to care about Las Vegas.
The customer experience has plunged at these formally top Vegas properties, in my opinion...
I was irritated enough that I sent this e-mail to Wynn's customer service, copying the company's CEO, president, chief marketing officer, and chief communications officer:
I'm writing to tell you about a very disappointing experience I had checking in on Sunday.
It had already been a horrible day, as my flight from JFK Airport was delayed by six hours, so when I showed up at 11 p.m., I was looking forward to a quick Express Registration check-in (per the email I received, below) and going to sleep shortly after that.
Instead, when I showed up at the Wynn registration area, I found that all Express Registration kiosks were out of order/turned off.
So I sat in line with maybe eight people in front of me. It was moving very slowly because there was only one person working the desk.
Fortunately, as I stood there, I called Wynn's phone number and, after I gave the rep my confirmation number, I learned that I was at the wrong hotel – my room was at Encore!
How was I supposed to know this (I didn't book my room; my assistant did)?
Look at the confirm email below: In four different places, it says "Wynn Las Vegas," yet nowhere does the word Encore appear (which is where I would have had the taxi drop me off had I known).
So I had to walk 20 minutes to the Encore registration desk, dragging my three heavy bags...
...Where I discovered the exact same situation as at the Wynn: The Express Registration kiosks were out of order/turned off, there was a line with maybe eight people in front of me, and only one person working the desk!
By the time someone finally helped me, it was midnight. A process that should have taken five minutes instead took an hour.
In summary, can you please:
1) Fix your email confirmations so that if someone is at Encore, it says so IN BOLD LETTERS;
2) Fix your Express Registration kiosks, so they work 24/7;
3) Better staff your registration desks (I noticed a big line this morning at 11 a.m.); and
4) Give me a credit for a future visit to make up for this very disappointing experience.Thank you,
Whitney Tilson
To the company's credit, I got a call from the front office manager only 45 minutes later. He was very apologetic and asked if he could do anything for my current stay. There wasn't, so I asked for a credit or something for a future stay. He agreed and sent me an offer I can use anytime in the next year whereby I can book their cheapest room for any length of stay, and they'll upgrade me to their fanciest Suite Salon, which looks very nice on their website:
Susan and I are already planning a trip!
Best regards,
Whitney