Las Vegas Sands, Owner of Venetian, Plans IPO

Las Vegas Sands Inc., owner and operator of the Venetian Casino Resort, plans to raise at least $200 million by selling shares for the first time to the public as early as September, President William Weidner said Tuesday.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which is advising the 5-year-old company, helped Las Vegas Sands raise more than $2.8 billion in the first three years of its operation, Las Vegas Sands said. The listed business would include the Venetian and the Grand Canal Shops in Las Vegas as well as the company’s Macao unit.

Las Vegas Sands on Tuesday opened the $240-million Sands in Macao, its first casino in the former Portuguese colony, where gaming was the main attraction for 12 million tourists last year. The company is inviting others to help build a $20-billion casino row in Macao similar to the Strip in Las Vegas.

“The market is just exploding here,” Chairman Sheldon Adelson said in Macao during an interview. “The larger the pie you bake, the more you can eat out of it. That’s how I see business.”

Gambling revenue in Macao, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1999, is forecast to reach $4.7 billion this year from $3.6 billion in 2003. Las Vegas draws gambling revenue of about $5 billion a year.

Macao, a 10-square-mile territory with a population of 440,000, is the closest place for the 1.3 billion people of greater China -- including Taiwan and Hong Kong -- to gamble legally in casinos.

In Las Vegas, the $1.2-billion Venetian resort opened in 1999 with 3,036 rooms in a 35-story, three-wing tower. It has since added more than 1,000 rooms and plans to add 3,000 more, for a total of more than 7,000 rooms, the most of any hotel resort casino in the world.