American casino operator Boyd Gaming Corporation has announced the signing of a deal that will see it spend $100 million in order to buy restaurant and bar video gambling machine operator Lattner Entertainment Group Illinois.
Boyd Gaming Corporation explained that the acquisition, which is expected to close before the end of June, will see it gain approximately 1,000 machines in 220 venues located across Illinois with the purchase price representing around eight times its target’s implied adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.
Keith Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer for Boyd Gaming Corporation, declared that the purchase of Lattner Entertainment Group Illinois represents ‘a strategic opportunity to further diversify and expand our business’ and will provide his firm with ‘a valuable new avenue to access gaming customers’ as well as ‘a platform to participate in the expansion of distributed gaming’.
“We are excited to welcome the Lattner [Entertainment Group Illinois] team to Boyd Gaming [Corporation] and look forward to establishing ourselves as one of the leading distributed gaming operators in the country,” read a Wednesday statement from Smith.
Established in 1975, Boyd Gaming Corporation is responsible for 24 gambling venues across seven states including the riverboat?Par-A-Dice Hotel Casino in East Peoria, Illinois, complete with an estate of some 30,000 gaming machines as well as around 630 gaming tables. But, the Journal Star newspaper reported that the Las Vegas-based operator has seen the annual adjusted gross receipts from its sole property in the ‘Land of Lincoln’ decline by over 26% to just under $79 million since the 2013 decision to legalize video gaming in bars and restaurants across the Midwestern state.
The Journal Star cited official figures from the Illinois Gaming Board in detailing that the state had 28,271 distributed gaming terminals at over 6,300 locations in 2017 that recorded aggregated revenues of $1.3 billion. In stark contrast, it reported that combined receipts from the ten casinos in Illinois had declined from their 2007 peak of approximately $2 billion last year to stand at $1.41 billion.