NEW YORK — When Jonathan Halkyard, chief financial officer at MGM Resorts International, agreed to an on-stage interview at the NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum, an acquisition bid from Barry Diller's People Inc. was not on his radar.
Had he known, Halkyard said he "would have given it a second thought. Let's just say it hasn't been the week I expected it to be."
The day before Halkyard's onstage appearance, MGM Resorts confirmed it received an acquisition proposal to buy all outstanding shares for $48.30 per share in cash, a valuation of roughly $18 billion for the global resort-casino company. Diller, whose company owns a 26.1% stake in MGM Resorts, wrote a letter to MGM Resorts' board, stating the company was not realizing its full potential in the public markets.
"We continue to believe the market materially undervalues the power and durability of MGM's assets," Diller said in a news release accompanying the letter. "We believe MGM's management team is superb, and that there is a compelling opportunity to support MGM's next phase of growth and help unlock its full value."
The news of the MGM Resorts acquisition bid came not even a week after the announcement that Fertitta Entertainment intends to buy Caesars Entertainment for $5.7 billion and take on its approximately $11.9 billion in outstanding debt.
In the five and a half years since he’s been with MGM Resorts, Halkyard said he often takes the time to make a case for the company’s valuation. That means accounting for its Las Vegas business, its regional domestic operations, its properties in Macau through MGM China, its integrated resort in Osaka, Japan, and its digital business.
“You account for all of that — the valuation on our domestic business which most people know about in Las Vegas and other places, is at a very low multiple, and that’s been the case for quite a while,” Halkyard said. “Why do people miss that, despite me harping on it? I’m probably just not communicating it well enough, but also, it’s a complicated group of businesses: digital, brick and mortar, cash flow generating now, big development in the future.”
It’s kind of a mixed bag, and sometimes investors aren’t doing that work to value some of MGM Resorts' parts, he said.
When looking at the accepted bid to buy Caesars Entertainment, Halkyard said there are investors who understand the long-term value of these businesses and the reliable cash flow from the regional markets and dynamism of Las Vegas.
In a recent conversation with investors, Halkyard said one of them asked about Las Vegas bottoming out.
“I was like, ‘Bottoming out? I missed that one, because I was looking at occupancies on Wednesday nights in March of 98.5%,’” he said. “This business has been doing exceptionally well for a long time, and I think that long-term investors realize it.”
Las Vegas did face its challenges last year for multiple reasons, including a drop in international inbound visitors, particularly those from Canada, as well as the perception that Las Vegas was too expensive a destination. During MGM Resort’s third-quarter 2025 earnings call, President and CEO Bill Hornbuckle said the company was correcting course after receiving feedback about how rooms and amenities were priced.
“When we think about pricing and the things that got everyone’s attention, whether it’s the infamous bottle of water, or a Starbucks coffee at Excalibur that cost $12, shame on us,” Hornbuckle said. “We should have been more sensitive to the overall experience at a place like Excalibur to those customers. You can’t have a $29 room and a $12 coffee.”
Halkyard said that Hornbuckle’s comments were correct and that Las Vegas has always been a place where people can both find the right value for their dollar as well as splurge when they want. What MGM Resorts is doing is giving everyone the opportunity to have the kind of trip they want to have.
The MGM Grand Las Vegas, for example, is a “beast of a property” with its finest VIP lodging in 12,000-square-foot suites with more economical rooms 100 yards away for about $150 a night, Halkyard said. MGM Resorts also introduced all-inclusive packages a few months ago at its Luxor and Excalibur properties in which guests can buy a stay starting at two nights that includes the daily resort fee, dining, entertainment and parking.
One of the main draws of Las Vegas is all the different forms of entertainment available, and MGM Resorts’ team believes that having these live experiences won’t become less important over time, Halkyard said.
“They’ll actually become much more important, and that people will seek that out, maybe even more than they do today, because let’s face it, the way people are pursuing entertainment is so much different now from the way it was even five or 10 years ago,” he said.
Entertainment has been changing constantly in Las Vegas, he said. The model used to be that people would come to Las Vegas, stay in a hotel, gamble and buy a ticket to a show. The nature of that show has changed. They used to be production shows, and then Cirque du Soleil became popular in its residencies in the 2000s, and typically about two to three discrete things going on at the same time.
Now, the show integrates with the other offerings, he said.
“Whenever we’re signing a new entertainment deal, it seems more often than not there’s a food-and-beverage component to it,” he said. “There’s a retail component to it. Oftentimes appearances.”
New Kids On The Block played at Dolby Live, and then they would appear at the nightclub at Park MGM, he said. Bruno Mars plays at Dolby Live and has his own club at the Bellagio.
“We kind of expected he might show up there three or four times a year,” Halkyard said. “He went there, I think, 50 times last year. and oftentimes getting up on stage and playing.”
The approach now is to always integrate things beyond simply the ticket to the show, he said.
Nashville is the only other city that Halkyard said he could think of as another market that could compete with Las Vegas as the country’s entertainment capital. That said, he doesn’t believe Nashville has the scale and hotel room base yet to do it.
What has been going on with professional sports in Las Vegas may be even more impactful to the market than entertainment has been, Halkyard said. The city has gone from zero to four major sports teams in about 11 to 12 years, and there are hopes for an NBA team in a couple years.
“Where it really makes a difference is the experience that we create around this, and it's a lot about the away fans coming to Vegas,” he said. “I mean, the poor Raiders. A lot of their home games are actually away games because so many people come from other cities.”
Quoting Hornbuckle, Halkyard said a three-hour game becomes a three-day weekend for Las Vegas visitors.
It’s difficult for other cities to promote themselves as a destination to another team’s fanbase, but Las Vegas can do that, he said. When the former Oakland A’s come to Las Vegas in 2028, there’s enough of a draw to get fans for other cities, such as Atlanta, to fly out to catch the game.
“We have a huge database of Atlanta customers, and so now that three-game series playing the A’s becomes an event for either casino customers or retail, so the possibilities with sports in Las Vegas are just almost endless,” he said.
The other thing Las Vegas can do with sports is when there’s nothing going on, it can create something, he said. The Players Era Festival, an early season college basketball tournament, started in 2024. The first year it had eight teams, growing to 16 in 2025 and 32 this year.
“It’s like March Madness in November, December, and it’s going to bring that kind of energy and visitation,” he said.