Genting Malaysia Reaches Agreement For Sale of Miami Land Parcels

Genting Malaysia, the well-known global leisure and hospitality company, has announced that it finally reached an agreement with Smart Miami City LLC for the sale of a property in Miami, Florida, for 1.23 Billion dollars.

The amount is slightly lower than the 1.5 billion dollars that were reportedly offered to Genting Malaysia for that piece of land in the past month. The details of the transaction were revealed by a company filing to Bursa Malaysia, which revealed that Resorts World Miami LLC, the company’s subsidiary, has reached an agreement with the buyer on 26 April for the sale of four land parcels measuring a total area of 15.24 acres.

The deal is not entirely completed, though, it still needs the approval of the company’s shareholders and also from local authorities in Miami-Dade County. Genting Malaysia intends to use the funds received from this sale to expand its casino located in New York, Resorts World New York City, which only offers slot games at the moment.

The Malaysian company is competing for one of the three full casino licenses which will be granted in New York this year, and a full license would allow the operator to add gaming tables along with slot machines at its venue.

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In a note regarding the Miami transaction, Tushar Mohata and Alpa Aggarwal, analysts at Nomura, described the deal as “a very positive development” for Genting Malaysia. The analysts remarked that Genting paid 259 million dollars for that land in 2011, so the company would stand to gain almost 1 billion dollars when the sale is complete.

“This is a large windfall for the company,” the analysts’ note continued, also pointing out that the proceeds from the sale would “help improve the balance sheet” for Genting Malaysia after having gone through difficult times in recent years due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Nomura analysts agreed with the assumption that the funds will be used by Genting to obtain the New York casino license, and added that the respective license should be granted sometime at the beginning of 2024.

Genting still has some property in Miami, it owns the Hilton Miami Downtown hotel and the Omni Center which is connected to it. The Malaysian company hoped to develop a big integrated resort on the land in question but the plans never came to fruition because Genting was unable to secure a casino license in the state of Florida.

Source: “Genting Malaysia reaches agreement to sell Miami land parcel for US$1.23 billion“. Inside Asian Gaming. April 27, 2023.