MTR Gaming Group, Inc, a hospitality and gaming company that owns and operates, through subsidiaries, horse racing tracks and racinos in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, recently announced its addition to the Russell 3000 Index, a global asset manager that offers actively managed, multi-asset portfolios and services that include advice, investments and implementation.
As part of the deal, MTR will be added to the Russell 3000 Index when Russell Investments reconstituted its comprehensive set of U.S. and global equity indexes after the equity markets closed on June 22.
The process of annual reconstitution of Russell’s U.S. indexes takes into account the 4,000 largest U.S. stocks by total market capitalization as of the end of May and ranks them accordingly. Now that the MTR Gaming Group is part of this prestigious group, it carries with a membership that lasts for one year, and includes automatic inclusion in either the large-cap Russell 1000 Index or the small-cap Russell 2000 Index, in addition to growth and value style indexes.
In a press release to the media, MTR Gaming Group’s president and CEO, Jeffrey J. Dahl, commented on the announcement. “We are very pleased to see that the extensive amount of work in expanding and improving MTR Gaming over the past couple of years has paid off in being added to this well-regarded benchmark index,” he said.
“Our inclusion in the Russell 3000 should enhance our visibility and aid us in bringing our recent success story to a broader range of the investment community.”
MTR Gaming Group’s current portfolio includes ownership through subsidiaries of a number of casinos in the Midwest, including the Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack & Resort in Chester, West Virginia, the Presque Isle Downs & Casino in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Scioto Downs in Columbus, Ohio. In addition, MTR also owned Binion’s Gambling Hall and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada – they bought it from Harrah’s Entertainment in 2005 only to sell it to TLC Entertprises three years later in 2008 – as well as the Ramada Inn and Speedway Casino in North Las Vegas, Nevada before selling it in 2008.
Being included in the Russell Index is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly, especially when you take into account the fact that the company’s indexes are widely used by investment managers and institutional investors for index funds and to determine certain benchmarks that need to be achieved for both active and passive investment strategies. The company currently accounts for $3.9 trillion in institutional assets with Russell responsible for calculating more than “80,000 benchmarks daily covering approximately 98 percent of the investable market globally, 83 countries and more than 10,000 securities”.
