Caesars Entertainment Corp. (CZR) are once again hogging the casino news headlines after announcing Oct 17 as the end date for investors to tuck into 125.4m worth of shares in the new spinoff Caesars Acquisition Co. (CAC).
Three months after unveiling plans to dismantle certain parts of CZR, to form the spinoff company CAC, the Las Vegas based casino giant has announced Oct 17 as the record date for the distribution of subscription rights for common stock of the new company.
On this date, shareholders will be able to purchase one share of CAC stock for every share they own in CZR, in a bid to generate $1.18bn in extra lolly. The new company will be part owned by both CZR, and CAC, and will be known as Caesars Growth Partners.
Are you blinded by acronyms yet?
The new company will be comprised of its interactive division – Caesars Interactive Entertainment (CIE) – the Planet Hollywood casino on the Las Vegas strip and the soon to be built $400m Horseshoe casino in Baltimore, in a bid to separate it’s prize assets from the record $23bn debt load.
CIE is the parent company of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) brand, and WSOP.com – in partnership with 888 Holdings – has recently opened its cyber gates for players wanting to play legal real money online poker in the state of Nevada. A similar plan is on the offing for New Jersey when the action starts in earnest on the Nov 26th, in a playing field specialists believe will rake in $7.4bn in business by 2017.
The delayed launch of WSOP.com lost some of it’s WSOP shine after the world’s largest and most prestigious live tournament schedule came and passed without a single cent being passed between online poker players. That delay created a less than enthusiastic start with player numbers down on those enjoyed by Ultimate Poker (UP) when they became the first real money online poker operator back in April.
Since that wobbly legs moment WSOP.com has picked up a head of steam with ever increasing numbers in its first week of real money play. It still has a little way to go before it reaches the player numbers that UP currently enjoys, but as WSOP.com players are going up, player numbers at UP are slowly – and obviously – going down.
62.96% of CalvinAyre readers believe that WSOP.com will be the most dominant online poker force after they get a year of operation under their belt, and they are on course to make that a reality.
If you want to pick up more backstory on the CAC spinoff then make sure you check out these two amazing articles (Investing the Hard Way: Caesars Does it Again and The Caesars Spinoff by Numbers) by our very own Albert Einstein of stocks and shares Mr. Vince Martin.
