Texas casino and dining billionaire Tilman Fertitta, has taken his company public by merging with the special acquisitions company (SPAC) Fast Acquisition of New York. This gives Fertitta a 60 percent share of a company that’s already on the New York Stock Exchange.
The merged company has a combined value of $6.6 billion. This put’s the gaming sector of Fertitta’s empire, including Golden Nugget and his dining sector, Landry’s Inc., which has 500 restaurants.
Eventually Fast Acquisition will be re-christened as Golden Nugget Entertainment. It will not include Fertitta’s hotels or the Houston Rockets baseball franchise. He will be chairman and chief executive officer.
This gives the Texas billionaire the capital to compete with other gaming companies. He told the Houston Chronicle: “We’re looking to do some substantial mergers and acquisitions in gaming. We want to be aggressive in the M&A world.” Two years Fertitta was outbid by Eldorado Resorts when he tried to buy Caesars Entertainment.
The move represents Fertitta’s change in strategy, from a restaurant focus to building a casino empire and especially toward online gaming.
He told the Chronicle, “I’ve grown my huge net worth by being an opportunistic buyer, and yes, there’s going to be opportunities out there I want to seize upon.”
He said he hopes to be able to take advantage of acquisition opportunities created by the Covid-19 pandemic.
He told Bloomberg, “I want to do big gaming deals. Thirty years ago there was gambling in two states. Now we’re approving new states for online almost on a weekly basis.”
His company was slammed by the pandemic, but he says he expects earnings to rebound in 2021 and 2022, with increased buying leverage.
He plans to use the money realized from investors to retire some of the company’s $3.4 billion in debt.
