The boss for American casino operator Golden Entertainment Incorporated has reportedly announced that his firm will be on the lookout for ‘smaller bite-sized’ acquisitions over the course of the next 18 months.

According to a Thursday report from the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper, the revelation from Chief Executive Officer Blake Sartini comes after his company managed to post better-than-expected second-quarter financial results despite the devastating impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The firm was purportedly celebrating even though its loss for the three-month period grew by almost 446% year-on-year to $78.6 million as overall revenues dropped by some 69% to approximately $76 million.

Coronavirus recovery:

Golden Entertainment Incorporated is responsible for western Maryland’s Rocky Gap Casino Resort alongside nine casinos in Nevada including the iconic The Strat Hotel, Casino and Skypod. It was purportedly allowed to partially resume operations at these venues in June after reviving its 3,000-strong distributed slot operation in Montana from May 4 following an almost seven-week coronavirus-related shutdown.

Timid attitude:

The newspaper reported that Sartini believes the Las Vegas-headquartered firm is now well placed to ‘to act on future growth opportunities’ that could include an ‘expansion of distributed gaming in new jurisdictions’ in addition to ‘targeted tuck-in acquisitions’. But the executive also purportedly declared that he does not expect Golden Entertainment Incorporated to ‘meaningfully grow’ over the course of the next few years as he is not interested in accumulating any more debt.

Gradual growth:

It was further reported that Golden Entertainment Incorporated had around 6,960 workers in Nevada at risk of being furloughed or laid off during the six weeks to the end of April. Sartini purportedly moreover proclaimed that his firm’s flagship The Strat Hotel, Casino and Skypod property had seen its average occupancy rate climb from about 40% in June to around 50% last month with this figure subsequently having ‘touched’ 70% on weekends.