When billionaire Sheldon Adelson sold his successful Comdex computer show and decided to build a lavish hotel-casino with thousands of rooms, gambling executives ridiculed his business model.
They said Adelson's plan for the Venetian to cater to business travelers and profit from hotel rooms and conventions wouldn't work on the Las Vegas Strip, where everyone knew casinos were the true moneymakers.
Critics and competitors told the Wall Street Journal in 1997 that Adelson was "smoking something" and his over-the top property was doomed because Las Vegas had too many rooms and couldn't make enough money outside the casino to support its size.
Executives of Las Vegas Sands Inc., the Venetian's parent company, can laugh now when they read that article. The Venetian is the second-most-profitable hotel-casino in Las Vegas, after the Bellagio, Steve Wynn's upscale creation that raised the stakes in this city and put luxury at the forefront of the Vegas experience.
And in the next few weeks, the now privately held Sands is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the name Las Vegas Sands Corp.
"My gut tells me this will be a very high-demand or hot" initial public stock offering, said Marc Falcone, a Deutsche Bank equity gambling analyst in New York. "You have an outstanding business model with great growth opportunities, and you have a management team that has done an outstanding job with their assets."
With the public offering, Las Vegas Sands would become one of the largest gambling companies in the world, behind Harrah's Entertainment Inc. and MGM Mirage Inc. -- if their recently announced acquisitions are approved next year.
Proceeds from the offering will be used for the company's proposed $1.6-billion, 3,000-room Palazzo hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip and the $1.8-billion Macao Venetian Casino Resort in Asia. Both developments are scheduled to open in 2007. The company has proposed to Macao's government the construction of six more resorts there, some of which will have casinos.
The company also is exploring projects in Britain, which is revising its gambling laws to allow for more and bigger casinos.
Las Vegas Sands executives are aiming for an IPO price of $24 to $26 a share. Under the terms disclosed in a government filing, the company could raise as much as $619 million.
Sands executives declined to comment further, citing SEC rules that impose a quiet period on companies going public.
