Wynn Resorts Ltd., the casino company controlled by billionaire Steve Wynn, said that it swung from a loss a year earlier to a profit of $65.5 million (€45.05 million) in the fourth quarter, pushed by sharply higher VIP business in the Chinese gambling strip of Macau.

Its Wynn Las Vegas resort also held up, posting a slight 3.3 percent revenue increase despite a slowing U.S. economy.

Chief Executive Wynn said Tuesday that the company did not see its business slow, but he forecast general weakness ahead, saying “you probably should turn on the yellow light” for the Las Vegas market.

“It would be unsophisticated to think that Las Vegas is somehow a magical island unto itself,” he told analysts on a conference call.

Wynn shares fell 4 cents to close at $119.84 before the earnings announcement and dropped another $5.09, or 4.2 percent, to $114.75 in after-hours trading. Despite the drop, Wynn shares remained priced about 12 percent higher than they were a month ago when markets closed Jan. 11.

Analysts said investors may be skittish about any impact the slowing U.S. economy might have on the casino industry.

“I think that people are nervous about the Las Vegas Strip,” said Keybanc Capital Markets analyst Dennis Forst. He added that casinos catering to rich clientele such as Wynn, Bellagio and Venetian would be “more resistant than others” to a possible recession.

The company’s fourth-quarter net profit of 57 cents a share reversed a loss in the same quarter of 2006 of 55 cents a share. Revenue rose 26 percent to $711.3 million (€489.27 million).

On an adjusted basis, net profit came in at 72 cents a share, compared with 53 cents a share a year earlier. That beat the expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, who predicted adjusted net income of 68 cents per share on revenue of $692 million (€475.99 million).

For all of 2007, Wynn’s revenue was up 88 percent from 2006 to $2.69 billion (€1.85 billion), but net profit was down 59 percent to $258.1 million (€177.53 million), or $2.34 a share.

Casino net revenues at the company’s Wynn Las Vegas resort fell to $160 million (€110.06 million) in the fourth quarter, down 2.3 percent, or $3.7 million (€2.55 million), from a year earlier. While more money was wagered on tables games in the quarter, worse luck led to a $17.5 million (€12.04 million) downward swing in what the casino kept. Non-casino revenues rose 8.1 percent to $206.7 million (€142.18 million), with higher food, beverage, retail, entertainment and hotel receipts.

Meanwhile, the total amount bet on VIP table games at Wynn Macau surged to $11.2 billion (€7.7 billion) in the quarter, compared with $6.6 billion a year earlier, and the casino won 3 percent of the amount wagered, higher than the 2.6 percent hold in 2006′s fourth quarter. The amount bet on all other table games was $507.6 million (€349.15 million), a 1.2 percent drop from a year earlier.

Analyst Lawrence Klatzkin of Jefferies & Co. said the company’s generally wealthy customers showed resilience to worries about the economy.

“It was pretty much business as usual,” Klatzkin said. “In this economy, I guess that’s a good thing.”

The company finished a major expansion of its Wynn Macau resort in late December, increasing the number of table games by 40 percent to 380 while nearly doubling the number of slot machines to 1,270.

It also is building a $600 million (€412.71 million) Wynn Diamond Suites in Macau, a 405-room luxury offering to open in the first half of 2010, and is awaiting approval from the Macau government to develop another site on 52 acres. In Las Vegas, the under-construction $2.1 billion (€1.44 billion) Encore property is set to open in early 2009.

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