Casino Stock Winners and Losers: Pinnacle

Pinnacle Entertainment(PNK Quote) shares moved higher on Friday as the casino company reported first-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates.
Pinnacle reported earnings from continuing operations of $1.2 million, or 2 cents per share on lower pre-opening and development costs, compared with a loss $15.8 million, or 26 cents per share in the prior-year period. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who were expecting a loss of 3 cents per share.

Pinnacle shares were trading up 8%, or 86 cents to $11.59.

The $269 million in revenue also beat Wall Street’s forecast of $265.3 million.

Pinnacle, based in Las Vegas, Nev., operates seven casinos in the U.S., mostly, in Louisiana, Indiana, Missouri and Nevada.

Elsewhere in casino land, shares of Las Vegas Sands(LVS Quote) were up 12.7% to $7.05 of volume of more than 27 million shares.

Penn National Gaming(PENN Quote), which reported an upbeat quarter Thursday, was up 6.8% to $32.86.

The results impressed JPMorgan gaming analyst Joseph Greff: “We continue to believe that PENN is well positioned in relatively healthy regional gaming markets, possesses a strong competitive positioning in these markets, and has the ability to extract margin improvement even on flat year-over-year revenue performance,” he wrote in a note late Thursday. “We are also raising our year-end 2009 price target to $34 from $31, which assumes that PENN can trade at 7.5x 2010E EV/EBITDA by the end of the year.”

MGM Mirage(MGM Quote) was up 5% to $6.01.

Boyd Gaming(BYD Quote) was up 11.4% to $7.32.

Wynn Entertainment(WYNN Quote) was up 4.8% to $38.18.

Isle of Capri Casinos(ISLE Quote) was up 6.8% to $9.60.

Ameristar Casinos(ASCA Quote) was up 2.9% to $15.51.