Boyd Gaming Has 17.2% Upside: Here’s Why You Should Buy It Before July 23
Boyd Gaming's July 23 earnings report is two weeks out, and a quiet combination of balance sheet strength, aggressive buybacks, and a compressed valuation has set up a trade that most investors are overlooking.
Boyd Gaming (NYSE:BYD | BYD Price Prediction) stands out in gaming heading into its confirmed July 23 earnings release, and the setup is doing most of the work for you. The 24/7 Wall St.’s base case pegs fair value at $102.07 against an $86.03 print as of July 14, a 16.91% upside call with a 90% confidence score and a Buy recommendation. The conviction case rests on a buyback machine, a rerating catalyst two weeks out and a valuation that ignores the earnings power underneath.
Valuation Is Doing the Heavy Lifting
BYD trades at a forward P/E of 11 against a 50-day moving average of $84.99 and a 200-day of $83.94. That is a low-double-digit multiple on a business generating $317.42 million in quarterly adjusted EBITDAR with property margins exceeding 39%. The analyst consensus target of $93.94 already implies room to run, and Wall Street’s rating mix skews neutral-to-bullish with zero sell ratings across 19 analysts.
The Capital Return Is the Real Story
CEO Keith Smith is aggressively shrinking the share count. Boyd returned $155 million in Q1 2026 repurchases plus a raised $0.20 quarterly dividend, with the board authorizing an additional $500 million buyback and roughly $707 million remaining. Management guided to $150 million per quarter in repurchases, worth approximately $9 per share in value for shareholders in 2026. Over the past four and a half years, Boyd has returned $2.9 billion to shareholders and reduced the share count by more than 33%.
Why BYD Wins the Head-to-Head
The obvious alternatives are MGM Resorts (NYSE:MGM) and Penn Entertainment (NASDAQ:PENN). Boyd finished Q1 with traditional leverage of 1.8x and lease-adjusted leverage of 2.4x, the strongest balance sheet in the company’s history. MGM and Penn have historically carried materially heavier debt loads and neither runs a buyback intensity that matches Boyd’s 33% share count reduction over the last four-plus years. Penn’s persistent Interactive losses have kept its forward earnings visibility murky, while Boyd’s Online segment is guided to $30 million to $35 million in EBITDA this year, a cleaner profile.
The July 23 Catalyst
Q2 2025 delivered an EPS surprise of +14.82% with a same-day pop of +4.4%. Momentum has since rebuilt: Midwest & South revenues grew 4% and EBITDAR grew 5% with margins near 37%, and Smith noted customer trends from Q1 continued into April. Options positioning confirms the tilt with a 0.17 full-chain put/call ratio.
The setup heading into the July 23 report combines a buyback-driven share count reduction, sector-low leverage, and a valuation that leaves room for a rerating.
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Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
