The diversified machine behind the fantasy
The Société des Bains de Mer sells a dream of Belle Époque glamour. Its annual results reveal something more modern: a three-engine company in which hotels, gaming, and property each pull their weight.
The Monte-Carlo Casino is the most famous gaming room in Europe, and the Société des Bains de Mer, the company that operates it, trades on that fame. But the group's published results for its 2025-2026 fiscal year tell a story that has little to do with roulette. Revenue reached €861.6 million, operating income €86.6 million, net income €112.9 million. The casino is now one engine among three.
The hotel segment remains the largest, at €443.1 million: the Hôtel de Paris, the Hermitage, the Monte-Carlo Bay, the Beach. Gaming contributed €259.6 million. And the rental segment, the group's property arm, contributed €156.5 million, a figure that would have been unrecognisable a decade ago. SBM is no longer a casino company with hotels attached. It is a resort and property conglomerate that happens to own a casino.
The transformation was deliberate and expensive. The metamorphosis of the Hôtel de Paris, completed in early 2019 after four years of work, and the construction of One Monte-Carlo, inaugurated on February 22, 2019 with its 37 apartments, 24 boutiques, and nine floors of offices, represented a combined investment estimated at about €600 million. The bet was that Monaco's future lay not in extracting more from the gaming tables but in owning more of the square metres around them.
The 2025-2026 results suggest the bet is paying. The rental segment turns the group's control of the Golden Square into recurring income: boutiques, offices, residences, all paying rent to the company that curates the address. It is a landlord's business grafted onto a resort business, and in a principality where the square metre is the scarcest asset, it may be the most defensible business of the three.
There is an irony here that the group's founders would have appreciated. SBM was created in 1863 to monetise Monaco's glamour; a century and a half later, its most modern segment monetises Monaco's geography. The fantasy is still the product. But the fantasy now comes with a property portfolio.
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