NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Initial public offerings are making a bit of a comeback. Following a nearly two-month period with no IPO activity, five companies have taken the plunge so far in October.

Sometime this week, perhaps the sexiest, albeit strangest, IPO of this fall is scheduled to start trading. Wynn Resorts, a new casino company founded in April 2000 by legendary casino mogul Steve Wynn, is aiming to raise approximately $450 million.

So what's odd about a casino company looking to go public?

Perhaps it's the fact that Wynn, who is responsible for building the Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio, doesn't plan on opening his new Las Vegas casino, Le Reve, until April 2005. In the meantime, the company will generate only a small amount of revenue.

Essentially, Wynn is asking the public to play the role of a bank or venture capitalist.

To be fair, Wynn has a good track record. He did reinvent Las Vegas, after all, and in 2000 sold his previous company, Mirage Resorts, to MGM Grand for a handsome premium. (That company is now known as MGM Mirage.)

Nevertheless, investing in Wynn at this early stage in the company's development takes a big leap of faith. "The only thing with this IPO is Wynn's name and his reputation," says Nadia Mir, an analyst with ipo.com, a Web site that tracks new stock offerings.

In a sign that underwriters are having trouble selling the deal to investors, the company lowered the price range on the offering Tuesday from $21 to $23 a share to $18 to $20 a share and increased the size of the deal from 20.5 million shares to 23.7 million. The stock was supposed to start trading on Wednesday but the offering was pushed back. The earliest it will start trading is Thursday, and it could wind up getting delayed even further.

Casino stocks have performed extremely well this year as tourists have once again flocked to Las Vegas following last year's terrorist attacks. MGM Mirage shares are up 16.7 percent year to date. Harrah's Entertainment has gained 18.3 percent. And Mandalay Resorts has surged 42.8 percent.

But there's a good reason that these stocks have been winning bets this year. Earnings for MGM Grand and Harrah's are expected to be more than 45 percent higher than a year ago, while analysts are predicting a nearly 60 percent jump in profits for Mandalay Resorts.

Wynn Resorts, however, lost $12.8 million in the first six months of this year and is expected to lose more as construction continues. The company did generate some revenue ($945,000 in the first half of 2002) from a jet leasing business as well an art gallery and shops that are on the property of the old Desert Inn casino, where Le Reve is being built.

According to the company's prospectus, approximately $375 million of the offering's proceeds will be used for the construction of Le Reve. The total price tag should come in at about $2.4 billion. Wynn also aims to sell about $340 million in mortgage bonds to help fund the construction, with the rest of the money coming from loans.

Since the company will not have meaningful revenue or earnings for at least two and a half years, it is difficult to figure out what will move the stock. "The only thing the stock could trade on would be phantom news, news from the construction site, whether or not it's on budget or if there's going to be a delay," says Daniel Davila, a casino analyst with Hibernia Southcoast Capital. His firm is not involved with the offering. Bank of America, Bear Stearns and Deutsche Bank are the lead underwriters.

Valuing the company is also going to be highly subjective. If the stock started trading at $19 a share, the middle of its expected price range, the market value for Wynn Resorts would be $1.1 billion. To put that into perspective, Boyd Gaming, a profitable casino company that owns 12 casinos in Las Vegas, Mississippi, Illinois and Nevada and generated revenue of $1.2 billion in the past twelve months, has a market value of just $900 million.

But the mere promise of Le Reve, which is French for The Dream, seems to be enough to have convinced Ron Baron, CEO of mutual fund firm Baron Asset Management, to have invested already. According to Wynn's prospectus, the Baron Asset fund will own 3.2 percent of the company's shares following the IPO. "We invest in people, not just buildings," Baron said Friday at his annual investment conference in New York.

Other major investors are Steve Wynn himself and a Japanese company called Aruze, which makes slot machines and gaming software. Wynn and Aruze each will own about 31 percent of the company after the offering has been completed. That leaves about a third of the company available to the public.

Still, the average investor probably would be wise to not place any chips on Wynn just yet. Mir says that she does not think the stock will trade much higher than its expected offering price and adds that she has not heard much in the way of institutional demand for the stock. She says that the overall IPO market remains sluggish and that it will take more than two weeks of strong market performance to entice investors to buy any new offerings, let alone one this risky.

And Davila says he's not really interested in instituting coverage of the stock just yet. "I would prefer to pick up coverage at a closer proximity to the opening so I can see some cash flows," he says. Wynn also has plans to build a casino in Macau, China, but there is no time frame for the beginning of construction.

For his part, Wynn seems to relish the role of the underdog. Speaking at the Baron conference Friday, Wynn said that every time he announced plans for a casino, he had many doubters who turned out to be wrong. He even joked that it's better to have naysayers. "I have a nightmare. And that nightmare is that someday in the financial press, someone will predict that I will be a success," says Wynn.

If history is any guide, Le Reve probably will do extremely well once it opens. And that's the key. Once it opens. It's a long time between now and April 2005. Without the hope of a profit until then, investors buying the stock now might wind up having nightmares of their own. Or if you pardon our French, Le Cauchemar.