Deutsche Bank has reduced by nearly one-third its estimate for second-quarter casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in the Macau market. The brokerage also reduced its full-year forecast by about 18 percent.
It now thinks GGR for the three months to June 30 will be US$2.97 billion, dropping its earlier estimate of US$4.39 billion, a downward adjustment of 32.3 percent, according to a note issued last week.
The new figure would still be a 634.8 percent year-on-year improvement on the US$404.8 million achieved in the second quarter, 2020, when inbound tourism to Macau was effectively stagnant due to the Covid-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions.
Analyst Carlo Santarelli said Macau’s March GGR result represented “a 68 percent shortfall relative to the GGR achieved in March 2019”.
Macau’s March and first-quarter GGR numbers were released by the Macau government on Thursday.
They showed that Macau casino GGR rose by 13.6 percent sequentially in March.
The aggregate GGR in the three months to March 31 was up about 8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2020.
Deutsche Bank forecasts, under its revised estimates, that second-quarter mass-market GGR will be US$2.15 billion, which would be up 894.8 percent year-on-year. The institution expects second-quarter VIP GGR to be US$820.8 million, which would be a year-on-year gain of 335.9 percent.
The institution now expects full-year 2021 GGR will be just under US$19.29 billion, up 154.9 percent year-on year.
The new full-year estimate is 17.7 percent below the bank’s prior forecast of US$23.44 billion.
