GGRAsia – Macau Jan GGR likely to dip 60pct y-on-y: Bernstein

Macau Jan GGR likely to dip 60pct y-on-y: Bernstein

Jan 12, 2021 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for January is likely to contract year-on-year by “low- to mid-60s of percent”. The estimate is by brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd, in a Monday note, after assessing Macau operators’ trading performance in the first 10 days of January, based on “channel checks” within the industry.

The institution said accumulated GGR for that 10-day period was circa MOP2.85 billion (about US$357 million). That meant an average daily rate of MOP285 million, down by 68 percent year-on-year, but representing a 13 percent sequential increase compared to December 2020.

The brokerage judged that up to Sunday, VIP volumes were down “mid-70s of percent year-on-year”, with “slightly-higher-than-normal win rate”; while mass-market GGR was estimated to be down by the “low 60s of percent year-on-year”.

“Our currently-published estimates for 2021 GGR [are for] approximately 80 percent of 2019 GGR,” added analysts Vitaly Umansky, Tianjiao Yu and Kelsey Zhu.

But they noted this forecast was “likely to be reduced, as normal travel will be pushed further back in 2021,” with Macau casino GGR “nearly back to 2019 levels” by the year 2022.

On Friday, a senior official representing the health authority in mainland China’s Guangdong, called on the public in the province of more than 100 million people, to spend their February Chinese New Year break within its boundaries, as a precaution against the risk of spreading Covid-19.

Visitors from Guangdong province made up nearly 60 percent of Macau’s mainland Chinese visitors for the first 11 months of 2020, according to latest data available from Macau’s Statistics and Census Service.

China’s State Council has designated February 11 to 17 inclusive as the Chinese New Year holiday period for 2021. The week-long break – linked annually to the lunar calendar and also known as the spring “Golden Week” – is typically a busy period for Macau’s casino resorts and the city’s tourism trade.