GGRAsia – 2026 maybe launch pad for Macau GGR rise: CLSA

2026 maybe launch pad for Macau GGR rise: CLSA

Jan 10, 2025 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Brokerage CLSA Ltd says growth performance in Macau casino gross revenue (GGR) is “unlikely to be eventful” this year, but to register acceleration in 2026, supported by improved consumer sentiment on mainland China’s economy.

“We expect GGR growth to improve in 2026 once Chinese property prices stabilise and consumer confidence picks up in second half 2025,” wrote analysts Jeffrey Kiang and Leo Pan, in a Thursday report.

The institution maintains its view expressed at the end of last year, that 2025 Macau GGR should expand 4.0 percent year-on-year to MOP235.76 billion (US$29.40 billion), supported by greater volume of visitors. It nonetheless characterised such likely improvement as “modest”.

CLSA thinks that will be followed by “10.4 percent year-on-year growth” to MOP260.19 billion in 2026.

“In our view, bottoming property prices in China should be a catalyst for confidence to turn; our property research team expects this in second half 2025,” said the brokerage.

Even the slower 2025 pace would in likelihood also be tied to “top-down recovery in Chinese consumer confidence, currently close to a 34-year low,” wrote the CLSA team.

“Therefore, Macau gaming concessionaires will have to reshape their investment narratives amid modest growth, while dividend payouts have not fully returned to pre-Covid levels for the entire sector,” added the analysts.

Points of interest for this year would include “whether Chinese stimulus can fuel growth in GGR,” and “whether [Macau gaming] companies will further raise dividend payout ratios”.

CLSA said there was room for optimism, based on past China economic policy. It stated that after China economic stimulus measures in the fourth quarter of 2008, and the second quarter of 2015, “GGR per day in Macau grew on both…12-month and 24-month horizons”.

The brokerage observed nonetheless that a consumer confidence index covering the China market was at 85.7 in September, with the base at 100 in January 1990.

The index was 86.2 in the latest reading as of November last year, “close to a 34-year low and in line with the plateauing trend of Macau’s GGR per visitation in 2024,” added CLSA.

The institution said Macau had generated “seasonally low average GGR per visitor” of MOP6,043 in the third quarter of 2024, though this was “on track to improve” to MOP6,345 in the fourth quarter.

This year would be “basically flat” at MOP6,483 per visitor, followed by a “marginal 1 percent increase” in 2026 to MOP6,525 per visitor, it added.