Macau casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) declined by 37.4 percent sequentially in June, to MOP6.54 billion (US$817.7 million) compared to MOP10.45 billion in May.
Judged year-on-year, June GGR was up 812.5 percent, according to data issued on Thursday by the city’s casino regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, a body also known as DICJ.
A Thursday note from brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd said the June GGR result was “in line with expectations”.
Referring to a decline in inbound travel to Macau from mainland China in June, coinciding with new Covid-19 cases in neighbouring Guangdong province, the largest-single feeder market currently for Macau’s tourists, the brokerage stated: “The province has reported zero local cases since June 22”.
Analysts Vitaly Umansky, Louis Li, and Kelsey Zhu, added there were signs that certain travel restrictions might ease soon, including between Macau and Hong Kong.
In pre-pandemic trading, Hong Kong consumers accounted annually for circa 10 percent-plus of Macau GGR, a number of investment analysts has said.
The respective governments of the two special administrative regions had been “discussing to launch a Macau-HK travel bubble, which could happen as soon as mid-July,” suggested Sanford Bernstein.
In terms of the year-on-year comparison, GGR in June 2020 had been heavily impacted by countermeasures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in Macau.
Aggregate casino GGR in the six months to June 30 this year stood at MOP49.02 billion, an increase of 45.4 percent on the MOP33.72 billion achieved in the first six months of 2020.
In the first quarter last year, the city’s casino sector had a strong performance in January, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Macau’s casino GGR for May 2021 was the highest monthly figure to date since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The result coincided with a five-day holiday period in mainland China at the start of the month, linked to Labour Day on May 1.
(Updated 3.05pm, July 1)
