Macau’s average daily casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the first nine days of October is estimated to have been two times the daily run-rate seen in September, stated brokerage JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd in a Monday memo.
The period examined included a week-long holiday that started on October 1 in Macau’s main tourism feeder market, mainland China, and marks festivities around China’s National Day.
Macau’s aggregate casino GGR for the first nine days of the month was MOP1.7 billion (US$210.2 million), or approximately MOP190 million a day, suggested JP Morgan analyst DS Kim, in the note. Average daily GGR in September was MOP99 million.
The city logged an aggregate of more than 182,000 inbound visitors for October 1 to October 7 inclusive. The average occupancy rate of Macau hotels was 66.7 percent during that period, according to a Macao Government Tourism Office update.
But the city’s average daily casino GGR for October Golden Week this year was still only about “15 percent to 20 percent” of Golden Week performance in pre-pandemic times, when daily GGR had achieved the MOP1.0-billion mark, said Mr Kim.
“By segment, we estimate mass GGR has recovered to 30 percent to 35 percent of pre-Covid Golden Week levels, versus VIP at a mid-single-digit recovery,” wrote the JP Morgan analyst.
This year’s autumn Golden Week was nonetheless “respectable”, given the city was yet to benefit from the mainland authorities’ pledge to resume package tours and electronic issuance of exit visas for independent mainland travellers to visit Macau, said the brokerage.
“…even domestic mobility” in mainland China had not yet “normalised”, suggested the analyst, with China’s domestic tourism revenues “falling 26 percent year-on-year to be only 44 percent of pre-Covid levels, not too far from Macau’s mass [gaming] recovery” level.
By that comparison, “pent-up demand for Macau’s mass gaming seems pretty solid,” Mr Kim wrote.
JP Morgan maintains its estimate that Macau could see sequential improvements in mass GGR and in industry profitability throughout 2023, before the market could achieve “full recovery” in 2024.
