Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the first 10 days of December was estimated at MOP5.2 billion (US$646.6 million), or circa MOP520 million a day, said JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd in a Monday memo, citing its industry checks.
“GGR was a bit soft, partly due to poor luck” for the operator side, wrote analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi and Selina Li. The result for the first 10 days of December “is weaker than MOP535 million a day in November, in part due to poor VIP luck factor (mid-2 percent versus typical 3-percent-plus) on our estimates,” they added.
By segment in the first 10 days of December, the brokerage estimates mass GGR “at around 95 to 100 percent of pre-Covid levels (versus 100-percent-plus in recent months), while VIP was lower at mid-teens due to poor luck (versus circa 20 percent in recent months)”.
The JP Morgan team added: “We do expect, however, demand to ramp up in the coming weeks into Christmas and year-end holidays (plus normalising luck).”
It added: “We expect full-month GGR to hit circa MOP17 billion, translating to about MOP550 million a day run-rate with a 100-percent-plus mass recovery.”
According to the institution, such December tally would imply that fourth-quarter GGR would grow at a rate above 8 percent quarter-on-quarter, “with mass being a tad stronger, say 9 percent quarter-on-quarter”.
This in turn “could drive plus 8 to 10-percent quarter-on-quarter growth in industry EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation] versus historical seasonality of plus 5-percent growth quarter-on-quarter before Covid-19,” it added.
In November, Macau GGR fell by 17.7 percent month-on-month, to MOP16.04 billion, according to official data. The figure compared with an October GGR result of MOP19.50 billion, which was the best monthly performance since January 2020, at the very beginning of the Covid-19.
