Mass-market baccarat generated revenue of just above MOP33.53 billion (US$4.16 billion) in Macau in the fourth quarter of 2023, up 12.6 percent sequentially, according to data released on Tuesday by the city’s casino regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
The latest quarterly figure represented circa 109.2 percent of fourth-quarter 2019 mass-market baccarat gross gaming revenue (GGR), a period during the last trading year before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the three months to December 31 last year, VIP baccarat rose by 7.9 percent quarter-on-quarter, accounting for MOP12.70 billion. It represented about 39.3 percent of fourth-quarter 2019 levels.
For the final quarter of 2023, VIP baccarat had a 23.5-percent market share of GGR, according to the data published on Tuesday.
Slot machine revenue was nearly MOP2.97 billion, a market share of circa 5.5 percent. It was up 4.1 percent quarter-on-quarter.
Aggregate revenue in the overall mass-market segment – including slot machines – stood at just above MOP41.41 billion, accounting for an almost 76.5-percent share of Macau’s casino GGR in the three months to December 31.
The latest overall mass-market GGR quarterly result represented 103.9 percent of the MOP39.84 billion achieved in the comparable period of 2019.
Macau’s fourth-quarter GGR stood at MOP54.11 billion, up 10.9 percent from MOP48.81 billion in the preceding three months. October was the best monthly performance since January 2020, at the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Earlier this month, JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd said it expected fourth-quarter Macau casino corporate earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to likely to show a 10 percent rise sequentially. Such result would represent “circa 85 percent of pre-Covid levels, versus 80 percent recovery in the third quarter,” stated the brokerage.
