Deutsche Bank Securities Inc estimates Macau’s March casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) will be the equivalent of just under US$2.42 billion. That would represent an increase of about 5.7 percent month-on-month, from February’s MOP18.49 billion (US$2.29 billion) tally.
Nonetheless, Deutsche Bank’s forecast for March GGR “represents a monthly sequential per day decline of 2.2 percent,” said the institution’s analyst Carlo Santarelli in a Friday memo. That would still be better than the “7.7 percent average sequential per day decline in March,” relative to February, he added.
Deutsche Bank’s March forecast “is down 25.2 percent” versus the same month in 2019, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The institution now expects Macau GGR to reach about US$7.15 billion in the first quarter this year, up 65.0 percent year-on-year, and a 5.6-percent increase sequentially. The quarterly figure would be down circa 25.0 percent from the comparable period in 2019, it added.
JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd said in a Friday note that Macau’s GGR in the first two months of 2024 was tracking “7 percent above” the fourth-quarter 2023 level.
“This suggests first-quarter GGR can grow +5 percent quarter-on-quarter, to beat the historical seasonality of flattish quarter-on-quarter, if history is any guide,” wrote analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi and Selina Li.
“Historically, March is 4 percent below January/February GGR run-rates,” they added.
