Two large players in Cotai gaming resort mall business – Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd and Sands China Ltd – have respectively seen third-quarter net revenues from such operations rise sequentially, though they declined year-on-year. That was according to their third-quarter financial results.
Mall net revenue at Galaxy Macau reached HKD347 million (nearly US$44.6 million) in the three months to September 30, up 6.4 percent from the previous quarter’s HKD326 million. Galaxy Macau’s third-quarter mall net revenue went down nearly 5.2 percent year-on-year compared to the HKD366 million in the same period of 2023.
For the first nine months this year, Galaxy Macau mall net revenue was HKD1.04 billion, down 12.7 percent year-on-year. Nonetheless it was up nearly 15.5-percent on the same period in 2019, the trading year before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sands China’s mall-business performance was detailed in the third-quarter results of its U.S.-based parent, Las Vegas Sands Corp. The main Sands China malls are at its Cotai properties, namely: The Venetian Macao; The Londoner Macao; the combined The Plaza Macao and Four Seasons Macao; and The Parisian Macao.
Their aggregate third-quarter net revenue was US$125 million according to a GGRAsia review of the data, up 6.8 percent from the prior-quarter’s US$117 million. Year-on-year, the tally was down by 5.3 percent from the US$132 million achieved in third-quarter 2023.
January to September net revenue from those Sands China malls was US$357 million, flat from a year ago, but down almost 3 percent on the same period in 2019. In the latter year, the-then Sands Cotai Central had not yet been revamped and rebranded as The Londoner Macao.
In the third quarter, the top contributors to Sands China’s mall revenue were The Venetian Macao and the combined mall at The Plaza Macao and Four Seasons Macao. The Venetian Macao logged US$59 million, and the latter combo US$40 million.
The Plaza Macao and Four Seasons Macao net revenue from mall business declined circa 20 percent from third-quarter 2023.
The Shoppes at Four Season’s “tenant sales per square foot” – described by the group as the sum of reported comparable sales for the trailing 12 months, divided by the comparable square footage for the same period – remained the highest among all Sands China’s properties. However, the actual figure saw a sequential and year-on-year decline in the third quarter.
Tenant sales per square foot for The Shoppes at Four Seasons were US$5,832 in the third quarter, down 5.4 percent sequentially and down by just over 13.1 percent from a year earlier.
The “over 150” brands carried at The Shoppes at Four Seasons are at the luxury end of the retailing spectrum, as per Sands China’s marketing materials.
The other four Macau casino operators do not report mall performance as a distinct item in their financial results.
In terms of the overall outlook for the tourist-spend in Macau, Macau’s Statistics and Census Service said third-quarter per-capita visitor spending for shopping went up slightly year-on-year.
It was MOP2,381 (US$296.93) in the third quarter, up 1.5 percent year-on-year. The figure nonetheless represented an increase of nearly 16.5 percent from the same quarter in 2019, the statistics bureau’s visitor expenditure survey data show.
A separate census service survey focused on city-wide retail sales shows that Macau’s third-quarter value of retail sales grew by a sequential 2.5 percent to MOP16.59 billion. Judged year-on-year, the third-quarter retail sales tally represented a 15.5-percent decline, led by decreases in sales value of “watches, clocks and jewellery” and “leather goods”.
The third-quarter numbers took Macau’s aggregate value of retail sales in the January to September period to MOP53.48 billion, a decline by nearly 17 percent year-on-year. The retail sales value though already corresponded to 95 percent of the comparable period in 2019, the survey stated.
