Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in February – a month where the first four days were the tail end of the latest Chinese New Year holiday – is likely to be MOP18.5 billion (US$2.31 billion) to MOP19.3 billion, says Macquarie Capital.
That would mean the city’s aggregate GGR for the first two months of this year would decline year-on-year in the range of 1 percent to 3 percent, said the institution in a Monday memo.
The lunar-calendar based Chinese New Year holiday in mainland China – Macau’s most significant source of visitors – ran from January 28 to February 4 this year.
For last week, i.e., from February 10 to February 16, Macau’s city-wide “mass volume grew 23 percent to 25 percent month-on-month, while VIP volume saw stronger growth of 25 percent to 28 percent month-on-month, with a 3.3 percent to 3.5 percent win rate remaining above normal,” noted Linda Huang, head of consumer research, Asia, at Macquarie Capital, citing third-party data provider.
Macau’s January casino GGR fell by 5.6 percent year-on-year to just above MOP18.25 billion. Judged sequentially, the January result was up 0.3 percent, according to official data.
Macquarie said – citing the third-party data – that in January, Macau casino operators Sands China Ltd and Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd both probably saw month-on-month GGR market share improvement, by “1.5 percent and 2.0 percent respectively”.
“Share was taken from Wynn Macau [Ltd] and MGM China [Holdings Ltd], with market share contraction of 1.5 percent and 2.0 percent,” suggested Ms Huang.
She further noted: “Comparing to the premium-focused peers, the base mass-focused Cotai mega resorts witnessed a higher year-on-year decline on mass GGR in the week of Chinese New Year, implying potential market share movement again in February.”
