Consumer demand for Macau casino gambling was “stable” in the first nine days of March, said JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd in a Monday note.
“Based on our checks, gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the first nine days of January was MOP5.75 billion [US$718.7 million or MOP638 million a day,” wrote analysts DS Kim, Selina Li and Mufan Shi.
“This implies the daily GGR remained stable versus MOP644 million a day in [the first] two months of 2025, which is somewhat encouraging for a shoulder month like March,” they added.
According to the JP Morgan team, the print in the first nine days of March “implies mass GGR is running at +110-percent of pre-Covid levels, and VIP at low minus 20 percent”.
The institution said it continues to “model March GGR to stay flattish year-on-year at around MOP19 billion (-2 percent to 0 percent)”.
Such monthly tally would imply “first-quarter 2025 GGR to also remain flat year-on-year, against relatively tough comparisons”.
“We expect GGR growth to accelerate into the latter half of the year on easier comparisons (+5 percent year-on-year versus 0 percent in first-half 2025), resulting in a modest 3-percent growth for 2025,” stated the JP Morgan analysts.
Macau’s casino GGR in the first two months of 2025 stood at nearly MOP38.00 billion, up 0.5 percent on the same period in 2024, according to official data.
Earlier this month, Fitch Ratings Inc forecast Macau’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth to slow to 6.9 percent this year from 8.8 percent in 2024, as the city’s GGR “is likely to rise more gradually to roughly 81 percent of its 2019 level, after a rebound in 2024”.
