Hong Kong-listed hotel and casino services provider Macau Legend Development Ltd reports “significant progress” on its going concern issues. It added that positive steps were financial restructuring talks with banks, and a stay on repayment of HKD205 million (US$26.4 million) in shareholder loans.
The update was in the firm’s 2024 annual report filed to the Hong Kong bourse on Tuesday, referring to events after March 28, when it had filed its unaudited full-year results.
As well as running hotels in the city, Macau Legend has an economic interest in a Macau satellite casino (pictured) at the Legend Palace Hotel complex at the waterfront leisure and entertainment complex Macau Fisherman’s Wharf.
Macau Legend stated on the group’s overall business prospects: “In particular, the company has reached preliminary consensus with the banks on a transitional restructuring arrangement.”
It added it also had a “confirmation letter from a substantial shareholder dated April 3, 2025 – to whom HKD205-million of shareholders’ loans are owed, representing 60.4 percent of total current shareholder loans – that no demand for repayment will be made until the group is capable of repaying the outstanding amounts.”
Macau Legend said it would “proactively communicate with the banks to confirm the details” on “repayment of outstanding instalments of loan principal,” and “closely monitor the liquidity position of the group while maintaining normal business operation.”
Macau Legend had net current liabilities of approximately HKD2.51 billion as of December 31, including total bank and other borrowings amounting to just under HKD2.41 billion.
Such liabilities were “due for repayment within the next 12 months from the end of the reporting period or are repayable on demand” noted the annual report for the trading period to December 31, 2024.
They included instalments of loan principal amounting to HKD166.4 million which have been “in default” as at the date of the annual report, plus instalments of loan principal totalling HKD144.0 million, due by the end of 2025.
Among bank and other borrowings either due for repayment this year, or repayable on demand, is a HKD50.0-million loan from “the controlling sharholder” of the firm, and HKD289.4 million represents loans from its other “substantial shareholders”, the 2024 annual report mentioned.
An entity controlled by jailed former junket boss Levo Chan Weng Lin still holds 33.08 percent of the group’s outstanding shares according to the report, though he is referred to in the document merely as “a” controlling shareholder. The filing does not clarify which shareholders are owed HKD205-million in shareholder loans.
Legend Palace satellite, Paradise Ent’s Kam Pek satellite
Macau Legend’s satellite casino interest is via a services agreement with SJM Resorts Ltd, the operating entity of gaming group SJM Holdings Ltd.
Legend Palace Casino is one of the nine Macau satellite casinos that currently rely on the gaming rights of SJM Holdings.
The Macau Legend annual report noted: “The directors of the company have confirmed the group intends to continue operating all of the group’s principal businesses in Macau for the foreseeable future.”
In its annual report, Macau Legend cautions that “any unfavourable regulatory developments” relating to satellite casinos beyond a three-year grace period that ends this year, would bring “material adverse impact” on the firm.
Under the city’s updated regulatory framework, from 2026, those with service-provider agreements for Macau satellites must swap to a ‘management company’ model, receiving a ‘management fee’ for such services and cannot share gaming revenue.
The Macau Legend annual report said the group has “been monitoring the regulatory developments with respect to satellite casinos beyond the three-year transition period, in particular how the compensation for the provision of casino management services is to be determined.”
In other developments on the satellite topic, Hong Kong-listed Paradise Entertainment Ltd, which controls another such venue, Casino Kam Pek Paradise, said in its own 2024 annual report – filed on Tuesday – it is “awaiting further details” on the casino management fee provisions.
Jay Chun, chairman and managing director of Paradise Entertainment, said Kam Pek Paradise had witnessed “outperformance” relative to the other satellite casinos in the city. It also has a services agreement with SJM Resorts.
He was cited in Paradise Entertainment’s report as saying: “Subject to agreements with the existing concessionaire, the group will engage [in] discussions with both the concessionaire and the regulators to ensure the continuation of its casino management services for dedicated gaming patrons beyond 2025.”
