Banking group Jefferies now expects Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) to stood at MOP237.00 billion (US$29.31 billion), down 1.3 percent from its previous estimate of MOP240.0 billion. The institution said in a Tuesday memo that its forecast was “in line with market estimates, but higher than [the Macau] government estimates”.
In June, the Macau government reduced by about 5 percent its forecast for the city’s 2025 GGR. The new estimate is MOP228 billion, versus its projection of MOP240 billion made in November.
“Based on the first-half 2025 GGR trend, which was up 4.4 percent year-on-year to MOP119 billion …, we lower our 2025/26/27 GGR assumptions slightly,” wrote analysts Anne Ling and Jingjue Pei.
The bank now expects GGR growth of 4.5 percent year-on-year for 2025.
“This is compared to the market forecast of 4.0 percent GGR growth [year-on-year] to MOP236 billion … for 2025 and the government’s estimate of 0.5 percent GGR growth to MOP228 billion … for the same period,” noted the Jefferies team.
The institution expects Macau’s GGR to grow by 3.5 percent in 2026, to MOP245 billion, followed by a 3.4-percent increase in 2027, to MOP254 billion.
The Jefferies team said it continues to assume Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd and MGM China Holdings Ltd will “increase market share in 2025 and 2026,” with Sands China Ltd eventually catching up “with a change in [business] strategy”.
In late May, Robert Goldstein, chairman and chief executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp, said the group’s Macau operations – via Sands China – were not performing as expected.
That was in the context of the casino firm, according to Mr Goldstein, not being as competitive as it should be regarding incentives to customers, as well as in terms of increasing earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) across the Macau portfolio.
In Tuesday’s report, Jefferies said it expects Macau to see GGR growth of 5.7 percent in the third quarter of 2025, down 3.5 percent from the preceding quarter.
“For the first two weeks of July, GGR growth was up 9 percent year-on-year and minus 10 percent compared to the last two weeks of June,” observed the analysts.
They added: “This is a good start to the second half given that the third quarter is normally a low season.”
But they cautioned: “We believe the market view is currently mixed, wondering if the strong performance in May/June … will continue in second-half 2025 or whether VIP players just visited Macau earlier this year for the new properties.”
