Casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau for the first five days of October stood at MOP5.5 billion (US$686.1 million), representing a daily average of MOP1.10 billion, suggested brokerage JP Morgan, citing industry checks.
It was the “best Golden Week print in five-plus years,” wrote analysts DS Kim, Selina Li and Lindsey Qian in a Monday memo commenting on GGR performance during an ongoing mainland China holiday season.
Macau received 790,016 visitors during the first five days of ‘October Golden Week’, according to official data. It is a major festive break for mainlanders and a peak trading period for Macau’s casinos. Mainland China is the main feeder market for Macau’s tourism sector.
China’s State Council has designated this year’s autumn holiday on the mainland as running from October 1 to 8, encompassing China’s National Day on October 1 and the lunar calendar-based Mid-Autumn Festival, which this year falls on October 6.
According to the preliminary data, Macau welcomed a total of 191,176 visitors on Saturday (October 4), but the figure declined to 113,051 on Sunday, as travel to and from Macau was impacted by Typhoon Matmo.
Despite the GGR tally for the first five days of October, the JP Morgan team noted that “year-on-year growth appears relatively muted at plus 3 percent off last year’s (very) high base, coming in a few points below our and the Street’s mid-single digit expectations”.
The analysts however said they were “not worried” about the “seemingly muted momentum thus far”.
That was because a “longer holiday this year – eight days versus seven last year – suggests more sustained demand in the back half of Golden Week, resulting in a longer/stronger tail demand post the peak”, observed the JP Morgan analysts.
Such trend, they added, “will likely be amplified by a typhoon yesterday [Sunday], which hurt visitation/GGR due to ferry/flight disruptions for about half a day”.
In Monday’s memo, the analysts said they “continue to expect” GGR in the second week of October “to grow mid/high-teens year-on-year, to around MOP750 million a day, implying circa 30 percent week-on-week decline versus last year’s about 40 percent week-on-week decline”.
They added: “Our full-month projection remains unchanged for now, with GGR reaching a six-year high of MOP23 billion, growing at 11 to 13 percent year-on-year.”
The bank’s analysts also said they “foresee sustained double-digit GGR growth through at least first-quarter 2026 (hopefully longer), with stronger flow-through” driving industry earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) growth to “sharply accelerate” in the period up to the opening quarter of 2026.
