Macau casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) is likely to expand in September by between 4 percent and 7 percent year-on-year.
So said a Monday memo from brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd, noting that this month would see an easing of year-on-year comparisons due to Typhoon Mangkhut in September 2018, which had resulted in the precautionary closure of Macau casino operations for a period slightly greater than 24 hours.
Regarding September this year, “our channel checks indicate that Macau’s GGR for September 1 to 15 was estimated to be approximately MOP11.6 billion [US$1.4 billion], a month-to-date average daily rate of approximately MOP773 million,” wrote analysts Vitaly Umansky, Eunice Lee and Kelsey Zhu.
The average daily rate for the month up to September 15 was -1 percent compared with August and was -2 percent compared to July, but was +6 percent compared to September 2018, when the average daily rate was MOP732 million.
Brokerage Nomura said in a memo the same day it anticipated “low single-digit” GGR growth in Macau for September.
“We estimate GGR for the month should settle around MOP22 billion to MOP23 billion,” wrote Nomura’s Harry Curtis, Daniel Adam and Brian Dobson.
“The roughly 2 percent to 3 percent GGR growth estimate for September implied by our estimate would mean more than 1,000 basis points of sequential acceleration versus last month’s decline, given much easier one-year growth comparisons for the balance of the year,” said the Nomura team.
The institution said it judged that in the prior week average daily VIP volume had been approximately 5 percent higher sequentially; VIP hold percentage had been 3.1 percent to 3.2 percent versus a “normalised” hold range of 2.7 percent to 3.0 percent; and mass GGR per day had been down approximately 6 percent to 7 percent, “versus the average in August”.
