Bigger numbers of tourists from Singapore, Indonesia, China and India travelling to Malaysia have helped boost first-quarter leisure and hospitality revenue for Genting Malaysia Bhd’s monopoly casino resort business in its home market. That is according to comments attributed to management and reported by Malaysian Chinese-language news outlet, Sin Chew Daily.
The comments were said to have been relayed by retail investors attending the casino company’s annual general meeting (AGM) on Wednesday. The group reports gaming performance at Resorts World Genting, outside the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, under the ‘leisure and hospitality’ heading.
Genting Malaysia also runs casinos in the United States – via associated businesses – and in the Bahamas, the United Kingdom, and Egypt.
Resorts World Genting accounted for MYR1.75 billion (US$371.9 million) of group-wide first-quarter leisure and hospitality revenue, up 24.7 percent year-on-year.
Genting Highlands operations had benefitted from Malaysia’s visa-free policy applicable to Chinese and Indian passport holders respectively – an approach those countries have reciprocated for Malaysians – reported Sin Chew Daily citing Genting Malaysia AGM attendees.
The company’s management also reportedly gave some commentary on a linked business, United States-based casino operator Empire Resorts Inc. The latter became in 2019 an associate of Genting Malaysia.
According to a number of notes by investment analysts, some Genting Malaysia shareholders have previously expressed concern about commitments to Empire Resorts having dragged the results of Genting Malaysia. Wednesday’s AGM heard Empire Resorts would improve its capital structure, as well as lower its leverage and interest expenses.
Empire Resorts has several U.S. gaming businesses. They are: Resorts World Catskills, a casino resort approximately 90 miles (144.8 kilometres) upstate from New York City, and which started full operations in January 2019; Resorts World Hudson Valley, about 61 miles upstate from New York City, which opened in December 2022; and a mobile sports betting operation in New York state, that started in March 2022.
Genting Malaysia reported higher share of losses in the first-quarter this year associated with Empire Resorts, by MYR5.8 million, following the increase in January in its effective economic interest in Empire Resorts to 89.6 percent, from 76.3 percent.
At the Wednesday meeting, Genting Malaysia management reportedly told shareholders the firm’s involvement with the upstate gaming business could help it gain one of the three downstate New York gaming licences that might be decided by late 2025.
The group is also willing to explore any new business opportunity, should New York state pass any legislation permitting online casino games, the AGM was told.
The company also has the ambition to “solidify” its market position in the Northeast U.S., by expanding its patron database, enhancing its product offerings and doing cross-marketing work, the Malaysia news outlet reported, citing discussion at the annual general meeting.
The wider Genting group runs the Resorts World New York City gaming complex, in the New York borough of Queens.
