Genting theme park launch possibly by CNY: Maybank

Jan 07, 2022 Newsdesk Latest News, Rest of Asia, Top of the deck  

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The launch of the long-awaited Genting SkyWorlds theme park at the Resorts World Genting casino complex near Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, might be in time for Chinese New Year (CNY), suggests Maybank Investment Bank Bhd, in a Thursday note. This time the lunar-calendar based festival falls on February 1.

The eventual ramp up of the theme park (pictured) should help the resort’s promoter, Genting Malaysia Bhd, achieve a 501 percent year-on-year rise in 2022 earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA), to MYR3.23 billion (US$767.9 million), Maybank analyst Samuel Yin Shao Yang noted in the memo.

“We expected Genting SkyWorlds to open on December 10, 2021, but it did not come to pass. Channel checks inform us that Genting Malaysia is ‘ironing out’ software issues and hopes to open Genting SkyWorlds for Chinese New Year,” the analyst wrote.

Despite the delay to that attraction, the investment bank said it understood Resorts World Genting had “robust” visitor volumes in the fourth quarter of 2021 comparable to the 4.0 million visits achieved in the third quarter of 2020. The latest trend was helped by a high rate of Covid-19 vaccination across Malaysia’s population.

Maybank forecast Genting Malaysia’s 2021 EBITDA to recover by 63 percent year-on-year to MYR537.2 million, with expectation that Covid-19′s impact on the company’s overseas casino business – in the United States, the Bahamas and the United Kingdom, “moderates”.

Genting Malaysia’s group-wide EBITDA could reach MYR3.23 billion in 2022, and MYR3.47 billion in 2023, said the financial institution.

Maybank also estimated the casino operator would report a net loss of MYR1.05 billion for 2021, before rebounding to make a net profit of MYR973.2 million in 2022, and MYR1.21 billion in 2023.

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