Casino sales in February at Grand Korea Leisure Co Ltd (GKL), an operator in South Korea of foreigner-only casinos, declined in sequential and year-on-year terms, according to a Wednesday update filed to the Korea Exchange.
The firm’s February casino sales amounted to approximately KRW32.46 billion (US$22.3 million), down 5.5 percent from January. Judged year-on-year, the February casino sales represented a 3.6-percent decline.
In February, table-game sales were KRW29.99 billion, down 4.5 percent sequentially, and 3.8-percent lower than a year earlier.
Machine-game sales in February were KRW2.46 billion, down 16.0 percent from the previous month and 1.4 percent lower from a year ago.
Grand Korea Leisure runs three foreigner-only, Seven Luck-branded, casinos. Two are in the capital Seoul, including one at Gangnam. Its third is in the southeastern port city of Busan.
The company is a subsidiary of the Korea Tourism Organization, which in turn is affiliated to the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
For January and February combined, Grand Korea Leisure’s aggregate casino sales was up by 25.4 percent year-on-year to nearly KRW66.8 billion. The firm had seen a 75.3 percent year-on-year jump in its casino sales in January.
The Seoul Gangnam Casino generated in aggregate approximately KRW38.62 billion in casino sales for the first two months of this year, making the venue the biggest contributor to GKL’s group-wide casino sales.
That property was also the only one of the group’s casinos to register year-on-year growth in casino sales for January and February combined. The other two saw casino sales decline year-on-year, according to GKL’s supplementary financial data.
In the first two months of this year, the firm’s “drop” – the amount paid by customers to purchase gaming chips – declined by 11.3 percent year-on-year to approximately KRW527.91 billion.
