Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) result for February of nearly MOP20.63 billion (US$2.56 billion) was down 18.7 percent on the same month in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, observed analyst Steven Pizzella of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. February 2019 also saw Chinese New Year (CNY) celebrated during the month.
The tally for February this year was still up 4.5 percent year-on-year, showed the official data published on Sunday.
Deutsche Bank currently expects first-quarter GGR in Macau to be equal to US$8.1 billion, or up 11.7 percent year-on-year.
JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd stated in a Sunday note: “GGR surprised to the upside – even with a slower lunar new year kickoff” in terms of consumer demand.
The brokerage’s analysts DS Kim, Selina Li and Lindsey Qian wrote that the first quarter was “on pace” to deliver GGR up 13 percent year-on-year.
They said, per the timing of February GGR volume based on the brokerage’s research, the “run-rate improved to circa MOP1 billion per day in the final week of February, versus MOP785 million during the lunar new year week, fuelled by strong ‘tail-end’ demand from high-end players”.
The nine-day festive period, from February 15 to February 23, was declared a holiday on the Chinese mainland, Macau’s main tourism feeder market. Preliminary figures show that Macau received just over 1.55 million visitors during the holiday period.
JP Morgan said the full-February result had been “particularly impressive following the relatively soft lunar new year performance,” which the analysts attributed to a “timing dynamic, not weak underlying demand”.
The brokerage stated: “Peak seasonality simply kicked in later this year (day six of the nine-day holiday, versus the usual day four to five, of a seven- to eight-day break,” typically seen in other years.
Daily GGR ‘below October Golden Week’
Vitaly Umansky, senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners said in a Monday note, referring secondly to an autumn holiday period on the Chinese mainland encompassing National Day on October 1: “We estimate daily GGR during Chinese New Year to have been circa MOP890 million, approximately 2 percent below daily GGR of October Golden Week and 10 percent above Chinese New Year 2025.”
Mr Umansky added, referring to February this time: “The month ended extremely strongly following a very weak first two weeks.”
During the lunar new year in 2025, the mainland holiday had lasted eight days, from January 28 to February 4 that calendar year.
Seaport estimated first-quarter GGR this year, would grow by circa 13.4 percent from the prior year.
Deutsche Bank’s Mr Pizzella mentioned that the degree to which last month’s GGR undershot the pre-pandemic year of 2019, was also greater than that in January this year, and in December and November last year.
The GGR result for February this time, “was down 18.7 percent, relative to the GGR achieved in February of 2019,” wrote Mr Pizzella in his note.
The analyst was citing historical GGR data publicly-available from the website of Macau’s regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
He added the February performance this year relative to February 2019, “compares to the January decline of 9.3 percent” versus that month in 2019, “the December decline of 8.5 percent” from December 2019, “and the November decline of 7.8 percent, relative to November of 2019”.
February GGR this year also represented an 8.9 percent sequential decline from January’s GGR, observed Deutsche Bank.
“The average sequential expansion in February, relative to January, over the 2013 to 2019 period, was +15.5 percent,” stated Mr Pizzella.
Though he added this by itself was “misleading given the influence of the shifting timing of Chinese New Year”.
(Updated 9.50am, March 3)
