Macau’s August casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) of MOP19.75 billion (US$2.46 billion) was “above” investment analysts’ consensus expectations. The result was the second-best monthly tally of the year after the nearly MOP20.19 billion patacas recorded in May.
August’s GGR figure was up 6.2 percent sequentially and increased by 14.8 percent from a year earlier, according to a Sunday announcement from the local regulator.
A Sunday note from JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd said the August tally implied a “daily run-rate of MOP637 million – the second-highest level in 55 months – an 81-percent recovery versus 2019, the highest recovery rate since Covid-19”.
“This came in slightly above consensus … and perhaps more importantly, printed above-seasonal momentum – plus 6 percent month-on-month versus historical seasonality of plus 2 to 3 percent – after two consecutive months of sub-seasonal trends,” wrote analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi and Selina Li.
Brokerage Seaport Research Partners said in a Sunday memo that August had been “showing strong” visitor numbers “with fairly consistent revenue during the course of the month, which had five full weekends”.
“Average daily GGR was over MOP 637 million … which is the third strongest monthly daily GGR in 2024, the strongest outside a Golden Week holiday period,” said analyst Vitaly Umansky.
For September, Seaport estimates Macau GGR to be circa MOP17.78 billion, a 10-percent decline from August.
“September is generally the weakest or second weakest month of the year, along with June,” noted Mr Umansky.
JP Morgan also said that September GGR in Macau was not likely to “wow anyone,” since “it’s a shoulder season between the summer holiday and the October Golden Week”.
“We model circa MOP17.5 billion GGR for the month, which implies a MOP580 million a day run-rate, which in turn would keep third-quarter GGR flattish quarter-on-quarter,” stated the JP Morgan team.
The analysts said: “This would be below historical seasonality of plus 2 to 3 percent quarter-on-quarter, but should not come as a surprise by now given June/July misses and a slew of deteriorating data points from the China consumer/leisure space in the past few months.”
They added: “Rather, we believe the Macau’s demand trend is tracking slightly better than the market has feared lately, faring better than many other China consumer spaces.”
