Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the first eight days of October is estimated at MOP6.65 billion (US$824.5 million), or circa MOP830 million a day, said JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd in a Monday memo, citing its industry checks. Such a daily tally for the start of the month would be nearly 29 percent above the average daily GGR of circa MOP645 million during this year’s May Golden Week surrounding Labour Day, according to the institution.
Autumn ‘Golden Week’ this year was actually eight days as designated by the mainland China authorities: i.e., from September 29, a Friday, until October 6, a following Friday. It encompassed the Mid-Autumn Festival and China’s National Day celebrations.
The pace of GGR actually slowed in the final two days of festivities. Daily Macau casino GGR for October 1 to 6 inclusive was estimated at over MOP930 million. October 7 and 8 generated a more ‘modest’ MOP500-million daily, suggested JP Morgan analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi, and Selina Li.
The daily GGR run-rate for October 1 to October 6 suggested a circa “80 percent recovery” in headline GGR versus the equivalent Golden Week holiday in 2019, where aggregate GGR had been MOP1.16 billion. The latest holiday had thus marked a “significant acceleration” from the circa 70-percent recovery in Macau GGR in the third quarter 2023, the JP Morgan team noted in the Monday memo.
The analysts also observed, referring to Macau’s GGR performance in the October Golden Week: “…mass GGR has likely recovered to [circa] 110 percent to 120 percent of 2019 Golden Weeks, comfortably exceeding a 100-percent bar that we think many buy-side [investors] had. In short, Macau’s [autumn] Golden Week turned out to be pretty golden – much better than we and the market had feared.”
Macau recorded an aggregate of 932,365 visitor arrivals from September 29 to October 6 inclusive, including a peak of 158,726 on Saturday, September 30, according to information published by Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) this Saturday. Nearly 76.1 percent of that tally were vistors from the Chinese mainland.
