Macau’s daily run-rate of casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the first 10 days of March was at MOP610 million (US$75.7 million), a tally in line with “normal seasonality”, said JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd in a Monday memo, citing industry checks.
The city’s casino GGR for March 1 to March 10 was MOP6.1 billion, said JP Morgan’s analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi and Selina Li.
“This implies a daily run-rate of MOP610 million, 3 percent below the MOP630 million a day run-rate in the first two months of 2024,” stated the institution.
But its analysts noted this was “in line” with a historical trend of a 4-percent decline month-on-month in run rate commonly seen in March versus the Chinese New Year season of January or February.
Macau’s casino GGR in February stood at MOP18.49 billion, down month-on-month by 4.4 percent, despite what had been described by investment analysts as a “strong performance” during the mainland’s Chinese Lunar New Year holiday period which this time was from February 10 to 17 inclusive.
Referring to the GGR run-rate of the first ten days of March, the JP Morgan team wrote: “This indicates that demand actually remained resilient after the lunar new year holiday – or at least in-line with normal seasonality – and that the miss in February GGR could be attributed to luck factor as well as (unnecessarily) elevated market expectations, rather than a sharper-than-usual slowdown in demand after the holiday.”
The analysts estimated Macau’s mass GGR – inclusive of gaming revenue generated from slot play – is tracking at circa “110 percent” of pre-Covid 19 pandemic level, month-to-date.
“This compares with a 104-percent recovery in the fourth quarter of 2023, suggesting mass gaming demand can grow by 3 to 4 percent quarter-on-quarter” in the first three months of this year.
Such a result would mean it would again outperform the historical seasonality of “+2 percent quarter-on-quarter,” the JP Morgan team wrote.
