Barclays Research estimates Macau’s full-2014 casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) will have declined by 2.5 percent compared to 2013.
The estimate is based on a forecast of a 30 percent year-on-year drop in GGR for December. Wells Fargo Securities LLC released a similar forecast for December on Monday.
If Barclay’s full-year estimate is correct, it will be the first time since 2004, when the first casino independent of Stanley Ho Hung Sun’s business empire opened in Macau, that annual GGR has contracted. In 2013, GGR went up by 18.6 percent. During that decade, the annual growth rate was always above 10 percent, except in 2009, when it stood at 9.7 percent – only to skyrocket to 57.8 percent in the following year.
Data from the city’s gaming regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, shows that GGR for the first 11 months of 2014 stood at MOP328.2 billion (US$41.1 billion), up by a mere 0.3 percent in year-on-year terms.
Barclays said it expected monthly GGR declines to continue in the near future, with growth potentially only resuming around mid-2015.
