In a note following Saturday’s news of Macau’s 6.8 percent year-on-year rise in gross gaming revenue for February, Seaport Research Partners said it expected full-year GGR in the Chinese casino hub to expand by 6.5 percent.
Analyst Vitaly Umansky observed in a Sunday memo: “We forecast 2025 GGR growth to be approximately 6.5 percent year-on-year, with higher growth in the second half of the year.
“Growth should be driven by increase in marketing efforts by operators and improving consumer sentiment in China.”
The brokerage made reference to important political meetings that start in China on Tuesday (March 4). These are known as the “Two Sessions”: the annual plenary sessions of the National People’s Congress and of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Mr Umansky stated: “We expect policies coming out of the Two Sessions to highlight more of a pro-growth stance than was the case over the last two years.
“While we do not expect any ‘helicopter money’ to consumers that would fuel higher spend, further stimulus will come from government spending and policies that could drive higher consumer spend and private business activity.”
JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd stated in a Sunday note, referring to the February Macau GGR performance exceeding investment sector expectations: “February GGR was a clean beat.”
Analysts DS Kim, Selina Li and Mufan Shi added: “Despite market concerns of a poor lunar new year performance, gross gaming revenue proved strong in February and rose 7 percent year-on-year to MOP19.7 billion [US$2.46 billion], coming in 6 percent above consensus.”
The JP Morgan team further stated: “The print makes us feel pretty comfortable about the latest consensus of 2 percent to 3 percent growth for full-year 2025 GGR.”
The institution’s analysts said year-on-year comparison on GGR data would “get much easier from June into the second half”.
For February by segment, JP Morgan estimated mass-market GGR grew 2 percent to 3 percent year-on-year to be 114 percent of pre-Covid levels, while VIP GGR remained “at around low-20s of percent of pre-Covid”.
Seaport’s Mr Umansky said February’s average daily GGR of circa MOP705 million had been “the best daily GGR since January 2020 and over 5 percent higher than October 2024, which was the previous best month post-Covid opening”.
Compared to last year, which had been a calendar leap year, “February this year had one less day but the same number of weekend days,” observed the analyst.
JP Morgan had a similar view, observing that the MOP705 million a day in February was “the first 7-handle print since Covid-19 and the highest level in 60 months, thanks to much longer and stronger ‘tail’ demand post Lunar New Year”.
The institution added: “Combined with January – to neutralise the impact from Lunar New Year calendar shift –, the industry generated GGR of MOP644 million a day in [the first] two months of 2025, up 2 percent year-on-year, despite relatively tough comparisons.”
While Seaport estimates March GGR to be up “5.3 percent year-on-year”, JP Morgan expects the tally for this month “to stay flattish” from a year earlier, at between MOP19 billion and MOP19.5 billion.
