Macau GGR still strong in January pre-CNY: JP Morgan

Jan 16, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck  

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Macau’s daily casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) across the seven days to Sunday inclusive, had moderated by about 4.8 percent, compared to the “impressive New Year holiday” volume of MOP630 million (US$78.2 million) per day, said a Monday note from JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd.

“Last week’s daily GGR was MOP600 million, which was obviously lower than the impressive [calendar] New Year holiday print (MOP630 million) but still pretty solid and respectable against seasonality,” wrote analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi, and Selina Li.

But the institution still anticipates – based on its industry checks – for January to generate between MOP17.5 billion to MOP18.0 billion in GGR.

“While GGR is due to slow down seasonally for the balance of month ahead of Chinese New Year [CNY] we expect January to print MOP17.5 billion to MOP18 billion, which should still satisfy market expectations,” they added.

This time the mainland China holiday period for Chinese New Year is February 10 to 17, compared to February 4 to 10 in the pre-pandemic calendar year of 2019.

Macau GGR for the first 14 days of January was estimated at MOP8.6 billion, translating to what JP Morgan termed a “robust run rate” of MOP614 million per day, versus December’s MOP599 million per day, with the latter month “already a beat” relative to market expectation.

JP Morgan stated that so far in January, mass-market GGR had been running at “105 percent to 110 percent” of the equivalent period in 2019, compared to being 105 percent above pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter of last year.

So far this January, VIP GGR was “flattish month-on-month” at around 20 percent of pre-Covid, estimated the brokerage.

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