Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) rose 7.4 percent year-on-year in September, to MOP18.40 billion (US$2.30 billion), said on Saturday the local regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
The result marked only the second time in 28 months that monthly revenue had not contracted, judged year-on-year. The improvement began in August, when monthly casino GGR expanded by 1.1 percent after 26 straight months of decline.
September’s casino GGR result exceeded many analysts’ estimates. A number of investment analysts had expected September GGR to register flat to +4 percent performance.
Judged on a quarterly basis, Macau casino GGR grew by 1.2 percent year-on-year to MOP55.0 billion in the three months to September 30. It represented the best quarterly performance the Macau market has seen since the second quarter 2014. In that quarter, casino GGR expanded by 5.5 percent year-on-year.
The third-quarter split between VIP gambling revenue and the mass-market variety will be published by the gaming bureau at a later date.
For the nine months to September 30, Macau’s aggregate casino GGR was MOP162.79 billion, a shrinkage of 7.5 percent from the prior-year period.
Macau’s Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lionel Leong Vai Tac, had said on June 8 that the government was maintaining its full-year 2016 forecast for the city’s casino GGR at MOP200 billion.
Brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd had stated in a Friday report on the outlook for the Macau market: “Mass gaming revenues now exceed 50 percent of gross gaming revenues in Macau, while non-gaming revenues make up high single digits of industry take.”
It forecasts Macau casino GGR to record a compound annual growth rate of circa 8 percent between 2016 and 2020; with the VIP segment expanding by approximately 3 percent, and the mass segment by about 12 percent.
The institution added: “We believe this shift in the market will continue over the coming years, driven by incremental capacity expansion (new hotels, new casinos, new retail, new entertainment) [and], transportation infrastructure improvements in Macau…”
