Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the first 10 days of April is estimated at MOP4.0 billion (US$494.4 million), said Citigroup in a Tuesday memo, citing industry sources. The same estimate was given by JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd in a separate note.
“The implied daily run-rate was circa MOP400 million, which was lower than that of the final 12 days of March 2023 at circa MOP495 million a day (we believe that might have been padded by some favourable hold rate),” wrote Citigroup analysts George Choi and Ryan Cheung.
Analysts DS Kim and Mufan Shi of JP Morgan observed that there was a “potential margin of error in these weekly checks”.
They added: “We’d say around 5 percent to 10 percent deviation is possible for any given week, and we feel the actual GGR could be a tad stronger than MOP400 million per day.”
The JP Morgan analysts further observed: “We view the print as decent/encouraging,” as it “suggests mass GGR is run-rating at around 70 percent-plus of pre-Covid level.”
Macau’s visitor volume is not necessarily a proxy for the city’s GGR performance, a number of investment analysts has previously observed, referring to pre-pandemic times.
Nonetheless, the market has seen a sharp improvement in tourism since the turn of the year. Macau’s overall visitor arrivals reached 481,765 for the six-day period running from April 5 – the Chinese festival of Ching Ming – to April 10 inclusive, the end of the Easter season, according to Public Security Police’s latest statistics. The police figures suggested that the daily average for the six days was just over 80,000.
Ching Ming is a public holiday in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. Good Friday and Easter Saturday are public holidays in Macau and in neighbouring Hong Kong, with Easter Monday also observed in the latter city.
Regarding early-April gaming performance, Citigroup noted: “Based on industry sources, VIP volumes were down approximately 10 percent month-on-month and mass volumes were largely flat month-on-month. VIP hold rate appears to be around normal level.”
Citigroup said it was maintaining its April casino GGR estimate at MOP12.0 billion, a level equivalent to circa 51 percent of the same month in 2019.
