GGRAsia – Macau has best non-holiday weekly GGR in 3 years: analysts

Macau has best non-holiday weekly GGR in 3 years: analysts

Feb 21, 2023 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau average daily gross gaming revenue (GGR) continued in the third week of February to be higher than the January average, the latter month the period of Chinese New Year, says JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd.

JP Morgan estimated last week’s Macau GGR was about MOP400 million (US$50 million) per day, which its analysts characterised as “the best non-holiday print in over three years”.

The figures suggest a 45 percent-plus recovery versus pre-Covid-19 levels, the brokerage added, suggesting mass-market GGR might have recovered to “65 percent to 70 percent” of pre-pandemic levels.

The institution estimated the aggregate GGR for the first 19 days of February was MOP7.2 billion, implying MOP375 million to MOP380 million per day.

“This is slightly ahead of the strong – and well-telegraphed – beat in January GGR,” when the tally averaged MOP374 million per day, wrote analysts DS Kim and Mufan Shi.

They added this was a “very solid print, especially considering slow seasonality post the long holiday”. The Macau rally – coinciding with the easing of Covid-19 countermeasures in mainland China, Macau, and Hong Kong in early January – “‘still has legs”, said the institution in another Monday note.

“VIP recovery, which we estimate to be at around 15 percent of pre-Covid levels, has also been tracking solidly for a segment that’s been considered ‘gone’ given the demise of junkets,” the JP Morgan team stated.

Though they added: “We highlight again that VIPs don’t really move the needle much for the profits/cash flows given the very low margin of high-single-digit [percentages]… versus 35 percent to 40 percent for mass.”