Macau recorded casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) of just under MOP15.21 billion (US$1.88 billion) in June, down 2.3 percent from MOP15.57 billion in May.
The latest monthly tally was up 513.9 percent from June 2022, according to data released on Saturday by the local regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
June this year included a public holiday break on the Chinese mainland surrounding this year’s Dragon Boat Festival. The number of tourist arrivals to Macau in the period from June 22 to June 25 stood at 366,935, according to preliminary data released by the city’s Public Security Police.
JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd said in a Sunday note issued in Hong Kong, that the June GGR result was “yet another post-pandemic high in June, bucking the seasonality” in terms of a lull typically expected after May.
Analysts DS Kim and Mufan Shi added: “This implies mass GGR has finally recovered to 90-percent-plus of pre-Covid levels, at a pace and magnitude that’s almost unthinkably strong when the border reopened less than six months ago.”
The JP Morgan team further noted: “We estimate VIP recovery gained pace as well, to 25-percent-plus of pre-Covid, suggesting direct VIP volumes have more than doubled versus pre-Covid.”
Though they cautioned: “This still isn’t moving the needle much” for earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation/cash flows, “but is impressive nonetheless.”
JP Morgan Chase & Co suggested in a memo from the United States last week that a “flattish” month-on-month result for June would be a “positive”, since the long-term monthly sequential change from May into June “averaged a 14-percent decline (from 2007 through 2022, excluding 2020).”
Macau’s second-quarter GGR stood at MOP45.49 billion, up 31.3 percent from MOP34.64 billion in the first three months of 2023. The latest quarterly result represented 62.0 percent of the MOP73.35-billion achieved in the comparable period of 2019, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Macau’s casino GGR stood at MOP80.14 billion in the first half of 2023, an increase of 205.1 percent from a year earlier.
For full-year 2022, Macau’s casino GGR stood at MOP42.20 billion, down 51.4 percent from the previous year.
(Updated 9.32am July 3)
