GGRAsia – Macau mass GGR at pre-Covid by Oct, whales back: analysts

Macau mass GGR at pre-Covid by Oct, whales back: analysts

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

Macau’s mass-market casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) should recover to 100 percent of the pre-Covid-19 levels seen in 2019, during “October Golden Week” this autumn, said a Monday note from JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd.

That was a reference to holidays associated with China’s National Day, on October 1.

Separately Citigroup said in its August snapshot survey of Macau gaming floors that the 24 “whales” – idiom for very high-value casino players – that it observed this time was the “highest single-month tally this year,” and represented the equivalent of nearly 89 percent of the 27 such big players it saw at Chinese New Year 2019.

With the big players seen this month, “their bets of HKD100,000 [about US$12,760] to HKD500,000 per hand suggest that they are still willing and able to play, despite the current state of the economy in China,” wrote Citigroup analysts George Choi and Ryan Cheung.

JP Morgan stated for its part that Macau GGR was about MOP560 million (US$69.4 million) per day for the first 20 days of August, or about MOP11.2 billion in aggregate.

Analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi and Selina Li observed: “This implies last week’s GGR remained elevated at MOP570 million-plus per day, versus MOP537 million [daily] in July”.

The “ramp” in visitor volume to the city, “hence grind/base mass business, continued nicely into the summer holidays”, said the institution.

Its analysts added the data suggested August mass-market GGR was already at a daily run rate of “90 to 95 percent of the pre-Covid level month-to-date”.

The JP Morgan analysts stated: “We expect mass GGR to finally hit 100 percent recovery [during October Golden Week].”

Citigroup said that what it termed “grade-A premium mass players” had fuelled the circa 90 percent mass-play recovery in the second quarter, but noted that “more casual” premium mass players were also “important” to Macau’s casino sector current performance.

China’s State Council has designated September 29 to October 6 inclusive as the holiday period known as October Golden Week. The period encompasses the lunar-calendar based Mid-Autumn Festival, falling on September 29 this year, and China’s National Day on October 1. Traditionally those holiday seasons are times of peak demand for Macau’s casinos and general tourism facilities.