Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) stood at MOP11.10 billion (US$1.38 billion) in the first 21 days of May, estimated JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd, citing its own checks.
That would imply a daily run-rate of MOP528 million, which is “ahead of (surprisingly) strong April figure of MOP491 million,” stated the brokerage in a Monday memo.
“While this print indicates that last week’s GGR weakened to circa MOP450 million a day, we’d again flag the potential margin of error in these weekly checks and would focus on monthly/month-to-date trends (versus just a single week),” wrote analysts DS Kim and Mufan Shi.
According to the brokerage, the month-to-date print “suggests mass demand is run-rating at around 85 percent of pre-Covid levels, while VIP is at around 25-percent recovery, both of which are well above 67-percent/15-percent recovery rates during first-quarter 2023.”
For full-May, JP Morgan expects Macau GGR “to print yet another post-pandemic high of MOP15.5 billion,” implying a “60-percent recovery on headline GGR, led by 85-percent mass recovery.”
The first three days of May were part of a five-day break on the Chinese mainland that began on April 29 and encompassed Labour Day on May 1.
Macau’s casino GGR reached MOP14.72 billion in April, up 15.6 percent from March, according to official data. The April tally – up 449.9 percent year-on-year – was the best monthly performance since January 2020, prior to the onset of the pandemic alert.
