GGRAsia – Macau October GGR to expand at least 4pct: analysts

Macau October GGR to expand at least 4pct: analysts

Oct 16, 2018 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for October is on track to expand by between 4 percent and 7 percent year-on-year, suggested a Monday note from brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd.

“Macau’s GGR month-to-date [November 1 to 14] was approximately MOP14.3 billion [US$1.8 billion], an average daily rate of approximately MOP1.0 billion,” said analysts Vitaly Umansky, Eunice Lee and Kelsey Zhu. They cited as the basis of the information “channel checks”, understood to include industry unofficial data.

“Assuming a GGR average daily rate of MOP790 million to MOP820 million for the remaining days of the month, we estimate October GGR to a range of MOP27 billion and MOP29 billion, an estimated year-on-year increase in October of +4 percent to 7 percent,” added the Sanford Bernstein team.

The October improvement could be at least 100 basis points above the bottom of that range, according to a Monday note from Japanese brokerage Nomura.

“October GGR should be up approximately 5 percent to 10 percent year-on-year,” stated the Instinet LLC research arm of Nomura.

Analysts Harry Curtis, Daniel Adam and Brian Dobson added: “Despite a tougher one-year growth comparison for the month… our October estimate implies 220 basis points to 720 basis points of accelerating GGR growth versus last month’s +2.8 percent number, primarily driven by stronger-than- expected demand during Golden Week.”

The latter was a reference to China’s Golden Week holiday marking National Day. China’s State Council declared October 1 to October 7 as this year’s National Day holiday period. According to previous reports by several analysts, Macau’s casino sector posted a strong revenue performance in the holiday period, with average daily revenue rising to about MOP1.2 billion to MOP1.3 billion (US$162 million) between October 1 and 7.

Macau GGR in October last year recorded the highest figure for 2017, at MOP26.63 billion, according to previously-issued data from the local regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.