Macau outlook hints 15pct rise in March GGR: analysts

Mar 06, 2018 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck  

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March casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau is likely to show an increase of about 15 percent year-on-year based on daily run rates for the first four days of the month and estimates for the rest of the period, say several investment brokerages.

“We estimate daily GGR through the first four days of March was around MOP750 million [US$93 million], down [circa] 12 percent sequentially versus the January and February average (MOP857 million/day),” stated Japanese brokerage Nomura.

“We believe GGR/day benefited from a higher weekend-to-weekday proportion, which our analysis suggests benefited daily GGR by [about] MOP64 million/day assuming weekend demand at roughly 1.5 times that of a typical weekday,” wrote analysts Harry Curtis, Daniel Adam and Brian Dobson in a Monday memo.

The Nomura team estimated Macau’s March GGR would be in the range of MOP24 billion to MOP25 billion, which “implies year-on-year growth of 13 percent to 18 percent, or [about] 15 percent at the midpoint”.

Brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd on Monday said its preliminary growth estimate for Macau’s March GGR was in the range of 12 percent to 15 percent, “assuming a GGR average daily rate [ADR] of MOP770 million to MOP790 million for the remaining days of the month”.

“The ADR during the last week was [about] MOP750 million, which is over 19 percent above similar period last year (March 1-5),” said analysts Vitaly Umansky, Zhen Gong and Cathy Huang.

“According to our channel checks, the VIP hold rate so far during the month has been slightly below normal level,” they added.

Nomura said it estimated VIP hold percentage to have been about 2.8 percent in the first four days of March, “slightly below the expected ‘normal’ hold rate of [about] 2.85 percent”.

February’s GGR tally was MOP24.30 billion, a modest 5.7 percent year-on-year increase, according to official data.

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