GGRAsia – Premium mass room at Raffles with decent volumes: Citi

Premium mass room at Raffles with decent volumes: Citi

Jul 18, 2023 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

A recently-opened gaming room within the Raffles at Galaxy Macau hotel tower is “already raking in some decent volumes,” says a note issued by Citigroup. “More importantly it does not seem to be cannibalising against the other premium mass rooms within Galaxy Macau”, the brokerage added, defining the new room as being in that market segment.

There will be on August 16 a soft opening to the public for the new all-suite hotel tower (pictured), which is part of Phase 3 of the Galaxy Macau complex, a property promoted by casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. From August 16 the general public will be able to stay there, or use food and drink outlets.

Accommodation within the new tower is already available for certain invited customers of Galaxy Entertainment, GGRAsia reported earlier this month. GGRAsia understands that invited customers include some gambling patrons.

Citi analysts George Choi and Ryan Cheung said their monthly gaming table survey at Macau casinos suggested that Raffles’ new premium mass room – called ‘Horizon’ – was “already appealing to a lot of the Grade-A players in the market”.

They added: “At the time of our survey [July 14], we counted a total of 56 players at Horizon, wagering a total of HKD1.5 million [US$192,000], the highest wager total we observed in a single premium mass room that day.”

“The players were betting, on average, more than six times the average minimum bet,” according to the two analysts.

Citi stated that the gaming room had a total of 63 baccarat tables, which at the time of the table survey were all open, and with dealers. The brokerage noted that prior to the Covid-19 pandemic there used to be another ‘Horizon’ room at Galaxy Macau, but located in the complex’s phase 2, and with 30 baccarat tables.

Mr Choi and Mr Cheung said that ‘whales’ – i.e. players with bet sizes of HKD100,000 per hand or more – “were pretty spread out across Macau” this month”.

“We saw a whale at SJM Holdings Ltd’s Grand Lisboa Palace for the first time,” the analysts said.

The brokerage noted that its table survey pointed to a circa 16-percent month-on-month rise in average wager per player, “equivalent to approximately 52 percent higher versus July 2019”.

“We believe this strength can be largely attributed to the new premium mass supply in the market, in particular the opening of Horizon at Galaxy Macau Phase 3,” said analysts Mr Choi and Mr Cheung.

The increase “continues to show that visitors to Macau are still demonstrating some higher-than-pre-Covid-19 spending power,” they added.