GGRAsia – S. Korea’s Paradise Co April casino sales up 9 pct

S. Korea’s Paradise Co April casino sales up 9 pct

May 04, 2016 Newsdesk Latest News, Rest of Asia, Top of the deck

Casino sales at South Korean casino operator Paradise Co Ltd rose 9.4 percent year-on-year in April, the firm said in a filing on Wednesday to the Korea Exchange.

Such sales were KRW56.48 billion (US$49.0 million) compared to KRW51.62 billion in the year-prior period.

Judged month-on-month, April casino sales were up 28.3 percent compared to March.

The year-on-year improvement in April casino sales was caused by a 10.9 percent rise in table game sales during that month, to KRW53.16 billion. Machine game sales fell 10.5 percent to approximately KRW3.32 billion during April.

Paradise Co currently operates a network of five foreigner-only casinos located in three major cities in South Korea and on the country’s holiday island of Jeju.

The firm is also constructing a foreigner-only casino resort called Paradise City, in Incheon, near the main international airport serving the country’s capital Seoul. The scheme broke ground in 2014. Paradise City is a joint venture project between Paradise Co and Japanese pachinko operator Sega Sammy Holdings Inc.

In April the table drop recorded by Paradise Co in its current operations – the amount of cash exchanged by customers at casino tables – fell by 5.1 percent year-on-year to KRW415.26 billion. Judged month-on-month, table drop was up 2.4 percent on March.

Across the first four months of 2016, table drop fell 4.8 percent year-on-year, to nearly KRW1.65 trillion.

The April casino sales result means that in the four months to April 30, Paradise Co’s casino sales were down 2.9 percent year-on-year, to approximately KRW194.45 billion. Table game sales were down 2.2 percent year-on-year in the first four months of 2016, while machine game sales declined by 13.3 percent.