SJM Holdings Ltd – best-represented among Macau’s six gaming concessionaires in terms of traditional satellite casino business – could lose gaming market share in the remainder of 2025 and during 2026, suggests Seaport Research Partners.
That and other pressures including the slow ramp up of its Cotai resort, Grand Lisboa Palace and significant debt, cloud the outlook for it restarting a dividend programme on its Hong Kong-listed stock, according to Seaport senior analyst Vitaly Umansky.
Grand Lisboa and Casino Lisboa (pictured, right), the SJM group’s core properties on Macau peninsula, might not be able to hold onto former satellite business amid the rolling closure for the latter venues prior to January 1 next year, indicated Mr Umansky.
“We expect SJM to lose market share during the rest of 2025 and in 2026 as the satellite businesses go away and Grand Lisboa Palace continues to struggle with share gain,” he stated in a Monday memo.
Mr Umansky added: “While SJM will likely pick up some of that [satellite] business (at a higher margin) at its peninsular operations, it will unlikely be able to pick up all of it.”
Grand Lisboa and Hotel Lisboa, the home of Casino Lisboa, are connected by a footbridge. Both properties are currently undergoing refurbishment.
SJM Holdings has pledged to invest HKD529 million (US$68 million currently) to expand the casino facilities within Hotel Lisboa, and is committed to a HKD1.75-billion acquisition of one current satellite, Casino L’Arc, and its host property, L’Arc Hotel, which is within walking distance of Grand Lisboa and Hotel Lisboa.
Crystal Palace – a gaming area within Hotel Lisboa – was recently relaunched with a new look as part of a bid to capture the business of other shuttering satellites, the company has told GGRAsia.
Those rejig expenses, plus costs linked to closing satellites – including absorbing many of the venues’ local workers into SJM Holdings’ core operations and repatriating satellites’ gaming tables and machines on which government premiums are payable – meant SJM Resorts would face “increasing costs in 2026,” said Mr Umansky.
GGRAsia’s review of publicly-announced data concerning the rolling closure of satellites – most of them having operated under SJM Holdings’ licensing – indicates so far that 2,980 people must be absorbed back into its core operations.
They are from the already-shuttered properties: Casino Grandview; Casino Grand Emperor Palace; Casino Legend Palace; Casino Casa Real; Casino Ponte 16; Casino Kam Pek Paradise; and Casino Fortuna, due to shut down by December 10.
Seaport’s Mr Umansky stated regarding trading and finance pressures on SJM Holdings: “We have some concerns around SJM’s debt levels at this stage (especially with the slow ramp up at Grand Lisboa Palace) will lead to increasing debt costs on future financing needs.”
In its third-quarter earnings highlights issued last month, Hong Kong-listed SJM Holdings said it had just under HKD3.45 billion of cash and deposits and HKD27.31 billion of debt as at September 30.
Mr Umanksy noted, referring to the pre-pandemic trading period up to early 2020 : “SJM has no ability to restart its dividend any time in the foreseeable future, which was a key element of its [financial] return strategy prior to Covid.”
