SJM to make 2nd of pledged staff subsidy payments for 2022

Jun 27, 2022 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck  

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SJM Resorts SA, the Macau operations unit of Hong Kong-listed casino firm SJM Holdings Ltd, has affirmed it will pay on Friday (July 1), to employees eligible for it, the second instalment of a so-called “annual living subsidy”.

The information was given in a company memo that was reproduced in a social media posting.

SJM Resorts had pledged in December that it would provide such support to those that qualified for it – but has not clarified the eligibility terms, other than that they must still have been in employment with the firm as of June 26 this year.

The two-instalment payment, with one made in January and one now to be made in July, is said to be in aggregate at least one-and-a-half months of annual salary, and for some workers the equivalent of up to two months of annual salary.

SJM Resorts’ honouring of its previous pledge comes against the backdrop of stuttering recovery in Macau tourism and in casino gross gaming revenue, amid the sporadic outbreaks of Covid-19 infection either in parts of mainland China or in Macau itself.

On Thursday, the parent SJM Holdings confirmed it had clinched new syndicated loan facilities of up to HKD19 billion (US$2.42 billion), representing a HKD9-billion term loan facility and a HKD10-billion revolving loan facility.

Prior to that confirmation, a number of investment analysts had said in May that SJM Holdings had about three months of cash liquidity at its ongoing level of cash burn, amid an earnings environment constrained by the pandemic.

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