GGRAsia – Wynn Golden Week profit highest since Covid: mgmt

Wynn Golden Week profit highest since Covid: mgmt

May 11, 2021 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

The management of United States-based casino operator Wynn Resorts Ltd says its Macau unit recorded the “highest amount of normalised profit” per day during May Golden Week, since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic at the beginning of last year.

Matt Maddox, the group’s chief executive, said the growth momentum seen in February and March in the Macau market, “continued in April and May”. He was speaking on Monday, in a conference call with investment analysts following the group’s first-quarter results announcement.

Wynn Resorts is the parent of Wynn Macau Ltd, which runs the Wynn Macau complex (pictured) on the city’s peninsula, and the Wynn Palace casino resort in the Cotai district.

Wynn Macau Ltd recorded earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$43.9 million in the first quarter, driven by a premium mass led-recovery, according to the group’s management.

“During Golden Week, which is the first week of May in Macau, we experienced and generated US$3 million of normalised EBITDA per day,” stated Mr Maddox. “[This was], by far, the highest amount of normalised profit that we have generated since the onset of the pandemic in the beginning of 2020.”

Mr Maddox said that junket volumes during the recent five-day break encompassing the Labour Day holiday on May 1 continued “to fluctuate between 25 percent and 30 percent” compared to May holiday period in 2019.

Nonetheless, the CEO said the Macau unit was able to achieve such EBITDA result during Golden Week because it focused its business on mass and premium mass. “As we talked about in previous calls, we have been converting space that was previously for VIP into premium-mass space, and we feel very comfortable and confident with our positioning in the Macau market.”

Hotel occupancy at Wynn Macau Ltd’s properties during May Golden Week “was 93 percent, and retail was up 80 percent over the Golden Week numbers in 2019,” noted Mr Maddox.

Two separate brokerages suggested that Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) during the May holiday period was approximately MOP600 million (US$75 million) a day, “well above” market expectation.

Mr Maddox said on Monday: “We do expect that May will continue to see acceleration over the April results, and we are very excited about the summer and what’s going to come in Macau.”

Ian Coughlan, president of Wynn Macau Ltd, said on the call that the “success of Golden Week” gave the company “a lot of confidence about the summer”.

“We are seeing new customers in the market who haven’t travelled to Macau before, and they are getting positively overwhelmed by the quality of resorts here,” Mr Coughlan stated, adding that the market is now seeing a “higher quality customer” compared to previous years.

On Monday, Wynn Resorts also announced that Wynn Interactive Ltd would merge with Austerlitz Acquisition Corp, in a bid to continue to grow the group’s online sports betting and iGaming business segments. Upon closing of the proposed transaction, the combined company will retain the ‘Wynn Interactive Ltd’ name, and relist its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, said the parent company.