Macau Oct 1-20 GGR US$1.8bln, as past week slowed: JPM
Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the first 20 days of October was estimated to be MOP14.6 billion (US$1.8 billion), or MOP730 million a day, with the daily GGR run-rate of the third week of the month showing signs of “post-holiday lull”, suggested JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd in a Monday memo, citing industry checks.
The daily run-rate of Macau’s casino GGR last week was estimated to be at MOP514 million, a level that “slowed materially” from MOP846-million in estimated daily GGR in the first two weeks of October – a period including the October Golden Week, suggested JP Morgan’s analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi and Selina Li.
“Month-to-date demand suggests October GGR is likely to reach circa MOP21 billion (or more than MOP670 million a day), a tad better than the MOP20 billion-plus that we and the market had expected several weeks ago; this suggests downside risk to consensus is limited at least for fourth quarter of 2024,” the JP Morgan team wrote.
Based on the latest estimated Macau casino GGR, the mass element is likely to have recovered to “110 percent to 115 percent” of the 2019-level, with VIP GGR at a circa “25 percent” recovery.
Both segments seemingly outpaced third-quarter Macau mass GGR recovery rates of “105 percent to 110 percent” relative to pre-pandemic trading in 2019, and VIP third-quarter GGR recovery rates of “23 percent to 25 percent”, the analysts said.
“We may not extrapolate this for a full quarter as the [GGR] figure was boosted by a very strong [October] Golden Week…but it is encouraging to see that the recovery rate is rebounding so far after two quarters of sequential pull-back,” the JP Morgan team wrote in its Monday memo.
