Gaming | GGR may plunge to ‘mid-50%’ range in June following May rally

The city’s gross gaming revenue (GGR) in June may plunge to “mid-50% range compared to June 2019,” according to brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd.
Analysts at the firm expect a downturn in revenue “due to new Covid-19 cases emerging in China which may lead to softness in visitation,” stated analysts Vitaly Umansky, Louis Li, and Kelsey Zhu, as cited in a GGRAsia report.
This would amount to a fall of MOP10.72 billion: 45% of GGR in June 2019, which stood at MOP23.81 billion.
Meanwhile, brokerage JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd. noted in a Tuesday memo that GGR in June is “historically” the “weakest month of the year”.
“We expect further recovery over the summer holidays with July/August printing MOP11 billion to MOP12 billion GGR (roughly MOP350 million to MOP390 million per day), after a seasonal lull in June,” stated JP Morgan analysts DS Kim, Derek Choi and Livy Lyu.
GGR in May has surpassed the expectations of analysts as tourist numbers from mainland China recorded a surge over the Golden Week holiday.
GGR surged 492% in May to MOP10.4 billion – beating the median analyst estimate of a 467% increase year-on-year. The accumulated revenue in the first four months of this year reached MOP42.487 billion, an upturn of 28.7% year-on-year.
Recently, the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) said that arrivals in city have been affected by Covid-19 outbreaks in the neighboring cities of Guangzhou, Foshan and Shenzhen, with the number of recent tourist arrivals already seeing a decline.
The MGTO’s director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes recently reported that visitor arrivals on Sunday and Monday were 16,000 and 20,000 respectively – lower than the average 25,000 to 30,000 arrivals in May.

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