Gaming | Spring Festival’s GGR continues to be curtailed as expected: JP Morgan

Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) is expected to stand at MOP3 billion for the first 15 days of February, equivalent to an average daily number of MOP200 million — a gaming performance JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd. regards as “so far, so bad, as expected,” as cited in a report run by GGRAsia yesterday.
JP Morgan announced its forecast for Macau’s GGR in the first 15 days of February — which marks six out of seven days of the Spring Festival Golden Week — in a note released on February 16.
The analysts from the brokerage associated the projected slowed momentum in GGR with “a lull period of Chinese New Year: pre-holiday slowdown, plus the first three days of the Spring Festival, where the Chinese spend time with family/friends.”
On the same day, another institution Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd stressed in its release that the city’s GGR dropped during the second week of this month and the mainland tourist arrivals continue to decline owing to “rising Covid-19 contagion in the country.”
Bernstein also shares the same GGR prognosis of MOP3 billion for the first 15 days of February with JP Morgan.
The official tourist arrival data, released by the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), seems to corroborate both brokerage’s gloomy forecast upon GGR in February.
There were 77,383 tourist arrivals in Macau during the first six days of the Chinese New Year between February 11 to 16, down by 68.2% year-on-year.