JP Morgan: ‘Best Golden Week print in five-plus years’

Macau’s gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the first five days of October reached MOP5.5 billion, averaging about MOP1.1 billion daily, according to JP Morgan.

Analysts DS Kim, Selina Li, and Lindsey Qian described this as the “best Golden Week print in more than five years” and maintained that the “full-month projection remains unchanged for now.”

The JP Morgan analysts wrote, “We continue to expect the second week’s GGR to grow mid-to-high teens year-on-year to around MOP750 million (USD94 million) per day,” forecasting about a 30% week-on-week decline compared with last year’s 40% drop.

Despite this strong performance, year-over-year growth of 3% fell short of both the broker’s and market’s expectations, largely due to last year’s exceptionally high base. However, JP Morgan expressed that they were “not worried” about the seemingly modest momentum, noting that this year’s holiday period was longer.

This year, National Day coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival, creating an eight-day break.

The brokerage expects stronger and more sustained demand in the latter half of Golden Week.

It also highlighted that typhoon-related disruptions to ferries and flights for about half a day on Sunday during Tropical Storm Matmo may have contributed to this trend. Visitor numbers dipped on the fifth day of the holiday, which slightly tempered the early-week figures.

Based on these factors, JP Morgan maintained their full-month forecast and expects total gaming revenue for October to rise 11–13% year-over-year to MOP23 billion, marking a six-year high driven by sustained premium mass-market demand.

Supporting this optimism, official data from the Public Security Police (PSP) showed that on October 7 – the fifth day of Golden Week – the combined number of arrivals and departures at all Macau checkpoints had reached 689,303, with 338,061 of those travelers being from mainland China.