[Photo: Renato Marques]
Analysts at JPMorgan Investment Bank estimate that the local gaming industry generated just over MOP8 billion in the first 11 days of this year.
According to the bank, gross gaming revenue (GGR) has been around MOP8.05 billion, or approximately MOP731 million per day.
The same analysts noted that the higher average had been reached, citing a strong start to the year that should have delivered around MOP850 million per day over the first four days.
Despite the drop over the past week to around MOP692 million a day, JPMorgan still believes the industry is off to a good start, particularly when considering that daily run rates at the end of 2025 were, on average, around MOP100 million lower per day than the average so far.
“All-in, we are still comfortable modeling January GGR to grow at least 15% year on year (and possibly as much as 20%) thanks to easy comps,” JPMorgan noted, extending its forecast to around 13% growth for the first quarter of this year.
The analysts also said to expect profits to improve faster than GGR this year, at around 6–7%, while GGR is likely to grow by 5-6%.
This comes after weaker EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) results for the industry at the end of 2025 (up 6%), compared with GGR growth (up 9%).
On the same topic, Citigroup has projected a decline in casino concessionaires’ profits at the end of 2025, citing exceptionally high expenses and capacity reductions related to hosting the 15th National Games and other sports events in the final quarter of the year.
Citigroup noted that during the event, a large number of hotel rooms, as well as other related expenses, were shouldered by the gaming concessionaires and ultimately resulted in reduced hotel capacity for accepting reservations from other guests, namely casino patrons.
The bank also noted that the hosting of the NBA China Games by Sands China caused significant capacity disruption, particularly due to the need to separate the areas where the athletes and their delegation were staying from the rest of the hotel guests.
The memo from Citigroup also noted that additional expenses related to the closure of satellite casinos affected SJM’s results.
Citigroup forecasts that industry EBITDA increased by around 13% year on year in the last quarter (Q4) of 2025, driven by an estimated 15% year-on-year increase in GGR and 12% growth in net revenue.
As a result of exceptional expenses and reduced capacity, the industry EBITDA margin is projected to rise to 27.5% in Q4, just 0.5% up from the result obtained in the same period in 2024.
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