Gross gaming revenues are improving in Macau

Macau is slowly getting back to normal after dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic for more than a year now. This past week, gross gaming revenues reached a new high, coming in at MOP$300 million ($37.5m) on a daily basis. The improved daily rate is due to an increase in visitation numbers within the mass market plus a high VIP hold.

Weekly Improvement

The casino industry in Macau has seen weekly improvement which is a positive sign that the industry is continually recovery from losses incurred due to the pandemic. JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd has estimated in a note this past Monday that based on its review, the region hit the new daily high.

The change was one of the highest readings from a non-holiday post-COVID that has been seen as of yet. The firm pointed out that the increase was partially helped due to favorable VIP luck.

Analysts of JP Morgan, DS Kim, Livy Lyu, and Derek Choi wrote that consumer demand in Macau is recovering at a comfortable rate. The first 18 days of April have been estimated to see gross gaming revenues of MOP5.5 billion which equals MOP280 per day. This is slightly higher than recent months’ daily intake.

A Second Opinion

Along with the JP Morgan update, Sanford C. Berstein Ltd has provided insight on Macau’s improvement. This firm says that positive change is due to the mass consumer traffic saw over the weekend plus the VIP hold continuing to be high.

On April 16, the firm says that the visitor traffic reached 34,252, which is the highest total in over a year for the region. The Macao Government Tourism Office reported that Macau has seen a steady increase in traffic from visitors as of late. As visitor numbers continue to increase, the recovery process should be pushed to new heights by way of revenues.

Earlier this month, the casino market in Macau started to show more signs of improvement after a huge COVID-19 slump. Aggregated gross gaming revenues for the month of March were a 13.6% increase. The month generated over $1 billion.

The monthly figure was actually the best performance for Macau this year. The year-to-date total came in at $2.95 billion due to the increase. However, the first three-month earnings are still well below the 2020 totals. In the same time period last year, Macau was at the $3.81 billion mark. So, the earnings are still just over 22% short of 2020.