Macau’s daily gross gaming revenues have more than doubled over the past week compared with earlier in the month, with analysts pointing to a post-Chinese New Year surge in visitor arrivals and high win rates for the sudden improvement.
According to figures published Monday by both JP Morgan and Sanford C Bernstein, Macau’s GGR for the first 21 days of February reached MOP$5.8 billion (US$726 million) or MOP$276 million (US$35 million) per day – down 70% compared with MOP$906 million (US$113 million) per day in February 2019 (which offers a truer comparison than February 2020).
However, the average daily rate (ADR) over the past week has been MOP$466 million (US$58 million) per day, more than double the MOP$200 million (US$25 million) per day over the first two weeks of February and vastly improved from the average MOP$250 million (US$31 million) to MOP$260 million (US$33 million) in recent months.
Bernstein’s Vitaly Umansky and Tianjiao Yu noted that the second half of the CNY holiday period is “generally stronger in Macau as trips prior to CNY and during the first half of CNY are typically delayed to this period.”
JP Morgan’s DS Kim and Derek Choi said, “Demand acceleration itself was well expected, but this is a strong print that exceeded our and the market’s expectations (which were around MOP$300 million to MOP$400 million per day).”
The sector was aided by high win rates in both mass and VIP, the analysts added, with VIP daily volumes estimated to be up 5% versus January and between 3% and 4% for mass.
February’s GGR figures are expected to come in at around 70% down compared with February 2019.
