The institution said in a Friday note that such a trend would in likelihood be due to a number of political and economic factors expected to affect neighbouring mainland China, which supplies a majority of the gamblers visiting the city.
“Although it is likely to continue to show strength over the next few months (or even the next two quarters in 2018), the VIP model is likely to face structural headwinds in the latter part of 2018 from instituted cooling measures on Chinese real estate, a credit tightening in China, an increasing [focus on] regulatory environment in Macau and continued Chinese government focus on capital outflows in China,” stated the brokerage’s analysts Vitaly Umansky, Zhen Gong and Cathy Huang.
“While growth will decelerate from 2017, 2018 will still show respectable growth (driven more by mass) and long term secular growth drivers are still in place,” said the memo.
“In 2018, we expect total GGR [gross gaming revenue] to grow 10 percent year-on-year, and VIP GGR and mass GGR will grow 8 percent year-on-year and 11 percent year-on-year respectively,” added the brokerage.
The official growth rate of Macau’s VIP and mass segments respectively for full-year 2017 will not be made public until later this month, when details of fourth-quarter GGR recorded by segment are due to be announced by Macau’s gaming regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
Source: GMB / GGR Asia
