“Macau January GGR was much stronger than original expectation and well above consensus (27% year-on-year),” brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd said in a Thursday note. “Average daily revenue [ADR] for the month was US$104 million (16% above December ADR of US$89,95 million) and only 1% below October (the busiest month of the year),” it added.
Several investment analysts had estimated in respective notes issued prior to the official announcement that January’s GGR expansion would be in the range of 25% to 30% year-on-year.
Brokerage JP Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Ltd said in a Thursday note that January was a “great month for both VIP and mass” segments.
“Based on our checks, we estimate VIP GGR was up 50% year-on-year (versus 22% year-on-year in fourth quarter) and mass GGR was +22% to 24% year-on-year (versus +17% year-on-year in fourth quarter), both of which showed big accelerations from recent trends and beat recent expectations, partly helped by easy comps (given Chinese New Year calendar shift) and VIP luck,” said the JP Morgan analysts.
The casino revenue tally for January 2017 was the smallest of full year 2017, at approximately US$2.36 billion, with an average daily rate 15% below the full-year 2017 average daily rate, according to investment analysts.
“With the first few days of Chinese New Year typically spent with family (not gambling), we do not expect the pre-Chinese New Year lull that negatively impacted GGR in late January last year to repeat [in January 2018],” Japanese brokerage Nomura said in a note on January 21.
In full-year 2017, Macau’s casino GGR tally stood at US$32.65 billion, an increase of 19.1% compared to 2016, according to official data. It marked the first year of GGR growth after three consecutive years of annual decline.
Source: GMB / GGR Asia
