The recovery process continues in Macau as gaming operators have recorded their best week since the early days in 2020 during Golden Week this month. Gross gaming revenues came in at around 50% of the levels the region saw before the COVID-19 pandemic. JP Morgan analysts provided insight into the recovery, noting that the figures are ‘broadly satisfactory.”
Golden Week Growth
In a recent note, JP Morgan analysts Derek Choi, DS Kim, and Livy Lyu, stated the higher numbers in Macau were due to an increase in the mass segment. Visitation levels during Golden Week this year reached only 25% of the same totals from May 2019. However, the GGR was higher, at between 40 to 50% from the same time frame.
Macau had 165,500 visitor arrivals for the five-day holiday surrounding Labour Day on May 1, meaning there was a daily average of 33,100. But the actual tally for the final two days on May 4 and May 5 was fewer than 30,000 arrivals, according to figures from Macau’s Public Security Police.
The tally was not directly comparable with the 2019 holiday, which saw 531,000 visitor arrivals, as that year’s break was officially only four days for mainland China residents.
For 2021, China’s State Council designated the first five days of May as the Labour Day break. Mainland China currently has a quarantine-free travel bubble with Macau, and is presently the main source of Macau’s tourists.
Macau casino operator Sands China Ltd says its adjusted property earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) more than doubled in the first three months of 2021 from the preceding quarter, mostly due to a rebound in premium-mass revenue.
The Macau unit of United States-based gaming group Las Vegas Sands Corp saw its adjusted property EBITDA hit US$100 million in the first quarter, compared to US$47 million in fourth-quarter 2020. The first-quarter figure was 49.3-percent higher than a year earlier.
Hong Kong-based analyst Andrew Lee of Jefferies LLC, said in a Thursday note that Sands China’s EBITDA had improved sequentially in the first quarter, to the “highest level since the pandemic started, and higher than both our and consensus estimates”.
The average nightly occupancy rate for Macau hotels – including properties in casino resorts – could reach “70 percent to 80 percent” during the upcoming Labour Day break in May, indicated a Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) senior official on Tuesday, citing the latest hotel room booking data from the industry.
The holiday season encompassing Labour Day on May 1 was likely to “emerge as the best” for the Macau tourism “since the pandemic” started, early last year, said MGTO deputy director Cheng Wai Tong, in comments to the local media on the sidelines of a Tuesday event.
The latest forecast on average nightly occupancy for the Labour Day break is higher than that previously mentioned by a fellow MGTO official on Friday. That person said hotels might be “40 percent to 50 percent” full during the holiday period.
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