Macau’s daily gross gaming revenue grew by 108% week-on-week and 124% compared with April daily revenue, boosted by the Labor Day holiday period, according to brokerage Bernstein.
Providing their weekly Macau update, Bernstein analysts Vitaly Umansky and Louis Li said daily GGR reached MOP$200 million (US$25 million) in the nine days from 1 to 9 May 2022, although this was still 76% lower than May 2019 and 41% lower than May 2021.
That leaves month-to-date GGR at MOP$1.8 billion (US$225 million) with both VIP and mass GGR more than doubling compared with April results.
The analysts noted that average daily visitation during the Labor Day Golden Week was 27,300, exceeding government predictions of 25,000 per day.
“The 2022 May holiday daily visitor arrivals was -18% year-on-year from 2021, and -83% from 2019, but slightly better than government’s expectations,” they wrote. “Macau’s consecutive relaxations of the COVID measures for travelers entering from Guangdong are positive signals showing the government’s intention to start improving visitation.”
However, such significant improvement is not expected to continue given last week’s proclamation by Chinese President Xi Jinping that zero-COVID would remain the nation’s highest priority.
“In April, China’s export growth and PMI recorded close to the lowest level over the past two years,” the Bernstein note said.
“The economy has significantly worsened due to Chinese government’s strict zero-COVID measures, but the government still indicated no relaxation from such policy. Despite the GGR rebound from holiday seasonality, we expect visitation and revenue will remain largely constrained due to the restrictive travel and border control.”
Bernstein estimates May GGR will be 88% higher than the MOP$2.68 billion (US$335 million) recorded in April, but still down 80% on May 2019.
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