Macau is tipped to notch a new post-pandemic gaming revenue high this month, with Citigroup on Monday raising its May GGR estimate on what it says was strong growth over the past seven days.
According to analysts George Choi and Ryan Cheung, the daily run-rate of the last week reached MOP$686 million (US$85.4 million), up 19% from a run-rate of MOP$579 million (US$72.0 million) per day in the prior week. This, they said, took Macau-wide GGR for the first 19 days of the month to MOP$13.4 billion (US$1.67 billion) based on industry sources.
The reason for the week-on-week increase was high visitation around the 15 May public holiday plus a series of concerts by Cantopop group Mirror at Galaxy Arena from 16 to 19 May. The recent introduction of the “Small 6/Big 6” side bet by Sands and Galaxy “probably helped too”, Choi and Cheung added, with VIP volumes said to be up between 15% month-on-month and mass volumes by 13% to 15%.
Citi said it is raising its May GGR forecast from MOP$20 billion (US$2.49 billion) previously to MOP$20.5 billion (US$2.55 billion), which would exceed the previous post-pandemic high of MOP$19.5 billion (US$2.43 billion) set in March.
The new forecast places the daily run-rate for the rest of the month at MOP$592 million (US$73.7 million) with the MOP$20.5 billion monthly estimate representing 79% of May 2019 levels.
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