Investment bank JP Morgan has upped its Macau gross gaming revenue forecast for October to MOP$22 billion, well above consensus of MOP$20 billion to MOP$21 billion, due to strong ongoing demand post-Golden Week.
In a Monday note, analysts DS Kim, Mufan Shi and Selina Li said GGR for the first 13 days of October combined had reached MOP$11 billion or MOP$846 million per day, implying a decent run-rate of MOP$643 million per day over the past week. This, they explained, was up 10% over September and in line with August despite soft seasonality.
“While it is still too premature to call it a “positive wealth effect”, we can say that month-to-date demand suggests October GGR is likely to reach ~MOP$22 billion, well above the MOP$20 billion to MOP$21 billion that we and the market had expected only few weeks ago,” the bank said. “This should at least limit the downside risks to 4Q consensus, in our view.”
JP Morgan added that the print implies a 130% recovery in mass GGR versus 2019 levels and 30% for VIP, both meaningfully above Q3’s recovery rates of 110% and 25%, respectively.
“We cannot extrapolate this for a full month/quarter as the figure was boosted by a ‘truly golden’ Golden Week, but it is encouraging to see that the recovery rate is rebounding so far this quarter after two quarters of sequential pull-back,” the analysts added.