Two consecutive months of higher gaming revenues than anticipated and a strong start to June likely indicate that Macau is reaching a permanent inflection point, with Citigroup forecasting year-on-year growth of 6% for the second half of 2025.
In a Wednesday note, Citi’s George Choi and Timothy Chau said improved GGR performance and stable spend per visitor to Macau suggests players remain passionate about gaming and that the trade conflict between the US and China has not dissuaded them from playing.
“This bodes well for GGR growth in 2H25,” Citi said. “With a glamorous event/concert lineup put together by operators, Macau is expected to see 6% year-on-year GGR growth, translating to a 4% growth for FY25 at MOP$235.7 billion (US$29.1 billion), on our estimates.”
Such a result would be lower than the Macau government’s original MOP$240 billion (US$29.7 billion) GGR forecast for 2025 but higher than its recently lowered forecast of MOP$228 billion (US$28.2 billion).
Citi’s more bullish estimates come after April GGR beat consensus by growing 2% year-on-year and May repeating the dose with 5% growth, while June is also currently tracking 5% higher than the same month last year.
“We find this trend particularly encouraging because such re-acceleration happened when the US tariff rate on Chinese imports was at its peak at 145%, indicating gaming demand remains resilient and counter-cyclical despite economic uncertainties,” the investment bank said.
“For 2H25, we expect GGR to be driven by the glamorous event lineup (including concerts by Jacky Cheung, Aaron Kwok, Air Supply, TWICE) that the casino operators are putting together.”
Citi’s analysis includes its own revision to how spend per visitor is calculated, noting that while dividing year-to-date GGR with per capita spending suggests a 10% decline, this ignore the fact that the 13% year-on-year visitation growth is mainly due to the 53% rise in visitors from neighboring Zhuhai thanks to a recent visa policy change.
“We think a better way to gauge the quality of real players is to compare GGR against overnight visitation since most of the hotel rooms in Macau are comped to casino players.
“As year-to-date GGR growth and overnight visitation growth are largely similar, our analysis concludes that per capita gaming spending (and thus player quality) is holding up well.”
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