China’s annual Two Sessions will get underway this week and all eyes will be on whether Beijing announces further stimulus measures aimed at promoting broad economic growth.
According to Seaport Research Partners, any new measures could provide a “positive tailwind” to Macau gaming revenues given the ultimate goal of shoring up the Chinese economy and providing further stimulus to improve economic activity and consumer confidence in China in 2025.
“With an increasing tariff regime in the US, we expect China policymakers to more forcefully look at expanding consumption and improving domestic consumer confidence,” said Seaport analyst Vitaly Umansky in a weekend note following release of Macau’s February GGR numbers on Saturday.
“Such policy initiatives should have a positive tailwind to Macau revenues. Fiscal stimulus (e.g. higher government spending) and regulatory easing measures will be important in building consumer and business confidence.
“An area of central focus remains shoring up the real estate market, which has contributed to a drag on the economy and has significantly weakened consumer confidence (although there are signs of this improving).
“Our view on China economic improvement and corresponding uplift in consumer sentiment could lead to stronger base mass recovery (with continued premium growth) in 2025.”
Giving confidence to Seaport’s belief that Beijing will look to introduce policies supporting economic growth are the visa changes introduced in 2024, many of which offer direct benefit to Macau tourism. Those changes included faster visa processing times, the addition of 10 new mainland cities to the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) for Hong Kong and Macau and allowing mainland tour group travelers to make multiple round trips between Hengqin and Macau via the Hengqin control point within a seven-day period.
These changes should have some marginal positive impact on Macau fundamentals in 2025, but more importantly, the PRC government maintains what appears to be a continued positive policy stance towards Macau,” Seaport said.
Shorter-term, analysts stated over the weekend that February’s GGR result, which came in ahead of consensus at MOP$19.7 billion – up 6.8% year-on-year – should alleviate some concerns around 2025 growth prospects for Macau.
“We forecast 2025 GGR growth to be around 6.5% year-on-year, with higher growth in the second half of the year,” wrote Seaport.
“Growth should be driven by increase in marketing efforts by operators and improving consumer sentiment in China. China stimulus and policy changes are likely to help China’s economy and improve consumer confidence later this year.”
JP Morgan analysts – who recently downgraded their 2025 Macau gaming forecasts – added that they expect March GGR to be flat year-on-year at between MOP$19 billion and MOP$19.5 billion, which would also see Q1 revenues flat versus 1Q24.
“We expect GGR growth to accelerate into the latter half of the year on easier comps, resulting in a modest +2% growth for FY25,” JP Morgan said.
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