Macau’s gross gaming revenue during the five-day May Day Golden Week holiday is estimated to have reached MOP$5.1 billion (US$639 million) or around MOP$1.02 billion (US$128 million) per day, representing 12% year-on-year growth and easily exceeding pre-holiday expectations, according to channel checks by investment bank JP Morgan.
The strong result not only represented a return to around 90% of pre-COVID May Day levels but also smashed consensus by around 20% given earlier estimates of MOP$850 million (US$106 million) per day.
In a note, JP Morgan analysts described it as the “biggest beat we’ve seen in years” and especially encouraging as it provides meaningful contrast to Chinese New Year which missed consensus by around 10%. More importantly, it provides a clear runway for Macau to finally gain some momentum throughout the entire month of May.
“We learned a (very) hard way that it’s better to err on the side of caution when it comes to Macau forecasting, and we wouldn’t extrapolate such a strong recovery in our models yet,” said analysts DS Kim and Selina Li.
“That being said, it goes without saying that our May forecast of flat year-on-year growth now has meaningful upside risks and we wouldn’t be surprised if May GGR prints something like mid-to-high single digit growth year-on-year (vs consensus of flattish momentum).”
As previously reported by IAG, total visitor arrival figures had already exceeded expectations at around 170,000 per day across the five-day holiday period, including a new single-day post-COVID high of 221,968 arrivals last Friday.
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