Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd has been granted an extension by the Macau government of the development period for expansion of its Macau integrated resort Studio City under the property’s land concession contract.
The extension, announced late Monday, sees the development period for the land of Studio City extended to 24 July 2021 with the company stating that the additional development will likely included a hotel and related amenities. The previous deadline for Phase 2 to be fully developed was 24 July 2018.
Melco Resorts Chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho revealed during last week’s 2017 earnings call that the company was still undecided on its exact plans for Studio City’s Phase 2 development, adding that it had “gone through many iterations of what we wanted to build at Studio City” over the years.
However, he noted that the “timing would be quite good” to build new hotel rooms sooner rather than later.
“I think the Lotus Bridge border and the footpath that leads to Studio City, we are doing all that we can to try to ask the government to open it sooner, but hopefully it’s going to be opened sometime within this year,” he said. “The walk from the Lotus Bridge to our property in the future would be literally less than one minute.”
Studio City was the star performer for Melco Resorts in 4Q17, with net revenue rising 49.9% year-on-year to US$369 million thanks to a huge increase in rolling chip volume following the implementation of VIP gaming on 5 November 2016. The property generated Adjusted EBITDA of US$91.5 million in 4Q17 compared with Adjusted EBITDA of US$56.7 million 12 months earlier.
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