Macau GGR Increases 8.5% in November

The world’s biggest gambling enclave of Macau has had a tough year, leading many analysts to forecast negative financial outcome at the end of the year, but the last couple of months have proved otherwise.

Demonstrating a surprising rise in profit and effectively salvaging Macau’s year, November brought more good news in form of a reported 8.5% gross gaming revenue increase year-on-year.

Never Write Off Macau

The figures, posted by the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ), reveal that total GGR for the month of November came to $3.1 billion!

The consensus estimate by analysts was that Macau’s November revenue might grow 4 percent – those most optimistic among them were calling shots between 7 and 8 percent. However, the higher hold in the VIP sector contributed to the higher GGR total in general.

Looking at the entire year, GGR is up 13.7% and there is only one month remaining in 2018. $34.3 billion was won in 2018, which is already higher than 2017 which stood at $33.2 billion. November GGR was 28th consecutive monthly positive and it followed the largest monthly take in four years – during October, Macau won $3.38 billion.

Analyst, Steven Wieczynski, said that bottom line is that market continues to hold up better than the fear associated with it.

Politics Influence

Macau’s gaming industry received another bit of good news when US President Trump and China President Xi Jinping met at G20 Summit and agreed to postpone the 25% tariff on goods and services exchange.

Enclave’s gambling scene responded to that almost immediately as world stock markets went up this week as a consequence of that deal. This also applies to the five licensed operators in Macau traded on US exchanges – MGM Resorts rose 4%, Melco was up 7.3%, Galaxy was up 9% and Wynn Resorts climbed as much as 9.5%.

Margaret Huang of Bloomberg Intelligence predicts a 5.7% increase for Macau in December, whereas they’re forecasting a “steady ramp up of the mass market, better connectivity to China, new Cotai resports and stimulus efforts” for 2019.

Overall, it could be said that Macau’s ending to the year feels much brighter than what the previous period of it may have suggested it would be like. The GGR increase in September was only 2.8% and this was the slowest monthly increase in two years.

What is more certain is that Macau’s tax revenue will rake in a significant amount of money next year. The draft budget was presented in late November and during the meeting, a very careful estimate yielded a possible $11.28 billion in tax turnover.

Source:

“Macau GGR gains 14 percent in 2018, Dec. beats forecasts”, agbrief.com, 2nd of January 2019.