[ET Net News Agency, 3 March 2020] Goldman Sachs said Macau's gross gaming revenue
(GGR) fell -88% to MOP3.1bn in February, broadly in line with the lowered market
expectation of a -90% decline.
Excluding the 15 days with no GGR contribution, this will imply a daily run rate of
MOP222mn for remaining 14 days of operations in February (-76%), a slowdown from MOP593mn
over 20-31 January (-30%) due to various travel restrictions as the government imposed
precautionary measures to control the spread of the coronavirus.
Although casino operators have started to see some Chinese players outside of the
Guangdong province coming back over the past week, companies generally sound cautious
about their GGR outlook near-term, Goldman said.
Tracking Macau's visitation also suggests a rather limited pickup in daily arrivals from
2-3k in the prior week to around 6-7k currently (versus 127k daily visitation in February
2019), the research house added.
Goldman's base case still assumes a similar magnitude of GGR decline in March (-70% to
-80%), resulting in -57% in 1Q. It expects further disruption in 2Q (GGR -45%), followed
by 10-20% incremental growth from pent-up demand in 2H.
All-in-all, it forecast -17% GGR and -33% EBITDA decline for the industry in FY2020,
followed by +27%/+58% recovery in FY2021. (KL)