Brokerage Citigroup said it expects the Macau casino industry to post earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization of $1.59 billion in the second quarter, up 35% from the first quarter of 2023.
"Based on the government's reported GGR figures for the second quarter of 2023 and solid premium bulk trends collected from the monthly table survey, we expect Macau to continue to recover EBITDA last quarter," analysts George Choi and Ryan Cheung said in a note released on Monday.
They added. "According to our forecast, industrial EBITDA will recover to about 65% of Q2 2019 levels, mainly driven by a recovery in bulk GGR of about 90%. " 슬롯머신
Macau's second-quarter GGR was MOP 45.49 billion, up 31.3% from MOP 34.64 billion in the first quarter of 2023, according to data released earlier this month by the local regulator Game Inspection and Coordination Bureau. The most recent quarterly results represent 62.0% of the MOP 73.35 billion achieved in the corresponding period of 2019, prior to the pandemic.
"Macao visitors are still showing higher spending power than before COVID-19, a similar trend that can be found in some global luxury consumption discretionary plays," Choi and Chang said
Citigroup analysts said they expected MGM China Holdings to become "the first casino operator in Macau to exceed pre-COVID EBITDA"
Conversely, the brokerage said it expects SJM Holdings "to lag behind in terms of EBITDA recovery."
It added: "We believe Grand Lisboa Palace [Casino Resorts] has gained market share, but we believe [SJM Holdings]'s satellite casinos and other self-run casinos are facing market share pressure."
In a note last week, JPMorgan Securities (Asia Pacific) said Macau's casino operations were likely to have achieved an "all-time high" EBITDA margin in the second quarter. The agency estimated that the sector-wide EBITDA margin peaked at 26% during the period.
JPMorgan's team expected second-quarter EBITDA for the sector to be $1.7 billion, 47% more than recorded in the first three months of the year. This estimate represents 73% of the quarterly EBITDA recorded by the sector in the second quarter of 2019, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
