ShareMacau’s casinos posted gross gaming revenue of US$964 million in February, showing mild signs of recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. This represents a 6.1% increase over the same month in 2021 and 22.3% up from January 2022.
Although any improvement is welcome, these figures are still a far cry from industry performance seen in 2019 before pandemic restrictions. A crackdown on the operations of two casino junket organisers has further impacted tourist traffic to the region.
David Katz, analyst for Jefferies, said: "February will be the near-term peak in Macau's gaming revenue as Macau is unlikely to relax COVID policies due to HK daily cases having yet to peak (likely to worsen) and reports of new local outbreaks in Guangdong in the past few days. Further, the next China national holiday is May's Labour Day holiday. We maintain our expectations of a slow and gradual recovery that will be driven by government policies, thus we prefer US-names that have clearer visibility."
Analysts are also predicting that 2022 will see a 47% drop in revenue from VIP gamblers. This threatens the recovery which hit 40% from the 80% fall in 2020.
