Macau: JP Morgan cautious over Chinese New Year uptick
Analysts at JP Morgan Securities suggest it’s not yet time to celebrate Macau’s return.
Macau.- JPMorgan Securities (Asia Pacific) has said that Macau’s tourism market performed “good but not spectacular” during the first four days of the Chinese New Year holiday period. It also warned that historically attendance figures have not been an accurate indication of gross gaming revenue (GGR) and that the majority of gaming volume usually occurs between the fourth and sixth day of the holidays.
However, analyst DS Kim indicated that a 50 per cent-plus recovery in mass GGR compared to the holiday period in 2019, is ‘safely feasible’. JP Morgan expects January’s daily average gross gaming revenue to exceed MOP200m (US$24.8m) and to represent a 25 per cent to 40 per cent recovery in total and mass GGR, respectively.
The first five days of Chinese New Year saw 318,000 arrive in Macau. That averages at 63,600 per day, an increase of 291.9 per cent over the same period in 2022. The majority of visitors were from mainland China (182,250, or 57.3 per cent of all arrivals). Visitors from Hong Kong represented 37.1 per cent of visitors at 117,842.
