Two week casino closure set to badly impact operators already suffering from a decrease in visitors during Chinese New Year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Macau.- According to analysts consulted by Macau News Agency (MNA), the shut down of all casinos in the SAR could lead to gaming revenue losses between \u20ac848 million and \u20ac1.3 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAfter the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic and the related policies undertaken by various governments in controlling visitor flow, it has been estimated by many investment firms that Macau\u2019s February gross gaming revenues may fall from around MOP800 million (\u20ac90 million) a day as normal to around MOP500 million (\u20ac56 million)\u201d, University of Macau Associate Professor in Business Economics, Ricardo Siu, told MNA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGiven that the epidemic situation continues in February, I may suspect that the daily GGR may only be around MOP400-500 million, or even lower.\u00a0\u00a0In other words, the \u2018real effect\u2019 of the 15-day casino suspension decision by itself may lead to a lower of around MOP6-7.5 billion in GGR\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Director of Corporate Finance at Fitch Ratings, Colin Mansfield, said to the news agency that since visitation was already down by about 80 percent through the Chinese New Year holiday, the impact from fully shutting down the casinos is \u201con the margin\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPrior to the outbreak, Macau was generating roughly US$100 million in daily gross gaming revenues, so a 15-day closure implies US$1.5 billion of lost market-wide gross gaming revenues,\u201d Mr. Mansfield said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur hypothetical stress case was a 50 percent and 25 percent decline in revenues in the first quarter and second quarter, respectively, in Macau. This resulted in an aggregate US$3.3 billion cash flow decline for all six Macau operators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gaming revenue growth in Macau in 2020 was also expected to be negative, with Fitch Solutions having\u00a0just announced\u00a0they had revised their economic growth predictions for Macau to a 3.8 per cent drop this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lei Wai Nong, announced several measures to mitigate the economic impact of the virus outbreak, with annual individual cash handouts to be provided earlier while rents paid to the Macau government will be wavered for three months starting from February 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two week casino closure set to badly impact operators already suffering from a decrease in visitors during Chinese New Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Macau's two-week casino closure, exacerbated by pre-existing visitor declines during Chinese New Year, is projected to result in GGR losses between \u20ac848 million and \u20ac1.3 billion, or US$1.5 billion for the 15-day period. Analysts from Fitch Ratings anticipate an aggregate US$3.3 billion cash flow decline for the six Macau operators under a stress scenario, with Fitch Solutions revising Macau's 2020 economic growth forecast to a 3.8% contraction. The Macau government has announced mitigation measures, including earlier cash handouts and rent waivers.","focusai_entities":"Macau News Agency (MNA), University of Macau, Ricardo Siu, Fitch Ratings, Colin Mansfield, Fitch Solutions, Lei Wai Nong","focusai_location":"Macau","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (1.0), regulator (0.7), operator_casino (1.0), investor_analyst (1.0), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Impact on Operator Debt","query":"How will the projected US$3.3 billion cash flow decline for Macau's six operators impact their debt service capabilities and potential for covenant breaches, particularly for highly leveraged entities?"},{"label":"Macau Recovery Timeline","query":"Given the 3.8% economic contraction forecast, what is the anticipated timeline for Macau's GGR recovery, and what specific government or operator initiatives are planned to stimulate visitation and spending post-closure?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,16338,163,158],"tags":[7299,257],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-east-asia-news","category-finance-news","category-slider-home","tag-coronavirus","tag-macau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3197"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3211,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions\/3211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}