Bernstein makes top picks for 2018

According to the brokerage, Melco and Wynn are the top picks for 2018 as they are set to outperform the Macau competition.

Macau.- Brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein chose Melco and Wynn as the top Macau picks for 2018 in a Friday note. After outperforming the competition in the autonomous territory, Bernstein expects them to continue to improve thanks to their venues in the region.

In Melco’s case, the brokerage forecasted it will continue to grow thanks to Morpheus at City of Dreams and the permanent improvement at Studio City. Wynn, on the other hand, will keep thriving due to Wynn Palace’s mass ramp up and the “potential increase in its dividend payout.”

However, Bernstein projected the VIP segment to struggle in 2018: “The VIP model is likely to face structural headwinds in the latter part 2018 from instituted cooling measures on Chinese real estate, a credit tightening in China, an increasing regulatory environment in Macau and continued Chinese government focus on capital outflows in China,” said Analysts Vitaly Umansky, Zhen Gong and Cathy Huang.

In the same note, they estimated total GGR to grow by 10 per cent year-on-year, while advancing VIP GGR and mass GGR growth of 8 per cent year-on-year and 11 per cent year-on-year respectively.

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