Hong Kong airport closure didn’t impact Macau

Analysts from Japanese brokerage Nomura said that the closure of Hong Kong International Airport had no impact on Macau’s GGR.

Macau.- Some representatives in the industry were worried that the closure of Hong Kong International Airport could’ve impacted on Macau. However, brokerage Nomura analysts say the two-day shut down didn’t hurt GGR for the week between August 12-18.

“We estimate daily GGR last week was around €97.2 million (€91.7 million per day month-to-date), up approximately 7% sequentially from our estimate for the prior week (€90.8 million/day),” said Instinet LLC, a research arm of Japanese brokerage Nomura.

Analysts Harry Curtis, Daniel Adam and Brian Dobson added: “Protests in Hong Kong and the temporary closing of the airport had no effect on the weekly GGR number, it seems.”

VIP figures

Bernstein Research has released its latest estimations, showing that VIP volume in Macau has registered better figures in the first 18 days of the month. Despite the positive estimations, gaming gross revenue (GGR) is likely to be down in August.

Bernstein said that for the month until August 18, GGR is approximately €1.6 billion. The average daily rate was €91.6 million in Macau, while ADR increased 4% for July but posted a setback of 4% from August last year.

The brokerage said that GGR was very strong last week, as it was the one before the summer holidays finish.

VIP volume rose in mid to high single digits, and mass-market revenue increase in mid-single digits. However, Bernstein said that the total GGR in August is likely to be down by two to four per cent.