According to data from Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, gross gaming revenue rose from a year earlier to US$ 2.48 billion, following a 14.4 % increase in November. For the full year, casino revenue fell 3.3 %, easing from the 34.3 % drop recorded in 2015.
This increment comes as the Chinese gambling hub continues its efforts to reinvent itself drawing more tourists from beyond China.
"We continue to believe that while the market is stabilizing, we won’t see a v-shaped recovery like we did in 2010 and 2013,” Wells Fargo Securities’ Cameron McKnight wrote in a note before the release. The analyst cited macroeconomic and policy as among the risks facing Macau in the near term, along with new supply of casinos being planned by operators.
Property tightening measures by China’s government to cool the overheated market may also be affecting gaming in Macau, according to Vitaly Umansky, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. "We expected the cooling real estate market may bring some headwinds on the Macau VIP sector,” he wrote.
Macau had snapped a two-year economic contraction in the third quarter, with gross domestic product growing 4 % from a year earlier, amid the recovery in gaming revenue.
Source: GMB / Bloomberg
