Macau gambling industry revenue is picking up as we make our way through the month of August. An investors note sent by David Bain cited Sterne Agee’s check channels that stated table only gross gaming revenue reached MOP8.8 billion (US$1.1bn) for the first 12 days of the month. The reason for optimism is that week two achieved MOP779.6m compared with the first week that only reached MOP689m. Bain attributes the upturn to “typical summer holiday travel pick-up” as well as some people taking “postponed trips” now that were abandoned after Typhoon Vicente. It meant that Bane projected a 2 percent rise in revenue for August with the figure hitting MOP25.2 billion.
Package tour visitors to the enclave increased by 25.9 percent in the first half of 2012. The figure of 4.1 million accounted for 30.1 percent of all visitor arrivals for the six months to June 30 and was among figures given by the Statistics and Census Service. Of those arriving on tours, 69 percent were from Mainland China and it goes to show how reliant the enclave still is on Chinese customs.
Junket operator Asia Entertainment & Resources Ltd (AERL) posted modest increases in both profit and rolling chip turnover (RCI) for Q2 2012. Profit increased by 4 percent to US$22 million with the company’s RCI up 8 percent to US$4.7 billion. Commenting on the results was chairman Lam Man Pou, who said: “The Chinese economy has experienced a gradual slowing, which caused us to tighten our credit to junket agents, thus affecting our results for the second quarter. We believe that the Chinese government has been implementing policies that should result in renewed economic growth in the latter half of the year, which will allow us to return to a more normal credit policy, leading toward higher rolling chip turnover.”
