Silver Heritage Group Ltd (SHG), an Australia-based gaming operator, didn’t fare too well in the first quarter of the year. The casino 
company just released its earnings to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASE), reporting a loss of $1.9 million in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). It’s not the end of the world, though, and company executives noted in their report that they expect business to pick up for the rest of the year.
For Q1, SHG reported total revenue of $4.7 million. This was helped in part by the recent grand opening of the company’s Tiger Palace Resort Bhairahawa, located in Nepal on the border with the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Tiger Palace received its gaming license in December of last year and opened to the public in mid-March of this year.
In the filing with the ASE, SHG reported, “Resort revenues and casino revenues [at Tiger Palace] have both been growing steadily over the first quarter 2018 and that growth continues in April.” However, Tiger Palace also reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.8 million for the first quarter. The casino’s table drop was $3.2 million and its hold percentage was 23.9%. Gross gaming revenue (GGR) was reported as $911,000.
In order to support its assertion that the financial situation is improving, SHG reported that the GGR for Tiger Palace in the first 28 days of April had reached $450,000. This was an increase of $50,000 over the GGR for March.
SHG, which only went public in August of 2016, operates the Tiger Palace, as well two others. It runs the Millionaire’s Club and Casino in Kathmandu and the Phoenix International Club in Vietnam. In both of these, the financial numbers had dropped compared to last year.
The Millionaire’s Club had a table hold percentage of just 10.4% in the first quarter, representing a decrease of 6% from Q1 2017. Phoenix’s hold percentage also dropped, but not quite as much. It was down to 23.2% for the first quarter, compared to 24.8% for all of 2017.
SHG’s revenue showed a decline from last year’s upward trend. The company started 2017 with sales of $4 million in Q1, followed by $4.1 in Q2 and $4.76 in Q3. It reported sales of $5.44 million in the last quarter of the year. Tiger Palace had initially expected to launch its casino operations much sooner, but was delayed over licensing issues.
