Emperor Entertainment Hotel Ltd. is bumping up its stake in a casino in Macau, the Grand Emperor Hotel. It is reportedly working on a deal that will see it grab another 5% of the casino’s parent company, British Virgin Islands-registered Luck United Holdings Ltd., giving the company an equity stake worth 80% in the company. The deal is expected to be finalized on or before March 15 of this year.
The company announced its intentions in a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last Thursday. It added that it considered the purchase a “tremendous opportunity for the company to further increase and concentrate the stake in Luck United at a deep discount.”
Emperor further asserted, “In recent years, the target group continued to achieve a stable performance in entertainment and hospitality services in Macau and generate recurrent income for the group. Such acquisition can enable the group to realise such good investment opportunity and utilise financial resources efficiently.”
During the first half of last year, Emperor saw a decrease in total revenue of 5.2% year-on-year. This was attributable to a decline in gaming revenue. The company said at the time, “While [the] VIP segment delivered stable performance, [the] gaming concourse segment was lacklustre as a result of capacity expansion in Cotai. Nevertheless, the group strived to enhance the table yield and improve customer segmentation, which enabled the group to mitigate, to a certain extent, the impact of heightened competition.”
The latest purchase hopes to offset those losses and will be completed through Emperor Entertainment Hotel Investment Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Emperor that is also registered in the British Virgin Islands.
The vendor for the deal is Hong Kong-registered investment holding company New Mode Ltd. According to the filing from last Thursday, the unaudited consolidated net asset value of the target group was around $609.95 million as of the end of last November.
The target firm reportedly owed the vendor $1.56 million in outstanding balance on a loan. That balance will be covered by Emperor through the stake increase.
Emperor runs the Grand Emperor through a gaming license controlled by SJM Holdings. The venue has six gaming floors covering over 130,000 square feet with slot machines, gaming tables and a VIP gaming room with ten tables.
