MACAU GROWTH SLOWS

06/26/12 10:32AM EDT

The past week Macau GGR growth decelerated to just +2.1% YoY, generating average daily table revenues of HK$678MM. It’s unclear whether the deceleration was due to hold fluctuation or volume growth slowing.  Our full month June forecast is now for GGR of HK$22.5-23.5 billion or 12-16.5%.  While an improvement over May growth, we believe that this level of YoY growth could disappoint investors when coupled with the reduction in the UnionPay withdrawal limits and rumors of the lengthening of the IVS visa process.

Yesterday the Macau Daily News reported that UnionPay reduced its maximum daily transaction limit to on their debit cards to RMB$1MM from a prior limit of RMB$3-5MM. There is some speculation that this actually occurred back in April 2011, in which event, the tightening is likely having no impact on the recent decelerating trends we’ve been seeing. If the reduction limits are a more recent event then they are more likely to impact premium Mass business, as high rolling VIPs wager off of Junket and direct credit lines.  However, we have also heard that pawn shop business has dropped by 30% in Macau this month, which is having a negative impact on the VIP business.   

There was also an article in the Macau Daily News about rumored lengthening of the visa process for those on the IVS, which is speculated to be negatively impacting mainland visitation to Macau. We generally believe that as in the past, reaction to visa restrictions are usually overblown.

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In terms of market share on a week-over-week basis, MPEL share saw a big move up from 9.5% last week to 16.1% this week while Galaxy saw the inverse move, losing 6.4% share week over week to 20.3%.  LVS’s share fell to 17.7% from 19.5% in the prior week, while Wynn gained 90bps getting its share to 12.1%.  The MTD share table is below:

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