~~Macau records strongest week since late May

~~

Macau's casino industry was on track for its best week in more than three months, starting in September with positive GGR results, according to unofficial industry returns cited by several analysts responsible for gaming. Analysts said the results helped with a long holiday period in mainland China.

"According to our industry channel confirmation, Macau's GGR was 4.1 billion MOP [US$514 million] by September 6," said a report from Hong Kong's Bernstein company released on Monday.

Analysts Vitaly Umansky, Simon Zhang and Bo Wen said, "Over the past week, average full-day earnings (ADR) were about 14% higher than MOP 683 million MOP 610 million. It's the strongest week since late May 2015."

The Sanford Bernstein team noted that the weekend could be long due to the strong numbers reported last week in mainland China and Hong Kong, which are major supply markets for the Macau casino industry.

The Chinese State Council declared a three-day holiday from Sept. 3-5 to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender and the end of World War II. Sept. 3 was also a holiday in Hong Kong.

Based on data from the first six days of September, David Bain, an analyst at Stern Age CRT, predicted Macau would record a year-over-year GGR decline of 29% to 35%. The city recorded 25.6 billion GGR in September 2014.

"We expect the GGR at the end of September to level with the Golden Week beginning on October 1… "The early signs/checks for the Oct. 1-7 Golden Week are solid, mostly driven by large hotel bookings," it added. The latter referred to the holiday period that accompanies China's national holiday, Oct. 1.

"With Macau shares down more than 20% over the past three weeks, we believe the market has overreacted to China's macroeconomic slowdown and the potential negative impact of the yuan's devaluation," Japanese brokerage Nomura said in a note on Tuesday. It advised investors to focus on the more defensive Macau name, or Sands China Inc., which Nomura now rates as a "buy." 카지노사이트