Casino revenue in Macau, the world’s largest casino hub, surged 66 percent to 18.9 billion patacas (US$2.36 billion) last month as an increasing number of Chinese gamblers visited the city.
Sales for casinos in Macau, the only place in China where they are legal, surged 58 percent to 188.3 billion patacas last year, according to data from Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
China, which contributes more than half the number of tourists to Macau, may have grown 10 percent last year, according to the median forecast of 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
Macau’s visitor arrivals rose 15 percent to 22.7 million in the first 11 months of last year, with more than 80 percent coming from China and Hong Kong, the city’s tourism agency said. Tourists from China increased 20.5 percent in the same period, according to the agency’s data.
“The key driver was the higher average spend by an increasing number of mainland tourists,” Aaron Fischer, a Hong Kong-based analyst for CLSA Ltd said yesterday. “What surprised us was how strong the growth remained in the second part of December.”
Shares in Wynn Macau Ltd (永利澳門), the Hong Kong-listed casino unit of Wynn Resorts Ltd (永利度假村), climbed 5.7 percent, the most in more than two months, to HK$18.40, the highest since it started trading in October 2009.
Shares billionaire Stanley Ho’s (何鴻燊) SJM Holdings Ltd (澳門博彩控) rose 3.4 percent to HK$12.76, Sands China Ltd (金沙中國) gained 1.6 percent to HK$17.36 and Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd (銀河娛樂集團) surged 5.6 percent to HK$9.29.
Melco International Development Ltd (新濠國際發展), which has a joint venture with Australian billionaire James Packer’s Crown Ltd, advanced 5.9 percent to HK$4.70.
“We believe gaming revenues will remain extremely robust in 2011 and increase by at least 20 percent during the year,” Fischer said.
“We also expect another 25 percent growth next year as 2012 benefits from a full year of two new large scale resorts being opened,” he said.
Galaxy is building a US$1.9 billion casino resort, which it plans to open this year, on the Cotai Strip, where Sands China operates the Venetian Macau and Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd has its City of Dreams.
Sands China is building St Regis, Shangri-La, Sheraton and Traders resorts on sites five and six of the Cotai Strip. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas Sands Corp’s chief executive officer, has said he plans to recreate the Las Vegas Strip on the 2,880m length of reclaimed land between Macau’s Coloane and Taipa Islands, to boost the non-gambling portion of casino operators’ earnings.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last