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.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS