China’s deadly virus outbreak is threatening the outlook for casino operators in the world’s largest gambling hub. The number of mainland Chinese visitors to Macau fell 80 percent on Sunday, the third day of the holiday, compared with the equivalent day during last year’s Lunar New Year break, according to the city’s tourism office.
For the first three days of the holiday, arrivals were down 66 percent. That is a blow for an economy which is reliant on the gambling industry, and comes after casinos suffered their worst year since 2015. The outlook is unlikely to get any better as China limits travel for its citizens, including overseas tour bans, amid the growing death toll caused by the novel coronavirus.
Macau Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng (賀一誠) said on Thursday he could not rule out closing all casinos in the city due to the disease outbreak, according to a Radio Television Hong Kong report.
Wynn Resorts Ltd shares plunged 11 percent in US trading last week, while Wynn Macau Ltd shares sank 13 percent in Hong Kong. Shares in Sands China Ltd (金沙中國) dropped more than 8 percent. Hong Kong’s markets are closed for holidays until tomorrow.
In China, box office sales plunged to about 6.1 million yuan (US$883,000) over the first three days of the holiday, compared with 2.3 billion yuan in the year-earlier period, according to Maoyan Movie (貓眼電影) data. Cinema operators including Dadi Cinema Group (大地影院), Jinyi Cinemas (金逸電影) and the local affiliate of CJ CGV Co (星聚匯) announced last week they were halting operations from Friday last week through yesterday.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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