Gaming revenue drops to only $886m per day

No match compared to previous amounts.

According to Barclays, average table revenue for the 10-16 March period was soft at HK$886mn per day compared with HK$1.2bn per day for 1-9 March and HK$1.1-1.2bn a day for the last three weeks of February (10-28 February).

The softer VIP volume during the latest week and a low VIP hold rate led to the much lower revenue.

Here’s more from Barclays:

The growth in GGR for March could be at 6-9% y/y off a high base: If we assume that rest of March sees a more normalized HK$950mn-HK$1.0bn per day in revenue and if we add in our slot revenue assumption of HK$1.1bn, then we estimate that the full month total gross gaming revenue for March would be at HK$32.4-33.2bn, which would imply GGR growth of 6-9% y/y for the month.

This would be much slower than Jan/Feb, which was at 24% y/y. However, we note that March does have a high base effect as March 2013 was the third strongest month in 2013.

We expect 2Q13 to see an easier base comparison again. We still look for 15% GGR growth for full-year 2014.

Table-only market share data for 1-16 March (Mar MTD): Wynn, MGM and Melco gained market share for the month to date in March vs. February.

Galaxy gained marginal market share. Sands and SJM slipped in market share vs. February.