Meantime, several multibillion dollar resorts in Macau are set to open soon, raising the risk there could be an oversupply amid the current gaming slowdown.
"The $64k question is if the opening attracts new play or recycles existing customers to the incremental capacity," Nomura analyst Harry Curtis said in a note last week. "While we expect modest market growth (2-3 percent), it will not be sufficient to generate adequate returns on invested capital net of cannibalization."
Rival Las Vegas Sands' Parisian Macao, a $2.7 billion, French-themed resort on Cotai, is scheduled to open Sept. 13, giving the company a total of six properties in Macau overall (five being on Cotai). MGM Resorts International is majority owner of MGM China, which plans to open MGM Cotai, a $2.5 billion resort, in the second quarter of 2017 (that resort will more than double MGM's presence in Macau).
"It is worth saying again — new supply opening into weak markets has never resulted in better-than-expected EBITDA," said Curtis. "Perhaps 2017 will be an exception, but we doubt it since the negative operating leverage in these buildings is high."
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