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Brokerage JP Morgan Securities LLC has suggested that Las Vegas Sands Corp’s 2025 property-level Macau earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, amortisation and rent (EBITDAR) could rise 16.6 percent year-on-year.
The forecast was included in a Tuesday note on Las Vegas Sands, parent of Macau operator Sands China Ltd.
JP Morgan said it expected the 2025 figure to be nearly US$2.77 billion, compared to more than US$2.37 billion for full-year 2024.
Analysts Joe Greff and Sam Nielsen said factors leading to such EBITDAR increase were likely to include that at the Londoner Macao (pictured) “renovation disruption” to hotel space and gaming space seen during 2024 “will meaningfully abate from here”.
They added, referring to a revamp and rebranding as the ‘Londoner Grand Casino’ for one of that resort’s two main gaming floors: “With the newly-renovated casino already now open, and hotel rooms and other revenue generating inputs opening on a staggered basis in the fourth quarter 2024 and into 2025… [it] should allow for Las Vegas Sands to achieve above-Macau-peer growth in 2025.”
In another Tuesday memo ahead of third-quarter 2024 earnings reporting season, JP Morgan said that one of Sands China’s five Macau-market rivals – MGM China Holdings Ltd – could see its 2025 property-level EBITDA fall by 2.0 percent year on year.
Mr Greff and Mr Nielsen estimated MGM China’s 2025 property-based EBITDAR could be US$1.05 billion, versus an expected US$1.07 billion for full-year 2024.
MGM China runs the MGM Macau property on Macau peninsula, and MGM Cotai in the newer casino district, Cotai.
Factors in JP Morgan’s revised estimate included “our anticipation of give-back in GGR [gross gaming revenue] market share in Macau, also providing for tough year-on-year comparisons”.
At an investment conference in late September, MGM Resorts’ chief financial officer, Jonathan Halkyard, said MGM China would in likelihood maintain its GGR share in the Macau market “in the mid-teens,” and its EBITDA margin “in the high twenties”.
JP Morgan forecast that the property-level EBITDAR margin on MGM Resorts’ Macau business, which it majority owns, would be 27.2 percent this year, and 27.9 percent in 2025.
At the time of the group’s second-quarter earnings in August, MGM Resorts stated that its GGR market share in Macau “further climbed to 16.5 percent” for the six-month period, from 14.9 percent a year earlier and 9.5 percent in 2019.
The Wall