In Macau, June reportedly saw aggregated gross gaming revenues rise for an eleventh consecutive month as the over 30 casinos in the city posted a 25.9% combined increase year-on-year to bring in just over $2.49 billion.

According to a report from GGRAsia citing official figures from the former Portuguese enclave’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau regulator, the swell was the largest in year-on-year terms since February of 2014 although the tally represented a decrease of 12.1% month-on-month.

After suffering through 26 months of year-on-year declines, Macau’s casinos saw their aggregated gross gaming revenues for August improve by 1.1% to $2.35 billion while September’s figure of $2.29 billion represented a boost of 7.4%. This trend continued in October with an 8.8% increase to $2.72 billion before being surpassed by a 14.4% advance to $2.34 billion in November. Even better, December’s figure subsequently grew by 8% to hit almost $2.5 billion while combined takings in January rose by 3.1% to reach nearly $2.41 billion before February saw a 17.8% improvement to $2.87 billion.

More recently and aggregated gross gaming revenues for Macau’s casinos reached just over $2.65 billion for March, which was an 18.1% rise year-on-year, followed by a 16.3% boost for April to $2.52 billion and an impressive 23.7% swell last month to $2.83 billion.

However, several investment analysts had reportedly forecast that June aggregated gross gaming revenues would increase by over 30% year-on-year with brokerage Union Gaming Securities Asia Limited declaring via a Saturday note that the monthly tally had missed “elevated consensus on late-June slowdown”.

“We would attribute the delta primarily to People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s visit to Hong Kong that is currently underway,” read the advice from Union Gaming Securities Asia Limited written by analyst Grant Govertsen. “We note that Hong Kong has been in a state of virtual lockdown over the last several days and this likely had the effect of curtailing high-end visitation to Macau during this period.”

Macau’s aggregated gross gaming revenues for the fist six months of 2017 consequently stood at just over $15.71 billion, which represents a rise of 17.2% year-on-year, with Govertsen reportedly explaining that the rate of VIP growth at 24% had “eclipsed that of mass-market during the second quarter 2017” by four percentage points.

“As has been the case historically, second-quarter 2017 gross gaming revenues of [about] $7.87 billion were modestly below first-quarter 2017 gross gaming revenues of [about] $7.94 billion,” said read a Saturday note from Deutsche Bank Securities Incorporated analysts Carlo Santarelli and Danny Valoy. “The [circa] 1% sequential decline, however, was considerably better than the average [circa] 10% sequential quarterly decline over the past three years.”