After recovering from a somewhat disappointing previous month to post June aggregated gross gaming revenues of approximately $2.78 billion, the over 30 casinos in Macau have now gone even better by recording a 10.3% rise year-on-year for July to $3.13 billion.

Result falls short of predictions:

According to a report from GGRAsia citing official figures from the city’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, July’s tally represented a 12.6% improvement when compared with the previous month but fell short of the 11% year-on-year rise that had been predicted by several brokerage firms.

Grant Govertsen from Hong Kong-headquartered Union Gaming Securities Asia Limited used a note earlier today to declare that last month’s aggregated gross gaming revenues in Macau had been unable to hit his forecast due to a trio of ‘headwinds.’ These encompassed July containing one less comparable Sunday, the impact of interest in the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia and the 31-day period seeing ‘the toughest comp of the year.’

Seven-month figure improves:

Nevertheless, GGRAsia reported that Macau’s aggregated gross gaming revenues for the first seven months of 2018 stood at just over $21.71 billion, which represented a swell of 17.5% year-on-year.

Favorable August forecasts:

Brokerage firm, Sanford C Bernstein Limited, used an update issued earlier today to proclaim that it expects Macau to post between a 15% and 17% rise in aggregated gross gaming revenues for August, despite the month supporting ‘one less Saturday than last year.’

Similarly, Govertsen forecasted that this month’s aggregated gross gaming revenues in Macau should be around 14% higher than those recorded in August of 2017. He detailed that this is due to last year’s comparable period having suffered through Typhoon Hato, which was the strongest storm to have hit the former Portuguese enclave in 53 years, alongside its subsequent Typhoon Pakhar counterpart.

Govertsen’s statement reportedly read…

“The weather comp is very easy in that August of last year saw the catastrophic Typhoon Hato, which was followed one week later by Typhoon Pakhar. These two weather events took a big bite out of gross gaming revenues last year.”