As Galaxy Entertainment CEO Lui-Che Woo is fond of pointing out, it will take two years of positive results before Macao can be said to have recovered from its revenue collapse. That being said, May’s 
results — 24% up — were impressive, although Wall Street analysts tried to maintain a business-as-usual façade. “While stronger than forecasts, we don’t expect the result to come as a meaningful surprise given the recent checks,” wrote Deutsche Bank‘s Carlo Santarelli. He predicts “continued, though decelerating, double digit growth” through the end of the year and is raising his projection for year-long growth by three percentage points.
JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff credited Labor Day and Dragon Boat Festival with some of the boomlet. He also speculated that VIP play was driving the growth, leading him to write, “we have to wonder that if this level, or even lower levels, of growth, is sustainable, does the government want to recalibrate policy to bring this growth rate down?” He concluded, “Given … our low confidence in VIP revenue and earnings, we don’t find the risk-rewards for our US-listed Macau-centric gaming names all that compelling.”
* “We can do all the prototyping, focus groups, and game nights we want, but there is nothing like a live environment to learn from,” said GameCo President Blaine Graboyes, whose latest learning experience was having Caesars Entertainment jank all the GameCo skill-based slots from its Atlantic City casinos, where they weren’t making their nut. GameCo’s next move will be to add a “top winner” screen that shows who the best competitors have been. Caesars claims to be “100% committed” to the SBS concept, despite having aborted the Atlantic City experiment. (Some say SBS machines belong in the table games pit.)
As proof, a second wave of SBS is coming in the form of Space Invaders games, while Borgata has retaliated with a Simpsons-based machine. And the Tropicana Las Vegas is still on the SBS bandwagon. The machines exiled from the three Caesars Boardwalk casinos will be repurposed at Foxwoods Resort Casino, which needs something to juice its slot revenues. Nothing But Net is a success story, doing an industry-average $200/slot/day but GameCo is going to phase it out for a new edition, and Danger Arena will be retired in favor of Terminator 2 machines.
* Ol’ Rusty Pipes, Mr. Wayne Newton takes his tired act on the road to Seminole Casino Coconut Creek this weekend. Haven’t Native Americans suffered enough?
