By Josh Resnek
Encore Boston Harbor Casino and Hotel revenues dropped about $6 million from August when reported by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission on the 15th of September.
The softening of the casino marketplace as the seasons change was not expected, but then, there is a great deal of volatility to the marketplace and no real way to predict what exactly figures will be from month to month.
The big news this week was the announcement by the government of China that the gambling resort in Macau has a new and improved COVID-19 recovery plan.
This is expected to allow thousands more gamblers the possibility of visiting the resort’s gaming houses without running into complicated difficulties with restrictions caused by COVID-19 which has plagued the industry there since 2020.
News surfaced over the weekend that Macau had been OK’d to resume issuing electronic visas for individuals and tour groups in late October or early November. J.P. Morgan analyst Joseph Greff said that would be the “first meaningful” easing of travel restrictions to the gambling center since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The operating environment in Macau, which is responsible for 75% of Wynn Resorts earnings was running at a rate of 10% of pre-pandemic levels.
Also, he lack of capacity to reasonably predict when travel mobility would start improving among mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau remain a big question mark.
Never the less, Wynn Resorts shares shot up about $5 Monday, reaching a high of about $67. The week before Wynn Resorts was languishing at $63 – a near all year low that had reduced the company’s market cap – the total value of all the outstanding shares to slightly over $7 billion.
In 2018 Wynn’s market cap was about 2 1⁄2 times that amount and the stock price hovered in the $190 a share range.
In 2020 its stock price stood at $150.
In 2021 it had dropped to $114.
At the beginning of 2022, the price for a share was $84 and that has dropped to Monday’s $67. It has been as low as $50 in 2022 so far this year.