Gaming in the Asian-Pacific region is on track to complete recovery from the material impact of the coronavirus outbreak last year, an unaudited 2021 first-quarter report released by NagaCorp revealed.
Daily Volumes Indicate Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels
The operator of the largest integrated resort (IR) in Cambodia, NagaWorld, announced the first 3 months of 2021 indicated recovery rate of the average daily volume of between 98.5% for electronic gaming machines (EGM) which generated $5.44 million, and 99.4% for table buy-ins which accounted for $3.74 million.
The only segment that was falling behind, 53.1% from pre-pandemic daily levels of the first quarter of 2020 was the VIP business, which generated $56.6 million compared to $106.52 million during the first 3 months in 2020.
The first 3 months ended March 31, 2021, generated gross gaming revenue (GGR) of $127.34 million and net gaming revenue of $72.6 million. The mass market business generated $202.11 million in mass table buy-ins of which the operator retained $29.72 million in mass table GGR, while another $17.1 million were retained from EGM which generated $297.65 million in revenue. VIP Rollings accounted for $2.91 billion in revenue and $90.51 million in VIP GGR.
NagaCorp noted in the voluntary announcement that the first quarter of 2021 related to the period from January 1 to February 20 only due to the decision of the Board of the incorporated in the Cayman Islands company to voluntarily suspend operations, following the detection of some cases of the coronavirus disease in the premises of NagaWorld as reported by the Cambodian Ministry of Health.
Financial 2020 Highlights
This was the second closure of the NagaWorld property after the integrated resort suspended operations in March last year and remained shut until July. Despite being inoperative for nearly 3 months in 2020, NagaCorp managed to achieve net profit for the year ended December 31, 2020.
In March, the Hong Kong-listed operator released the final results for the year posting a GGR of $869.6 million and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $265.2 million.
GGR generated from table buy-ins was $174.3 million, EGM accounted for another $82.4 million in GGR, while VIP GGR contributed with $613 million as NagaCorp finished 2020 with a net profit of $102.3 million, delivering basic earnings per capital share of $0.236.