GAMING: SJM falls to 8-month low

2014-5-14

From：Macau Daily Times

SJM Holdings Ltd., Asia’s largest casino operator by revenue, dropped to the lowest level in almost eight months after posting first-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates.
SJM fell 2.4 percent to close at HKD20.40 in Hong Kong trading, the lowest level since Sept. 18. The stock has fallen 22 percent this year, compared with the 4.1 percent decline in the city’s Hang Seng Index.
“We expect better growth at SJM in the remaining quarters of the year,” Phoebe Tse, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Barclays Plc, wrote yesterday, as the company is expected to expand a new gambling room to cater for the so-called premium-mass players, who place bigger stakes than mass-market bettors and incur lower costs than VIPs brought in by middlemen.
Barclays has cut its 2014 Ebitda estimates by 3.7 percent after first-quarter earnings were 4 percent below its forecast, Tse said. SJM’s performance in the second half should be helped by a move to dedicate more tables to premium-mass gamblers, Tse and Barclays analyst Vineet Sharma said. They bet in cash, unlike the high rollers who gamble with credits provided by middlemen agents, who charge casino operators a commission.

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