Macao Market Share Drops Melco Shaking
Casino group Melco Resorts & Entertainment “obviously” experienced a “loss of share” in the Macau market in 2023, which is “part of a change in management,” said Lawrence Ho Yau Lung, its chairman and chief executive officer.
The group’s management has also made clear that it is changing the way it does business at its Chinese casino hub, with a heavy deployment of sales personnel.
Mr. Ho and his executives were talking about the group’s call to discuss its fourth-quarter earnings, which were released on Thursday.
Referring to David Sisk’s departure last week, which was announced as the chief operating officer of the Macau resort, Mr Ho said: “David has done a great job for us in terms of trying to survive during COVID.
“But I think we’ve dug too deep in terms of our operating costs and how we do business after COVID.”
Mr Ho said the issue was “not the top market share.” He outlined: “It was never really something we were interested in. It was really about EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation].”
The group reported sequentially an 8.1% increase in adjusted real estate EBITDA of $303.4 million in the fourth quarter, compared with a negative adjusted real estate EBITDA of $6.8 million in the last quarter of 2022.
Melco Resorts said in a statement on Feb. 23 that it is recruiting Alidad Tash as vice president of analytics and game operations in Macau, Stefan Bolhalder as vice president of hotels and food and beverage at City of Dreams Macau Casino Resort, and Linda Switzer as vice president of retail.
During Thursday’s earnings call, group chairman Evan Winkler gave some background on why he was appointed.
He said: “It’s all really focused on how we’re looking at game operations and how we can get greater efficiency in terms of how we spend there, where we allocate resources, and how we drive floor placement.”
That includes “player reinvestment,” an element of the cost of the recent controversial Macau business, Mr Winkler said.
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