Enrique Razon Jr., chairman and CEO of Bloomberry Resorts Corp., has revealed he doesn’t expect his second Philippines IR, Solaire North, to be finished until late 2022 or early 2023. Bloomberry’s Solaire Resort & Casino is the market leading IR in Manila’s Entertainment City, according to Inside Asian Gaming.
Bloomberry originally targeted early to mid-2022 for completion of the Quezon City property. In the company’s stockholders meeting, held online earlier this month, Razon attributed the delay to the Covid-19 lockdown, which “reasonably added to the completion date.” Construction has restarted at the site, he added.
Bloomberry resumed partial operations at Solaire Resort & Casino to “very limited capacity” following the latest easing of some restrictions in Manila on 15 June but is expecting the impact of Covid-19 on its financials to continue through the remainder of 2020.
“Solaire just opened to very limited capacity and it is still too early to give any indication on how the business will perform,” Razon said. “Our number one priority right now is to ensure the safety and well-being of our guests and employees.
“The record performance of the company in 2019 will no longer reflect our short-term future performance, until the pandemic is over, in one way or another, whether it runs its course or a vaccine is created in mass quantities. When this may happen is simply a wild guess at this point.”
He added that Bloomberry is “still on the lookout for opportunities whose potential and valuation makes sense in this environment,” and suggested the delay in Solaire North’s opening could prove beneficial.
“We strongly believe that the timing of Solaire North could well-coincide with a full economic recovery,” he said.
In a May filing to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Bloomberry said first-quarter net income declined by 37.7 percent year-on-year, while net revenue contracted by 12.5 percent, which it attributed to the impact of Covid-19.
