Manila Bay Resorts will provide new competition starting in December
Melco Crown’s entry in the Philippines casino market posted net losses of 45 percent, or 9.14 billion pesos (US$259 million) from 6.3 billion pesos in 2014, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.
In a filing to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Melco attributed the loss to an “increase in total operating costs and expenses arising from the full year resort operations in 2015, as well as the interest expenses as a result of lower-interest capitalization since the project completion” in first-quarter 2015.
CalvinAyre.com reports that the first full year of City of Dreams Manila led to a boost in Melco Crown’s total net operating revenues, which rose from PHP13.73 billion from PHP430.20 million in 2014. But total operating costs and expenses also climbed year-on-year to PHP20 billion from PHP4.66 billion in the previous year.
Melco Crown, a joint venture of gaming scions Lawrence Ho and James Packer, owns about two-thirds of the Manila casino; the balance is owned by Filipino developer and billionaire Henry Sy’s Belle Corp. During an earnings call in February, Ho said, “I think some of the macro problems in Manila are not dissimilar to what we face in Macau, which are kind of infrastructure-led issues.” In the first months of operations, the property—which did not launch VIP operations until July 2015—laid off 2 percent of its total workforce.
City of Dreams is the second of four casinos planned for Manila’s Entertainment City economic zone. A third Entertainment City resort, Kazuo Okada’s $2.4 billion Manila Bay Resorts, is scheduled to open in December with 1,000 hotel rooms, 500 gaming tables and 3,000 poker machines, reported SMH. That compares to three hotel towers, 1,700 poker machines, and 380 gaming tables at City of Dreams.
Gross gaming revenues for the Philippines are expected to top out at $3.1 billion in 2016, reported the Herald.
