Manila’s Solaire Resort & Casino is expanding this month with more hotel rooms, casino space and a theater.
The resort’s owner, PSX-listed Bloomberry Resorts, is adding a second 312-room hotel tower to the property’s current estate of 478 five-star rooms. The casino is getting 66 more VIP table games and 223 machine games, growing the floor to 361 total tables and 1,443 EGMs. The showroom will have 1,760 seats.
Solaire opened last March at a cost of US$750 million as the first of four megaresorts licensed for a special government-sponsored gaming and tourism district on Manila Bay called Entertainment City. The resort struggled in the early going but reported a profit of PHP992 million (US$22 million) for the three months ended September 30, a six-fold increase over the same period last year, on a 44 percent increase in net revenue to PHP5.6 billion, almost all of it from gaming. The company recorded a profit of PHP3.3 billion for the first nine months of 2014, on gross revenue of PHP22.4 billion, up 127 percent from a year earlier.
VIP has emerged as a core strength of the property. As of September 30, the casino has signed-up with 58 junket operators, Bloomberry said.
“We are extremely pleased with the better-than-expected results as it speaks well of the tremendous efforts we have put in to turn around our operations without cutting down on our quality of service and amenities,” Enrique Razon, chairman and chief executive of Bloomberry, said in a statement.
Bloomberry’s share price has responded, rising about 72 percent this year, “becoming the best performing gaming stock globally,” J.P. Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) said in a recent report.
