Chairman: Indian market a better bet
Silver Heritage, now raising US$14.8 million (MOP118.4 million) to complete its Tiger Palace resort in Bhairahawa, Nepal, has delayed the opening of its casino floor until November.
The project, the project initially estimated at US$40 million will now cost nearly US$55 million. Silver Heritage previously raised US$19 million in August 2016 through a public offering with the Australian Stock Exchange to complete the original US$40 million cost target, according to Forbes.
Last month, Silver Heritage posted a US$4.58 million net loss due to the ongoing construction. But in a regulatory filing March 29, the company said its annual loss is 14 percent lower than it had predicted during its initial public offering in August 2016. It has described Tiger Palace as the “the first purpose-built integrated resort in South Asia” on Nepal’s border with India.
The company’s shares are in voluntary suspension on the Australian Securities Exchange and will stay that way until the details of the capital raising are completed.
Forbes has reported that target markets for Silver Heritage include Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, and an estimated 430 million people who will live within a six-hour drive of the casino.
David Green, chairman of Silver Heritage Group Ltd., notes that Indian gamblers are a better bet than Chinese VIPs. In a statement in the annual report, Green noted, “The detention of Crown Resorts employees in China in October 2016 has exposed the significant risks associated with China-facing VIP programs, calculated to encourage high-value Mainland Chinese players to visit casinos. The reliance of that market on credit has also exposed the fragility of the so-called junket operators who typically source high-value players for casinos outside China.”
Silver Heritage, he added, “has no exposure to gaming credit risk, or to the reputational and business risk presented by undercapitalized junket operators.” The company currently runs casinos in Kathmandu, Vietnam and Laos, according to the company’s official website.
