Genting Singapore Limited seeking Japanese collaborators

The Genting Singapore Limited subsidiary of Asian gambling giant Genting Malaysia Berhad has reportedly announced that it is ‘in the process of exploring partners’ to help it win one of the coming trio of integrated casino resort licenses for Japan.

According to a report from GGRAsia citing a Wednesday note from brokerage Sanford C Bernstein and Company, the Singapore-headquartered firm used a recent conference call with investors to declare that it is hoping to ‘secure a consortium by a September/October timeframe’ before further refining its Japanese plans.

Stakeholder backing:

Genting Singapore is already responsible for the giant Resorts World Sentosa development in Singapore and reportedly told shareholders that it will be concentrating its Japanese efforts on ‘major prefectures and cities.’ This purportedly comes after last week saw its backers overwhelmingly approve a plan that could see the firm spend up to $10 billion so as to bring a Las Vegas-style facility to ‘any one prefecture or city’ with Osaka and Yokohama widely seen as the leading candidates.

Developing timeline:

GGRAsia reported that Genting Singapore has already participated in both of these cities’ preliminary request for concept (RFC) stages and stated that it is now expecting to receive replies ‘by the end of the year’. Should either of these schemes for Japan move forward, the casino operator purportedly explained that funding would come from internal cash resources, bank loans and the issuance of debt.

Financial health:

The Genting Malaysia Berhad subordinate furthermore used a Wednesday filing (pdf) to disclose that its net profit for 2019 had slipped by almost 9% year-on-year to about $495.7 million courtesy of a 2.3% decline in annual revenues to around $1.7 billion.

Regarding the final three months of last year and the Singapore-listed operator detailed that its net profit had increased by 3.8% year-on-year to approximately $112.7 million off of quarterly revenues that had conversely slumped by some 9.5% to just over $437.1 million.