Grant R. Bowie - MGM China Holdings Limited
Analyst · Nomura Instinet. Please go ahead.
Okay. So on market conditions first. I think it's been pretty consistent from all the people who have come out and we're saying the same thing that yes, it seems like after what has been a relatively good period of growth of junket, they have slowed. I think there is probably some impact from a whole series of conditions, they've been opening a lot of rooms. Clearly market conditions in China are a little more volatile. Critical point I'll make on the junket though is that there still seems to be a lot of liquidity. And what this seems to be is much more of a controlled pause rather than the effect of running out of liquidity which, as I think you understand, is really critical in that segment. So I think what we're all expecting is a little softness for a little while until we can get – we stabilize. For us though, we're still pretty confident because we're opening our other rooms and that's going to be a positive for us. Clearly, we'd like more growth in the market because that will help us increase our share and that leads us to the mass. Mass business continues to be more robust and more resilient than the VIP simply because of the nature of the business and obviously it's much for debate. Like always, the mass business is just not one element, there is a series of components. And while the mid to lower mass is still very strong, there is, similar to the VIP, a little bit of a slowdown in the growth in some sectors at the top end. But again, talking specifically on the property and the ramp up, once we get the President's Club done and the Mansion done and all those construction things out of the way, we're very, very positive that that will allow us to build our base and we'll continue to see that. As you will see in the quarter, Harry, we had a decent sort of luck effect and some of that was actually a result of the ramping up because you tend to get a bit more volatility and that volatility is just part of that process. If you didn't get it, then you probably weren't going to get the business. So in summary, market growth, I think we're all consistent around that high single, early double digit, probably flat for junket going through and obviously it was a better performance than mass. But it's going to be slightly different over the range of mass customers. For our property, positive signs, traffic improvement for Cotai. But I also just want to lay the point that we're also very focused on driving business into Macau. The cannibalization there has stabilized at about 12%, 13% and so we've got great opportunities to continue to grow and establish that. So we're getting through the difficult phase of the ramp and now we want to see some momentum from that.