Suncity Group Posts $60M Loss in ‘Dark’ 2021, Not Accounting for Junket Collapse

Suncity Group has reported losses of HK$469.3 billion (US$60 million) for 2021, compared with an HK$871.5 one thousand thousand ($111 million) gain for the previous year, according to its freshly published financial report. That’s despite an 87 percent step-up inward revenue, twelvemonth on year, for trading operations that did not include its junket business.

Despite some hurricane-force headwinds, the Hong Kong-listed companionship said it was ploughing on with the evolution of its Asiatic casino resort operations.

Last year was a stinker for Suncity. But 2022 has been no better for the company, as horse opera sanctions against Russia threaten to disrupt the operations of its Tigre Cristal Resort in Russia’s Primorye Region.

Suncity said inwards its most recent write up that it may follow “too early to full assess the impacts of the recent sanctions on Russia,” adding that it was monitoring the situation and would abide by with [Macau] authorities policy.

‘Dark Year’

The story does non bring up Chau’s arrest, other than to describe 2021 as a “dark twelvemonth inward the group’s operating history.”

But it did speak the break of the junket manufacture inwards Macau. The reliance of the casino sector on the VIP section had “already gone,” which presents opportunities for the keep company elsewhere, it said.

The hike of the mega-rich and middle-class customers inwards South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, etc, are the basics of demand for high-quality integrated resorts with a localized idea inward Asia,” the news report stated. “There is fair special supply of VIP gaming facilities to cater to high-end exact since Macau has at present virtually left the VIP junket business.”

Suncity opened the Hoiana structured holiday resort inward Viet Nam inward 2020 and it’s edifice another inwards the Philippines, the Westside City Project in Manila.

Chau Arrest

Last year culminated in the stoppage in tardily November of its founder, CEO, and chairman, Alvin Chau, on charges of operating a crook syndicate, offering illegal online proxy betting from the Philippines, and money laundering.

The hitch of Chau signaled Peking had running play out of forbearance with the junket industry, which has for years channeled a becalm watercourse of wealthy Chinese gamblers into Macau’s casinos.

That allegedly enabled money laundering and majuscule flight. This resulted in the December breakup of Suncity Gaming Promotion Company Limited (SGPC), which formerly controlled around 40 percent of Macau’s VIP segment. Figures for SGPC were omitted from the financial report.

In 2021, “COVID continued impacting all segments of our business and quarantine-free international traveling has non yet resumed,” the fellowship said inward its report.