GENTING HIGHLANDS: Genting Malaysia Bhd’s new casino — SkyCasino — opened its doors to the public yesterday.

The Edge Financial Daily chanced upon this during a day visit to the highlands resort. This confirms The Edge Malaysia weekly’s story in the March 13-19 edition that the casino will be opening its doors soon.

The new gaming area, comprising three floors, had its soft opening at 11am. The SkyCasino drew a sizable crowd with local and foreign visitors in the first two hours of operation. The existing gaming area was also filled with visitors.

Genting Malaysia’s stock has been on an uptrend recently. The stock climbed to its all-time high of RM5.75 on Tuesday. It retreated to RM5.55 yesterday.

Gaming analysts say the run-up in the stock price is partly to do with the expected opening of the new casino.

“This is fuelled by the optimism of new revenue from the expected opening of the new casino. The news that the new casino has opened is good, but it remains to be seen if they can grow earnings. The opening is at a time when consumer sentiment is weak but to be fair, there is a tourism boom in Malaysia now and that might offset the local weakness,” says a gaming analyst with a local bank.

He noted that the new gaming space would be able to cater for the increase in tourist arrivals from China. “Chinese tourists like to visit it [the casino] when they come to Malaysia,” the analyst said. “There has also been a lot of foreign buying of the stock as this is one of the few Malaysian stocks with [a] structural growth story,” he added.

Responding to The Edge Malaysia weekly report, Genting in an email response noted: “The SkyCasino was said to open sometime in January. However, the management had wanted to ensure it had the all necessary components ready to give maximum impact to its customers.

Nevertheless, with a successful simulation exercise conducted daily on its facilities before opening, the resort’s latest casino is expected to open its doors soon.”

In its response, Genting Malaysia also revealed updated figures noting that it already has seen 1.19 million passengers boarding its new 2.8km Awana Skyway cable system from the time it officially opened on Dec 22, 2016 to Feb 28, 2017.

For its financial year ended Dec 31, 2016, Genting Malaysia’s revenue grew 6% year-on-year to RM8.93 billion. Its net profit soared 125% to RM2.8 billion in 2016 from RM1.24 billion a year earlier. The jump in earnings was partly due to the RM1.27 billion gain it made from the disposal of its Genting Hong Kong shares. Craving out the one-off gain from its investment, Genting Malaysia still saw its earnings higher at RM1.53 billion compared with RM1.24 billion net profit in 2015.