Melco Crown posts US$35.3m loss as wagers by high rollers decline

Falling wagers by high rollers saw wider first-quarter losses at Melco Crown Entertainment, the Nasdaq-listed joint venture between Lawrence Ho Yau-lung's locally listed Melco International Development and Australian James Packer's Crown.

Melco Crown, which operates the Altira casino hotel (formerly the Crown Macau) and on June 1 opens the US$2.1 billion City of Dreams resort complex on Cotai, booked a net loss of US$35.32 million in the first three months.

VIP bets dropped 11.5 per cent from the previous quarter and 53.1 per cent from a record run a year earlier to US$9.1 billion.

The firm won back 2.79 per cent of VIP wagers, down from 3.1 per cent a year earlier and compared with an expected 2.85 per cent win rate.

Still, while the company's fourth consecutive quarterly loss compared with profit of US$43.23 million a year earlier, it was better than the US$46.53 million net loss forecast by a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

Cost-cutting measures, including an effective 7 to 8 per cent pay cut for about 3,600 staff at Altira, cushioned the bottom-line impact of decreased revenue, which fell 14.6 per cent from the previous quarter and 55.2 per cent from a year earlier to US$216.49 million. This was 25.8 per cent below analysts' expectations.