Hong Kong outbreak dents stocks, but won't have major Macau impact

The pushback in timing for the Hong Kong/Singapore travel bubble dented market sentiment, pushing stocks in Macau gaming companies down by 3.2-6.5 percent, but is unlikely to have a significant impact on Macau's prospects, Morningstar research wrote in a note. Macau's recovery will be linked by recovery of tourism traffic from mainland China, as well as China’s expanding prosperity. "We maintain both our earnings forecasts and fair value estimates for the six Macao gaming companies. We continue to expect Macao's gaming sector to return to profitability in the fourth quarter of 2020, and a full recovery to pre-pandemic 2019 levels by early 2022, underpinned by our base case view for a COVID-19 vaccine to be available by mid-2021," the note said.