Stephen Grambling : So the visitation data for Chinese near looks like Hong Kong has been the bigger driver in the recent uptick in visitation. Is there any way to parse out recovery between Hong Kong and Mainland China? And any reason why spending behavior and recovery may be different between these source markets?
Rob Goldstein : Yeah. And I’ve got a perfect answer to that. Mr. Chum?
Grant Chum : Yes, you can see from the visitation numbers been published by the Tourism Bureau. The Mainland Chinese visitation is at about 30% recovery rate versus 2019 CNY. So obviously, with a 40% recovery for overall visitations, Hong Kong visitation recovery has been higher. Mainly, I think, as a result of just the ease with which they’ve been able to go. And obviously, Hong Kong has had a longer stabilized situation with, as it relates to the pandemic. So I think from a pure visitation point of view, it’s just not unexpected. And bear in mind, the transportation support for the Hong Kong visitor only really opened up on the eighth of January. So this has been a very rapid increase in Hong Kong visitations. That said, I think we referenced back to the comments that Rob made earlier and I alluded to as well, I wouldn’t get too stuck on the visitation recovery.
I think in these types of reopening, we’re going to see the premium customers come back first. The core customer coming back as a much bigger percentage than the overall visitation. So I think what we’re seeing is the quality of revenues and the patronage from all regions that visit in Chinese New Year has been very, very high. So we are way outperforming the visitation recovery in terms of volumes and revenue. And indeed, I think if you look at our property visitations our recovery rate in visitations to our own property, is far outperforming the recovery in the overall visitation numbers in the market versus 2019.
Rob Goldstein : Steve, to Grant’s comment just, again, we don’t want to confuse visitation with GGR. There’s not necessarily an easy way to make them work. I was recently in Singapore, I walked in one of our retail stores with our retail person and she told me the sales in the store were like $70 million. And I said there’s nobody here, no one in the store. And she said, Rob, we only need the right people, not a lot of people. I think that’s what’s happening in Macao, we gained the right people showing up in mass, and it’s reflecting in the numbers. You’ll see that when the market numbers come out. I think the early adapters to the market are the right people for the market. And I think that’s why there’s a confusion in the visitation versus the actual revenues.
Stephen Grambling : Makes sense. And maybe as a related follow-up there, there’s been a similar dynamic, stronger spend per visitor in the U.S. that ultimately drove much better margins. How are you thinking about the puts and takes to margins in Macao versus what we’ve seen in other markets?
Rob Goldstein : Grant, margins?
Grant Chum : Yeah. I think first of all, our cost structure is in good shape. It’s been — unfortunately, we’ve had to spend extra effort in optimizing the cost structure over the past two or three years. So we’ve got a very lean cost base right now. In terms of gross margins on the revenue, I think a couple of things. One is our mix, obviously, is more favorable going forward just from a gross margin mix perspective simply because a vast majority of our revenues will be coming from the non-rolling and slot segments. And then secondly, the non-gaming, we expect to be growing, and that’s obviously a much higher margin. We expect to be growing retail, hotel, F&B, actually all the non-gaming segments. So that’s the structural framework for the margin.
