Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | March 2014 20 COVER STORY T he company founded by Stanley Ho to take his gaming empire forward in the post-monopoly era is still the best-known among players and probably the most respected. But its Hong Kong-listed stock consistently lags the competition in valuation, the much smaller peninsula operations of Wynn Macau and MGM China included. Sands China has outstripped it in terms of hotel rooms and floor space. In February, the Sands juggernaut on Cotai dethroned it from its longstanding position as the market leader in gaming revenue. “SJM’s only problem is it has only ever been a gaming company,” The Last Resort Lisboa Palace won’t open until 2017 at the earliest —the final splash of Cotai’s next wave—and it promises to be worth the wait says David Green, who heads Macau-based industry advisors Newpage Consulting. “It is a company so ingrained in gaming,” as he recently put it to Reuters , “that it could be a limiting factor.” Ambrose So, a protégé of Stanley Ho’s going back more than three decades and chief executive of SJM Holdings, the company’s publicly traded parent, acknowledged as much in his remarks at a ceremonial groundbreaking for Lisboa Palace on 13th February. “Ten years back the main thing for [the customers] was really gaming-centric. They just wanted to go to the casino and were glued to the tables. We have seen there is a gradual change.” SJM’s vision for Cotai —very French, very aspirational.