Bloomberry incurs P1.5 B loss in 9 months

MANILA, Philippines - Bloomberry Resorts Corp., the hotel and casino operator owned by ports tycoon Enrique Razon, incurred a net loss of P1.5 billion in the first nine months of the year, a reversal of the P3.3 billion profit reported in the same period last year.

In the third quarter alone, Bloomberry’s net loss reached P189 million, significantly lower than the previous quarter’s P787 million loss.

Bloomberry owns and operates Solaire Resort & Casino within the 100-hectare Pagcor Entertainment City in Parañaque, and Jeju Sun Hotel & Casino in Korea.

The company registered P19.42 billion in revenue from January to September, up from P16.97 billion in the same period a year ago.

For the third quarter, Bloomberry booked revenues of P7.09 billion, 29 percent higher than the P5.5 billion recorded a year earlier.

Razon, Bloomberry chairman and CEO, said the company’s additional investments are paying off.

“Our investments in the Sky Tower are beginning to show returns. Given the improvement in Philippine operations and the opening of a new revenue stream, we are hopeful that returns stream, we are hopeful that returns will continue to gain higher ground,” Razon said.

Gross gaming revenues and non-gaming revenues for the first nine months reached P24.55 billion and P1.38 billion, respectively.

On a year- on-year basis, these grew by 14 percent and 53 percent, respectively, with strong growth across all gaming segments and additional incremental growth in non-gaming revenues with the opening of Sky Tower in November 2014 and the consolidation of Korean operations beginning in the second quarter of 2015.

“Jeju Sun, in its first 15 days of casino operations, accounted for less than one percent of consolidated gross gaming revenues and 13 percent of consolidated non-gaming revenues,” Bloomberry said.

By segment, bulk of the revenues came from gaming followed by hotel, food, beverage and retail.

Bloomberry said gaming accounted for 94.6 percent of total revenues followed by hotel, food and beverage and retail at 5.1 percent with the balance of 0.3 percent taken up by Interest Income.

Cost cutting measures continue to show tangible benefits, the company said, with cash operating expenses in the third quarter declining six percent quarter-on-quarter to P3.98 billion.