Two Las Vegas-based gaming companies offered differing outlooks in their first quarter financial reports last week.
Gaming Partners International Corp., which makes casino chips and table game equipment, said its first quarter results were boosted by a significant chip order from the $1.9 billion Galaxy Macau casino, which opened Saturday.
Gaming Partners posted quarterly revenue of $17.8 million and net income of $1.7 million or 21 cents per share. Those numbers are up from revenue of $10.9 million and a profit of $37,000 and nothing per share in the year-ago quarter.
"We are pleased with our strong first quarter results, due to delivery of a significant chip order for the Galaxy Macau casino opening," CEO Greg Gronau said in a statement. "Given projected casino openings and our sales backlog for 2011, revenues and earnings in the next three quarters may not reach the same levels that we saw in the first quarter."
At Global Cash Access Holdings Inc., which operates casino ATM machines and cash advance services, quarterly revenue of $134.4 million fell 15.2 percent after GCA lost its largest customer – Caesars Entertainment Corp. – in the fourth quarter. Business was also hurt by "continued weakness in the gaming sector and consumer revolving credit," GCA said.
The company earned $1.8 million or 3 cents per share, down from $7 million or 10 cents in the year-ago quarter.
"2011 continues to be difficult to predict for GCA and the gaming industry as a whole but early signs are encouraging," CEO Scott Betts said in a statement. "When we gave our previous guidance for the year, we believed that 2011 should signal the bottom of the cycle, and while we expect the remainder of the year to continue to have some volatility, we believe we should begin to see sequential improvement in our results as we progress through the year. We were pleased to see our same store volumes metrics turn positive in the first quarter — the first time in over two years."