Casino operator Genting Malaysia Bhd’s fourth-quarter profit actually rose 60.1% due to slightly lower earnings.
Those gains were 720.14 million yuan ($176.7 million), compared with 449.79 million yuan in the previous year quarter. These group sales were nearly 2.51 billion yuan, down 1.5% from 2.54 billion yuan booked in the same period in 2017.
But for the full year ending Dec. 31, the group posted a loss of 196.6 million yuan, compared with an annual profit of 1.16 billion yuan in 2017.
The company said in an op-ed to Bursa Malaysia on Wednesday that the annual loss was “mainly attributed to impairment losses of 1.83 billion yuan from the group’s investment in promissory notes issued by the Maciphy Wimpanoag tribe,” referring to attempts to invest in the U.S. tribal gaming venture.
Genting Malaysia, which has major operations at the resort’s World Genting Casino complex in the Genting Highlands near the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur and also operates casinos in the U.S., Bahamas, the U.K. and Egypt, declared a special dividend of MYR0.08 per common share for the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, due April 4 this year.
A factor in quarterly earnings was positive inflows from taxes of 304.98 million MYR, compared to 47 million MYR in the prior year.
“The revenue was overachieved, but it was due to low taxes,” Samuel In Xiao Yang, an analyst at Maybank IB Research, part of Maybank Investment Bank Bhd, said in a note on Thursday.
Japanese brokerage Nomura noted that “net profit was higher from tax refunds” in the fourth quarter, “because Genting Malaysia switched back to its old tax calculation methodology after obtaining approval for judicial review of tax benefits.”
However, Nomura analysts Tushar Mohata and Alpha Aggarwal added, referring to judicial reviews filed by Genting Malaysia within the Malaysian court system, “However, the outcome remains unclear as the court’s final tax incentive decision is likely only until the third quarter of 2019.”
BY: 바카라사이트
