New Zealand’s SkyCity Entertainment Group’s main priority is to start its recovery from the pandemic and stay open for 2021

Skycity’s CEO Graeme Stephens envisaged a two year path to recovery for the company. He said: “It’s really only 2022 that we expect to be back under full strength. We feel well-positioned to ride out what is ahead of us. I think it will be FY2022 before we have any realistic prospects of [getting back to] where we were in FY19. We will not be paying an interim dividend. If we’re able to stay open and trade we are anticipating a final dividend of FY21. We understand how important it is to our shareholders.” 

Stephens doesn’t believe international spend will return until at least 2022 adding: “We won’t be spending a lot of capital. Let’s just get through this period and position ourselves for a future beyond this.” 

He further explained that another challenge in 2019/20 was the Sky City New Zealand International Convention Centre fire and said: “The year started off really well in the first quarter, we were on track for a record, but the fire came. We were going really well again by January/February and then we all know what happened next. We restructured and downsized.” 

Hamilton, Queenstown and Adelaide were actually continuing to trade ahead of expectations and SkyCity Online casino continued to trade positively with around 25,000 first time depositors as of September. 

Auckland’s performance after the second lockdown was consistent with trading during May and June under alert level 2 with the cost of the lockdown falling in the region of $20m in Auckland. 

About SiGMA Europe Virtual Expo

SiGMA Group is excited to announce the launch of their November event, SiGMA Europe Virtual Expo. The online event, which runs from the 24th to 25th, will focus on the European gaming and tech marketplace.

For more information about how to sponsor this event please contact Hamza and to explore speaking opportunities get in touch with Jeremy. To register for the expo click here.