Genting Malaysia Berhad Group receives a negative rating from the risk rating agency S&P Global Ratings

In this regard, S&P Global Ratings affirmed its long-term issuer credit rating of Genting Bhd at "BBB" and Resorts World Las Vegas (RWLV) at "BBB-", with a negative outlook.

Here is a summary of the press release:

We continue to believe Genting Bhd. will see recovery in its gaming monopoly and duopoly in Malaysia and Singapore, respectively. The addition of Resorts World Las Vegas LLC (RWLV) in the summer of 2021 will increase EBITDA in 2022 to 90% -95% of pre-COVID levels.

The recovery of its Singapore market is weaker than we had expected, due to Genting's reliance on international tourism while border restriction remains tight.

Meanwhile, we continue to expect faster recovery at other properties, including in Malaysia, U.K., and U.S. where domestic demand dominates. For Malaysia specifically, we forecast leisure and hospitality EBITDA in 2021 to reach 55% -60% of 2019 level, before exceeding that in 2022; the recovery will be spurred by resilient local demand, which we estimate at about 75% of the revenue mix, and stronger volume from VIPs given they cannot fly out of Malaysia to play.

We expect Genting's EBITDA in 2021 to recover to 50% -55% of 2019's, and 90% -95% in 2022, compared with our previous expectation of 75% -80% in 2021 and 100% -105% in 2022 in May 2020 . We project Genting's debt-to-EBITDA ratio to reach 5.0x-5.2x in 2021 before falling to 2.6x-2.8x in 2022. Based on the revised credit metrics, the current rating level does not have any tolerance for a weaker recovery scenario.

In our view, further upside to Genting's Singapore recovery from our base case is possible from stronger local demand or a faster return of overseas travelers. With the lack of options for Singapore residents to travel abroad and recent government efforts to promote local tourism, Singapore's local market size could exceed the 2019 level, compared with our current base case of 100% recovery by 2021. Furthermore, the government recognizes that the overseas tourism industry is important to the Singapore economy and hopes to ease travel restrictions. In particular, an easing of travel restriction with China could help to spur a demand recovery, given Greater China made up about 24% of international visitor arrivals in 2019.

We continue to believe RWLV will be a meaningful earnings contributor to Genting from 2022. RWLV remains on track to open in the summer of 2021. Besides launching as the first new property in Las Vegas in a decade, it is located next to the convention center connected by a proposed tunnel. Allegiant Stadium, which is home to the National Football League's Las Vegas Raiders and the venue for the annual Las Vegas Bowl, was opened in July 2020 and could help attract visitors back to Las Vegas. That said, in a post-COVID-19 world, there could be structural changes to the way businesses operate and the convention business of Las Vegas could shrink as a result. We estimate RWLV to make up 10% -15% of Genting's EBITDA in 2022.