By Carey Wong
Mon, 8 Mar 2010, 09:22:29 SGT

Genting Singapore (GS) intends to open the doors of Universal Studios Singapore (USS) to the public at 8.28am on 18 Mar 2010; this after wrapping up a week of Chinese New Year sneak peeks to great reviews. Ticket sales for USS’ soft opening phase will begin at 9am on 10 Mar; and as certain attractions may become temporarily unavailable during the preview phase, ticket prices will be partially rebated by shopping and dinning vouchers for use at USS. In addition, limited tickets will be offered during the soft opening. This is in line with the management’s intention to limit the sales to 3000 (or 10% of its 30,000 capacity) per day to slowly run in the park; but GS believes that the subsequent ramp up will be quite rapid. We continue to see the gradual opening up of the Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) integrated resort as a positive; this as RWS will be able to offer a more “complete” holiday experience to attract both foreign and local tourists. Maintain BUY with S$1.04 fair value.

Universal Studios soft opening on 18 Mar. Genting Singapore (GS) intends to open the doors of Universal Studios Singapore (USS) to the public at 8.28am on 18 Mar 2010; this after wrapping up a week of Chinese New Year sneak peeks to great reviews. Ticket sales for USS’ soft opening phase will begin at 9am on 10 Mar; and as certain attractions may become temporarily unavailable during the preview phase, ticket prices will be partially rebated by shopping and dinning vouchers for use at USS. In addition, limited tickets will be offered during the soft opening. This is in line with the management’s intention to limit the sales to 3000 (or 10% of its 30,000 capacity) per day to slowly run in the park; but GS believes that the subsequent ramp up will be quite rapid.

Pricing point looks attractive. As a recap, week-day tickets for USS will be priced from S$66 per adult and S$48 per child. In addition, visitors can also opt to pay extra for an “express pass” that offers priority access to all the attractions – this ranges from S$30 on weekdays (non-school holidays) to S$48 (school holiday weekdays) to S$60 on weekends and black-out dates. (See Exhibit 1). As compared to the other theme parks around the region, we think that the basic pricing point should be pretty attractive enough to draw both local and foreigner visitors. For example, the Warner Bros Movie World in Australia and the Disney Land and Universal Studios in Japan would set an adult back around S$90 per day; the USS 1-day adult ticket offers a discount of between 20.1% and 26.7%, depending on whether it is a weekday or weekend pass. Only the Disney Land in Hong Kong is cheaper but not by much – the USS 1-day pass is only 5.5% to 15.1% more expensive.

Opening of USS adds to overall RWS experience. The opening of USS will complete another piece of the puzzle for Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) and increase its attractiveness of its integrated resort (IR) concept, which is targeted towards the family-oriented tourist market. On the casino front, we understand that GS is in the process of opening up more gaming tables and should have more capacity to meet the expected increase in tourist arrivals from Mar onwards. Initial teething problems should also be ironed out by then. Maintain BUY with S$1.04 fair value.