The price of shares for Star Entertainment Group Ltd (ASX: SGR) is continuing its fast descent - and is now at a low of A$0.11 at the moment. This is a continuing trend of value loss for once a giant in the gambling industry in Australia.
Star is currently Australia’s biggest casino group with some of the biggest and most visited casinos working under their wing. However, more and more Australians prefer to enjoy their hobby in some of the online casinos, without the need to leave the comfort of home. It used to be you could just play slots on the web but now live tables are gaining in popularity as well. While there are many of them out there, choosing one hot new Aussie gambling site offers fun live games, bonuses, and security.
Still, fans of brick-and-mortar casinos might be disappointed with the fact that Star has been on a long downward spiral. As of now, their shares have lost more than 95% of their value in the period of last five years. This struggle has been an ongoing one, with a series of controversies and management changes happening since 2021. Most recently, the gambling and entertainment titan opened their behemoth $3.6 billion project in Brisbane but had to seek government help just a day after the opening of their new venue.
This long streak of bad moves and possibly bad luck for the corporation led them to the point where it’s expected that their available cash balance will hardly go over $79 million in the next release of half-year results this February. Even though that might seem like a decent amount of capital for a company, it’s a huge problem for Star with their investors jumping ship in troves. What’s more, the aforementioned new casino left them in serious debt, so there’s now a situation where the existing cash balance is disappearing faster than it should.
Things are looking grim for Star at the moment, and there is a high possibility that the company could collapse in mere weeks, creating a risk of mass layoffs. This could be a massive impact for Queensland, with a ripple that could be felt all throughout the region if bad comes to worse. The Treasury says they are working hard to protect the jobs, so we can expect that there will be some sort of safety net for the employees.
While there are still no further comments from the company itself, it’s easy to deduce that there’s a certain dose of unease in the high ranks at the moment.