Pull out your green eyeshade, miner’s lamp and magnifying glass to find signs of Macau’s stabilization and recovery in June and second quarter revenue reports. Casino revenue fell 8.5% in June, the 25th consecutive decline from the same month a year earlier. For the first six months of this year, the global casino capital’s gaming revenue contracted 11.4%, following a 34% decline last year. According to figures released by Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ), VIP gaming revenue fell 18% for the first half of the year and mass revenue was off 3%. Previewing casino concessionaires’ corporate earnings, Morgan Stanley labels Q2 2016 Macau’s “worst quarter in the last five years,” with the six licensees’ combined Ebitda expected to fall 3% year on year and 6% quarter on quarter. Stop me when you’re had enough optimism.

Gross gaming revenue in June was 15.9 billion Macau patacas (MOP) or just under US$2 billion. That’s the lowest total for the year so far, in fact the lowest since September 2010, according to Union Gaming. June is historically a laggard because it follows the May Golden Week holiday. (September and November round out the bottom three, bracketing October’s mainland China National Day holiday period.) Last month’s gaming revenue was 14% below that of May, two percentage points worse than the historic average 12% decline, Wells Fargo Securities reports. Union Gaming analyst Grant Govertsen in Macau faults the usual suspects, mainland China’s anti-corruption drive and decelerating economic growth, but also suggests acknowledging the impact of alternate VIP destinations, such as Saipan. Union calculates added US$2.5 billion in Macau’s VIP roll – Saipan alone had US$1.7 VIP roll in June – would translate into revenue of US$71 million, reducing June’s year on year gaming revenue decline to 5.2%.

Parsing the second quarter numbers, VIP revenue declined 12% quarter on quarter and 16% year on year. Morgan Stanley analysts Praveen Choudhary, Alex Poon and Thomas Allen estimate phone betting, banned from May 9, generated 8-10% of VIP revenue. Investment bank Sanford Bernstein notes mainland China’s June total credit formation (a/k/a total social financing), a leading indicator for VIP, continued to expand faster than expected and broad money supply growth accelerated. Bernstein sees the figures pointing to greater liquidity in China that could fuel VIP growth. Wells Fargo senior analyst Cameron McKnight, with associate analysts Daniel Adam and Robert Shore, while acknowledging the big beat in credit expansion for June, say growth has “ticked back” from highs early this year, concluding, “We don’t think the government is turning the stimulus tap on.”

Mass revenue fell 3% quarter on quarter and 1% year on year. Bernstein adjusts the number to account for reclassification of tables to thwart the smoking ban on main gaming floors and “other reporting shifts by operators,” to conclude that VIP revenue fell 22% year on year and comprised just 44% of total revenue, down from its peak above 70% in 2011. Mass revenue, as the brokerage adjusts it, grew year on year 4%, with mass table revenue up 6%, its first such rise since the third quarter of 2014.

“We expect the paradigm shift from VIP to Mass to intensify as new large scale casinos are slated to open in 2016-2018, starting with the Wynn Palace in August and Sands China’s Parisian in mid-September,” Bernstein senior analyst Vitaly Umansky and colleague Clifford Kurz write.

JP Morgan Hong Kong suggests not all openings are created equal, at least for investors. It suggests stock market overenthusiasm for Steve Wynn’s Wynn Palace, while archrival Sheldon Adelson’s Parisian will beat expectations. The bank also highlights a growing divergence among Macau operators’ share prices a departure from the sector’s customary lockstep behavior.

For Morgan Stanley, the Wynn Cotai and Parisian openings, adding 4,700 rooms and about 500 gaming tables to the market, raise concerns about oversupply, cannibalization and margin erosion. Morgan Stanley adds, “In the medium term, increase in hotel capacity (driving overnight visitors) and infrastructure improvement, along with yield compression will drive outperformance for the industry.” No one, however, has released a timetable for that medium term’s arrival.