Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd., a casino venture between Australian billionaire James Packer and Macau magnate Stanley Ho's son Lawrence, said its third-quarter loss narrowed on more business from high-roller gamblers.

The net loss shrank to $21.1 million or 1.6 cents a share, from a loss of $45.2 million or 3.7 cents, a year earlier, the Hong Kong-based company said today in a regulatory statement. Net revenue more than doubled to $295.2 million. Four analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected an average loss excluding some items of 1.6 cents a share, on revenue of $332.5 million.

Lawrence Ho and Packer overhauled their Crown Macau casino resort last year, doing a deal with junket operators to focus on VIP players, mostly from mainland China, who spend at least one million patacas ($125,000) per visit. The VIP strategy -- coming before this year's global financial crisis -- handed Melco Crown 15 percent of Macau's casino market in the only part of China that allows such gambling.

``Our outlook for the Macau market remains strong and we are confident that City of Dreams will set a new standard for casino development in Macau,'' Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Ho said in the statement.

Melco Crown is also developing a $2.1 billion resort casino called City of Dreams and plans a third Macau casino property, Trinity. The company said it had about $886 million in cash at the end of the third quarter and had un-drawn credit facilities available of $764 million.

CEO Pay Cut

Lawrence Ho said on a conference call with investors that he's taken a salary reduction of 35 percent as part of a plan to save $25 million annually.

Crown Macau filled 95 percent of rooms at an average of $238 a night, compared with 97 percent averaging $236 in the preceding quarter.

Crown Macau held 2.6 percent of the rolling chips gambled in the quarter, less than the 2.7 percent it had in the second quarter, Melco Crown said. The target is 2.85 percent, it said.

Melco Crown declined 31 cents, or 7.9 percent, to $3.63 at 10:50 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. Before today, the shares lost two-thirds of their value this year.

Earnings are improving in the current quarter, according to Chief Financial Officer Simon Dewhurst.

``Despite bad luck in the third quarter which was concentrated entirely in September, we like what we are seeing in October and November,'' Dewhurst said on the call today.

Macau Growth

Macau's casino revenue growth slowed in the second and third quarters, the first deceleration in at least three years amid a worsening of the credit crisis and measures by the Chinese government to restrict its citizens' travel to the city. Macau is a special administrative region which mainland Chinese need a visa to enter.

Macau's government will take over any casino that goes bankrupt, Chief Executive Edmund Ho said Nov. 11. The city has limited its casino licenses to six, and he said he was sure there would be interested buyers for them should any operator go bankrupt. The chief executive is not related to Stanley Ho.

Las Vegas Sands Corp., run by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, said Nov. 10 it's suspending construction in Macau to conserve cash after a third-quarter loss amid slowing growth in the former Portuguese colony where it earns about two-thirds of its sales. The company has said it will get a $525 million investment from Adelson's family and that it plans to raise $1.62 billion more by selling shares.

Edmund Ho on Nov. 11 said average monthly revenue at casinos is expected to fall to 7 billion patacas ($877 million) next year from 8.2 billion so far this year.

Casino gambling revenue in Macau has more than doubled since 2004, when the government ended the 40-year monopoly of Stanley Ho and allowed foreign companies Las Vegas Sands Corp., Wynn Resorts Ltd. and MGM Mirage to operate.

To contact the reporter on this story: Beth Jinks in New York at bjinks1@bloomberg.net; Saikat Chatterjee in New Delhi at schatterjee4@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 13, 2008 10:53 EST