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William
Hill doubles Australian profits - 8th August 2014
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Nearly
one year after its acquisition of Australian online
betting provider TtomWaterhouse, William Hill of Australia
announced a near doubling of its operating profits.
The interim report for the first six months of 2014
show record gains in wagering traffic, unique actives,
and new accounts.
Successful
diversification was observed in the 52% profit gained
from increasingly popular digital channels; and 17%
of total revenues earned from international markets
for the globalizing entity.
World
Cup Boost and Online Wagering
The
World Cup yielded a record-breaking level of online
wagering, up 211% from the previous tournament in
2010. The online Sportsbook also continued to grow,
boosted by mobile wagering to a 41% growth rate. Online
gaming net revenue continued to grow, up 18%, mainly
due to a strong and telling 146% growth figure for
mobile gaming.
Domestically,
Australian operating profit nearly doubled, driven
by wagering activity increases of 10%, unique actives
of 21%, and new accounts of 14%.
The
US performance of William Hill was strong as well,
with wagering activity showing gains of 22% and operating
profit up 383%. This all added up to healthy interim
dividend growth of 8%, but an overall drop in pretax
profit. The overall drop is attributed losses the
betting firm incurred from large payouts earlier in
the year, a result of an unusually high number of
favourites winning their matches.
As
of Friday afternoon, this information reflected a
2.5% drop in shares to 343.90 pence.
Next
Hurdle
The
latest challenge for UK operators is to drive the
business further outside the UK, due to tight controls
within the UK on betting shops and increased duties
imposed on high stakes gambling. This led to the closure
by William Hill of 87 loss-making betting shops with
27 more by years end in response to a tax hike on
fixed-odd betting machines.
Despite
the challenges, the company has expressed full confidence
in"assuming normalised sporting results"
by year's end.
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