Parents evening came and went for Betfair but now there’s nowhere to hide as the company’s first progress monitoring report card has come through since they made their IPO almost two months ago. Calvin Ayre and the tablog have made their feelings known about gaming companies choosing the public route rather than a private one, and Betfair’s first set of figures are a very mixed bag.
On publication of the figures earlier this morning, the company’s share prices have today dipped as low as 990p, after reported profit after tax was down 12.7% to £6.8m for the six months to October 31st from £7.8m from the same period last year. This was down to costs arising from the company’s listing of £14.7m, and the drop in share price shows another reason why it’s not always beneficial to float a gaming company on the stock exchange.
The remainder of the report card makes for better reading though. Underlying revenue rose 12.3% to £188.5m compared to £168m in the same period last year. In addition to this underlying adjusted EBITDA was also up, increasing 24% to £31.2m from £25.1m last year.
Chief Executive David Yu commented on the results: “We are pleased to report our first set of results as a listed company, which cover an exceptionally busy period. We have made significant progress throughout the Group pursuing our five key growth priorities of: building on our leadership in sports betting; continuing to expand our product portfolio and cross-selling these products to Sports customers; taking advantage of the proliferation and convergence of new channels; continuing our geographic expansion; and developing our platform to address new markets and new verticals.
“We also completed a listing of Betfair’s shares on the London Stock Exchange, an important development which we believe will enable us to grow more quickly than we could do as an unlisted business.”
Betfair’s release also included a number of highlights from the first half of the current financial year. One of the most significant of these was the revenue growth of around 70% from their mobile channel led by new Apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android, again demonstrating the growing presence that mobile gaming has in the industry.
