Earlier this year, sports betting content provider Perform became the latest iGaming related company to decide that they liked the look of going public. After entering, the public domain the company may well look back at what they’ve done with scornful eyes.
They obviously saw the cheap drink offers on the door and wanted a piece only to get inside and find out that all the cheap booze had already gone. It means that Perform’s shares that started off at the lower end of the revised share range of 260p to 280p has subsequently plummeted. When the market went into hibernation for the weekend on Thursday afternoon, the price remained unchanged at 229p where it has been for some time now.
Just before they launched the IPO, it became apparent that the new gambling policy in Germany would, like many other companies, affect them adversely so they subsequently delayed their decision for a day. It could and maybe should have been here that they decide that an IPO wasn’t a good idea but they went ahead regardless.
On this issue, co-chief Simon Denyar, told the Daily Telegraph, “This proved to be a bit of a hiccup right at the end of the process and we explained to shareholders it was actually a long-term positive. There was some sentimental reaction to that, as a good proportion of our revenues comes from the supply of content to the betting sector.”
The company also runs and manages Chelsea FC website as well as providing digital rights for a number of betting websites across the continent.
The other half of the chief executive team, Oli Slipper, was optimistic about the future, and said, “The first day or two’s trading was unfortunate but the stock has built up since then and, as a management team, we don’t look at the share price every day. If we did, I think we’d go mad.”
You never know with publicly-traded firms though. The unpredictability factor makes them all the more vulnerable.
