888 Holdings are bigging themselves up after posting some impressive figures for the third quarter of the year. The group saw total revenue grow 7 percent to $92million with B2C revenue up 7 percent to $92m. Poker was the star performer in this category with an increase in B2C revenue of 21 percent to $22m and the news from emerging markets was encouraging as B2C revenue increased by 27 percent to $7m. It all meant a wide smile on the face of CEO Brian Mattingley and some lofty projections for the remainder of the year.
“The final quarter has started positively with average daily revenues more than seven per cent ahead of the strong Q4 2011. A disciplined approach to our costs, and our analytics driven marketing spend proving highly efficient, means we now expect our EBITDA for the full year to be significantly ahead of current market expectations,” he said. “Our core business has continued to perform well during the quarter, with our targeted marketing campaigns contributing towards our ongoing success and Spain outperforming our expectations.”
The only blot on their gleaming report card was Dragonfish, the company’s B2B wing, posting a drop in revenue of 2 percent to $34m.
888’s latest set of results follows them reporting their highest ever six month revenues back in August The results also coincided with their best performance on the stock market for some time with the price of 105pence per share topping the previous 52-week best of 97.35p. It moved analysts at Peel Hunt to upgrade the shares from ‘hold’ to ‘buy’ and the target price improved from 87p to 111p.
The only thing better than this would be for them to be told they can get down to business in the US once again. For the time being this is a good enough second place prize.
