Look, we’re as sick of these tedious quarterly results articles as you are, so let’s polish these turds, shall we?
And who better to accompany a Q2 report from Nordic online gaming operator Mr Green than Ms. Green, aka actress Eva Green of Casino Royale, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and 300: Rise of an Empire fame? Her last name is Green and she’s extremely easy on the eyes, so keep her in your peripheral vision as you read the following…
In the three months ending June 30, Mr Green’s revenue rose 20.7% to SEK 194.8m (US $22.9m) while earnings were up 10.5% to SEK 42.5m. Mobile betting accounted for just under SEK 62m of revenue, and mobile’s share of overall revenue rose to 32% from 24% in the same period last year.
Active customer ranks rose 16% to over 73k while customer deposits were up 35%. But these gains didn’t come cheap, as cost of sales rose 45% to SEK 40.7m, marketing was up 13% to SEK 67.2m and other expenses increased 28% to SEK 44.4m.
Mr Green CEO Per Norman celebrated the fact that his firm was outpacing growth in the broader European online gambling market. But Norman warned that online competition would remain “intense,” especially given plans by Sweden’s state-owned betting monopoly Svenska Spel to launch its own online casino.
Nordic markets accounted for SEK 87.5m of Mr Green’s revenue, basically flat year-on-year, while other European markets improved more than one-third to SEK 102.5m, pushing the non-Nordic share of overall revenue into majority territory for the first time.
Mr Green has been actively trying to diversify its geographic profile, having secured a UK Gambling Commission license and launched an Italian-facing site since the quarter ended. Norman said he expects Mr. Green’s revenue from locally regulated markets will “increase significantly” in the next few years.
MYBET: IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE
To our knowledge, there are no stunning female actresses who share a name with German betting operator Mybet, so we’re going to double down on photos of Ms. Eva, partly because she was born just over the border in France, but mainly because she’s as smoking as that cylindrical object dangling from her lips.
Mybet reported revenue of €17.95m in the three months ending June 30, up 9% from the same period last year. Having successfully ditched its money-losing Italian and Spanish market operations, Mybet generated a net profit of €640k vs. an €878k loss in Q2 2014.
The company’s dominant sports betting vertical was a mixed bag, with betting stakes at Mybet’s roughly 300 retail shops up 0.6% to €21.5m while online stakes fell 3.8% to €24.8m. Those fortunes were mirrored on sports betting hold, which rose 10.4% to €5.3m in the shops while falling 2.1% to €3.8m online.
While the ranks of online sports bettors rose 10.4%, active online customers fell 18.7%. However, those customers who were betting online were betting more, as stakes per active customer rose nearly 23% to €422. Mobile betting revenue was up 387% year-on-year.
Revenue from the online casino and poker segment rose 6.3% to €6m, while horserace betting revenue rose 41% to €2.4m. Mybet’s ‘other’ segment, which consists mainly of its fledgling B2B payment processing outfit C4U-Malta Ltd., saw revenue fall 45% to €150k. Mybet says C4U’s development has “taken longer than planned” and the firm is “considering other strategic options” for C4U’s further development.
In a note accompanying the results, Mybet’s senior management offered the following revelation: “Long-term, Mybet must become sustainably profitable.” In order to accomplish this seemingly revolutionary aim, Mybet inked a deal in May tasking UK software solutions firm Amelco with completely revamping Mybet’s online sportsbook.
The gussied up product – which will also include a revamped casino offering — is expected to make its desktop debut by the end of this year. Once that’s in the bag, the focus will shift to improving Mybet’s mobile channel, including the addition of a mobile casino offering, something the company currently lacks.
