On February 27, Barry Gibson officially took over as the chairman at GVC Holdings. This completes a succession plan announced by the company in November 2019.
In an to update investors, it was explained that Gibson had taken control of GVC’s chairman responsibilities, ending the 12-year tenure of Lee Feldman. Gibson is an expert in mass marketing strategies. He is the former chairman at home emergency repair firm Homeserve Plc and served as the group chief executive at retailer Littlewoods Plc. He also served as the senior independent director at Bwin.party Digital Entertainment.
Gibson takes over the position at a time when they are seeking to expand their operation internationally, while simultaneously being forced to make some adjustments in the U.K. market, which expects to see even more regulatory changes. Some analysts believe GVC’s share price could take a major hit.
However, other analysts believe that these regulatory changes will have a minimal effect on the company. GVC Holdings is coming off a 2019 where the company had an earnings before interest, tax, amortization and depreciation (EBITDA) for 2019 between £670 million to £680 million ($877 million to $890 million). That was a bit of a surprise to many, following the action by new regulations imposed by the U.K. which limited the maximum stake of fixed-odds betting terminals.
That change was expected to produce a significant impact on retail net gaming revenue, which did drop 12% over the previous year. However, this was far less of a hit than was anticipated.
“The Group’s operational and financial performance in 2019 has been excellent with the strong momentum reported at Q3 continuing throughout Q4,” said Kenneth Alexander, CEO of the Group. “The performance continues to be driven by our industry-leading technology, products, brands, marketing capability, people and local execution, all of which is underpinned by our determination to spearhead the industry’s approach to responsible gaming.”
