Toronto-listed online gambling technology provider NYX Gaming Group saw revenue nearly double in 2015 yet posted a net loss for the year.
This week, NYX released its financial reports covering Q4 and FY 2015, which showed strong revenue growth thanks to a year packed with new client deals and major acquisitions, although acquisition and restructuring costs gobbled up all profits (and then some).
Revenue in the three months ending Dec. 31 more than doubled to C$18.4m and adjusted earnings tripled to $1.6m, but net losses increased to $10.7m. For the year as a whole, revenue was up 92% to $52.3m and gross profits gained 86% to $44.8m but the company recorded a net loss of $8.4m, worse than the $7m loss in 2014.
The troubled Ongame online poker product was responsible for $2.9m of red ink in NYX’s Q4 numbers and losses of $11.1m for the year. Earlier this month, NYX announced it was selling Ongame’s European-facing operations – although maintaining a “significant share” of the European-facing business – while retaining the North American rights to the product.
NYX CEO Matt Davey called 2015 “another outstanding and remarkable year” for the company, which went on a shopping spree that included Amaya Gaming’s casino software operations, the Italian-facing software firm Game360, Belgrade-based software outfit eGaming Consulting, Montreal-based developers Side City Studios and NYX also bought out Sportech’s 50% share of the US-facing SNG Interactive joint venture.
This month saw NYX pull off its biggest acquisition to date, a £270m deal to buy online sportsbook technology giant OpenBet. Davey told eGaming Review that NYX hoped to convince Amaya to switch its BetStars sports betting product to the OpenBet platform.
It was Amaya who sold NYX the Ongame poker product back in November 2014, a deal that also saw Amaya make a $10m “strategic investment” in NYX. The companies also have a six-year casino supplier relationship stemming from last year’s Cryptologic and Chartwell deal, and Davey figures the two firms would benefit further from extending their relationship to the sportsbook arena.
Davey said there were no guarantees that Amaya would be willing to abandon its existing sports platform – a mix of in-house tech and third-party software from Amelco – for OpenBet so soon after launching the product. But with OpenBet powering a host of the UK market’s biggest bookies, “you would have to imagine [Amaya] would consider our product favorably.”
