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Betting exchange and online casino operator Betfair has released its preliminary financial results for the twelve months to the end of April showing that total revenues from continuing operations fell by 0.38 percent year-on-year to £387 million.
Betfair rejected a preliminary takeover approach from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners Limited in May that was reportedly worth £911.7 million and revealed annual reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of 51.2 million, which represented a drop of some 39 percent year-on-year.
London-based Betfair declared an annual loss from continuing operations of £49.4 million, which is down by over £103 million for the previous twelve-month period, while stating that it had ‘strong underlying free cash flow generation’ of £50.2 million.
“This is a solid set of results in what has been a year of transition for Betfair,” said Breon Corcoran, Chief Executive Officer for Betfair.
“Revenues lost as a result of changing regulation have been largely replaced with regulated [and] more sustainable revenues.
“Following the outline of our new strategic plan at our half-year results in December, the business has undergone significant change and much progress has been made in a short time. A new management team is leading the business, a wide ranging restructuring has been completed ahead of schedule, marketing investment has been focused on core markets and we have successfully launched a sportsbook.
“While the exchange continues to be at the heart of our business, the sportsbook means we can now present new customers with a simpler [and] more familiar product and offer a wider range of promotional activity than is possible on the exchange alone. This is helping Betfair to attract more new customers than ever before.
“The recent introduction of Cash Out on the sportsbook is the first of many ways we intend to use exchange features to offer a differentiated customer experience and strengthen our competitive advantage.
“Although it remains early days for many of these initiatives, we remain pleased with the operational trends we are seeing, which give us confidence that the steps we are taking will deliver a higher quality, sustainable and growing business. We have made excellent progress on all of our key strategic aims and the business is in a far stronger position to generate future growth than it was at the start of the year.”
