Ladbrokes Profits Soar To £25.2M in H1 2016

In sharp contrast to the £51.4 million loss Ladbrokes reported for the first half of 2015, the UK-based gambling company has now bounced back in dramatic fashion by posting a £25.2 million profit for the same six months of this year. In addition, the company’s revenues also increased to £661.8 million, up an impressive 13.1% versus the £585.4 generated in H1 of 2016.
Commenting on the strong results, Ladbrokes CEO Jim Mullen, said that the company’s strategy of boosting marketing expenditure by an additional £15m-£20m per year, developing multi-channel betting in the UK, and expanding its operation in Australia had proved a great success. Mullen also noted that “the sporting gods have generally been on our side and we’ve enjoyed some helpful bookmaker friendly results.” Among the various results alluded to which played in the bookie’s favor was England and Northern Ireland being eliminated early from the 2016 UEFA EURO. Elaborating further, the Ladbrokes CEO explained:
“History would strongly dictate that such a run of results in our favour would see customer staking suffer, but encouragingly these numbers firmly buck that trend and combine strong staking and a good margin. However, 130 years of experience in sports betting has shown us that we will endure a run of customer-friendly results and margins will normalise.”
Since the H1 financial results were announced, shares in Ladbrokes are currently higher by 3.84% at 143.71, given the company a market capitalization of £1.46 billion. Last July, Britain’s second-largest bookmaker announced a proposed £2.3 billion merger with the country’s third-largest operator Gala Coral, although the Competition and Markets Authority has ordered the two businesses to sell up to 400 betting shops before the merger can go ahead. The decision was made in order to ease concerns about the new company, which would have had 4,000 shops, dominating the industry, and according to latest reports, the Ladbrokes/Coral merger should go ahead sometime in autumn, to be followed by a significant restructuring overhaul in Q4.