William Hill Announces Profit Knockback
Published on by Becky Mosley
In somewhat surprising news, off the back of the Cheltenham Festival William Hill has announced that its online gaming division has performed poorly during Q1 2016. Stuttering from a financial perspective, the company has highlighted two main reasons for the company’s misgivings. Both automatic self-exclusions and the accelerated number of manual user time-outs have been labelled as problematic for the online casino brand.
Self-Exclusions and Time-Outs To Blame
When it comes to player safety, both measures can be deemed a success, but from a business perspective the damage that they have caused is clear. William Hill has noted that the trend is “alarming” and has the potential to reduce yearly profits for the casino arm of the business by approximately £20 million. This information has only been compounded by the fact that William Recently posted a lacklustre 6.2% win margin. Unpredictable football results and a surprisingly poor Cheltenham Festival have contributed to this problem.
Talks With ‘Unamed Partner’
However, it isn’t all bad news for William Hill, as the company still remains very much in the black. The full yearly operating profit predicted for the company stands at approximately £270 million. Adding to that, company representatives have also stated that they are in advanced discussions with an “unnamed partner” regarding increased investment in OpenBet. On top of this William Hill is still celebrating the arrival of Crispin Nieboer as the new Interim Managing Director, who has exciting plans ahead for strategic restructuring, business refocus, and non-core market improvements.There is a lot going at William Hill right now, as they are looking to ensure that the recent poor results do not become a continual trend. Commenting on the matter James Henderson (William Hill CEO) remained positive by saying, “[Results] reflect the effect of the recently introduced regulatory changes as well as unfavourable sports results, [William Hill] will now turn their attention towards improving their online business in order for the operator to be able to outperform the highly competitive market.”