William Hill Shares Dive 11% On Profit Alert William Hill shares dive 11% on profit alert (Close): William Hill shares shut down more than 11% after the bookmaker warned on revenues. It stated online trading had been hit by harder regulation and "the worst Cheltenham leads to current history". It now anticipates full-year operating profit to be in between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, down from ₤ 291.4 m last year. As an outcome, the FTSE 250 company saw its shares drop nearly 40p to 331p. However, the benchmark FTSE 100 ended flat, up 6.4 points at 6199.1. Top riser on the FTSE 100 was B&Q owner Kingfisher. Its shares ended up 6% despite reporting a 20% drop in full-year profits to ₤ 512m. However, when restructuring expenses were stripped out, underlying earnings were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m. William Hill said there were 2 main aspects behind the weaker-than-expected performance from its online business. It said it had actually seen "a velocity in the number of time-outs and automatic self-exclusions over current weeks", procedures which allow punters to halt betting with a bookie. William Hill said that while the pattern was "still evolving, we estimate that, should these trends continue around current levels, the ensuing lower earnings will minimize online's earnings by ₤ 20-25m in 2016". Secondly, its earnings margins were lower than expected since of European football outcomes and recently's Cheltenham horseracing festival, where bookmakers were struck by large a variety of favourites winning races. William Hill said that despite its online problems, the more comprehensive group continued "to trade well" and remained in line with expectations. The company likewise said it was in "advanced discussions" to invest in Openbet, a gaming software application company.