William Hill Shares Dive 11% On Profit Alert
William Hill shares dive 11% on revenue alert
(Close): William Hill shares closed down more than 11% after the bookmaker cautioned on revenues.
It said online trading had been struck by harder regulation and "the worst Cheltenham results in current history".
It now anticipates full-year operating profit to be between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, down from ₤ 291.4 m last year. As a result, 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 finished up 6% regardless of reporting a 20% drop in full-year revenues to ₤ 512m.
However, when reorganizing expenses were stripped out, underlying profits were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.
William Hill stated there were 2 primary aspects behind the weaker-than-expected performance from its online company.
It stated it had actually seen "an acceleration in the variety of time-outs and automated self-exclusions over recent weeks", steps which permit punters to halt gambling with a bookmaker.
William Hill stated that while the pattern was "still progressing, we approximate that, need to these trends persist around current levels, the ensuing lower revenues will minimize online's revenues by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".
Secondly, its revenue margins were lower than anticipated due to the fact that of European football outcomes and recently's Cheltenham horseracing festival, where bookmakers were hit by large a variety of favourites winning races.
William Hill stated that regardless of its online issues, the broader group continued "to trade well" and remained in line with expectations.
The business likewise said it remained in "innovative discussions" to purchase Openbet, a video gaming software application firm.