Online gaming and financial trading systems provider Playtech PLC (LON:PTEC) has issued a Trading Update on its second half 2017 results, ahead of an event for investors and analysts being held in Riga, Latvia on November 14, 2017.
(Playtech did state that no new material information will be disclosed at the event).
Playtech stated that Tradetech Group, Playtech’s Financials division, is performing in line with expectations, with continued growth in underlying KPIs. TradeTech Alpha is already making a positive contribution since the acquisition of ACM assets on October 1, 2017.
Playtech stated that as expected, daily average revenues in the Gaming division accelerated following the interim results in late August.
However, although daily average revenues in the Gaming division are currently higher than those reported at the time of the interim results, the Sun Bingo contract remains challenging due to lengthier seasonality and the re-launch of the new Sun Bingo site, and moreover there has been an impact from recent changing market conditions in certain parts of Asia.
Playtech said that it has seen a recent slowdown in certain parts of Asia due to recent changing market conditions. Whilst it had been expected that activity would return to normalised levels in a relatively short timeframe, the company is now not expecting any significant improvement in 2017.
In response to the recent changes, Playtech will continue to support its partners in Asia whilst continuing to increase its exposure in key regulated markets.
Outlook and strategy
Playtech said that its non-Asian B2B business continues to perform broadly in line with expectations, with organic growth supplemented by acquisitions made in 2016 and 2017. With the impact of certain Asian markets and Sun Bingo performance taken into account the company now believes the Group’s performance for the full year will be around 5% below the bottom end of market expectations.
We would note that for the first half of 2017 Playtech did report fairly strong results.
Playtech will continue its strategy of focusing on both organic and inorganic revenue growth in regulated and to-be-regulated markets. The M&A pipeline remains very strong and the Company is in active discussions with a range of Gaming businesses consistent with executing this strategy and with the expectation that the relative contribution from Asia to the Group will consistently reduce over time.
As noted above, Playtech will be hosting an event for investors and analysts on Tuesday November 14, 2017 at the site of its new Live Casino studio in Riga, Latvia.