Bally posts record Q1 revenues
CEO Richard Haddrill expects online revenues to kick in during second half of the year.
Bally Technologies has reported record Q1 revenues, marking its fifth consecutive quarter of year-on-year earnings per share growth, with CEO Richard Haddrill (pictured) expecting income from its online operations to begin increasing incrementally later this year.
The casino and slot game manufacturer, which has been steadily building its online offering over the past 12 months since launching Bally Interactive in October last year, posted total revenues of US$235m, up 21% from the same period last year, while operating income for the period was also a first quarter record $54m, up 43% from last year.
Haddrill explained that the company has created Flash, HTML5 native iOS and Android versions of an initial library of some of its most popular titles for online distribution, and expects its 12 “major operators”, including the recently announced GameAccount Network, to feature the Bally virtual game library on their platforms during the second half of this fiscal year, “generating incremental revenues”.
Haddrill added that the company’s mobile arm also continued to make good progress. “Bally Mobile continues its strong momentum and has now grown to approximately six million users. Thanks to the measurable ROI these mobile applications are generating for our customers, we are seeing significant growth both in new customer acquisitions, which has grown by more than 50% year-over-year, and in the delivery of new features for existing customers,” he said.
Bally’s own open-architecture online gaming platform, acquired from Chiligaming in February, has attracted a number of clients including the Mohegan Sun casino group earlier this month.
The casino was the third to strike an online poker partnership with Bally this year, after fellow Nevada-licensee American Casino and Entertainment Properties (ACEP) inked a deal last month, and Golden Nugget went live with a freeplay poker in June.
ACEP’s agreement will see a freeplay poker site launch by the end of the year, with a real-money product in Nevada to follow once Bally’s systems have been approved by an independent testing laboratory. Bally has already been approved for an interactive licence by the state’s Gaming Commission, while Golden Nugget was granted an operator licence last week.
“[A]s the requirements of land-based mobile and online gaming continue to merge, the open architecture strengths of our iGaming platform and its ability to enable a single view of the player, continue to resonate well with our prospective customers,” Haddrill noted.
Meanwhile, revenues from offline gaming equipment sales increased 28% to $83m in the quarter, compared with $64m last year, driven by higher domestic replacement sales, the shipment of 670 units to the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, and initial shipments into the Illinois VGT market.