Amaya Gaming Q3 revenues up 8% to $325m
Chief exec David Baazov says the operator is well positioned despite global challenges in its core poker business
PokerStars and Full Tilt recorded an 8% increase in revenues during the third quarter of the year to CAD$325m (£162m), parent company Amaya Gaming reported this morning.
EBITDA was also up 8% YoY to $141m (£70m) helped by the continued roll-out of its online casino offering, which accounted for 14% of revenues during the three-month period ended 30 September 2015.
The Montreal-based gaming giant said revenues would have been up 21% on a constant currency basis and normalising the $5m (£2.5m) impact of new VAT charges in some European markets.
Amaya said its core poker business had been negatively impacted by “extraordinary events” such as withdrawing from Portugal and the economic slowdown in Greece.
That, combined with Amaya withdrawing PokerStars and Full Tilt from 30 grey markets following its acquisition of the Rational Group, dented revenues by around $9m (£4.5m) during the period.
Were it not for the VAT charges and the extraordinary events, the operator said poker revenues would have increased 12% on the previous year.
PokerStars and Full Tilt added 1.85m new customer registrations during the quarter, taking its total customer base to 97m, up 9% on the previous year.
“Despite multiple recent global challenges to our core business, we believe we are well positioned to increase our cash flow and continue to grow our customer base in 2016,” David Baazov (pictured), Amaya CEO, said.
The latest numbers take Amaya’s revenues for the first nine months of the year to $982m (£489m), leading to adjusted EBITDA of $421m (£210m) and adjusted net earnings of $261m (£130m).
Baazov said the strengthening of the US dollar relative to foreign currencies, particularly the Euro, had resulted in a 19% decline in the purchasing power of its customers.
The operator also revised its full year guidance, cutting expected revenues from up to $1.6bn (£800m) down to $1.3bn (£650m) and adjusted EBITDA from $650m (£324m) to $572m (£285m).
Amaya also said it had filed a base shelf prospectus to give it the option of raising a further $3bn (£1.5bn) to help “maintain financial flexibility” but had no intentions of undertaking an offering at this time.