Mor Weizer: Playtech closing in on multiple acquisitions

Playtech will use a war chest of more than ?1bn to execute an aggressive acquisition strategy in 2016, with the firm currently involved in “active discussions”, its chief executive Mor Weizer has said.

Speaking to eGaming Review after this morning reporting a 38% rise in full-year revenues, Weizer said M&A negotiations had been “progressing very well” and also revealed the supplier giant had a number of gaming and financial trading firms in its sights.

Although Weizer refused to be drawn on specific targets, recent weeks have seen the London-listed firm strongly linked with a move for rival supplier OpenBet, which is thought to have a price tag of between ?250m and ?300m, and a more transformative acquisition of PokerStars’ owner Amaya.

“Our policy is not to comment on specific opportunities so we cannot even allude as to whether we are even considering an offer for OpenBet at this stage, but Playtech is an acquisitive company and there are certainly live discussions for strategic acquisitions,” Weizer said.

“Discussions are progressing very well and we definitely see opportunities that allow us to grow the gaming business as well as grow our financial vertical,” he added.

Playtech currently has ?657.9m in net cash it could use to fund acquisitions, as well as an additional sum of more than ?200m which could be raised from a sale of its 9.7% stake in Ladbrokes and Plus500 investment.

The company’s house broker Canaccord estimated that by adding debt, Playtech could have a total of ?1.7bn at its disposal.

New deals, new opportunities

Weizer was also buoyant about new opportunities presented to Playtech as the result of the ongoing wave of consolidation within the B2C side of the online gambling industry.

“There are always risks associated with mergers but I believe Playtech will play a key role in such mergers and any consolidation which will create opportunities for us,” Weizer said.

“If you think about Betfair and Paddy Power coming together, Playtech is a key supplier to both and what’s interesting is that there is almost an entire overlap between what we supply Betfair and Paddy Power,” he added.

Weizer also told EGR the deals “opened up new opportunities for omni-channel”, particularly in the case of Paddy Power Betfair, and confirmed the supplier was in talks with a number of other firms with a view to roll-out its omni-channel solutions later this year.

However, Playtech today said it expected to see a decline in sports revenue in 2016 due to the loss of three Mobenga contracts with UK licensees due to the operators having switched to their own platforms – revenues from sports amounted to ?32.2m in 2015.

William Hill and Unibet are understood to be two of the licensees, but Weizer said he was unconcerned by the trend of operators moving front-end development in-house and that Mobenga continued to look for ways in which it could enable operators to differentiate their customer-facing elements.