Insight UK William Hill Financials
we will pursue that. If those are not open to us, then we will look when we’ve got excess cash, a giving cash back to shareholders.
OUTLOOK England, Wales and both Irish teams qualified
for the European Championships, are you anticipating a bumper summer of bettings?
Philip Bowcock, CFO William Hill
do that. Te more familiar we can make the content, the more familiar we can make the experience then the more likely we are to capture that in William Hill, whether it be online to retail or retail to online.
And a key part of that strategy is the SSBT, because if we're able to bring that rich breadth and depth of content from online that people are familiar with through our SSBT, which will be the only proprietary SSBT on the high street, then we have a better opportunity of catching those cross-channel customers which we know are more profitable.
PB: Our SSBT is proprietary to us therefore we don't pay a revenue share to a third party unlike our competitors, which enables us clearly to be more profitable. So from that perspective for us it doesn't matter whether the customer spends it over the counter or on the SSBT.
INTERNATIONAL
And what progress have you made in Australia since you launched the brand there last year?
JH: We launched the brand in February of last year, and we started by migrating the Sportingbet customers over. And actually within a month, 98 per cent of the customers we’d migrated over had had a bet under the William Hill brand. So, we then pioneered In-Play under the William Hill brand, and that gained great traction we also launched an App at the same time in September. So the combination of the William Hill brand, the In-Play product and the new App really saw us accelerate at the back- end of the year and saw the whole business growing in a single-digit fashion, bearing in mind in Q3 we were declining by 31 per cent. So it’s a real turnaround story.
Looking beyond Australia, how have the other international businesses perform in 2015?
PB:Well we have three other international businesses outside the UK, being Italy, Spain and the US. Te US has performed well. We’ve seen good turnover growth, margin was slightly down but overall it’s a great small business with great opportunity, depending on what happens in the US gaming industry.
Elsewhere in Italy and Spain, Italy turned positive in 2015, which was a major move for us,
and Spain again saw good growth and we would expect Spain to be positive in 2016.
Looking across your international footprint, how easy is it for you to roll out your technical innovations across the international portfolio?
JH: If I can just look domestically first. Te SSBT [changes] that I talked about earlier that we're going to be rolling before the Euros, we've been able to do that off the Trafalgar platform. So it makes any new innovation or new product much easier and if we go internationally then there's no reason we can't replicate that.
In regards to the global trading platform and the feeds, and Australia was a beneficiary of that during the Australian tennis. We have many more markets than anybody else so it means we can have a one- stop-shop where we take all that rich product from Online and distribute it around the world. So being in charge of your own destiny, whether it be the frontend or indeed your feeds, you're going to have a much better opportunity to be able to expand internationally and domestically.
FINANCIALS You’ve announced a
£200m share buyback scheme, so what does that tell us about WH’s balance sheet and use of capital?
PB: It’s about being flexible and having flexibility. Clearly the important thing is that we do pay a dividend to our shareholders, as I’ve just said the confidence that the Board has means that we can increase that. It’s then about investment. Organic investment where we can. If not, where there is M&A opportunity then
JH: I love tournament years, obviously, whether it be a World Cup or Euros, it's a huge opportunity for us. It's a pity Scotland aren't there to get a full suite of home nations but I'm looking forward to a really good, competitive tournament. Tere are more teams this time than there were last, so there'll be more matches, and with all the innovation and the Trafalgar platform that we've got in place we're really in a position to capitalize on the tournament. So I'm really looking forward to it.
Looking more broadly, what is the outlook for the year ahead?
JH: 2015, let’s be fair, was a difficult year with the significant tax headwinds that we had, a lot of changes made in the Australian business and the Online business with Trafalgar, but we are now in the perfect position to be able to capitalise on the opportunities that 2016 presents to ourselves.
Brilliant Display. Superior Quality.
Competitive Price. Re-Inventing Interactive Gaming With the New 90-Series.
Create engaging experiences with a wide range of sizes from 10” to 27”.
New! PCAP 2GS
technology delivers a ten touch interactive experience.
Backwards compatibility enables plug-and-play replacement of existing units.
© 2016 Elo Touch Solutions. Elo and the Elo logo are registered trademarks and EloView is a trademark of Elo Touch Solutions. 16031BEB00018
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76