32Red and IG Group Holdings have, in recent days, been the beneficiaries of double-digit gains in share value after investors bought on encouraging financial news.
In a trading update Monday, 32Red, which operates online casino, poker and, most recently, bingo, said gross win for the 2008 fiscal year came in at £13 million, up 27 percent on 2007.
Its core casino business generated £6 million during the first half, and £5.7 million during the second. Year over year, the casino grew gross win by 30 percent to £11.7 million but was down 5 percent, sequentially.
The Gibraltar company, which went to market in 2005, said growth in casino was driven by increased active player numbers, up 15 percent, and a 13 percent uptick in yield per palyer.
32Red did not give gross win metrics for poker or its bingo offering, which will be reported on its preliminary results in early March.
"Our good performance in 2008 puts 32Red firmly back on its growth path with revenues from our core business, the 32Red casino, growing strongly," Edward J. Ware, the company's chief executive, said in the update.
Mr. Ware said the company intends to compete effectively against its larger peers by leveraging its existing platform and adding new products, the newest of which will be a financial spread betting offering, due to go live in late January.
The spread betting operator IG Group, for its part, is profiting from the popularity of financial spreads amid fluctuating market conditions.
During the six months to Nov. 30, 2008, IG's United Kingdom spread betting offering, which accounted for 46 percent of total revenue, turned over £58.19 million, up 34 percent compared to the same period last year.
IG Group said the whole of its business, which grew total revenue of £126.5 million by 54 percent, had benefited from an 89 percent surge in account openings versus the previous-year period. Profits after tax, meanwhile, came in at £38 million.
Revenue from its financial segment -- which includes contracts for difference and spread betting -- came in at £122.3 million, while revenue from its sports segment came in at just £4.1 million, down from £6.3 million a year ago.
"Sports has become much less of a priority for IG Group given the money they are making off the volatility in the financial markets," Simon J. Holliday, the director of H2 Gambling Capital, told IGamingNews Tuesday.
The company said FXOnline Japan K.K. -- the foreign-exchange trading company in which it took an 87.5 percent stake in October -- had turned over £10 million and logged 4,000 new account openings in its first two months under IG Group's control.
Looking ahead to the second half of its fiscal year, IG Group said lower interest rates will impact returns on its cash balances, but that trading since the end of the first half had been strong.
"We do expect the rate of growth to slow in the UK, and indeed lower interests to have an impact," James Hollins, an analyst with Daniel Stewart & Company, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. "However, this will be more than balanced by strong grow[th] (sic.) in Overseas revenues and a favourable exchange rate move. At the time of the acquisition of FXOnline, the £/Yen rate was 195, today it is 128."