The Ultimate Float
Excapsa, operator of Ultimate Bet, has hired investment dealer Canaccord Capital to advise it on a possible listing on the London Stock Exchange. If it floats, the company will likely try to raise £30 million and seek a valuation between £145 million and £200 million. Kahnawake-licensed Ultimate Bet has been online for five years and is ranked by PokerPulse.com as the world's seventh-largest Internet poker room. Excapsa, which is headed by chief executive Jim Ryan, launched a U.K. site in May under the Ultimate Poker brand.
St. Miniver Also Mulls Too
White-label I-gaming solutions provider St. Minver Limited, which has worked with Yahoo! and Virgin in developing real-money online bingo Web sites, has appointed stockbroker Panmure Gordon to advise the company on a potential listing on the London Stock Exchange.
SEC Investigating Brunson's WPT Pitch
After much speculation that the proposed $700 million purchase of WPT Enterprises Inc. (WPTE) by Doyle Brunson and a team of unknown investors was not legitimate, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly received many complaints and is carrying out an official investigation.
Smith Barney Analysis of PartyGaming and Empire Online
Financial Group Smith Barney, a division of Citigroup, has published a report analyzing the relationship between two recently floated Internet poker companies: PartyGaming, the largest online poker operator in the world, and marketing group Empire Online. The report states, "We see Empire as a troublesome child to PartyGaming, small but growing faster and taking more than its fair share of the budget. We think PartyGaming's best option is to tie Empire in by buying it."
The report continues to explain that Empire pays a royalty on its players for being allowed to use the PartyGaming platform. Empire's players account for about 4 percent of PartyGaming's EBIT, which seems unimportant until you realize that PartyGaming makes less profit on Empire players than on layers that come directly to PartyGaming; Smith Barney estimates that PartyGaming's 2005 EBIT would have be about 11 percent higher if Empire's players returned the same amount of profit as its normal players. It would therefore seem to be in PartyGaming's best interest to renegotiate its arrangement with Empire, but Empire has the leverage of about a 9 percent share of the online poker market that it could opt to take elsewhere, thereby increasing another poker room's market share and decreasing PartyGaming's market share. PartyGaming could eliminate the inefficiency of competing with Empire, however, by purchasing it. Smith Barney estimates that PartyGaming could pay a 30 percent premium for Empire without EPS dilution.
Meanwhile, Empire recently appointed games and leisure analyst Andrew Burnett as a consultant for potential mergers and acquisitions. "Following our successful IPO, we are rapidly rolling out our operations throughout Europe and will also consider making strategic acquisitions," CEO Noam Lanir explained. "We intend to play a leading role in the anticipated consolidation and we are looking to Andrew Burnett to spearhead this for us, working closely with our existing financial advisers, Numis."
BetonSports Trading Update
Costa Rica-based BetonSports said in a trading update that it has allotted $14.4 million for advertising and marketing to U.S. bettors (substantially higher than what it spent in '04) and that more than $10 million of that has already spent. The NFL season is the most important trading period for BetonSports; historically, 65 percent of all customer signups have occurred during this period.
The company also announced that shareholder Boulder Overseas Corp. has sold 23 million ordinary shares at a price of 125p each to Evolution Securities Limited. The transaction has released Boulder from a lock-in that it entered when BoS floated in July 2004. Boulder retains an interest of 12,979,020 ordinary shares, representing 15.46 percent of BetonSports' issued share capital. Its remaining interest is subject to a lock-in until July 2006. The shares purchased by Eveolution have been placed with its institutional clients.
BetonSports has appointed Scott Wallers as chief technical officer.
IASbet Expects Improvements
Australian online bookmaker International All Sports Ltd. (IAS.AX) has stated that it will report a loss in its annual report, but the company's outlook looks strong, aided by December's merger with U.K.-based Canbet Ltd. and the acquisition of new licenses for the Northern Territory and Macau. The company expects to report an un-audited pretax loss of AU$5.1 million after restructuring expenses. The company's wagering performance strengthened in turnover and margin in the second half of the year, and directors are confident the trend will continue throughout the first half of the new financial year.
Greek Government Sale of OPAP Shares Successful
The Greek government sold 16.4 percent of its holding in monopoly betting company OPAP in mid July to foreign and local investors. The government earned 1.26 billion euro through the offering--the highest amount ever from a Greek privatization equity deal. Demand for OPAP shares exceeded supply by four times and then rose nearly 5 percent on the Athens market Monday.
Atlantic Lottery of Canada Stats
The Atlantic Lottery Corporation of Canada has released its annual report, the chief highlight of which is a return of CD$426 million in profit to the four Atlantic provinces. The Lotteries Commission of New Brunswick received $123 million, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador received $118 million, the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation received $168 million and the Prince Edward Island Lotteries Commission received $17 million. The Atlantic Lottery Corporation, the first lottery in Canada to offer players the ability to purchase lottery games on the Internet (through its PlaySphere Internet site), awarded players more than $319 in total prizes in 2004.