SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Athens-listed gambling group OPAP SA is confident it will deliver on its full-year corporate expectations after recording a strong Q3 2019 performance including growth across all core metrics.
Continuing to reap the benefits of its VLT and systems upgrade, OPAP maintains year-to-date revenues of €1.173 billion – up 6% on year-to-date (YTD) 2018 comparatives of €1.106 billion.
Publishing its latest corporate update, OPAP details that Q3 2019 trading saw the company deploy 21,000 new VLTs, hosted by 369 Play Gaming Halls and 2,022 betting agencies.
“Our results in Q3 provide further evidence of the positive growth that is being delivered by the OPAP team thanks to the investments made, and hard work put in, over the last few years,” said OPAP Group Chief Executive Damian Cope. “With both revenues and profitability once again showing good growth over 2018, I believe that OPAP continues to demonstrate the sustained benefits of the company’s ongoing transformation.”
Detailing a significant increase in VLT contributions (up 52%), combined with a solid lottery performance (up 2%), OPAP YTD gross profits currently track at €463 million – up 7% on YTD 2018’s €433 million.
Highlighting a series of operational efficiencies, OPAP has been able to maintain its growth momentum whilst group expenditure is contained to €200 million – a 6% decrease on 2018’s €212 million.
Closing a successful Q3 2019 trading period, OPAP governance reports YTD group profits of €140 million, up 33% on 2018’s €105 million.
“In Q3 we saw similar trends to the first half of 2019 with solid Lottery figures and a strong VLT performance, together with the ongoing improvement of our sports betting offer,” added Cope. “In terms of customer engagement, we continue to steadily grow the number of monthly actives across Online, VLTs and our new Tora services.
“We are now within a few weeks of 2020, the year that will represent the culmination of our original ‘2020 Vision’ ambition. Until then we will be focused on successfully delivering for the remainder of 2019 and in this regard, we are confident in meeting our full-year expectations.”
