SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Stockholm-listed Kindred Group Plc has revealed that its gross winning revenues for Q4 2019 have been hampered by both weak sports betting margins and the costs of its US expansion efforts.
As confirmed in a pre-market update, Kindred explained that its expected revenues will be in the region of £235m for the final three months of 2019, marking a decrease from £250m in the same period in 2018.
Meanwhile, corporate governance underlines expected earnings to reach between £27m-£32m, down from £58.5m from Q4 2018.
But despite the expectation of lower revenues and earnings, Kindred revealed that its active customers for the quarter amounted to 1.6 million which was an increase of 2% compared to the same quarter last year.
The regulatory landscape in its home market of Sweden has impacted Kindred’s bottom line for Q3 2019, however the group remained positive as it emphasised that ‘performance in Sweden improved significantly compared to prior quarters’.
Kindred has also come up against fines from the Dutch gambling regulator Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) which had issued penalties worth a combined €3.5m (£3.0m) in 2019 – a 105.8% increase compared to the previous year.
The penalties were inclusive of a €470,000 sanction issued against Kindred’s Trannel International subsidiary for offering online gambling services to consumers in the country without the necessary licence.
The challenging global market, said the company, means that Kindred’s management ‘will continue to implement a number of additional operational efficiency initiatives to ensure that the group can deliver growth in revenues and underlying EBITDA in 2020 compared to 2019’.
