Britain’s Got Talent online games maker Gaming Realm’s share price rises as company posts 109 per cent revenue uptick
Gambling games publisher Gaming Realms has won out with triple-figure turnover in the first half of the year, though an increased marketing budget ate into its earnings.
The figures
Revenue at the Slingo.com and Britain's Got Talent online games maker grew by 109 per cent to £16.6m in the six months to 30 June, up from £8m in the same period of last year.
This was driven by growth on its mobile platform Grizzly, where real money gambling revenue increased by 143 per cent to £10.2m, and the acquisition of social gaming assets from Real Networks, which contributed £3.8m of social gaming and licensing revenue in the first half.
Read more: Gaming Realms makes successful play for US bingo market
However, adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation dipped 24 per cent to a loss of £3m, as the marketing budget doubled from £5m to around £10m.
The number of new players in the first half rocketed 269 per cent to 143,282, and the number of average monthly depositing players grew 257 per cent to 55,387.
Gaming Realms' share price was up 3.7 per cent to 19.7p in early afternoon trading.
[charts-share-price id="556"]
Why it's interesting
Chief executive Patrick Southon told City A.M. that the group is "aiming to be profitable as a business" in the second half of the year.
"Our business is trying to take advantage of a massive shift in consumer behaviour," Southon said. "We are trying to be a bit like Netflix in that we are trying to deliver content that is good for the device that you use – as desktop use for games like ours decrease and mobile increases, we need to position ourselves accordingly with our products."
Read more: Gaming Realms makes play for worldwide gaming machine market
The company said today it is trading in line with expectations, which would lift its Ebitda to a positive level for the whole of 2016.
What Gaming Realms said
Chief executive Patrick Southon said:
We continue to see lower player costs per acquisition than the industry average. At the same time, we have streamlined the business through the disposal of our third party platform bingo sites and marketing agency.
In addition, we continue to sign strategic partnerships and licensing deals for our content, intellectual property and platform with blue chip partners, which underlines the long term growth prospects of the group.