Bally’s “evaluating” future of money-losing US online businesses
Fenton stated that Bally’s plans had entered a new phase where loss-making assets would be examined to ensure how they fit into the operator’s wider strategic picture.
The business made a major wave of acquisitions in 2020 and 2021, including those of Gamesys and Bet.Works.
“We pulled together a fairly large number of assets in a small space of time, we’ve now had 12 months of looking at that and knitting that picture together. The assets that are not showing us a near-term path to profitability will of course be under the microscope, as they should be,” said Fenton.
“We’re evaluating how that all knits together and will make the decisions quickly in terms of what doesn’t work now that we have our stack pulled together. The overall strategy remains. We’re identifying effectively what becomes non-core.”
Pivot to igaming
CFO Bobby Lavan outlined what this would look like in terms of the Bally’s online offering and the wider pivot to online casino rather than sports betting.
“There’s about $7m in the third quarter of losses, that we view as non-core or we need a plan to make sure they are at least flat,” said Lavan. “Icasino in New Jersey continues to ramp up, we’re very excited about early results in Ontario and we’ll have icasino in Pennsylvania next year. We’ll be minimising the losses related to sports betting – and in the end that’s what North America Interactive should be.
“The trajectory is positive and we’re feeling very confident about that – we just really need to look inside at those $7m in losses and have a path. Because burning money for money’s sake – where the market was two years ago – is not where we’re going in the future.”
Bally’s Q3 results
Revenue for the quarter increased 4.7% from $552.5m (£492m/€564.9m) in Q2 to $578.2m. This worked out as an 83.7% year-on-year increase from $314.8m.
Operating expenses were $524.6m, with a further $51.9m in other expenses. This left a net income of $593,000 for the three-month period ending 30 September.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation or amortisation stood at $151m for the quarter, compared to $78m the previous year. Earnings per share stood at $0.01.