Rank Group full-year digital revenues up 21%
Multi-channel investment helps its Mecca Bingo and Grosvenor Casinos brands increase revenues although EBITDA flat-lines
Rank Group has hailed the success of its multi-channel strategy after recording a 21% year-on-year increase in full-year digital revenues with strong growth across both its flagship brands.
The operator also confirmed plans to relaunch its Spain-facing online business and that it has selected a shortlist of sportsbook partners for a 2016 launch.
Digital revenues from Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo for the year ended 30 June 2015 were £87.5m, up from £72.4m last year.
The online Grosvenor Casino product was Rank’s fastest growing digital business, albeit from lower levels, with revenues increasing 65% year-on-year to £22.3m, while Mecca Bingo posted an 11% rise in digital revenues.
Mecca Bingo recorded a 15% year-on-year fall in EBITDA however this would flip to a 19% rise if the cost of the UK’s Point of Consumption tax is stripped out.
Grosvenor posted a 318% increase in online profits, leading to combined digital EBITDA rising slightly from £19.4m to £20.2m for the full year.
The number of online customers across all brands increased 17% year-on-year to 257,000.
Rank Group CEO Henry Birch confirmed plans to relaunch its Spanish Enracha brand online before July 2016, saying he was “fairly bullish” about its prospects in the market given the recent regulation of slots.
He also confirmed that Rank would enter the online sports betting market next year and that a shortlist of platform suppliers had been drawn up.
Birch hailed the operator’s performance during the 12-month period as it looked to ramp up its multi-channel strategy further ahead of its planned migration Bede Gaming’s digital platform later this year.
“Alongside our strong operating performance, we have made good progress on our strategic objectives that we outlined 12 months ago, and we have a clear strategy for delivering sustainable profitable growth across all our brands,” Birch said.
“We are particularly pleased that the strong digital growth we reported at our interims continues and we remain on track to implement a new digital platform in early 2016,” he added.
In June Mecca Bingo overhauled the front-end across all digital platforms with the launch of a new single responsive site with a number of personalisation features, while Rank also plans to develop new online poker and sports betting products over the coming months.
As part of its strategy Rank increased its marketing spend for the year by 19% to £75.5m to promote its multi-channel offering and the operator said it will continue to “incrementally increase” spend during the coming year.
“We believe that consumer trends will increasingly favour companies that can offer services across digital and retail channels and successfully offer a joined-up experience to our customers,” Birch said.
Rank Group’s share price was up 3% to 257.4p at the time of writing.