News round-up 24 July 2015

This week’s news in brief sees mobile driving strong H1 results at 32Red and Svenska Spel while XLMedia begins to cash in on its mobile acquisitions

An increase in mobile penetration helped 32Red to strong H1 results, with 42% of casino revenues now derived through handheld devices during the first six months of the year. Mobile growth was also ahead of the curve at Svenska Spel, which reported a 9% increase in digital revenues during H1 but a 56% increase from mobile.

XLMedia CEO Ory Weihs singled out mobile while reporting a 83% year-on-year rise in revenues and a 87% rise in EBITDA during H1. “We are delighted with the strong financial performance the group has delivered in the first half of 2015,” Weihs said. “We closed two acquisitions during this period which enhanced our mobile capabilities and we look forward to generating additional revenue streams as these businesses are fully integrated into the group,” he added.

Sky Betting and Gaming added a new navigation bar and in-app gaming content to its sportsbook app for the first time in a bid to boost cross-sell on the channel. Version 5.0 of its flagship app sees the navigation bar give more prominent billing to the cash out functionality the firm introduced to mobile earlier this year as well as making it easier to place bets. Meanwhile users will now be able to play roulette, blackjack and some slots content without having to switch to the firm’s dedicated casino app.

Mobile platform provider Nektan said it remained upbeat despite a predicted £5.5m EBITDA loss in FY15 with the firm pointing to a series of omni-channel deals it has in place. Net gaming revenue for the year is expected to be in the region of £500,000 but Nektan said its EBITDA losses were “better than expected” in light of wide-scale improvements to its product. The firm listed its addition of new payment methods, its growing portfolio of mobile games and the doubling of its registrations to deposit ratio as reasons to be cheerful.

Mobile drove Betsson’s strong Q2 results with revenue from the channel up 121% year-on-year to SEK286m (£21.3m) for Q2 2015. The channel accounted for 33% of total revenues across the group compared with 17% in Q2 2014, and more than half of sportsbook revenues are now driven by the channel. The results indicate a remarkable turnaround for a firm with Betsson reporting the channel accounted for just 10% of total revenues as recently as the start of last year. “The KPI I am most proud of is the mobile development,” outgoing CEO Magnus Silfverberg said. “We have had fantastic mobile development in the last year and it is continuing to develop very strongly according to our plans.”