Betfair set float price

[Euler]

I agree, it all depends on your definition. I'm sure I asked them what the definition of an active was at some point.

[andyfuller]

I found this surprising that was announced this morning, much higher than I would have thought:

In FY12, Core Betfair generated approximately 4% of revenue from Cyprus and this revenue made a contribution of approximately £9 million before allocation of central costs.

Betfair kicked out of Cyprus:

http://otp.investis.com/clients/uk/betf ... sid=256151

[Euler]

I made a similar comment via the blog. I was very surprised to see those numbers as Cyprus is such a small country.

[Euler]

UK Director To Leave Betfair

Betfair, the iconic betting exchange and sports betting group, is undergoing several important changes under its new Chief Executive, Breon Corcoran.

This weekend, the group's director for sports exchange, poker and casino in the United Kingdom, Peter Marcus, confirmed that he was involved in talks that would eventually see him depart the group after 14 months.

Marcus was recruited from rival group, William Hill to head the UK operations, which account for over half of Betfair's revenues.

While Betfair would not comment on the news that the Betfair UK Director is to leave, it is believed that he will be on his way out within the next few days.

Betfair Culling Translators

Peter Marcus' departure is just part of a larger move to cull the number of employees at Betfair as the group moves closer to its core product and reducing its expansion around the globe.

It was recently revealed that over 50 translators would be asked to leave the group, with Betfair citing that it would be reducing the number of languages it made available on foreign websites in eastern Europe, Nordic countries and Asia. Instead, Betfair intends to concentrate on countries that are "more strategically attractive."

"We are concentrating on some countries more than others," said Betfair.

The group would not disclose which countries it was reducing its translation services in, and said it was not pulling out of these markets altogether. However, Betfair did confirm that it would not try to recruit new customers in these countries, and would reduce marketing costs.

Analysts, Morgan Stanley noted: "We think new management is making ongoing changes to the geographic profile of the business."

Betfair, which was founded in 1999, employees over 2,000 people around the world, mostly technology staff.

[superfrank]

2,000 is a helluva lot of people.

looks like cost-cutting is the only real option for increasing profitability and it probably makes sense.

imho they should concentrate on growing the exchange side of the business - there are hundreds of fixed odds/casino/games/poker operators and the margins for that stuff will only get slimmer as competition increases.

[giulio2010]

Betfair, which was founded in 1999, employees over 2,000 people around the world, mostly technology staff.

2000 people seems quite a lot...What is betfair turnover?
5-10billion euros turnover may justify this big number of employees, is this betfair turnover? I thought more like around half billion euros a year...Please correct me if I am wrong..

[Euler]

Bert cashed in £3m worth of shares last week: -

http://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2013/01 ... -cash-out/

[andyfuller]

The day before the Betdaq/Ladbrokes deal...

Still has plenty of shares in Betfair though as you point out on the blog.

The Share Price hasn't been doing great of late. Can't see anything that is going to see the price do a sudden about turn for the good any time soon. I do wonder why Betfair didn't buyout Betdaq rather than have someone else buy them out.

If Betfair bought out Betdaq the chance of any competition of note would have been gone. I couldn't see them gaining much other than squashing any chance of competition. Would they not have been allowed to?

[Euler]

Betfair announced their Q3 results this morning. Basically flat overall, you can read the full announcement here: -

http://corporate.betfair.com/media/pres ... -2013.aspx

As normal I participated in the conference call, but there wasn't much given away at all during the call and very little insight given into the inner workings and trends within Betfair. The introduction took a couple of minutes and the Q&A about twenty.

They were keen to point out that the sportsbook was up 39%, but that was only £7.5m vs £5.4m and the exchange shrank by £3.4m so net down overall. They admitted that the sportsbook was uncompetitive but also seemed to indicate that it was mainly non UK areas where the exchange shrank the most. They wouldn't confirm how the UK had performed. Gaming shrank as well so I suspect Betfair are going to have to spend some money on branding.

Breon was dismissive of Ladbrokes move for Betdaq.

Reading between the lines the turnover tax in Australian seems to have bolstered margins there despite the introduction of race card fees, maybe I mis-heard that? But there is continued talk on the 'pricing' of the exchange, though it appears no decisions have been made on that just yet.

Overall a fairly uninformative set of results and conference call. Business seems to be stable, possibly a bit more than expected, but there is no change on guidance for the year.

[Euler]

I came across this snippet today from 25th October 2010, while I looking for something else:
LAST WEEK’S SUCCESSFUL FLOTATION OF BETTING EXCHANGE BETFAIR IS GOOD NEWS FOR IRISH QUOTED BOOKMAKER PADDY POWER, which now does over half of its business online, Ireland’s Sunday Independent reports. Demand for the shares was strong, with the price jumping from £13 to £15, valuing the whole company at €1.6 billion. The paper points out that for that money you could buy the whole of Paddy Power and still have more than €400m to spare

Market cap of Paddy Power today? €3.1bn.