888 Holdings Sees Record Quarterly Rise
Publicly traded 888 Holdings, which runs the 4th biggest online poker room in the world, has reported a record quarterly high.
888 climbed as much as 5.3 percent, the most since August 30, before trading 2.3 percent higher at 33.75 pence as of 9:10 a.m. in London, according to Bloomberg News Tuesday. This gives the Gibraltar-based company a market value of 117.1 million pounds ($187 million).
“We’re concentrating on growing our volume business, not necessarily high-spend, particularly in poker to get our liquidity up,” Deputy Chairman Brian Mattingley said in a phone interview.
Third-quarter revenue rose 42 percent from a year earlier to $86 million.
“In the past we spent a lot of development time into areas that are not our core products,” Mattingley said, “So now we concentrate on casino, poker, bingo and to a lesser extent, sport.”
The company has incorporated an automated marketing tool that targets promotions for specific customers based on their betting habits.
Direct-to-consumer business, along with the marketing tool “has significantly changed the accent of our marketing approach and is now paying dividends, as being seen by the quarter-on- quarter growth we’re witnessing,” Mattingley said.
888 Holdings is one of the companies that has applied for an online gambling license in the state of Nevada while it awaits legalization in the US. The group has also formed a strategic relationship with Caesar’s Entertainment, which operates the World Series of Poker.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
