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The United Kingdom’s biggest bookmaker revealed it lost £14m in January after a series of what it referred to as "customer-friendly" football results.
Shares were down 3.3 percent in Thursday’s midafternoon trading as a result. Some of that was recovered by Friday.
In particular the third week in January was especially crushing with big favorites Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, Tottenham, Barcelona and Real Madrid each winning their respective matchups.
It wasn’t just the football results that resulted in Hill’s Quarter 1 losses. Extra costs of £20m from the introduction of a new "point of consumption" tax and a higher tax on gaming machines also contributed.
James Henderson, chief executive of William Hill, said: "Operating profit benefited from the changes we made to the staffing model in April 2014 as well as from the reduction in costs driven by shop closures".
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
