Bwin.party Shares Stable: Benefit Heavily From Full Tilt Poker Closure

Bwin.party reported a year-on-year revenue growth of 3 percent in the third quarter, benefiting from the abrupt closure of what had been the world’s second largest online poker firm, Full Tilt Poker.

According to Sharecast.com, third quarter pro-forma revenue of €201.1m was up from €194.7m in the third quarter of last year, ahead of the €194m Panmure Gordon had been predicting, and up 9% on the second quarter.

Another good sign for the industry as a whole, Bwin.party witnessed an increase in how much each active player was sending on average, up from €8.9 per day in 2010 to €9.6 this year.

Furthermore, the company’s sports betting side saw an 11 percent increase in revenue from the previous quarter to €60.2m.

430,400 new sign-ups were recorded for the quarter, up from the previous quarter’s 405,700, though down from 2010.  The quarter-over-quarter increase has been attributed to Italy opening up its online poker market.

Entries into new markets, including potentially the US, is crucial.

Chief Executives Jim Ryan and Norbert Teufelberger said:

"... we are on-track to launch new regional labels in both Spain and Denmark on 1 January 2012. In Germany ... we remain optimistic that changes can and will be made so that the (regulatory) regime becomes fully compliant and will foster a vibrant regulated market.”

Shares in the firm were up just half a percent in early trading on Tuesday. 

- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com