Ladbrokes released its third quarter results today, announcing that trading was in line with its expectations.
Group EBIT for the quarter was £14.3m, which was down on last year, but then 2014 was a football World Cup year. Chief executive Jim Mullen said: “These numbers reflect the first 68 days of activity since we announced our organic plan to aggressively invest and grow our recreational and multi-channel customer base, particularly across UK retail, Ladbrokes.com and Ladbrokes Australia.
“It is early in our journey but today’s results reflect positive initial progress and customer traction with continued increases in staking and actives across digital and improved staking trends in UK retail driven by football and racing.
“Operating profit, as expected, is down, reflecting continued headwinds from higher taxation as well as our increased marketing spend to build our customer base.
"With sports betting at our core, we see customers responding well to our products, our value and to our recently launched multi-channel offer. All these initiatives are part of the long-term plan for Ladbrokes with our targets based around delivery on hard financials for 2017.
"The focus now is on building on this start. Our people are responding to this challenge and we are committed to taking whatever steps necessary to keep this focus.
“The proposed merger with Coral is on track and, after raising £1.35bn bank debt to finance the merged group, we will shortly be issuing the shareholder circular. The CMA work is progressing but there is no material news that we can share on this today."
