In a conference call yesterday, bwin.party CEO Norbert Teufelberger said the company would return to growth this year after “disappointing performance” in 2013.
“The headline numbers show a fall in total revenue from €801.6m to €652.4m and a consequential decrease in clean EBITDA from continuing operations from €164.9m to €108m,” said Teufelberger.
“This was a disappointing performance and was below our expectations due to ISP blocking in Greece, market declines in some of our regulated markets and the negative impact arising from the migration of players to our new technology platform just before the start of the year.”
Pointing to launches in Belgium and New Jersey, the CEO felt bwin.party had nonetheless made significant progress during the year: “[Last year] was challenging but it also marked the turning point, reflecting the big operation decisions we took to reposition our business for the long-term, by focusing our attention firmly on regulated and to be regulated market, on improving the way we develop and launch our products and on further reducing our cost base.”
He continued: “We made good progress in all three of these areas. Nationally regulated and our taxed markets represented 53 per cent of our total revenue in 2013, up from 43 per cent in the previous year, and our new market in Belgium and US should help to drive this further in 2014.”
