25th Sep 2014 09:55
LONDON (Alliance News) - DJI Holdings PLC Thursday said sales in the second quarter surged, driving overall growth in first-half revenue and its gross profit, helping the company to narrow its first-half pretax loss.
The company, which provides lottery services in the Chinese lotteries market, listed on AIM in July, as part of its plans to drive growth and capture market share in the expanding mobile lottery sales market.
DJI Thursday reported a pretax loss of GBP2.6 million for the six months to June 30, compared with a GBP3.6 million loss in the first-half of last year.
Revenue in the period increased to GBP3.4 million, up from only GBP517,710 in the first-half of 2013, driven by a strong second quarter, which contributed GBP2.7 million to first-half revenue.
Its gross profit for the first-half was GBP2.1 million, compared with only GBP462,349 a year earlier.
"Our progress in the first half of 2014 affirms the Board's expectations for the full year. We look forward with considerable confidence to continued success in the second half of this year," the company said in a statement.
DJI said sales in the second quarter were boosted by increased volume from the World Cup in Brazil earlier this year, and improvements in other online lottery sales. It said sales maintained momentum after the World Cup as new players continued to participate in weekly, daily and high frequency draw games in July and August.
"Our business has successfully achieved profitability for the first time as a result of the significant growth in our digital business. It has been pleasing to see this momentum in growth and profitability continue into the third quarter," said Chief Executive Darren Mercer in a statement.
DJI develops and distributes lottery products, including its own recently-launched lottery websites and those it builds for third-parties, and lottery ticket fulfilment services to large online and offline retailers. It has a client base of large Chinese corporations, as well as individual consumers via its own lottery websites.
The company said Thursday that its strong license position and technology provides it with an ideal base to grow across both its B2C and B2B platforms, while it continues to work on a number of new developments which it said is confident will make a significant contribution in 2015.
"While the China lottery industry has grown considerably online this year, we are seeing indications that mobile is set to make significant gains as a platform of choice for lottery consumers. We are well-positioned to benefit from this trend in the second half of 2014, into 2015 and beyond," said Mercer.
DJI said it is witnessing a large migration of lottery customers to online and mobile as a preferred channel, a trend it expects to continue going forward. It said it expects mobile to eventually become the dominant channel for lottery ticket sales.
The company's stock was trading 3.8% higher Thursday morning at 151.00 pence.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @rharrisdoughty
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