8th Dec 2005 07:01
PartyGaming Plc08 December 2005 8 December 2005 PartyGaming Plc ("PartyGaming" and, together with its subsidiaries, the "Group") Trading Update for the two months ended 30 November 2005 O Strong current trading in both poker and casino O Average daily gross poker revenue up 14% to $2.7 million versus Q3 O Daily gross casino revenue up strongly following the launch of blackjack O Substantial cross-selling with approximately 40% of PartyPoker players now playing both blackjack and poker O Revenue and EBITDA for the full year likely to be ahead of consensus market expectations Commenting on today's announcement, Richard Segal, Chief Executive, said: "Our business has continued to perform well across the board during the fourthquarter with both our poker and casino businesses showing strong growth.Launching blackjack and other new games has underlined the importance of boththe breadth and quality of the product offering. "Our casino business has performed particularly well. The increase in revenuesfollowing the introduction of blackjack to our PartyPoker.com customers has beensubstantial and has exceeded our expectations. "PartyGaming is delivering on the strategy set out at the time of our IPO and weare delighted with the results from cross-selling one of our casino products toour large customer base. We are looking forward to raising the stakes againwith the launch of our fully integrated, Party-branded platform and the additionof the first of our new games in the first half of 2006." Current Trading PartyPoker.com has performed strongly since the end of September. Average newplayer sign-ups of 2,455 per day were in line with our expectations and weremain confident of achieving our target of 800,000 real money poker sign-upsfor the full year. The number of unique active players increased from 443,000in September to 487,000 in November and the daily average number of playersincreased from 131,000 in the third quarter to 138,000 during the two monthsended 30th November 2005. Average daily gross poker revenue in the period of $2.67 million1 was 14% abovethat achieved in the third quarter and 32% above the same period in 2004.Active player days in the period were 8.4 million, a 38% increase over the sameperiod in 2004. The casino business is experiencing a marked uplift in performance following theintroduction of blackjack on to PartyPoker.com on 8th October 2005.Approximately 40% of PartyPoker.com active players are now playing bothblackjack and poker. Whilst this has reduced the poker revenue generated bythese players, the overall revenue generated by them during the period hasincreased substantially. The cross-selling of blackjack to PartyPoker.comcustomers contributed to a substantial increase in active player days for casinowhich increased to 1.6 million during the period. Excluding the first weekfollowing launch, the gross revenue in casino for the period since the launch ofblackjack has ranged between $0.8 million and $1.2 million per day, which isbetween five and seven times higher than the average for the third quarter. Weexpect blackjack to continue to deliver a substantial amount of revenue infuture periods, although this is unlikely to be at the levels attained inOctober and November which benefited from an element of novelty factor. Distribution costs have remained in line with expectations and we expect theratio of distribution costs as a proportion of revenue for the full year to besimilar to that seen in the first half of the year. On the back of the strength in current trading, the Group believes that bothrevenue and EBITDA before share option and IPO costs for the full year arelikely to be ahead of consensus market expectations. Key Performance Indicators for the fourth quarter of 2005 will be announced on27 January 2006. 1 $2.65 million excluding the impact of the Multipoker and Intertops transactions in November 2005. Contacts: PartyGaming Plc +44 (0)20 7337 0100Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor RelationsJohn Shepherd, Director of Corporate Communications Financial Dynamics +44 (0)20 7831 3113Edward Bridges / Juliet Clarke Conference call Thursday 8 December 2005 For analysts and investors there will be an opportunity to put questions toRichard Segal, Chief Executive, and Martin Weigold, Group Finance Director, byway of a conference call. The details of the call are as follows: 9.20 am Please call +44(0) 20 7162 0025 (UK) or +1 877 491 0064 (US)Password: PartyGaming9.30 am Conference call starts A recording of the conference call will be available for a period of seven daysfrom 21 October 2005. To access the recording please dial one of the followingreplay telephone numbers: Replay no: +44(0) 20 7031 4064 (available for 1 week) (UK)Replay passcode: 685590 US Replay no: +1 954 334 0342 available for 1 week) (US)Replay passcode: 685590 All times are GMT. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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