William Hill shares dive 11% on profit alert
(Close): William Hill shares closed down more than 11% after the yohaig code bookmaker warned on profits.
It said online trading had been hit by harder policy and "the worst Cheltenham leads to recent history".
It now expects full-year operating revenue to be in between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, down from ₤ 291.4 m in 2015. As a result, the FTSE 250 business saw its shares drop almost 40p to 331p.
However, the benchmark FTSE 100 ended flat, up 6.4 points at 6199.1.
Top riser on the FTSE 100 was B&Q owner Kingfisher. Its shares ended up 6% regardless of reporting a 20% drop in full-year profits to ₤ 512m.
However, when reorganizing costs were removed out, underlying profits were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.
William Hill said there were two primary elements behind the yohaig code weaker-than-expected performance from its online service.
It stated it had actually seen "an acceleration in the number of time-outs and automatic self-exclusions over current weeks", steps which allow punters to halt gambling with a bookie.
William Hill said that while the pattern was "still developing, we estimate that, need to these patterns continue around present levels, the consequent lower revenues will lower online's revenues by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".
Secondly, its earnings margins were lower than anticipated because of European football outcomes and last week's Cheltenham horseracing celebration, where bookmakers were hit by large a variety of favourites winning races.
William Hill said that despite its online issues, the wider group continued "to trade well" and was in line with expectations.
The company likewise said it was in "innovative conversations" to buy Openbet, a video gaming software application firm.
Sterling weak
Elsewhere on the London market, shares in Sports Direct were having another bad day, down an even more 5.6% after dropping about 10% on Tuesday.
Earlier the yohaig code retailer had actually issued a statement stating that it expected full-year underlying profits to be "at or around the bottom" of a previously estimated variety. The statement was provided following remarks that founder Mike Ashley made to the Times newspaper on Tuesday.
On the currency markets, the pound stayed weak after having actually fallen sharply on Tuesday in the yohaig code wake of the fear attacks in Brussels, which were seen as increasing the likelihood of the UK ballot to leave the EU.
On Wednesday, sterling fell almost 1% against the dollar to $1.4087. Against the euro, it lost 0.4% to EUR1.2623.
