Paddy Power suffers 3.5% share price drop following Ladbrokes’ correction

PADDY POWER saw its share price fall by nearly 3.5% — or 60c — to €16.80 after rival firm Ladbrokes corrected part of its previously published first-half financial results concerning its Irish operations, showing a far less promising picture for its business here than first appeared.

Last week, the British-owned bookmaking chain said that overall gross win (the amount it keeps from losing over-the-counter bets) for its Irish operations in the first six months of this year, was up on the same period last year by 45.1% to £47.6 million (€60.8m).

However, it also said that on a like-for-like basis — measuring shops that were open at the corresponding period in 2007 and excluding the contribution from shops it bought in the second half of last year — gross win was up by 1.7%.