Ladbrokes ‘excited’ over troubled Irish operations

British bookmaker Ladbrokes saw underlying profits at its troubled Irish operations increase last year and said its business here can have an “exciting” future.

Ladbrokes Ireland emerged from a three-month period in examinership, last August, 50 outlets lighter and with the loss of 90 jobs via a voluntary redundancy programme, but with the UK group retaining ownership.

The group’s 2015 annual results, published yesterday, showed the Irish retail unit generating operating profits of £6.8m (€8.7m); up by 54.5% on the previous 12 months.

The profit figure, however, excludes £10m in exceptional costs, mostly related to the examinership process. Net revenue was down by just over 11% at £64.2m.

Total amounts staked in Ireland fell by nearly 4% to £584.9m, but growth was seen in the second half and management is upbeat about the prospects for its multi-platform betting model in the Irish market.

“The steps we took, allied to a more visibly promotion-led business strategy has seen the Republic return to good staking growth and profitability in the second half of 2015.

"Multi-channel represents an exciting opportunity for Ireland and we used our successful experience of the UK launch to roll-out the product in January,” management said.

On a group-wide basis, Ladbrokes reported its first annual loss in a decade, 2014’s profit of £37.7m giving way to a pre-tax loss of £43.2m.

Group revenue was stable at just under £1.2bn.

Impairments related to its core UK operations, the aforementioned examinership costs in Ireland and one-off costs related to its merger with Gala Coral dragged the business into the red.

Management say its strategy is working, 2016 starting well.