Canadian Stars Group Reported 24.6% Revenue Growth

The Stars Group’s strategy focused on delivering long-term sustainable growth and becoming the world’s favorite iGaming destination has proved effective in 2019. The financial results reported by the PokerStars owner showed a 24.6% year-on-year increase in revenue and a 17.9% rise in adjusted EBITDA for the twelve-month period ended on December 31, 2019.

According to the report issued by the Toronto-headquartered industry giant, the strong performance in both Australia and the UK was the main driven force of boosted total revenue of $2.53bn.

While the process of TSG-Flutter merging (which recently received a green light from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) is well underway, the acquisitions of the Sky Betting & Gaming and BetEasy played the most important role in the impressive year-end results.

Rafi Ashkenazi, The Stars Group’s Chief Executive Officer said:

“In-line with our expectations, we exited 2019 with a strong fourth quarter with Constant Currency Revenue growth of 7% year-over-year driven primarily by the continued impressive underlying performance of our primary sports betting brands.

With sports betting now our largest product vertical and 81% of our revenues coming from locally regulated or taxed markets, we are well-positioned for diversified growth in 2020 and beyond.”

In 2019, the Group harvested…

…a net profit of $61.9m in 2019, which is a huge step forward in comparison with a net loss of $109.0m in 2018. However, not all segments of the business contributed to big numbers equally.

For instance, affected by the closure of PokerStars in Switzerland in July and more difficult operating conditions in some other European markets including Sweden and Spain, international poker revenue decreased by 11.8% to $781.6m.

“We entered 2020 with the full $100 million run-rate of expected cost synergies from our 2018 Sky Betting & Gaming acquisition and earlier this month prepaid an additional $100 million of debt, underpinning our ability to execute on complex integrations and the highly cash-generative nature of our business model,” Rafi Ashkenazi commented.

“In addition to cost synergies, we have detailed plans in place to continue driving revenue synergies and to increase investments in product and marketing, giving us confidence in continued revenue growth in the years ahead.”

Commenting on the goals achieved in 2019, TSG pays special attention to its U.S. media and sports wagering partnership with FOX Sports. Namely, the FOX Sports Super 6 app had over 1.3 million downloads throughout the year while more than 500,000 customers per week made at least one prediction during the fourth quarter.

“In 2020, we plan to further enhance the global appeal of the PokerStars brand, including by launching the PokerStars Sports brand, leveraging the operational capabilities of our Sky Betting & Gaming business, and launching television advertising for PokerStars Casino,” Mr. Ashkenazi concluded.

Source: “The Stars Group Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Results”, The Stars Group, February 27, 2020.