Amaya Expects 10% Rise in Q3 Revenues

The Canadian gambling operator, more popularly known as the company behind PokerStars, announced that its revenues for the third quarter are expected to be the region of $263 million to $273 million. Their revenues for the third quarter of 2015 were $247 million.

The Montreal-headquartered online gaming operator further added that 73% of their Q3 revenues would be from poker, and 24% from its casino/sportsbook operations. This points to a heightened interest among punters in the latter – their sports/casino betting revenues made up only 15% in Q3 of 2015. Poker accounted for 81% in that quarter, indicating a decline of around 8%. This translates to only a 1% year-on-year fall, so it is not really much cause for worry as major sporting events like the Rio Olympics, Copa America and Euro tournaments took center-stage this year.

The number of gamblers also increased by 5% from the same period last year to 2.4 million. About 2.3 million of them were poker players while 490,000 played online casino games. Those who bet on sports totaled 230,000.

However, final reports would be out only on November 14.

Amaya’s revenues for the year are predicted to be between $1.127 billion and $1.157 billion. Adjusted net earnings would work out to $332 million – $352 million. This is below the $400 million payment it needs to make by February 1, 2017 to complete their $4.9 billion acquisition of the Rational Group, which owns both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. The company remains confident, saying that it currently has $144 million in excess cash flow; and another $99 million of unrestricted cash.

Amaya Gaming had applied for an online poker license in Russia, but this has not yet been granted. If it had, or happens before the aforementioned date, the share prices of the Rational Group would swell, leaving Amaya responsible for a $550 million payment to Isai Scheinberg and his son Mark, the owners of Rational Group. If Russia bans online gaming, Amaya would have to pay the father-son duo only $300 million.

For now, the company remains upbeat. This is why they decided against a merger with William Hill recently.