- 888’s poker product is now responsible for roughly 26% of total revenue, raising $24.4m in revenue in the quarter.
- Active poker customers rose 17% on the year.
- Gains were attributed to “successful winter marketing campaigns.”
- Mobile revenue is “somewhere between 5% and 10% of group revenue,” and “is growing very, very fast,”
888 released key performance indicators for Q1 2013, which showed strong growth in online poker revenue and active player numbers.
CEO Brian Mattingley, who hosted 888’s Q1 2013 earnings call this morning along with CFO Aviad Kobrine and COO Itai Frieberger, highlighted that its poker product is now responsible for roughly 26% of total revenue, raising $24.4m in revenue in the quarter.
Active poker customers total 474,000, a 17% increase on the year. Q1 2013 also represents a surge from Q4 2012 levels, when 888 reported roughly 390,000 active customers in the poker room.
Revenue growth could potentially be even higher than these numbers indicate. According to Kobrine, a decline of GBP vs USD artificially suppressed revenue by “a couple of percent,” approximately.
Gains were attributed to “successful winter marketing campaigns.” Poker growth spread “across the board” and was not driven by any particular market or region.
Revenue per player at 888poker dropped roughly 15% from $62 in Q4 2012 to $52. No explanation was offered, but it’s reasonable to assume the aforementioned marketing campaigns drew in a more casual player type.
888poker’s cash game traffic, as shown above via pokerfuse PRO (data courtesy of PokerScout), match closely the conclusions of the report. Average cash game players on 888poker.com grew from roughly 2100 to 2460, a 17% increase, based on a 90-day moving average.
However, from the graph its clear the natural seasonal spring decline has set in, with 30-day averages flatlining at March and declining from May. Maintaining such strong growth in Q2 will be a tough order.
Mobile revenue is “somewhere between 5% and 10% of group revenue,” and “is growing very, very fast,” according to Mattingly, who assured that the new platform “doesn’t cannibalize [its] existing customer base.”
Customers who bet via mobile produce lower revenue than desktop, but are also cheaper to acquire, it was claimed. 888 launched a mobile poker app back in February 2012, and the group plans to continue to expand mobile offering across all products in near future.
Among its other products, Bingo reversed a yearlong slide, growing 3% quarter over quarter. The company is looking to get into Spanish and Italian sports markets.
Transcript courtesy of SeekingAlpha.com
