Gross winnings revenue amounted to £16.3 million for the fourth quarter and £43.5 million for the full year 2005. Gross winnings margin on turnover was 17.5%, up from 12.6% and 15.5%, up from 11.4%, for the same periods respectively.
Operating profit for the fourth quarter and for the full year increased respectively 87.5 per cent to £7.5 million and 67 per cent to £19.9 million.
While profit after tax for the fourth quarter and for the full year rose respectively to £ 5.0 million, up from £ 3.1 million, and to £ 13.7 million, up to £ 8.9 million.
At 31 December 2005 the number of active customers, defined as those who placed a bet in the last three months, amounted to 171,918 compared with 139,006 at 30 September and 79,655 a year before. The company has also over 62,000 active poker customers; they were just 11,029 a year earlier.
The total number of registered customers has continued to increase during the fourth quarter and exceeded 919,000 at 31 December 2005, whilst at 30 September 757,000 customers were registered and at the end of 2004 they were 351,000.
Unibet also highlighted that during the fourth quarter the planned migration of the MrBookmaker business onto the Unibet’s platform was finalized successfully.
Unibet sportsbook gross winnings revenue, representing the net receipt of bets and payouts, for the fourth quarter and for the full year were respectively £6 million and £17.4 million.
Gross winnings margin on sports betting for the fourth quarter was 7.4 per cent. Gross winnings margins can vary quite significantly from one quarter to the next, depending on the outcome of sporting events. However, over time these margins will even out and calculated from January 2004 to December 2005 Unibet\’s sports betting margin demonstrates an average of 7.6 per cent.
Other highlights of the fourth quarter were the launches of five new language versions of the website, Russian, Estonian, Hungarian, Greek and Czech, and three language versions of Unibet Mobile, Finnish, Italian and English.
“The fourth quarter was a strong end to 2005 with Unibet’s best quarterly result ever. We experienced new records in the number of active customers for sports betting as well as casino and poker. We have also successfully launched new products such as lotteries and soft games, in line with our business model of the one stop shop,” commented Petter Nylander, CEO of Unibet.
”During the period, the MrBookmaker business has been integrated 100% into the organisation and the newly enlarged Unibet Group is now very strongly focussed on further growth in Europe with a common brand and a common operating platform,” he added.
In separate news, Unibet Group announced to have sold its entire holding (23 per cent) of ordinary shares in B2B Poker, together with certain other rights and warrants, to its partner 24hPoker for SEK 15 million payable within September 2006. Furthermore, subject to certain conditions being fulfilled, Unibet will be entitled to an additional consideration of up to SEK 7 million.
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