The leading UK bookmakers’ and gambling firm Paddy Power today announced that they were to lower their full-year earning predictions after revealing business had ‘fallen off’ in the three and a half months after its last trading update. The company blamed their losses on a string of unexpected wins, such as that of Padraig Harrington, the popular Irish golfer, and good results from the Irish horse trainer Aidan O’Brien.
Although last week the firm reported a 10% increase in pre-tax profits for the first six months of the year, these unexpected outcomes have meant that the company has had to announce that it now expects to make an operating profit for the full year of $110.3 million compared with its previous prediction of $120.8 million. Patrick Kennedy, the Chief Executive of Paddy Power, said yesterday that “much has happened since our last trading update a few months ago…The performance of the Irish and UK economies has deteriorated and the growth rates in our businesses have slowed accordingly…In addition, we said last year that the old adage of 'what goes around comes around' applies to sporting results and they certainly have come back around for punters since June with a string of unfavourable results for bookmakers and Irish bookmakers particularly.”
