(Alliance News) - Rank Group PLC on Thursday said it swung to an annual loss, despite revenue rising, as costs stacked up and other income declined.
The Mecca bingo and Grosvenor Casinos owner, with operations in the UK, Spain and India, said it swung to a pretax loss of GBP122.7 million in the financial year that ended June 30 from a profit of GBP73.0 million a year earlier.
This was despite revenue increasing by 5.9% to GBP681.9 million from GBP644.0 million, as cost of sales rose more significantly, up 26% to GBP521.3 million from GBP412.3 million. Other operating income also dropped significantly, to GBP3.7 million from GBP91.9 million.
"The return of customers to our Grosvenor and Mecca venues continues to pick up and our second half numbers give cause for optimism after a very challenging couple of years...energy costs have stabilised, inflation appears to now be easing, customers continue to slowly return to both our Grosvenor and our Mecca venues and we now expect to deliver good levels of revenue and profit growth," said Chief Executive John O'Reilly.
"Our Digital business is performing strongly, and we have a strong pipeline of customer facing developments in both our UK and Spanish brands to drive revenue and profit growth. We are very focused on delivering a market leading cross-channel experience for our Grosvenor and Mecca customers with several key developments landing during this new financial year."
O'Reilly also noted the UK government's white paper on gambling reforms.
"[This] sets out a number of important public policies which will enable the land-based bingo and casino sectors to modernise the customer proposition to better meet the needs of today's consumers," said O'Reilly.
"The delivery of the secondary legislation to enable these reforms cannot come soon enough and we are well advanced with plans to maximise these opportunities."
Shares in Rank were up 1.6% to 90.84 pence each in London on Thursday morning.
By Greg Rosenvinge, Alliance News reporter
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