The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
wow about the only blue stock on market impressive if it holds.
yes they could come back to table but poker face Putin is not going to buckle that easy. pfc could even disconnect from oil movement covid 19 could cause more damage i don't know. but i do know the the risk versus reward is against us. i guess also i am just being greedy and trying to catch the lowest sp possible and may not get it..
yes that is true but bears no relation could be anywhere. the futures market has hit the breaker means closed until cooler heads come to market quite a rare event. the oil price could be short lived as Russia could come back to table the oil price is not good for them? if you can take anything out of this i don't think we have ever had a recession with low oil prices but then again have we had a virus messing with economy this much.
forget sfo stuff the oil price is going to get very messy from here if the Saudi's start to flood the market. if memory serves me well this happened once before and ended bad will have to check on that and get back. but i can't blame Putin for not playing ball it's always opec that has to make cuts the american shalers just keep pumping.
thechancers yes i just had to double check long term wmh is a good play.
wise move to buy in small amounts. i picked up some today 129p could be a wrong move but covid 19 will be short lived i guess.
no prob.. what i like is 1 in 4 bets goes through wmh will post my key section here. And our market share in the states we operate in is 25%. And across all the regulated states, it is 24%. So again, my favorite data point. William Hill takes 1 in 4 bets in the U.S.
that's it apart from meet and greet stuff did not highlight a piece of interest i got lost in posts.will post that bit again on its own unless you pick up on it thanks.
Ulrik Bengtsson
This is a very exciting time to be CEO for William Hill.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to my inaugural results presentation. We will -- you will have seen the release this morning. We will walk you through that. We will have the Q&A at the end. And just before that, I will talk a little bit about our group strategy as well. Obviously, we all would have read the disclaimer. So I'll move on from that.
With me today I have Ruth Prior, our CFO. She will be walking you through some of the numbers in details in a moment. And then I will be coming back to talk about the year-end review and the strategy going for the group. 2019 was a year of transition for William Hill, not without challenges, but we did execute on our ambition to diversify internationally through the acquisition of Mr. Green and through the continued growth of our U.S. business. We also had a good underlying performance, operating performance of the business. And when we move into 2020, we have made good progress on our long-term ambition to build a digitally-led international diverse, betting and gaming company of scale. When we move into 2020, we are in a stronger position with our Online business. And we have strong positions in a handful of fast-growing markets, most notably the U.S.
Like I said, 2019, a year of transition that we executed on the year very well. We had operating profits of £147 million, which was ahead of our expectations against a challenging regulatory backdrop. 24% of our revenue is now coming from outside of the U.S., which is up from 15% previous year. We signed up to the Safer Gambling Commitments and implemented numerous customer protection measures during the year.
In our Online business in the UK, we maintained market share. We returned to growth. We actually had 3 consecutive quarters of growth in the second half of the year. Mr. Green performed in line with expectations with strong underlying activity.
Looking at our retail business, the entire year, really overshadowed by the £2 stake limits. This has been an enormous project across the company. We closed over 700 shops. And we had many, many, many people across the group that were affected. But in the end, we delivered ahead of our expectations, and had profits of over £83 million in the Retail business.
In the U.S., the business develops very nicely. Goes from strength to strength. Net revenue increased by 38% in the year. We're now live in 9 states. We have 24% nationwide market share. And in the early parts of 2020, as you will know, we signed a deal with CBS for new tools for us to be able to acquire customers efficiently and continue to build the William Hill brand in the country. Our industry is evolving. It's creating plenty of opportunities, and we're really excited about what lies ahead for William Hill.
Now I will hand it over to Ruth to talk about the numbers, and I'll see you in a little bit.
Ruth Prior
Right. Thank you, Ulrik. So I'm really pleased to be able to talk to you about a good set of results today. And particularly, as it followed a year of unprecedented change. And we say that but I don't say it lightly. Putting together our 2019 budgets and our expectations, were for me, probably the hardest of my career. And that isn't something I should say lightly. But we went into the year knowing that the £2 stake will come into effect in April. We had a shop-by-shop model, but it was based on our best guess.
We had no historic precedent about how consumers would behave under that sort of environment. The acquisition of Mr. Green had not yet completed. The U.S. regulation post passover was gathering momentum. But again, it wasn't clear, which states would regulate how, when and the economics. And this is all against the backdrop or regulatory change globally. So for me, this has truly been a year of transition for William Hill. We have results that show that we have executed very well. And that we've laid great foundations for 2020 and beyond. So the big picture before I get into my new share of the numbers. We closed 713 retail shops. Retail results were ahead of our expectations.
We completed the acquisition of Mr. Green. We established the international team in Malta. We've provided access to European markets post-Brexit. We've got a very talented team now in Malta as well as diversifying our revenues into 13 new markets. Online UK has returned to growth following our customer due diligence measures in 2018, growing in line with the market for the last 3 quarters. And the U.S. market is gathering momentum. We've launched in 3 new states, developed and launched our own technology platform, established a digital operation in New Jersey and now we have a media partner in CBS. And my favorite data point. William Hill takes 1 in 4 bets in the U.S., and I'll keep coming back to that data point.
So moving to the group income statement. This is on a statutory reporting basis. 2018 was a 53-week year so where relevant, I will give you the 52-week comparator. Net revenue of just under £1.6 billion was 2% down year-on-year as the addition of Mr. Green and growth in the U.S. have been offset by the impact of the £2 stake limit in Retail and a decline in William Hill Online. On a 52-week basis, net revenue was flat year-on-year. Cost of sales was 3% down following the lower net revenue in the year and the reduction of machine gaming duty in retail, offset by the increase in remote gaming duty in Online from 15% to 21% in April.
Net operating expenses were 6% higher through the inclusion of Mr. Green. And continued infrastructure investment in the U.S. across people, property, technology and marketing. And with the retail shop closures coming into effect from quarter 4, the full benefit of removing the costs from these shops aren't yet in these numbers. So as a result, adjusted operating profit was £147 million, 37% lower than last year. But ahead of our expectations and towards the upper end of the range we communicated in the January trading statement.
We've also recorded an exceptional charge of £134 million, of which £100 million relates to the costs we incurred for the retail mitigation strategy. The increase in interest expense as a result of IFRS 16, coupled with the charge associated with the new £350 million bond have resulted in net finance costs rising to £51 million, up 49% on last year.
One of the questions you all ask, the impact of IFRS 16 is as follows: Depreciation, up £44 million; interest expenses up £5 million; other admin expenses, down £46 million.
Now the net effect of all of this is a crash -- is a minimal increase in EBIT of £2 million and a decrease in profit after tax of £3 million.
Now the tax credit of £11 million has doubled from 2018, and this is due to the release of a prior year provision relating to the sale of Australia. So adjusted basic EPS of 10.7p is not unsurprisingly down against 2018, given the fall in profit following the £2 maximum stake limit. The dividend of 8p per share reflects the guidance we gave in 2018 to have it underpinned on the dividend policy.
Moving to the divisions. We're starting with Online. Now again, these numbers are presented on a statutory basis. So Mr Green is in the 2019 numbers for 11 months of the year, but not in the 2018 comparator. I'll call out pro forma comparators as we go.
Now it's fair to say Online has had a year of transition with the acquisition of Mr Green and the establishment of our hub in Malta as well as facing into a number of regulatory changes. And in that context, the teams have delivered a good set of results, and in the UK have held their market share stable.
Sportsbook amounts wagered were down 4% year-on-year. But there's a lot going on here. In the second half, strong Q4 margin, driven primarily by football. But this impacted customer wagering levels towards the end of the year. We've also traded over the World Cup. And in the first half, we continue to have the impact of the enhanced customer due diligence measures. We also saw softness in the international markets due to regulatory impacts, such as the advertising ban in Italy, the requirement in Sweden to cease trading until a new license was granted, which we now have and the closure of Switzerland.
Despite a strong 4Q margin in the UK, gross win margin of 8% was flat year-on-year as the portfolio of countries we now operate in reduced the benefit from the UK. And this resulted in net revenue being 3% down.
Gaming net revenue is up 36% year-on-year due to the inclusion of Mr Green, and on a pro forma basis, was down 1% year-on-year. Again, due to the impact of the enhanced customer due diligence measures and those regulatory impacts that I just described. Cost of sales increased following the inclusion of Mr Green and the change in remote gaming duty in the UK, the rate going from 15% to 21% in April. This cost £13 million in the year. And the impact will annualize in Q1 2020.
Mr Green delivered £4 million of synergies and an £8 million benefit following the harmonization of accounting policies. Under our policies, depreciation associated with acquired intangible assets is treated as in adjusted items and not in underlying earnings. In spite of these benefits, operating costs increased 19%, due to inflation and the inclusion of Mr Green. Mr Green synergies will annualize at £6 million, and the accounting benefit will be maintained. This has resulted in an adjusted operating profit of £118.8 million.