Amaya Inc. will ask shareholders to approve changing the group’s name to The Stars Group Inc. and also relocate from Montreal to Toronto.
The move is considered an effort to rebrand the company after founder David Baazov stepped down from the company while facing insider trading charges over the company’s purchase of PokerStars.
Rafi Ashkenazi, chief executive officer, announced that Amaya would submit the planned changes to shareholders to better reflect the company’s current trajectory.
“Our company has experienced incredible growth and change over the past years. We have divested the entirely of our B2B businesses, and today we are a pure play consumer-facing operator with PokerStars as our primary brand,” Ashkenazi said in a press statement. “We have decided to change the name of our corporation from Amaya to The Stars Group, Inc. We intend to ask our shareholders to improve this name change at our upcoming annual meeting.”
Shareholders will also be asked to approve a relocation of Amaya’s head corporate office from Montreal to Toronto.
Amaya just announced strong quarterly results that included a 22 percent year-over-year increase in adjusted EBITDA and a 10 percent revenue increase.
“We continued our momentum in the first quarter as we execute on our strategy and reinforce the foundation for sustainable and diversified revenue growth, including through the strengthening of our core management team and operations,” Ashkenazi said. “Our company also continues to evolve through corporate initiatives to deliver the greatest value for our shareholders.”
Total revenues were up from $288 million in the prior year period to $317 million. Revenues from online poker were flat when adjusted for foreign exchange rates, but online casino and sportsbook offerings generated $87 million – up 44 percent year-over-year according to a report on cdcgamingreports.
In another matter, Amaya may be preparing to exit the Australian market as early as July as that country is moving towards new online gambling rules that do not specifically make online poker legal. Forms of gambling not mentioned in the rules—such as online casino and poker games—would essentially be illegal as there would be no mechanism to have them licensed in Australia.
“If the current proposed legislation is enacted in Australia, we intend to block players in that market,” the company’s chief financial officer Daniel Sebag said in Amaya’s first quarter earnings call. “We currently estimate that the proposed legislation could be considered in late May, and we would block players in that market approximately 30 days thereafter.”
