With a hoped for merger with 888 Holdings and William Hill officially dead, Rank group has announced it is looking for new acquisitions.
Rank and 888 Holdings joined forces to make a $4 billion bid for the British bookmaker and create a gambling giant, but William Hill officials rejected the bid as undervalued. The two companies then announced that they will make no further efforts to merge with William Hill.
“We strongly believe that the transaction would have created significant value for all three sets of shareholders,” said Henry Birch, CEO of Rank. “We and 888 are grateful for the shareholder support we have received throughout this process.”
Rank then announced it is still seeking potential merger and takeover targets and is looking to improve its digital offerings.
“The company has been looking at M&A for the last 18 months and continues to do so and there is definitely a focus on the digital arena for that,” he told Reuters.
The statement came as Rank announced full-year results that were slightly behind analysts’ projections. Revenues in the twelve months to June 30 increased 2 percent to £753m, just short of a £757m analyst projection according to Bloomberg News.
Birch said he was “pleased” with the “solid set of results,” adding that “the board continues to look to the future with confidence.”
888 Holdings’ CEO, Itai Frieberger also said in a statement that his company felt a deal with William Hill would have been beneficial for all three companies, but is now ready to move on.
“We are disappointed that the board of William Hill did not share our vision of the combined businesses,” he said. “We believe that there was compelling industrial logic for the combination of these highly complementary businesses, which in our view would have brought scale, diversification, and strong revenue and cost synergies, from which all shareholders would have benefitted.”
Meanwhile, speculation continued in the British press that William Hill could see another takeover attempt. Among the companies rumored to be interested in the bookmaker are Australian gambling companies Tabcorp and Tatts Group and also UK-based Skybet.
William Hill also announced that it expects strong revenue for the year so far and estimated its profits would be about 280 million pounds for the year.
“We will continue to focus our efforts on our strategy to deliver value for shareholders,” William Hill Chairman Gareth Davis said in a statement. “The team has a clear plan to grow by diversifying digitally and internationally.”
