Stride Gaming steps towards breakeven after mass market push

21st Nov 2018 09:10

(Sharecast News) - Stride Gaming narrowed its losses through rising revenue, though regulatory pressures and increased taxes prevented the online gambling outfit from making more significant gains.For the year ended 31 August, Stride's loss before tax decreased by 80% to £5m compared to the previous year, as net gaming revenue grew by 9% to £89m following a strong performance from the AIM traded company's proprietary platform, Real Money Gaming.RMG's net gaming revenue increased by 24% to £60.5m as it refined its customer acquisition focus towards recreational "mass market" players, thereby reducing exposure to "high-roller" customers and unprofitable "bonus hunters".However, challenges facing the company included a new point-of-consumption tax, new European data privacy regulations and tighter regulatory controls across the UK gambling industry.Stride was also fined £7.1m by the gambling commission of Great Britain for failings in its anti-money laundering and social responsibility procedures.At 31 August cash and cash equivalents stood at £29.2m, up from £26.2m, and Stride opted to distribute a special dividend of 8p per share as well as a final dividend of 1.7p, thus increasing the total dividend by 11%.Eitan Boyd, chief executive of Stride, said: "Since the start of the current financial year, trading has been satisfactory and in line with our expectations after having absorbed further fiscal and regulatory costs to reflect the changed trading environment our industry is required to operate within. We have and will continue to adjust and right-size our cost base to mitigate these pressures."Stride Gaming's shares were down 2.00% at 122.50p at 0949 GMT.