6. Kindred Group (2017)
Welcome to the EGR Power 50 rankings of the online gambling industry’s most powerful operators
Kindred Group can consider itself unlucky not to have moved up the Power 50 leaderboard this year. However, the completion of the landmark merger between UK heavyweights Ladbrokes and Gala Coral last year prevents it from climbing the rankings, despite the company putting in another impressive shift during the past year.
The Stockholm-listed operator’s numbers speak for themselves. In July, Kindred reported H1 2017 revenues of £319.8m, a substantial increase on the £249m it recorded the previous year, while underlying EBITDA increased from £50.5m to £63.7m. These figures mean the firm continues to comfortably outperform the wider market – although its numbers were buoyed to a certain extent by the weakness of pound sterling.
But what’s more impressive is how the growth is spread across the group. Kindred’s sports betting and casino businesses, for example, increased revenues by 27% and 28% respectively, and while poker accounts for a smaller part of overall revenues, revenues from the vertical were still up 31%. Looking at Kindred’s international reach, revenues from the Nordics were up 27% and up 35% from Western Europe.
And while the operator’s organic growth is still strong, acquisitions have played a key part in Kindred’s growth over the last 12 months. Since last year’s Power 50, the firm completed its largest transaction to-date after finalising a £176m deal for 32Red – operator which in 2016 posted net revenue of £62.3m and EBITDA of £10.6m
The deal seems a good fit for the group. It goes with Kindred’s history of completing acquisitions of small- to mid-tier businesses in regulated markets, and also goes with its strategy of becoming a multi-brand operator in light of its rebrand from Unibet Group last year. More importantly, 32Red provides Kindred with a greater slice of the UK market.
However, Kindred still has a long way to go before it becomes a major player in the UK, where it recently decided to shelve the Stan James brand. But given its willingness to get involved in M&A and a strong proprietary technology legacy, you wouldn’t want to bet against it making a big splash in the world’s biggest regulated market soon.