Online affiliate and content marketing company Raketech has become the latest firm to allay an indifferent quarter to struggles felt in the Swedish market.
Reporting revenue for Q2 of €5.7m, a 6.1 per cent decrease from €6m, driven by the continued stabilisation period on the Swedish market with lower life-time value per player, performance for the six month to date is up 31.7 per cent to €14.4m (2018: €10.9m).
Michael Holmberg, CEO of Raketech, said of the jurisdiction: “The Swedish gaming market is still in a transition phase, and we can see that the overall market growth in Sweden has stalled.
“We generally have high traffic levels on our sites, but player values remain at the lower levels which we have noted since the beginning of the year. The operators continue to explore how to run their operations successfully in the long term, and are also affected by the lack of a common practice in assessing parts of the new gambling legislation. It is likely to become clearer later this year as several appeals will be raised in high court.
“In the long term, we expect that Sweden will have fewer licensed operators than today, and that Raketech as a partner to the largest operators will potentially play a more important role in the market.”
Adjusted operating profit for the period dropped 31 per cent to €2m (2018: €2.8m), while profit for the period increased to €1.5m, a significant increase from €200,000, due to lower financial costs and an IPO related impact of €1.4m.
The firm, whose Q2 EBITDA dropped 10.9 per cent to €2.9m (2018: €3.2m), Raketech has also lauded a duo of fresh launched during the period as it focuses on geographical expansion.
A new consumer-facing online casino product Rapidi.com was launched in the second quarter, while CasinoFever.ca, a new online casino comparison website tailored for the Canadian market, also debuted.
Holmberg commented: “2019 is the year when we build the foundation for our international expansion, and we have high ambitions for the future. We are constantly looking for new ways to use our expertise and optimise existing products in order to scale our portfolio, as well as to expand to new markets.
“We are actively looking for acquisition opportunities, and as a debt-free company we are well-positioned to acquire assets that would strengthen our operations. We are selective, but we continuously meet with interesting acquisition targets.”
Before providing an outlook for the period ahead: “In 2019, no major sporting events in par with the 2018 FIFA World Cup will take place, and with half of the year now behind us we can see that player values remain at the lower levels we noted during the first quarter.
“However, based on the development so far in the third quarter, our assessment is that player values will not decrease any further. We focus on driving traffic to the larger well established operators, with whom we have strong and successful relationships.
“Through our scalable business model, we continue to focus on profitability going forward, in combination with the before-mentioned geographical expansion and selective acquisition strategy. I look confidently towards our future and strongly believe in our long-term strategy.”
