FATH, the company's ambitions have to be bigger than doing well in a relatively small niche in their home market and for their 'home' sport of horse racing.

This is not least because racing is becoming less and less popular as a betting medium, esp. among young people.

As I see it and pushing out the boat slightly, the scope for international expansion for bf lies not so much as being regulated as an independent provider in a succession of slightly different markets (each w/ diff. rules and fiscal regimes, catering to which all will eats up time and resources) as in partnering existing monopolies.

In all communications (w/ the City, with regulators, governments, customers etc.) the emphasis shd be on offering market-efficient prices, or in other words the best prices for price-takers.

Thus bf wd say to the City, why shd an alternative firm grow rather than us, when we provide better prices? And they wd say to a jurisdiction where betting is offered through a monopoly, why are you going to lose any betting revenue to illegal bookies when their price is worse than what you cd offer through us?

This wd be my vision for the company, and I wd stress that it looks 10-15 years into the future.

It's been blocked so far because of resistance among certain jurisdictions, who have thought that any competition is nothing but a drain on their own business, and by the establishments esp. of horse racing, who have understood the funding mechanism (that keeps them all enjoying a good living) as punters losing the most money possible. When you have sports standing on their own two feet more, or just underwritten by rich enthusiasts, becoming receptive to a growth and low-margin model, you are going to have a much better environment for making exchanges the default mode for setting odds.

I wd also revise the odds ladder in two-team sports to give bf more of a chance of offering best prices and offer better commission deals to non-traders (not clear how this cd be done, but e.g. through having diff. comm. rates for single bets within 10-15 min. periods).

My remark about having a small team at the top had to do w/ having e.g. a technical director who understood the question driving his work as 'how can we grow our revenues?', not e.g. 'how can we have a system that conceptualises increasing a customer's withdrawal limit as an event, like a matched bet is an event?' You want as few 'cowboys' as poss. for this and they all need to meet and report to one respected leader.

nairda, I doubt it does; and I also think some of the company's recent measures have been short-term and designed to improve its figs. for the benefit of managers and early investors realising the value of their contributions.

When it comes to working out the cost of attracting new customers, securing existing customers and growing their bet-sizes, retaining wavering customers etc., we are all, including the company, in the realms of speculation.

The factors to be considered involve regulatory change, taxation, the prices at which bf layers and MMs can operate, the popularity of sports etc.

But I'm pretty sure than 40% is pimping up some future projections.

nairda
Haven't they already publicly declared that they intend to spend circa 50million in buying back shares ?
So what's the point of your post ?

Thanks nairda, amazing scenes!

Don't really see what's amazing about it tbh .
Just Messrs Black and Wray protecting their long term interests.
To be entirely expected perhaps ?.

They just can't do anything right eh askari ?

They are buying back the shares desperately trying to keep the share price up, and to satisfy the corporate investors.

In the end all the funds who dived into the shares during the IPO are pretty much **** and REALLY STUPID, like most wanne-be-investment bankers/ fund manangers.

They bought pretty much a tiny "blue" chip company (slow, but more or less steady growth) for the price of a dotcom or biotech company with a more or less promosing meds-portfolio.

The share price won't drop to zero like some morons suggest on here. It will move south until it more or less reflects the true earnings perspectives of bf

I can't quite work out whether Lori is short and looking for the best exit price, or whether he has no position and is looking for the best entry price.
Or perhaps more likely he is just indulging in a bit of petty minded schadenfreude ?.

Not me.
Don't have a schadenfreude bone in my body.
My wife is German she has enough for both of us.

It was £13*