3rd Q 2012 Results

Their revenue is down about 5% from the corresponding quarter last year, but it's possible this is only owing to a pullback in territories like Spain and Germany where they've run into regulatory difficulties.

Of the commission they get, only 17.6% or so of this is converted to profit. Their statement has no indication of costs or where the rest of it goes. The City (which has pretty much entirely lost interest in the company) wd want something like a 20% conversion rate or profit margin on revenues to regard a company of this kind as being run efficiently. They have to batten down on headcount to cut costs.

The areas where the company has been active, where it sees growth and a future role for itself, are mobile and games. The arcade now has a representative on the board; and the director for sports is an investment banker with no bookmaking or business-building background. The report is big on the fact that mobile accounted for 20% of 'commissions' in the quarter.

My inference is that there is a real danger for them that they will lose to the exchange space to Laddies/****, because they don't care about it in the way the founders did--there's no one on the board or at a slightly lower level that views betting from the perspective of the small-time winning punter. Instead they look at it in a bean-counting way, and in that spirit horse racing is a less desirable product (with all the complications of the levy and regulation) than the arcade. Certainly from that point of view its return characteristics are less stable and company-friendly.

All the people with energy in the company who believe in something seem to be doing something with mobile. Do they really see a future where everyone bets at football matches? Isn't there someone they can dredge up from the founders' era who cares about the idea of the exchange, who can address its original deficiencies (that efficient play makes the least for the company) in a way that benefits BF but is invisible to most punters? Some way, that is, that's not insanely complicated and isn't a frank injustice, like the pc....

Yep, the pc hits the smaller guy way too hard.  I keep banging on about it but they need to introduce a personal allowance. 

The 50% charge is putting too much of a dent in what I do and also taken away a lot of enjoyment from working on here.  I've put some pennies up on BDaq on a few occasions during the last month and was surprised to be matched, so am about to become more involved over there.