Rank Group Reports Losses Despite Strong Online Bingo Offering - 08-04-08

August 4 - The Rank Group, one of the UK's largest gambling operators, has posted a disappointing financial report for the first half of 2008. The only section to perform relatively well was Rank's online bingo and gambling products which rose by 12.2% to just over 19.3 million GBP.

Total revenue for the Rank Group was down by 9.7% to 257 million GBP compared to the same period in the previous year. Operating profits sank a dismal 39.7% to 28.9 million GBP.

The Chief Executive of the Rank Group, Ian Burke said: "During the first half of 2008, we succeeded in stabilizing the group's financial performance, following a very difficult end to last year. Although Group revenue and operating profit were substantially lower than in the first six months of last year, our performance reflects a significant improvement compared with the second half of 2007."

The growth in the Rank Group's online bingo section was due mainly to the growth at its successful meccabingo.com site that regularly attracts thousands of players. The profits garnered from the online bingo product managed to offset disappointing poker and casino results.

All in all, with discontinued operations taken into account, the Rank Group was forced to report a net loss of 50.8 million Pounds.

The number of active customers improved slightly in the Rank Group during the first half of 2008, however, with management reporting an increase of 4.1% during this period.

"Our aim is to attract more customers to our businesses as we build on service improvement, games development, capital investment and regulatory reform to create more entertaining gaming experiences," said Burke.

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