Ladbrokes Coral serves up solid 2016 despite adverse December closing

Issuing its first trading statement this morning as Ladbrokes Coral Plc, the FTSE newcomer stated that full-year operating profits would be ‘in-line with its expectations’ of £275-285 million.

Breaking down its profits target, Ladbrokes standalone operations are expected to generate circa £101 million, with Coral Group assets contributing expected corporate profits of £179 million.

As anticipated Ladbrokes Coral governance detailed that the firm’s combined performance had been impacted by poor sporting results (football and racing) recorded in December 2016.

Despite an adverse closing to 2016, Ladbrokes Coral detailed that individual company core metrics were consistently up throughout the year, with governance highlighting the continued digital growth of Ladbrokes and Coral assets.

Commenting on the trading update Ladbrokes Coral CEO Jim Mullen stated;

“The last quarter of 2016 was one of significant activity with the completion of the merger, good progress on integration along with the necessary shop disposals and a busy sporting schedule.  While the sporting gods did not look favourably on us in the period, it is pleasing to report that the business continued to perform well and that our full year numbers will be in-line with expectations.

“It has been an encouraging start to the life of Ladbrokes Coral Group plc. Good progress is being made on all the key integration workstreams.  We saw continued growth in our Digital division with Australia going from strength to strength and further growth in multi-channel sign ups.  We remain confident in our plans for 2017 and on delivering the opportunities identified in the merger.”

Further to its trading statement, Ladbrokes Coral announced that it would publish individual ‘historic proforma numbers’ this February. The company seeks to publish its full-year 2016 results on 28 March 2017