New look Intralot focuses on core business recovery

Intralot SPA has revitalised its strategic mandate to concentrate on the recovery of core business segments having stripped all non-essential assets from its business structure.

The Athens-listed technology group detailed that it has completed a ‘year of transformations’ under the guidance of company founder Sokratis Kokkalis, publishing its full-year 2019 results.

Tough 2019 trading saw Intralot’s headline ‘licensed operations’ unit record a 10% decline in revenues to €443 million (FY2018: €507m) impacted by Bulgarian Eurobet headwinds and severe Argentine currency declines.

Further 2019 woes saw Intralot begin to disband its Turkish INTELTEK unit, having failed to secure the renewal of its sports betting concession with the Turkish government.

Publishing results with little to cheer, Intralot governance highlighted US technology and support service contracts as the only area of growth for the company.

Intralot US technology sales grew by €20 million, with the group citing strong start to its new Illinois Camelot lottery contract combined with further equipment sales agreed with Arkansas.

Nevertheless, US advancements could not hide group-wide declines as Intralot recorded a 25% decline in EBITDA to €88 million (FY2018: €118m).

Absorbing significant Q4 transformative costs (-€64m) related to discontinued assets, licences and impairment charges, Intralot widened group losses to -€71 million (FY2018: -€15m).

Closing its 2019 accounts, Sokratis Kokkalis officially presented Christos Dimitriadis as new Group CEO, leading a new Intralot executive leadership team.

Dimitriadis said of his first CEO statement: “We have also successfully implemented a cost-saving program at HQ resulting in €11m of savings that have partly offset adverse developments related to the loss of the Turkish land-based sports betting contract, the negative impact of the regulatory changes in online betting in Turkey and one-time cost overruns.

“Looking into the future and as we go through the 4th industrial revolution, we are prepared to capitalize on our recent investments in building state-of-the-art products and in achieving economies of scale. The transformative power of our technology will play a key role in business innovation and value creation, together with an even more customer-centric new organizational structure.”