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Austria – Ownership wrangles aside – CAI is back in black

By - 2 September 2016

Despite news that Austria’s competition commission has put a roadblock in front of Novomatic’s acquisition of Casinos Austria with partner Saska, the internal restructuring of subsidiary, Casinos Austria International (CAI) has resulted in an operating profit of €19m, the first since 2009.

In the first six months of 2016, CAI took a further considerable step in improving its results and was able to raise its earnings performance significantly. With revenues of €65.1m, the group posted a positive operating result of €18.9m, compared to €4.1m in the same period in 2015. This includes an extraordinary one-off effect in Hungary: after the successful renewal of the license for the very profitable casino in Sopron, a new partner was brought on board. This generated a revaluation income of €15.2m, which is offset in the financial results by a deconsolidation loss of €10.9m.

After a long period of intense restructuring and change, CAI succeeded in the first six months of 2016 in bringing its consolidated operating results back into the black for the first time since 2009. A profit of €2.77m equates to an improvement of 584.3 per cent compared to the same period in 2015 (- 573,000 euros). “The satisfying fact that our consolidated results are now also clearly in the black is the result of our successful restructuring,” said Casinos Austria Director General Karl Stoss, who played a leading role in driving the restructuring program. “I would like to thank the whole team at CAI for their outstanding commitment and dedication.”

The slight drop in revenues from 67.5 to 65.1 million euros can also be attributed to Casino Sopron, since profits from the casino in Hungary are now only shown pro rata in the “at equity” figures. Adjusted for this one-time transaction, revenues were maintained at the 2015 level.

The main drivers of the continued improvement were the operations in Switzerland (+ 0.6 million euros) and Canada (+ 0.5 million euros) as well as the VLT operations in Macedonia, which contributed first returns of 0.3 million euros. The casinos in Australia, Germany and Hungary also continued to develop very positively. All CAI operations have now been posting positive operating results since the beginning of 2014, and positive consolidated results are once again expected for the 2016 business year.

As Stoss noted: “We are expecting our best results since 2009, will be further improving on our 2015 results and will once again be generating positive consolidated results at Casinos Austria International. We now have to strengthen and build on this solid position and develop CAI further on the basis of management contracts and in cooperation with financial partners.”

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