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UK – Key metrics down for Rank in ‘challenging year’

By - 20 August 2018

The Rank Group has reported a 41.4 per cent fall in profit before tax to £46.7m for the financial year ending 30 June 2018 with revenue dropping by 2.3 per cent to £738m.

Rank said it was a ‘challenging year for Grosvenor’s casinos hit by low win margin, enhanced due diligence and extreme weather hat group performance’ but that group performance was ‘in line with the board’s revised expectations.’ Revenues dropped by 6.1 per cent to £373m.

Rank said of its casinos: “Performance was materially impacted by further enhanced customer due diligence following the published advice of the UK Gambling Commission in September 2017. Consequently, customer visits declined resulting in revenue falling 9.9 per cent in H2 compared to a 2.4 per cent fall in H1.”

Its Mecca Bingo business also fell by 2.6 per cent with revenues slumping to £208.1m due to a fall in customer visits of 7.9 per cent. The group said though that Mecca’s performance was ‘above expectations, as a result of good cost control’ and said there was ‘growth from UK digital. Elsewhere it said Enracha’s performance continued to be ‘good’ whilst YoBingo was ‘performing strongly.’

It has a new leadership team in place focusing on operational improvements to drive sustained profit growth with a company-wide transformation programme currently in its development phase to identify, validate and prioritise the key initiatives to grow revenue and extract cost savings.

John O’Reilly, Chief Executive of Rank said: “We are taking steps to increase our focus on the customer, to accelerate growth in the digital business, to drive cost efficiencies across the business and to strengthen our organisational capabilities. This will be delivered within a transformational programme framework, which will ensure that we deliver a growing Rank Group that is fit for the future. Based on what I have seen and experienced, we need to be better across four key areas by 1) increasing our focus on the customer; 2) growing our digital business; 3) driving cost efficiencies; and 4) improving our organisational capabilities. Our delayed omni-channel service, Grosvenor One, will be delivered across the estate within the second half of the year. This is critical to growing both our Grosvenor venues and digital business.”

“Our aim is to deliver a responsible, growing and successful business which is responsive to changing consumer needs and therefore relevant to today’s customer,” he added. “We want to be an employer of choice to attract and retain the very best talent to ensure we have the organisational capability to drive increased loyalty from our customers and to create enhanced value from our shareholders. There is a lot to do over the coming months to get Rank fit for the future but this is exciting journey and one which the Rank team is now gearing up to deliver.”

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