Announcing its financial results for the period, the company reported Q4 revenues of $360.2m, rising from the $310.2m reported during the same period of 2016, while net earnings have grown more modestly by 4.7% during the period, rising to $47.1m.
The company’s yearly growth figures make for impressive reading with net earnings growing 91.30% to $259.2m during 2017 and revenues topping $1.3bn.
Drilling down into individual business segments real-money online poker revenues during Q4 2017 amounted to, $234.4m, increasing 7.9% year-over-year. During the entirety of 2017, online poker revenues rose 3.7% year-over-year to $877.3m.
Real-money online casino and sportsbook were the big winners for Stars Group, generating combined revenues for the quarter of $112.5m, or an increase of approximately 40.3% year-over-year. At a full-year level, online casino and sportsbook generated $384m for the business, an increase of approximately 45.4% year-over-year.
In a statement announcing the results, Rafi Ashkenazi, Stars Group CEO, said: “During the year, we strengthened our core senior management team, delivered another year of record revenues, significantly deleveraged and continued to strengthen our balance sheet, all while investing in marketing, growth initiatives and technology infrastructure to support the long-term growth of our business”
“We maintained our global dominance in online poker, with the business experiencing year-over-year growth in that vertical, our online casino has already become one of the largest in the world since its launch in 2014, and our emerging online sportsbook not only recorded meaningful growth in turnover and revenues, but started to become a secondary customer acquisition channel.”
Late last month the company agreed a $117.7m deal to acquire a 62% equity interest in Australian sports betting operator, CrownBet Holdings Pty Limited, in a deal that will make Stars the majority owner of the business.
Looking ahead to Stars Group’s plans for 2018, Ashkenazi added: “In 2018, we are continuing to execute on our growth initiatives, including through geographic expansion, inorganic growth, and improving our focus on and understanding of our customers, and we are beginning to realize our goal of becoming the world’s favourite iGaming destination.”
