Rank Group swung to a pretax loss for fiscal 2023 after a significant rise in cost of sales and impairment charges, though revenue rose.

The gambling group which houses the Grosvenor casino and Mecca bingo brands among its portfolio–reported a pretax loss for the year ended June 30 of 122.7 million pounds ($156.2 million), compared with a restated pretax profit of GBP73.0 million a year earlier. It reported GBP118.9 million of impairment charges due to a lower-than-expected performance during the year.

Underlying operating profit one of the company’s preferred metrics, was in line with guidance at GBP20.3 million, but down on last year’s GBP42.5 million. The company said this predominantly reflected underlying cost inflation. Revenue was GBP681.9 million compared with GBP644.0 million.

John O’Reilly, Chief Executive of The Rank Group Plc said: “The return of customers to our Grosvenor and Mecca venues continues to pick up and our second half numbers give cause for optimism after a very challenging couple of years. During that time, our UK venues have faced a surge in energy costs, high wage inflation, a tightening in the regulatory environment, the slow return of overseas visitors to London’s casinos and the more general pressures on the consumer’s discretionary expenditure. However, energy costs have stabilised, inflation appears to now be easing, customers continue to slowly return to both our Grosvenor and our Mecca venues and we now expect to deliver good levels of revenue and profit growth.

Our Digital business is performing strongly, and we have a strong pipeline of customer facing developments in both our UK and Spanish brands to drive revenue and profit growth. We are very focused on delivering a market leading cross-channel experience for our Grosvenor and Mecca customers with several key developments landing during this new financial year.

The UK Government’s white paper on gambling reform sets out a number of important public policies which will enable the land-based bingo and casino sectors to modernise the customer proposition to better meet the needs of today’s consumers. The delivery of the secondary legislation to enable these reforms cannot come soon enough and we are well advanced with plans to maximise these opportunities.

I am hugely grateful to my colleagues across the Group who continue to excite, entertain and protect their customers, provide support to their local communities and contribute fully to the progress we are making in the transformation of Rank.”