Despite the current recession continuing to affect everyone’s finances, ATG has had a good first half of the year.

The net gaming revenues were SEK 2.7 billion and they have grown by six percent, which means the highest ever for the interim year, says ATG’s CFO Lotta Nilsson Viitala.

Net gaming revenue includes the horse, sports and casino gaming areas in both Sweden and Denmark.

Divided by gaming area, horse betting had growth of six percent, sports betting two percent and casino 15 percent.

We have 1.4 million active customers. The increase in net gaming revenue for casinos is largely due to the increase in the number of casino customers. Our goal is to be a slightly nicer casino and it is gratifying that more and more people are discovering that, says Lotta Nilsson Viitala.

ATG® wants to clarify the ongoing work with gambling responsibility and therefore reports the proportion of green customers and proportion of green turnover based on self-tests and actual gambling behaviour. Currently, 204,000 customers have completed a self-test and 88 percent are green in their gambling. The share of green turnover amounts to 80 percent.

The group’s costs including gambling tax were 2.2 billion, an increase of three percent, or SEK 65 million.

The gambling tax is ATG’s highest cost item. Next comes the purchase of equestrian information and rights from Swedish Trotting and Swedish Gallop. Both of these costs follow the income, says Lotta Nilsson Viitala.

The group’s operating profit was SEK 841 million, an increase of 13 percent. The improvement in the result is an effect of growth and cost control, including a completed change of consultants that made the cost pool more efficient overall.

As for the future, we note that from July 1 the gaming tax has increased from 18 to 22 percent of net gaming revenue, something that will negatively affect costs and thus the result going forward.