William Hill shares dive 11% on revenue alert

(Close): William Hill shares closed down more than 11% after the bookie cautioned on revenues.

It stated online trading had been hit by tougher policy and "the worst Cheltenham leads to current history".

It now anticipates full-year operating profit to be in between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, down from ₤ 291.4 m in 2015. As a result, the FTSE 250 company saw its shares drop nearly 40p to 331p.

However, the benchmark FTSE 100 ended flat, up 6.4 points at 6199.1.

Top riser on the FTSE 100 was B&Q owner Kingfisher. Its shares ended up 6% regardless of reporting a 20% drop in full-year profits to ₤ 512m.

However, when restructuring costs were stripped out, underlying revenues were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.

William Hill stated there were 2 main factors behind the weaker-than-expected performance from its online service.

It said it had actually seen "an acceleration in the variety of time-outs and automated self-exclusions over recent weeks", steps which permit punters to halt betting with a bookie.

William Hill stated that while the pattern was "still developing, we approximate that, must these trends continue around present levels, the consequent lower earnings will reduce online's earnings by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its revenue margins were lower than anticipated since of European football outcomes and recently's Cheltenham horseracing festival, where bookies were struck by large a variety of favourites winning races.

William Hill stated that regardless of its online issues, the wider group continued "to trade well" and remained in line with expectations.

The company likewise said it was in "sophisticated conversations" to buy Openbet, a gaming software application company.

Sterling weak

Elsewhere on the London market, shares in Sports Direct were having another bad day, down an even more 5.6% after dropping about 10% on Tuesday.

Earlier the seller had actually released a statement saying that it anticipated full-year underlying incomes to be "at or around the bottom" of a previously approximated range. The declaration was issued following remarks that creator Mike Ashley made to the Times newspaper on Tuesday.

On the currency markets, the pound remained weak after having actually fallen dramatically on Tuesday in the wake of the fear attacks in Brussels, which were viewed as increasing the probability of the UK ballot to leave the EU.

On Wednesday, sterling fell practically 1% versus the dollar to $1.4087. Against the euro, it lost 0.4% to EUR1.2623.