ROME and PROVIDENCE – Lottomatica S.p.A. and wholly-owned subsidiary GTECH Corp. posted a first-half profit of $94.4 million (€68.1 million), compared with $44.2 million (€31.9 million) from Lottomatica’s Italian standalone operations in the first half of 2006, and total revenue of $1.16 billion (€835.5 million), compared with $472 million (€340.5 million) from Italian operations in the year-ago period.
That total revenue included about $565 million from six months of Italian operations, an increase of 19.8 percent, and $592 million from GTECH operations the company said. About $519 million of the total revenue came from the Lottery segment, $40 million from Gaming Solutions and $33.5 million from Commercial Services.
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“We are pleased with the results of our first semester,” W. Bruce Turner, CEO of GTECH and the Lottomatica Group, said in a statement. “The fundamentals of our business continue to experience positive growth.
“We defended existing contracts in New York, Kansas, and most recently in the United Kingdom, and we made significant progress toward achieving our strategic goals set out in our three-year plan. Our Italian operations have performed extremely well, particularly in the instants arena, and we are pleased with the recent successful launch of our Italian sports-betting business.”
Highlights of the period included a new 10-year contract with the Kansas Lottery; instant-ticket printing contracts with the Rhode Island and Connecticut lotteries; a three-year renewal of the New York Lottery’s online lottery contract; and a five-year contract by GTECH and its Spielo subsidiary to provide a new interactive gaming system to Svenska Spel in Sweden; and GTECH’s acquisition of London-based Finsoft Ltd., a provider of real-time transaction and information management systems for commercial sports betting, which closed July 2.
“With the acquisition of Finsoft, together with the operational experience we are gaining in Italy, we expect to establish a meaningful presence in the sports-betting space for commercial and government-sponsored customers,” Turner said.
Stefano Bortoli, chief financial officer of the Lottomatica Group, added: “We are also implementing an ADR program, which will allow our shares to be more accessible to U.S. investors.”
On Aug. 1, just after the close of the second quarter, GTECH and Warsaw-based private equity company Innova Capital Sp. completed their $319.5 million sale of PolCard SA – the leading debit, credit and ATM card issuer and transaction-acquisition company in Poland – to First Data International, a subsidiary of First Data Corp. GTECH had been PolCard owner since 2003, holding a 74.43 percent interest in the company, while Innova held a 25.24 percent interest; the remaining 0.3 percent was held by the Polish Bank Association, which retained its stake.
“With the sale of PolCard now complete, we remain committed to our lottery overlay model and will continue to pursue commercial services opportunities in jurisdictions where we are able to leverage our lottery presence,” Turner said at the time.
The PolCard sale was closed by a team led by Brendan Radigan and Keith Woodman of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge in Providence. Walter Reed and Greg Curtis, also of the Providence office, provided advice and corporate support during the negotiations, while Todd Peterson and Gary Anderson of the firm’s New York office advised Innova in the deal, EAPD said.
GTECH Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Lottomatica S.p.A., has provided lottery technology and services to the R.I. Lottery since 1978. CGI has been providing instant-ticket printing services to the R.I. Lottery since 1997. Lottomatica is a $1.7 billion commercial lottery operators and gaming technology and services company, with 6,000 employees in more than 50 countries. More information is available at www.gtech.com.
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