Cirsa Gaming hails first-half performance

Barcelona-based Cirsa Gaming stated that it saw its ‘best ever results’ for the second quarter while announcing that its first-half 2012 operating income grew by 4.7 % year-on-year to 897.6 million euros.

June saw Cirsa Gaming become the first local operator to be licensed to offer legal online gaming in Spain through its Cirsa.es sportsbetting, casino, poker and bingo domain and the firm declared that its overall earnings for the first six months of 2012 hit 449.9 million euros, which represented a rise of some 7.3 percent over the same period last year. It also saw its second quarter operating profit achieve the record-high of 80.6 million euros and surpass the same period last year by 12.7 percent.

“Twenty-six consecutive quarters of growth have exceeded all market expectations and can be put down to the correct use of development strategies for each geographic region, generally good business performance in Latin America and the correct execution of a variety of actions and programmes, which have generated a substantial overall improvement in Spanish business activities despite the current economic climate,” read a statement from Cirsa Gaming.

“Despite the current economic downturn in Spain and the outlook for the short and medium terms, Cirsa Gaming was able to hit its business targets for the second half of the year thanks to the commitment and dedication of the whole team, the efficient implementation of operational plans in Spain, the favourable economic evolution of Latin American markets and the growth in activities in Italy.”

Cirsa Gaming employs some 16,000 people at 114 traditional and electronic casinos, 79 bingo halls and 207 sportsbetting outlets and also operates over 38,600 slot machines alongside 1,980 lottery terminals and 2,786 video lottery terminals in Spain, Italy and Latin America.

“The efficient execution of operational plans by the entire team at Cirsa Gaming has reaffirmed that the strategy of geographic and business diversification is still providing the results we expected even in an environment as complex as the one we have now,” said Joaquim Agut, CEO for Cirsa.