“We absolutely expect the acquisition of VGT to be transformational for our business”

Aristocrat will buy VGT for US$ 1.28 billion. How important is VGT for the North American market and what does this purchase represent for Aristocrat?
Once approved by regulators, we absolutely expect the acquisition of VGT to be transformational for our business. Clearly VGT is a leader in class II tribal gaming, which is a very important segment of the overall market in the US.  

Significantly, VGT is a 100% recurring revenue business, and increasing our share of US gaming operations has been Aristocrat's largest single value opportunity and key strategic goal over the course of our turnaround.  So this transaction is squarely in our strategic sweet spot.  

The percentage of our revenue that is recurring in nature will increase from around 15% today to approximately 35% on a combined business basis, and our EBITDA will increase from around US$ 188M to US$ 355M.  This directly reflects a more than three-fold increase in our gaming operations installed base from around 8,200 units today, to over 28,000 post-acquisition.

What is the current situation of Aristocrat in the US and what are its medium and long-term goals in the country?
Obviously I'm not going to provide a trading update, but in terms of our Americas business, we have said that it's poised for further growth with the benefit of an expanded and increasingly competitive game portfolio targeted at high value segments.  Aristocrat has gained a significant share in North American gaming operations in recent years and is trending higher in outright sales segments as well.  

We expect that our ‘content led’ strategy will continue to drive progress not only in our North American business but across other key markets and segments also.

Will the agreement help boost other areas of the world as well?
Obviously there are class II markets in other parts of the world, but we're not calling out any expectations with respect to these markets at this stage.  We believe there is plenty of scope to drive growth across the North American footprint of the combined business and we will be focusing on these opportunities as our top priority.