No More GVC Shares to Be Sold During Alexander's Spell in the Company, Says CEO

GVC Holdings’ Chief Executive Officer, Kenneth Alexander, has said that there will be no more selling of the company’s shares as long as he is still in this role.

The gambling giant’s number one man has been given 453,625 additional shares in a firm that owns brands such as Ladbrokes Coral and bwin. This was undertaken on March 27th as a part of the brand’s incentive and bonus scheme…

…out of those, 344,332 were reserved for the incentive plan, while 109,293 went directly to deferred bonuses. Another batch of 197,044 incentive plan shares was given to Chief Financial Officer, Rob Wood.

A Long-Term Commitment

Alexander gave a brief statement regarding his future with the company, hinting at the course of business action it would be taking with him firmly at the helm:

“I remain totally committed to GVC for the long-term, and as such I will not sell any further shares in GVC while I am CEO. We have had an excellent start to the year and I look forward to updating on progress in our Q1 trading update on April 5, 2019 and at the Capital Markets Day on May 16, 2019.”

He offloaded $18 million worth of shares on March 8th…

…and this sale hit the company’s share price and impacted its values that dropped as much as 14% in only one day. This was the biggest drop in nine years, which – consequently – brought down the company’s price to its lowest point since July 2016.

Benefits of a Well-Timed Comment

Almost immediately after Alexander’s comment about his future and the fact that no more company’s shares will be sold, the effect of his words could be felt on the stock exchange…

…where the price of the said shares got a major boost: they closed up almost 5.5% to total of 539.5 pence per share on March 28th.

The selling of Alexander’s share came soon after the company publicly revealed last year’s impressive financial results during which GVC’s income rose to £3 billion, chiefly owing to the acquisition of Ladbrokes Coral.

A Deal With Playtech

In early March, is was announced that GVC has formed a strategic alliance with game developer, Playtech…

…under whose there will be a “full-scale inclusion of betting products onto online casinos such as BetBoo, CasinoClub, Ladbrokes, bwin” and several others.

A similar major deal was struck in January with Yggdrasil, whose games will be made available on the Gala brand as well. In the words of their CEO, Fredrik Elmqvist…

…this agreement is significant for the company in a sense that it will take on some of the biggest names in the European gaming industry.

Source:

“GVC CEO commits to no further share sales”, igamingbusiness.com, March 28, 2019.