William Hill shares dive 11% on earnings alert

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

It stated online trading had actually been struck by harder guideline and "the worst Cheltenham leads to current history".

It now anticipates full-year operating revenue to be in between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, down from ₤ 291.4 m last year. As an outcome, 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 revenues to ₤ 512m.

However, when reorganizing expenses were removed out, underlying revenues were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.

William Hill said there were 2 primary factors behind the weaker-than-expected efficiency from its online business.

It said it had actually seen "an acceleration in the number of time-outs and automatic self-exclusions over current weeks", steps which allow punters to halt gambling with a bookie.

William Hill said that while the yohaig code pattern was "still progressing, we estimate that, must these patterns persist around existing levels, the following lower incomes will reduce online's revenues by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its profit margins were lower than anticipated since of European football outcomes and last week's Cheltenham horseracing celebration, where bookies were hit by large a variety of favourites winning races.

William Hill said that despite its online problems, the broader group continued "to trade well" and was in line with expectations.

The business likewise stated it remained in "advanced conversations" to invest in Openbet, a gaming software firm.

Sterling weak

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

Earlier the merchant had released a statement stating that it anticipated full-year underlying revenues to be "at or around the yohaig code bottom" of a previously approximated variety. The statement was provided following remarks that founder Mike Ashley made to the Times newspaper on Tuesday.

On the currency markets, the pound remained weak after having actually fallen greatly on Tuesday in the wake of the horror attacks in Brussels, which were viewed as increasing the possibility of the yohaig code UK ballot to leave the EU.

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