Bookies’ World Cup share win after England defeat
England may have been in a sombre mood after Wednesday night’s World Cup defeat, but the bookies were quietly celebrating their victory.
Paddy Power Betfair, William Hill and ladbrokes Coral owner GVC all saw their share prices rise after avoiding millions of pounds of payouts to punters who had a bet on gareth Southgate’s side.
ladbrokes said that Croatia’s extra-time goal ‘saved us millions upon millions’. a spokesman added: ‘If England were to have made the final and consequently won it, that would have cost UK bookies around £200m.’ William Hill said that it hit a record, excluding the grand national, of almost 8,000 bets per minute in the build-up to the match and raked in more than £6m.
Paddy Power ended the day up 2.5pc, or 205p, at 8510p while William Hill climbed 1.4pc to 300.2p and gVC by 2pc to 1106p.
ITV, along with the rest of the nation, was less grateful for England coming home. Its share price, which had risen in anticipation of a World Cup advertising boost, fell 1pc, or 1.9p, to 175.6p yesterday as goldman Sachs downgraded the broadcaster. The investment bank pulled its recommendation for ITV down from ‘buy’ to ‘neutral’, saying any advantage it would gain from the tournament was now priced in to the shares. Britain’s blue chip index, the
FTSE 100, ended the day up 0.78pc, or 59.37 points, at 7651.33 as further gains at Sky helped to lift it.
FTSE 250 outsourcer Capita, which has been compared to bust competitor Carillion due to its weighty debt piles, saw its shares rise as it picked up more vital work. The company, which collects the london congestion charge and the BBC licence fee, was chosen to manage the administration of all primary school national curriculum assessments.
Winning the six-year contract worth £ 109m helped Capita’s shares climb 4.9pc, or 8p, to 169.1p. Investors were also heartened by the sale of its parking management business, Parkingeye, for £235m to investment bank Macquarie and private equity firm MMl Capital.
Jon lewis, Capita’s chief executive, said it was part of a strategy to simplify and strengthen the business. He said Capita now expected to raise more than £400m from selling non-key businesses in 2018, ‘well ahead of our target of £300m’.
Capita’s smaller peer Interserve also won a £35m contract yesterday, although its announcement nevertheless came ahead of a 2.9pc fall in shares to 60.2p. The five-year deal is to deliver services such as catering and cleaning to the 450-bed nHS King george Hospital in north-east london.
aIM-listed Caledonia Mining was also struggling after a fatal accident at its Blanket Mine in Zimbabwe. Steve Curtis, chief executive of the gold mining firm, said: ‘This is a very disappointing setback to our efforts to improve safety at Blanket which has been a key focus area for the business in 2018.’ Investors showed displeasure at the safety breach as shares fell 5.1pc, or 33p, to 600p. Shareholders in mining giant
Glencore, meanwhile, seemed less perturbed that heavyweight law firm Quinn Emanuel is putting together a case to sue the business. The firm wants shareholders to join a class action against glencore to claim for losses suffered when its shares crashed last week, after the US department of Justice announced a corruption investigation into the company.
glencore’s shares ended yesterday up 0.9pc, or 2.85p, at 314p.
IT firm Computacenter meanwhile gave an unscheduled market update, announcing ‘considerable progress’ on profitability. Shares shot up 9.3pc, or 128p, to 1502p.