Online casino 888.com considers UK float

Source Reuters.co.uk

Online casino 888.com is looking at joining the ranks of firms benefiting from a boom in Internet poker by listing this year with a valuation of about $1.6 billion (830 million pounds), the company's chief executive told Reuters.

Cassava Enterprises, the owner of 888.com and one of the world's biggest Internet gambling groups, has hired Credit Suisse First Boston to prepare the flotation, expected in the second half of this year.

The logic for London I think is that the business is much more institutionally accepted in the UK than anywhere else and therefore the value should be higher," he added.

London is fast becoming the de facto listing centre for Internet gambling companies, partly because online gaming is strictly regulated in the United States but welcomed in Britain, even though most players are in the States.

Anderson said he was not surprised by the level of institutional investor, shareholder and client interest in online gambling businesses.

Compared to normal businesses, I have no distribution costs, no production costs, no logistical problems, no storage costs, no stock costs.

Rapid industry expansion, helped by better broadband access and the convenience of playing at home, has fuelled revenue growth at the companies hosting the sites.

The online poker market is probably growing at over 100 percent a year," said Matthew Gerard, analyst at Investec Securities.

A recent report by Edison Investment Research and Durlacher estimated online gambling revenue -- effectively the amount lost by gamblers -- exceeded $8 billion in 2004, up 37 percent from a year earlier.