Bingo.com has announced that it is still losing substantial amounts of money every month, despite having the best online bingo domain name in the world.
Fourth quarter results published today showed that in 2008 Bingo.com lost $1,164,801 in 2008, or just under $100,000 per month. That loss was a 19% improvement on 2007, when Bingo.com lost $1,432,343.
Fourth quarter gaming revenues were £819,953 Pounds Sterling, an increase of 60% from gaming revenue of £510,171 in the fourth quarter of 2007 and an increase of 5% from gaming revenue of £781,948 in the third quarter of 2008. The company said the increase was down to more players using the Bingo.com website.
The advertising revenue for the fourth quarter, was $41,465, a decrease from advertising revenue of $90,585 in the fourth quarter of 2007 and a decrease of 42% from advertising revenue of $72,088 in the third quarter of 2008. Bingo.com is understood to derive affiliate revenue from US customers who they will not take bingo action from but do send them on to other sites. Bingo News understands that the key affiliate sites that Bingo.com worked with had considerable payment processing issues during 2008.
Tarnie Williams, Bingo.com's chief executive, said: “The fourth quarter of 2008 was another strong quarter of growth for Bingo.com as we saw increased gaming revenues across all our products. However, like many international companies, we have been negatively affected by the dramatic volatility of the currency market, particularly the fall of the United Kingdom Pound Sterling and the strengthening of the United States Dollar in relation to other world currencies.”
“To help alleviate our future exposure to currency risk and to aid our expansion into new markets, we will shortly be implementing a multi-currency product feature to our gaming software that will allow for simultaneous gaming activity in Pounds Sterling, United States Dollars, Euros and other currencies we choose to offer. We continue to follow our business plan which has been successful to date at securing significant numbers of bingo and slots players in the United Kingdom. In addition, through leveraging our recently acquired Maltese gaming license, we are creating a number of additional language and market-specific initiatives in anticipation of launching in several new markets in 2009. The strength of our URL http://www.bingo.com continues to provide the Company with new players at low acquisition costs compared to the competition and we have increased our player base consistently each month. While there are many hurdles yet to overcome we are confident that our offering will continue at a steady rate of growth and that Bingo.com will be a major player in this highly competitive market.”
Bingo.com is expected to start advertising on UK television shortly, following their acquisition of a Malta licence, which allows them to advertise in the UK under EU laws.
Shares in Bingo.com, which trade on the highly iliquid OTC market in the United States, stand at 14 cents, valuing the company at just over $5 million. The shares hit a trading low of 4 cents in January 2008 but have recovered since then.
