INTRALOT Group today announces its financial results for the nine-month period ending September 30th 2009, prepared in accordance with IFRS.

Consolidated Revenues for the period reached €680.6m. EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization) reached €131.0m(€161.8m in 9M08). Earnings Before Taxes (EBT) were €97.3m (€144.9m in 9M08). Earnings after Taxes and after minorities (EAT-am) were €57.8m (€77.1m in 9M08).

In the 3Q09 consolidated revenues were €192.6m, EBITDA reached €39.9m, EBT were €22.7m, while EAT-am reached €15.8m.

Concerning the parent company, revenues reached €118.2m in 9M09. EBITDA were €23.5m. Earnings After Taxes (EAT) reached €15.3m in 9M09.

Commenting on 9M09 results INTRALOT Group CEO, Mr. Constantinos Antonopoulos, noted: “INTRALOT’s Q309 financial results show a stabilization compared to Q308: EBITDA  in the quarter increased by more than 13.5% compared the corresponding quarter of 2008, a large improvement over the 6M 2009 decrease of 28%. Net profits of Q3-2009 had a minor contraction of 6%, but were improved over the 6M 2009 decrease of 30%. EBITDA improvement was larger than that of the Net profits mainly due to higher depreciation charges.

Amidst this volatile environment, the Company managed to increase its margins on an EBITDA basis (3Q: 20.8% vs. 18.6% in 6M09) and stabilize on a Net profit basis, which led to the improvement of the company’s financials despite top line softness. The top line was affected by a continuing sluggish global economy, FX impact, which is less severe than in the previous quarters, the outset of the new Turkish betting contract in March this year, and an unfavourable comparison with the previous year where the Euro Championship took place.

From a balance sheet point of view, net debt for the Group increased slightly by 7m in the quarter, taking also into consideration the capex for major projects like Arkansas. This is a large improvement compared to the previous quarters, where we experienced increases of net debt between 20-30m euro per quarter. 

Regarding recent developments, the Company successfully launched operations in the state of Arkansas, in the US, setting up a totally new lottery in a record 45 days. The sales of this project as of today have surpassed our expectations.

Moreover, the Company has entered into an agreement with Cogetech to jointly exploit the lucrative video-lottery market in Italy and has signed a contract with Loteria Concepcion in Chile. INTRALOT is also closely monitoring opportunities, such as the outsourcing of the operation of the Illinois Lottery and the upcoming liberalization of the online gaming market in France, among others.

Finally, we believe that as long as the global economic crisis continues to prevail it could cause volatility to our financials in the short term for market and/or regulatory reasons. However, we believe that this crisis coupled with Governments’ need to finance their growing budget deficits will also bring important opportunities to our sector in the short to mid-term. We maintain our focus on all gaming sectors and are very positive of our new initiative, INTRALOT Interactive (?2).”