The parent company of PokerStars, Amaya Inc., held its Q3 earnings call on Tuesday and we learned a few new details about PokerStars and its upcoming launch in New Jersey.
Unfortunately the news was not all good for the company as it was forced to cut expected earnings forecast for 2015 and the cut forced a stiff drop in stock prices.
Amaya Cuts Earnings Forecast - Stock Down over 60%
The big shocker during Tuesday's earnings call was the announcement that projected earnings will only be between $1.28 billion and $1.33 billion. The company initially projected earnings of $1.45 and $1.56 billion for the year.
Part of this expectation was due to the strengthening of the U.S. dollar.
According to CEO David Baazov, “The general strengthening of the U.S. dollar relative to certain foreign currencies, primarily the euro, has resulted in an approximate 19 per cent decline in the purchasing power of our customer base and has had a significant negative impact on our revenues, higher than we previously anticipated.”
Since the announcement shares of Amaya have plummeted. At the end of trading on Monday Amaya was trading at $23.56.
The stock closed on Wednesday at 14.80, a 62.81% drop.
PokerStars NJ Launch Date Adjusted- ROW Has 71% of Online Poker Traffic
When the NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement approved PokerStars for a license many figured that it would launch by the end of 2015.
After the DGE released a list of conditions that the company must comply with in order to operate in NJ, we assumed it would launch in January 2016.
According to the conference call, we may be waiting a bit longer. Baazov noted that the launch of PokerStars NJ would occur during the "first half of 2016."
This opens the door wide and means it could be spring or even summer before we see the site launch. We did learn another interesting stat during the call that could apply to NJ once launched.
According to data compiled by Amaya, PokerStars and Full Tilt comprise approximately 71% of online poker traffic in the world in 2015. PokerStars has around 68% of that traffic with Full Tilt bringing in the rest.
The reason for this increase in market share was the popular Spin & Go tournaments that can now pay up to $1 million for first place depending on stakes. Tournament traffic increased by around 40% on PokerStars from Q3 2014 to Q3 2015.
PokerStars is felt to have a monopoly on online poker sites and this goes to fuel those accusations.