William Hill shares dive 11% on revenue alert

(Close): William Hill shares shut down more than 11% after the bookmaker alerted on profits.

It stated online trading had actually been struck by harder guideline and "the worst Cheltenham results in current history".

It now anticipates full-year operating earnings to be between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, below ₤ 291.4 m in 2015. As an outcome, the FTSE 250 business saw its shares drop almost 40p to 331p.

However, the benchmark FTSE 100 ended flat, up 6.4 points at 6199.1.

Top riser on the FTSE 100 was B&Q owner Kingfisher. Its shares completed up 6% in spite of reporting a 20% drop in full-year revenues to ₤ 512m.

However, when reorganizing costs were removed out, underlying profits were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.

William Hill said there were two main factors behind the weaker-than-expected performance from its online organization.

It stated it had seen "an acceleration in the yohaig code variety of time-outs and automated self-exclusions over recent weeks", steps which permit punters to stop betting with a bookie.

William Hill said that while the pattern was "still evolving, we estimate that, ought to these trends persist around present levels, the following lower profits will reduce online's revenues by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its profit margins were lower than anticipated because of European football results and recently's Cheltenham horseracing celebration, where bookmakers were struck by large a number of favourites winning races.

William Hill said that in spite of its online problems, the wider group continued "to trade well" and was in line with expectations.

The company likewise said it remained in "sophisticated discussions" to buy Openbet, a video gaming software application company.

Sterling weak

Elsewhere on the London market, shares in Sports Direct were having another bad day, down an even more 5.6% after dropping about 10% on Tuesday.

Earlier the seller had actually issued a declaration saying that it anticipated full-year underlying profits to be "at or around the bottom" of a formerly approximated range. The statement was issued following remarks that creator Mike Ashley made to the Times newspaper on Tuesday.

On the currency markets, the pound remained weak after having actually fallen greatly on Tuesday in the wake of the horror attacks in Brussels, which were seen as increasing the likelihood of the UK ballot to leave the EU.

On Wednesday, sterling fell practically 1% against the dollar to $1.4087. Against the euro, it lost 0.4% to EUR1.2623.