We've got the scale to beat merged rivals, says William Hill CEO

William Hill remains in a strong position despite recent industry mega-mergers and can continue to grow its UK business following the roll-out of Project Trafalgar, according to CEO James Henderson.

Earlier this year the London-listed operator missed out on an opportunity to acquire 888 Holdings for £750m and has since taken a back seat on M&A activity as many of its main competitors announced merger deals.

But when fielding questions from analysts today, Henderson said while he did not rule out any M&A activity from William Hill in the near future, he was confident the operator’s current scale would be sufficient to compete with a new breed of egaming heavyweights.

“We’re a big scale player, even when the consolidation happens with Betfair and Paddy Power or Ladbrokes and Gala Coral, we’re still a big player and will be number one or two depending on which metric you look at,” Henderson said.

“Our strategy is very clear, I’m confident it’s the right thing to do, so there’s no movement in that area. Scale is important, we have scale and we’ll look at opportunities to increase that if there’s a need,” he added.

His comments come after William Hill this morning reported a 37% year-on-year fall in Q3 online profits, predominantly due to an £18m hit from the UK’s Point of Consumption tax, although the operator also recorded a small 3% fall in online net revenue.

The ongoing roll-out of Project Trafalgar, which will result in a new responsive front-end, was highlighted as a critical part of the operator’s strategy for future growth, particularly in the UK sports betting market.

“[Project Trafalgar] is a complex project but it does allow us to take control of the front-end, make changes, improve the experience and have a fully responsive site,” Henderson said.

The chief executive also said a significant amount of resource had been tied-up in the project, which he admitted may have led to a negative impact on wagering levels in the short-term. During the quarter, online sports wagers increased by a modest 2% year-on-year and 7% in the UK.

However, Henderson said he was confident these numbers would increase significantly once the roll-out of the new front-end platform was completed.

“There’s an opportunity to build on that platform and give our customers a much better user experience which will hopefully translate into wagering increases,” he said.

“[We had] really strong gaming numbers but now we’ve got the sports platform to capitalise on and we’re confident of the future,” he added.