Bwin shares dropped

The austrian online gaming company Bwin announced their third quarter results, which showed losses around Eur.5,6 million, and a surprising Eur.534 million write off coming from Ongame, the online poker platform acquired this year.

These numbers are the result of group's decision to stop accepting players from US after the anti-internet gambling law signed last month by President Bush. Shares of Bwin dropped 10% yesterday after the announcement, but the stock has dropped 83% during 2006.

Bwin has about 1,8 million customers worldwide, and the revenues from them were Euro 289 million during the first 9 months of the year. Chief Executive Norbert Teufelberger said: "We have decided to change our aggressive strategy. The precise amount of the write off is around Eur.534 million". And about their growth strategy in the gaming industry: "From today's point, we can say that the timing of the acquisition was bad".

Bwin announced they won't provide forecasts for the coming year, but they will focus on the generation of cashflow during 2007.