Amaya Makes $320 Million in Second Quarter of 2015

Canadian-based company Amaya Inc. has been in the headlines a lot lately, largely due to its big purchases of major poker companies like PokerStars and Full Tilt.

It appears that those acquisitions have continued to literally pay off for the company as it recently declared that it had recorded revenue of CAD$320 million (around US$244.8 million) for the second quarter of 2015.

That was a 10.7 per cent year-on-year increase of Amaya’s 2014 second quarter revenues, which stood at CAD$289 million (around US$221.2 million).

Amaya Chairman and CEO David Baazov attributed most of the company’s strong performance to its poker offerings, which he said helped put it in a strong financial position.

“Our core poker business remains strong and our customers have embraced our expansion into non-poker offerings,” he said.

“We've repaid approximately US$529 million of our long-term debt, thereby eliminating an estimated US$62 million of related interest expense."

Around 89 per cent of Amaya’s total revenues for the quarter came “almost entirely from poker”, with 11 per cent having come from its online casino operations.

The company’s poker revenue also grew by 11 per cent, which it attributed in part to an increase in real-money unique players and depositors on PokerStars.

The second quarter revenue has put total revenue or 2015 at CAD$656.9 million, which is 5.4 per cent more than the revenue recorded at the same time last year.

Amaya’s revenues are likely to remain strong throughout the year given the relatively strong performance of its poker operations.

However, there are some areas in those operations which may be a cause for concern for the company in the second half of the year.

One of those is the sudden drop in player numbers at one of its prized poker networks, Full Tilt.

Player numbers have fallen well below 1000 on average in recent weeks, which was largely attributed to changes to its ring games, a move that did not favour serious, seasoned online poker players.

However, the move was done in an effort for the site to become more attractive to the casual poker player, so any future marketing efforts aimed at them may boost numbers once again.