Rank Posts Preliminary Results for 2022-23 Operating Period

The leading gaming and entertainment company, The Rank Group Plc, released its latest preliminary results revealing details regarding its performance for the 12 months ended June 30, 2023. The recent financial report emerged Thursday and reveals that while net gaming revenue for the period increased, a decrease in the operating profit was observed.

Overall, Rank posted a group underlying like-for-like (LFL) net gaming revenue (NGR) of £679.7 million ($866.5 million). This result, when compared to the corresponding period for 2021/2022, when NGR halted at £633.2 million ($807.3 million), represented an increase of 7%.

While NGR in 2022/2023 increased based on the preliminary results, Rank’s underlying LFL operating profit marked a decrease. The company revealed that underlying LFL operating profit for the 12 months ended June 30, 2023, halted at £20.3 million ($25.9 million). This result, marked a 52% year-over-year decrease when compared to the £42.5 million ($54.2 million) result from 2021/2022. Although Rank acknowledged that this result marked a decrease when compared to the prior period, it said that the latest figure was “in line with the upgraded guidance provided in April 2023.”

The Company Remains Optimistic, despite the Difficult Operating Environment

John O’Reilly, The Rank’s chief executive, acknowledged that despite the challenging environment in the last few years, the company has seen an uptick in the visitation of its Mecca and Grosvenor venues. He said that the figures from the second half of the trading period showed an uptick in business volumes.

O’Reilly spoke about the difficulties high wage inflation, increased energy costs and tightening of regulations brought for the company in the UK. However, he noted that those negative effects of the operating environment are fading away, which leaves Rank optimistic.

“However, energy costs have stabilized, inflation appears to now be easing, customers continue to slowly return to both our Grosvenor and our Mecca venues and we now expect to deliver good levels of revenue and profit growth.“

John O’Reilly, chief executive of The Rank Group Plc

Further details released by Rank reveal that its Digital underlying NGR for the recent trading period hit £202.9 million ($258.6 million), up by 10% when compared to the £183.8 million ($234.3 million) result from the 2021/2022 period.

Similar growth was observed for the company’s Venues underlying NGR. Overall, Rank’s Venues posted £476.8 million ($607.8 million) in underlying LFL NGR this year. Comparing this result year-over-year to the £449.4 million ($572.8 million) reported for the 2021/2022 period shows that this year, an increase of 6% was observed.