888 Gives the Go Ahead to Sell Stock
12 September 2005

Even though the shares of their rival Party Gaming plummeted this past Tuesday, the world’s largest online casino operator, 888 Holdings, is proceeding with their plan to go ahead in an initial public offering (IPO) to sell stock.

Party Gaming, who is one of 888’s top competitors in poker gaming, recently saw its shares fall 37 percent. Poker Gaming had said that their revenue growth is slowing because more casino operators (such as 888 Holdings) are looking to enter the stock market. What resulted from this slow growth was the loss of $4.4 billion from their market value.

In fact, just this past Monday, the Gibraltar based company Party Gaming, had its shares rise 35% since their initial public offering that took place in June. Now, however, the company shares are trading less than the original offering price.

Party Gaming makes 87% of its profits from the U.S., and sad that the gains of this revenue are slowing down as competition rises.

888 Holdings, who’s the number one internet casino operator, due to their volume of visitors, has no intention of changing their plans to sell their shares. This was confirmed from a spokes person from their also Gibraltar based company (who wished not to be identified in the phone interview). Apparently 888 Holdings has received extremely “positive feedback” from investors in lead of this month’s sale.

888 is using Party Gaming’s valuation as a standard for their business. Thus, those shareholders of 888 who are planning to sell $500 million worth of stock in an initial public offering, would value 888 at an estimated $1.5 billion. However, bankers believe that this number may raise less in the IPO.

As for the rest of us we’ll just have to wait and see…