Party Gaming delivers again

Anticipation that Party Gaming's run of success would continue (see previous reports) was confirmed this week with another stellar set of results from the Internet's largest and most successful gambling group.

The Gibraltar-based company revealed that first-quarter sales climbed 54 percent as advertisements helped the company sign up more customers.

Revenue rose to $342.6 million from $222.6 million a year earlier, Party Gaming said in a Regulatory News Service statement. The number of new poker players rose 23 percent, and 39 percent of them were located outside the U.S., where Internet gambling's legal status is uncertain.

Marketing campaigns, particularly in Europe, helped to boost the number of poker players, PartyGaming said. The company also started running its first foreign-language Web sites in the quarter and in addition to English now offers Party Poker in six languages including French and German. The introduction of backgammon is "imminent," according to the statement.

"The first quarter has seen continued strong growth in poker on the back of a record number of poker sign-ups,'' Finance Director Martin Weigold said in the statement.

Sales from casino games jumped almost sevenfold to $83.1 million, or about a quarter of total revenue, swelled by the introduction of blackjack in October and the PartyCasino Web site earlier this year.

The number of new poker players climbed to 263,254 from 214,108 a year earlier. The number of new customers for casino games fell 23 percent to 11,024 from 14,304.

Investors will be pleased at the impact of the results. The stock rose 6.75 pence, or 4.7 percent, to 151.75 pence in London. Investors originally paid 116 pence each for the shares when PartyGaming, which has a market value of about 6 billion pounds ($10.6 billion), first sold shares to the public in June 2005.