Meanwhile, Ladbrokes has raided William Hill to fill a position where they are playing catch up with their FTSE100 rival.
British bookmaker Ladbrokes has hired Jim Mullen from William Hill to run its online operations as it tries to make up lost ground on its larger rival in the sector.
Ladbrokes' attempts to galvanise its digital business are borrowing heavily from the success enjoyed by market leader William Hill, which entered the FTSE 100 index of leading companies on Wednesday.
Mullen will have the title of director, digital when he starts work in November, Ladbrokes said on Wednesday. He worked as chief operating officer at William Hill's online operations.
Ladbrokes has formed a partnership with software developer Playtech to develop its online business, a fast expanding part of the gambling market. The companies launched a digital marketing services operation on Wednesday, to be based in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/news/article/-/16967171/ladbrokes-recruits-william-hill-man-to-run-digital-unit/
I remember mentioning elsewhere in the past that your thoughts on William Hill were actually a low risk high reward "bet".
ReplyDeleteOn reflection it is the low risk aspect that is the most impressive on your thoughts / risk v reward on this one.
I suppose one of the questions I like to ask myself when the share price of a company is falling and beginning to show good value, is what's the worst case scenario? Can it go out of business? What would cause that? To a large degree this is guesswork, but in the case of William Hill which went through a long downward period that can be seen on the weekly and monthly charts, my "guess" was that ultimately they would put things right.
DeleteIt then becomes a question of waiting. This may apply whether you are trading or investing. If you are the former you want to be trading long when momentum is ideally to the upside. If you are a longer term investor it makes sense to wait until any fall in the share price levels out and begins to turn around. So many investors like to catch falling knives that they think are cheap, but they go lower because the trend is down.
I think I've written elsewhere that William Hill is not so attractive right now because of the rise in share price in the last year or so. On fundamentals it is stretched but still delivering which it will need to carry on doing to justify the valuation. The weekly and monthly charts may tells us when this is likely, but both still look bullish. It still has momentum but doesn't feel as cheap as it once did. Of course, this can carry on for a long time.
Ladbrokes is the interesting one now in this sector because it is about 12-18 months behind William Hill in its turnaround. If it finally sorts out its online platform and gets back on track with its fundamentals it might follow the same upward momentum and re-rating as WH. It needs to get it right though.