WEB reported this morning and at first glance the state of affairs is not particularly encouraging. However, Chairman Denham Eke is very bullish. And I can understand why.
The first reason is that the Monarch deal (a dozen racecourses including Gulfstream and Santa Anita) has not yet had time to get going. When it does it will yield profit. Possibly a lot of profit.
Further, the weather in California has been astonishingly adverse in terms of cancelled meetings (five foot of snow this morning as against 27 centigrade in Washington DC). WEB’s main subsidiary, WatchandWager, is based in California and runs harness racing at Sacramento.
Finally, WEB is seeking to get another racecourse to operate – this time in Arizona.
It all adds up to a stream of profits as against a capitalisation at 2p of just £8m. This could be truly ridiculously low.
One has to bear in mind that Americans are increasingly engaging in legalised sports betting. WEB will surely do well.
*****
As regular readers know, I am appalled at how useless Britain’s high street banks are. However, a chum has a bank account in Oslo and sought to remit £5,000 to his West London bank account. He was told that he had to go to Oslo with his passport. Obviously British regulation is teaching the Norwegians of the prime aim of regulation which is to do a disservice to the customer.