Berjaya Sports Toto Bhd, a licensed provider of number forecasting games in the Malaysia consumer market, reported higher core net profit on lower toto revenue for its fiscal 2015 results.
Such profit was MYR354.3 million (US$95.4 million) a rise of 6.5 percent year-on-year. That was despite toto revenue falling 4.2 percent year-on-year to approximately MYR3.36 billion in financial year 2015.
For the group as a whole, revenue grew by 21.8 percent to approximately MYR5.29 billion. The improvement was mainly due to consolidation – since the third quarter of fiscal 2015 – of the revenue from a U.K.-based luxury car dealership business called H.R. Owen that the group had acquired, said an investment analyst in a note on the results.
“Despite lower toto revenue, the group’s core pre-tax profit improved 18.4 percent year-on-year, largely due to an estimated lower prize payout (4QFY15: 68.7 percent; 4QFY14: 69.3 percent),” added Lim Tee Yang, an analyst at Affin Hwang Capital, which has a strategic partnership with Daiwa Securities Group Inc.
Berjaya Sports Toto is 50.6 percent owned by Malaysian billionaire Vincent Tan’s Berjaya Corp Bhd.
In June last year, Mr Tan said his group planned to re-apply for a licence to operate a casino at Berjaya Hills, a resort area in the Malaysian state of Pahang. Mr Tan had applied for a licence to operate a casino at Berjaya Hills more than 10 years ago but it was rejected amid protests.
