Despite Georgia, Cyber Attacks On Its Mind Evolution Keeps Calm And Posts Fine Q3


Despite an ongoing labour dispute in the Republic of Georgia and a flurry of Far Eastern cyber attacks on its mind, live iCasino kings Evolution has reported significant financial growth for both the third quarter and the first nine months of 2024.

Evolution’s total operating revenues increased by almost 28 percent, hitting €579 million (£482m/US$624.9m), in Q3.

Net revenues grew by 14.7 percent to €519.4 million (£433.21m/US$562.16m) and EBITDA surged by 30.3 percent to €415.3 million (£346.38m/US$449.5m), representing a margin of 71.7 percent.

Profit for the third quarter, ending September 30, hit €328.6 million (£274.05m/US$355.65m), with earnings-per-share touching €1.57 — compared to €1.28 in the same period last year.

For the first nine months of 2024, Sqedish-origin Evolution reported total operating revenues in excess of €1.588 billion (£1.32bn/US$1.72bn), an increase of over 20 percent on the same period in 2023.

Net revenues rose by 15.6 percent to €1.529 billion (£1.27bn/US$1.65bn) and profit for the first nine months of the year reached €866.9 million (£723.13bn/US$938.36m).

Exogenous Factors

Earnings-per-share in this period climbed from €3.69 to to €4.12.

“Our operational development has continued at a high pace with very successful launches of new products and the opening of two new live casino studios,” commented Evolution CEO Martin Carlesund.

Referring to Evolution’s ongoing labour dispute in the Republic of Georgia, Carlesund continued: “[Although] we are continuing to build Evolution to capitalise on the great opportunity that online casino constitutes in the years to come, [we also faced] near-term challenges and two ‘exogenous’ factors that have had a negative impact on the quarter.

“During the summer we have faced a difficult situation in Georgia when union negotiations came to a halt after two years of dialogue,” explained Carlesund (pictured right).

“A strike was initiated in mid-July. The strike encompassed around 550 employees and had limited effect on our operational capacity. It’s important to state that Evolution fully supports the right of individuals to participate in unions and other organisations of their choice and to take part in collective bargaining.

“However, on August 1 a small number of union-affiliated activists began to illegally block entrances, vandalise buildings, take violent actions and harass working employees, actions that disrupted our operations and forced us to down-size capacity in Georgia.

“The union affiliated activists have also actively spread lies and disinformation about Evolution. We are taking all legal actions available against this defamation.

Cyber Attacks

“Currently we are operating at about 60 percent of original capacity in the studio, which is a level we will try to maintain.

“[Yet] with a network of over 20 studios, we are able to offset lost capacity using other studios to limit the impact on our customers. Nevertheless, overall the disruption has had a negative effect.

“Currently, the situation in Georgia is stable and we will continue to rebuild and increase capacity in other locations in the network over the coming quarters to be able to support future growth.

“During the quarter there was also a significant increase in advanced cyber-attacks against our Asian video distribution thereby impacting our Asian revenue negatively.

“Evolution has successfully deployed measures to counteract these intrusions, but it has negatively impacted the third quarter. We continue to see attacks and we will continue to aggressively scale up counter measures.

“In the third quarter our Live Casino offering is continuing to show strong performance, although it is impacted by the events mentioned above.

“During the quarter we launched the first tables in our new studio in Colombia. And in early October we opened the first tables in the Czech Republic studio.

“Investment in new studios will continue into 2025. Right now we are launching new studio projects in Brazil and the Philippines,” he ended.

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