Donaco says September start for Cambodian online gambling ops

Asian casino operator Donaco International saw its fiscal year profit fall by more than half due to an unfortunate series of one-off items.

The Australia-listed Donaco released its fiscal 2017 report card on Tuesday, which showed group revenue falling nearly 5% to A$136.4m (US $108.6m), earnings improving 17.6% to A$65.3m while net profit after tax tumbled 60% to A$31m.

Donaco claims the conflicting numbers were the result of over A$24m in positive non-recurring items in FY16, while FY17 was saddled with negative non-recurring items of A$23.6m. Stripping aside these factors, underlying earnings were down 4% to A$84.4m while underlying net profit was flat at A$54.6m.

Donaco’s flagship Cambodian property StarVegas saw its FY17 revenue fall 8.3% to A$110.2m, due in part to last October’s death of Thailand’s king and the lengthy mourning period that negatively impacted cross-border casino traffic. While traffic recovered in H2 2017, the full year figures saw StarVegas’ average visitors per day drop nearly 22% year-on-year.