It is deadline day for evoke and Bally’s Intralot, with the latter having until 5:00pm GMT to submit a formal offer for the struggling LSE-listed gambling business.
On 20 April, evoke, which owns brands including William Hill, 888 and Mr Green, confirmed that it was in talks with Bally’s Intralot regarding an offer of 50p per share for its business, which would value evoke at around £225m.
Since then, not much official news regarding the deal has been revealed, with Mark Summerfield, Chair of evoke’s board, recently commenting that “discussions remain ongoing”.
There has been movement from both sides of the potential acquisition on other fronts, though, as well as a heap of media reporting.
On 28 April, just over a week after evoke publicly responded to the media speculation, it pushed back its FY 2025 results – which were already scheduled for publication much later than many of its fellow gambling PLCs.
These results came out on 30 April and caused yet further worry for investors.
The widely-discussed debt situation
Debt, arguably the main buzzword in this acquisition saga so far, grew further at the William Hill-owned group, reaching £1.9bn.
While revenue rose by 2% year-over-year to £1.78bn (£1.75bn), and EBITDA sky-rocketed 43% from £211.4m to £301.3m, it is debt that will be one of the key considerations in this potential takeover deal.
This is partly due to the fact that Bally’s Intralot is no stranger to it either, with latest reports outlining that it is carrying around £1.51bn of debt itself, meaning the combined entity would be taking on close to £3.5bn of debt.
To add to this, evoke recently released its 2025 Annual Reports and Accounts, which confirmed that it will have to demonstrate “a sustainable and materially improved level of profitability and cash generation” before 2028 – a year when two of the company’s major loans mature. These loans total £769m.
The majority of the news from the evoke side of this story has been that of negativity, not helped by a wave of coverage regarding a William Hill jackpot malfunction, but Bally’s Intralot has been quietly making some steady progress.
In April, the group was awarded a new lottery contract in Chile, and its Australian subsidiary, Intralot Gaming Services (IGS), won a 15-year Electronic Gaming Machine (EGM) Monitoring Licence for the State of Victoria, effective 16 August 2027.
evoke’s potential wildcard of a delay
As mentioned already, evoke delayed the announcement of its FY 2025 results. Whether this will be mirrored again regarding a concrete Bally’s Intralot deal is yet to be seen, but it is a possibility.
Back when the company confirmed that discussions were ongoing, it said: “This deadline can be extended with the consent of the company.”
Currently, evoke’s shares are trading way off the value of Bally’s Intralot’s 50p per share proposal, sitting at around 34p as of 10:00am GMT.
This could suggest a lack of market confidence in a deal of 50p per share being agreed and approved.
However, anything may happen today or in the future if the deadline is pushed back, and the bulk of the gambling industry will be keeping close tabs on the situation for any updates that come through today.