William Hill shares dive 11% on revenue alert

(Close): William Hill shares shut down more than 11% after the bookie cautioned on revenues.

It stated online trading had actually been struck by tougher guideline and "the worst Cheltenham leads to current history".

It now expects full-year operating revenue to be between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, below ₤ 291.4 m in 2015. As a result, the FTSE 250 business saw its shares drop almost 40p to 331p.

However, the benchmark FTSE 100 ended flat, up 6.4 points at 6199.1.

Top riser on the FTSE 100 was B&Q owner Kingfisher. Its shares finished up 6% in spite of reporting a 20% drop in full-year earnings to ₤ 512m.

However, when reorganizing expenses were removed out, underlying profits were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.

William Hill stated there were 2 primary elements behind the weaker-than-expected efficiency from its online business.

It said it had actually seen "a velocity in the yohaig code variety of time-outs and automated self-exclusions over recent weeks", measures which allow punters to stop gambling with a bookie.

William Hill said that while the yohaig code pattern was "still progressing, we approximate that, need to these trends continue around current levels, the following lower incomes will reduce online's earnings by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its earnings margins were lower than expected since of European football results and last week's Cheltenham horseracing festival, where bookmakers were hit by large a number of favourites winning races.

William Hill stated that in spite of its online problems, the wider group continued "to trade well" and remained in line with expectations.

the yohaig code business likewise said it remained in "sophisticated discussions" to buy Openbet, a video gaming software firm.

Sterling weak

Elsewhere on the London market, shares in Sports Direct were having another bad day, down a further 5.6% after dropping about 10% on Tuesday.

Earlier the seller had actually released a statement stating that it anticipated full-year underlying earnings to be "at or around the bottom" of a formerly approximated variety. The statement was provided following comments that founder Mike Ashley made to the Times newspaper on Tuesday.

On the currency markets, the pound stayed weak after having actually fallen sharply on Tuesday in the wake of the horror attacks in Brussels, which were viewed as increasing the possibility of the UK ballot to leave the EU.

On Wednesday, sterling fell nearly 1% versus the dollar to $1.4087. Against the yohaig code euro, it lost 0.4% to EUR1.2623.