For the year as a whole it reported revenue of US$ 5,15 million compared to US$ 4,68 million in 2015, highlighting its North America and Italy performance.
Marco Sala, CEO of IGT, said: "We reached many important milestones in 2016. We reinforced our number one position in Lottery globally, achieving robust same-store revenue growth and securing valuable, multi-year contracts. We also made good progress with our gaming turnaround, developing compelling new titles and hardware, in addition to expanding our International presence. We operate in growing global market segments and IGT has a long history of investing in innovation to create shareholder value.”
"We achieved our financial goals for 2016 and ended the year in strong financial condition,” said Alberto Fornaro, CFO of IGT. "Disciplined capital management enabled us to reduce our debt and improve our leverage profile despite the large upfront investment in the Italy Lotto. We expect 2017 to evolve as a year of two halves, with difficult comparisons in the first part of the year easing as we reach the second half.”
During the year, the company shipped 33,147 gaming machines worldwide and global lottery same-store revenue, excluding Italy, increased 8 %. Italy lottery wagers rose 6 % in 2016.
Sala added: "It was a very good year for our global lottery operations, where revenues increased 7 % in constant currency. This includes same-store revenue growth of nearly 10 % in North America and 3 % at our international segment.”
IGT secured important new business and extensions during the year, including the new concession for the Italian Lotto, its largest single contract, which it has won for another nine years. In North America, it signed important new contracts in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin. It also extended key contracts in Georgia, Texas and Michigan. As a result, the weighted average contract length of its top 20 North American contract of lotteries including extensions increased to 8.5 years.
Internationally, it had new contracts and extensions in Argentina, Colombia, Switzerland and New Zealand.
Sala explained: "We continue to work on the expansion of several additional lottery contracts around the world, while this requires incremental capital investment in the near-term, it ultimately provides improved visibility and better returns in the long run.”
In the participation business, IGT ended 2016 with an increase in its global installed, base reflecting significant international growth, up 11 %.
"While we are encouraged with our progress in the participation business, we’ll really be able to assess it more fully once we reach the middle of the year. This is when the most of the new games and cabinets we presented at G2E last September at ICE in February, we’ll become available in the market,” explained Sala.
Source: GMB / G3 Newswire
