William Hill shares dive 11% on earnings alert

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

It said online trading had been hit by harder guideline and "the yohaig code worst Cheltenham leads to recent history".

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

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

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

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

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

It stated it had seen "a velocity in the number of time-outs and automated self-exclusions over recent weeks", procedures which enable punters to halt betting with a bookie.

William Hill said that while the trend was "still developing, we estimate that, should these patterns continue around existing levels, the consequent lower earnings will minimize online's revenues by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its earnings margins were lower than expected due to the fact that of European football results and recently's Cheltenham horseracing celebration, where bookmakers were struck by big a variety of favourites winning races.

William Hill said that in spite of its online problems, the broader group continued "to trade well" and was in line with expectations.

The company likewise stated it was in "sophisticated conversations" to buy Openbet, a video gaming software firm.

Sterling weak

Elsewhere on the yohaig code 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 issued a statement saying that it expected full-year underlying revenues to be "at or around the bottom" of a previously estimated range. The statement was released following remarks that founder Mike Ashley made to the Times paper on Tuesday.

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

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