William Hill shares dive 11% on profit alert

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

It stated online trading had been struck by harder policy and "the worst Cheltenham leads to recent history".

It now expects full-year operating revenue to be in between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, below ₤ 291.4 m last year. As an outcome, the FTSE 250 business 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 ended up 6% despite reporting a 20% drop in full-year earnings to ₤ 512m.

However, when reorganizing costs were stripped out, underlying revenues were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.

William Hill stated there were two primary aspects behind the weaker-than-expected performance from its online company.

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

William Hill stated that while the pattern was "still progressing, we estimate that, should these patterns persist around current levels, the ensuing lower earnings will lower online's profits by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its profit margins were lower than expected since of European football outcomes and last week's Cheltenham horseracing celebration, where bookmakers were hit by large a variety of favourites winning races.

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

The business likewise said it was in "sophisticated conversations" to purchase Openbet, a gaming software application company.

Sterling weak

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

Earlier the yohaig code retailer had actually issued a declaration saying that it expected full-year underlying revenues to be "at or around the bottom" of a formerly approximated variety. The declaration was provided following comments that founder Mike Ashley made to the Times newspaper on Tuesday.

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

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