William Hill shares dive 11% on revenue alert

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

It said online trading had actually been struck by tougher regulation and "the worst Cheltenham results in current history".

It now anticipates full-year operating profit to be in between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, below ₤ 291.4 m in 2015. As a result, the FTSE 250 company 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 ended up 6% despite reporting a 20% drop in full-year revenues to ₤ 512m.

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

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

It stated it had seen "an acceleration in the yohaig code variety of time-outs and automatic self-exclusions over current weeks", procedures which permit punters to halt betting with a bookie.

William Hill stated that while the pattern was "still developing, we estimate that, ought to these trends continue around current levels, the ensuing lower incomes will decrease online's revenues by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its revenue margins were lower than anticipated due to the fact that of European football results and last week's Cheltenham horseracing celebration, where bookies were hit by large a variety of favourites winning races.

William Hill stated that despite its online issues, the yohaig code broader group continued "to trade well" and was in line with expectations.

The company also stated it was in "advanced discussions" to purchase Openbet, a video gaming software application company.

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 released a declaration stating that it anticipated full-year underlying revenues to be "at or around the bottom" of a previously estimated variety. The statement was released following comments that creator Mike Ashley made to the Times newspaper on Tuesday.

On the currency markets, the pound remained weak after having fallen greatly on Tuesday in the wake of the terror attacks in Brussels, which were seen as increasing the probability of the UK ballot to leave the EU.

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