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Betting group Flutter wants to turn its fast-growing US customer base into shareholders, as the Paddy Power-owner prepares to switch its primary listing from London to New York.
The company, whose FanDuel business has a leading market share in the US, listed its ordinary shares on the New York Stock Exchange as part of a secondary listing in January. It will ask shareholders in a vote on May 1 to approve its plans to shift its primary listing there by the end of that month.
“We have FanDuel, and we want to make sure that our customers are able to buy shares in the company that owns their favourite entertainment provider,” chief executive Peter Jackson told the Financial Times, adding that retail investors are “important components of the US market”.
He noted that there are many US investors, including institutional shareholders, who “only invest in their domestic market”.
US retail investors can already buy Flutter shares thanks to the January listing but Jackson hopes the primary listing shift will encourage them to do so, with the group having started reporting according to GAAP rules they are familiar with.
“Once they see some reporting in US GAAP, these are the codes and the language they understand. We hope that will facilitate new investors into Flutter,” he said.
Switching the primary listing to the US would also allow the company to meet criteria for potential index inclusion in the S&P 500, he added.
Sports betting in the US has boomed after a 2018 US Supreme Court ruling struck down a federal ban with industry revenue hitting $10.9bn last year, according to the American Gaming Association, just as regulators tighten controls in more established European markets.
Ireland-based Flutter, which acquired a majority stake of FanDuel in 2018 and took its interest to 95 per cent two years later, now has a dominant market position despite high competition.
It reported a 53 per cent share in sports net gaming revenue in the country last year, up from 50 per cent a year before, overtaking rivals such as DraftKings. Flutter’s US business also delivered its first annual profit last year.
Flutter’s shares have gone up by nearly 20 per cent over the past six months, fuelled by investor excitement over FanDuel’s growth forecasts and the proposed US primary listing.
However Peel Hunt analyst Ivor Jones said the brand’s high popularity would not automatically mean more retail investors,
“You can see [FanDuel’s] brand name everywhere, it’s advertising at the Super Bowl, and it’s clearly a local hero . . . But retail investors behave pretty much like institutional investors. They buy good companies where they expect growth. So they’re not really swayed by it being a company that they know personally,” he said.
Flutter expects US profits to triple this year to between $635mn and $785mn. It recorded a net loss of $1.2bn for 2023, partly dragged down by an impairment charge related to the trademark of its online casino brand PokerStars.
Flutter plans to maintain a secondary listing in London, having cancelled its Irish listing. Jackson said current shareholders including those in the UK are “supportive” of the company moving its primary listing to New York.
“Higher levels of share trading occur for the same market cap [in the New York market] compared with the London market,” Jackson said.
