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Flutter warns over earnings hit from Budget gambling tax blow
Paddy Power and Betfair owner Flutter Entertainment has warned the Government’s Budget move to hike gambling taxes will hit its annual earnings by hundreds of millions of pounds over the next two years.
The Chancellor announced on Wednesday that remote online gaming duty will rise from 21% to 40%, while online sports betting – excluding horse-racing – will increase from 15% to 25%.
Flutter – which also owns Betfair, Sky Bet and FanDuel in the US – said the tax raid will impact its underlying earnings by around 320 million US dollars (£241.7 million) in 2025-26 and 540 million US dollars (£407.9 million) in 2026-27.
It hopes to offset the hit by up to 40% by 2027 through efforts to cutting promotion and marketing spend and wider cost reduction efforts.
Kevin Harrington, Flutter’s UK and Ireland chief executive, said the tax increases were “a very disappointing outcome and will have a significant adverse impact on our industry”.
“The Chancellor rightly wants to address harm, but these changes will hand a big win to illegal, unlicensed gambling operators who will become more competitive overnight.
“These black market operators don’t pay tax and don’t invest in safer gambling.
“At 40%, the UK’s remote gaming duty is now above countries such as the Netherlands, where a recent tax increase saw a rise in illegal gambling and a fall in government receipts.”
He added that “through both our scale and leading position in the UK, as well as the proactive cost initiatives that we are taking” the firm is “well placed to navigate” the changes.
Some gambling stocks suffered hefty share price falls on the London market on Wednesday after the tax blow, with William Hill owner Evoke sliding 18%.
Other gambling firms with more global operations were sheltered from the worst of the share price declines.
Flutter, which switched its primary listing from London to New York last year, saw its shares in London edge higher, while Ladbrokes rival Entain, which also has a more diverse global exposure, recouped initial losses and also closed higher.
The Chancellor spared the industry any tax rises for in-person gambling or horse racing in the Budget following warnings of a jobs hit in the industry, while she said bingo duty would be abolished entirely from April next year.
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UniQure needs to run another study to prove that its gene therapy “actually helps people with Huntington’s disease,” a senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said on a call with reporters Thursday.
The official, who requested anonymity before discussing sensitive information, confirmed the agency has asked the company to run a placebo controlled trial of its treatment, which is administered directly into the brain. UniQure has said that type of study isn’t ethical because it would require putting people under general anesthesia for hours, a characterization the official disputed.
“So what is really going on? UniQure is the latest company to make a failed therapy for Huntington’s patients,” the official said. “They likely acknowledge or understand at some deep level that their trial failed years ago, and instead of doing the right thing and running the correct clinical study, UniQure is performing a distorted or manipulated comparison in the mind of FDA.”
The comments mark the latest development in a messy public spat between UniQure and the FDA, and as the agency comes under fire for a number of recent drug approval application rejections, including some where companies have accused it of going back on previous guidance. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary in an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick last week seemingly criticized UniQure’s gene therapy for Huntington’s disease. Makary didn’t name UniQure but described its treatment.
UniQure then accused the FDA of reversing its stance that the company’s clinical trial data would be sufficient to seek approval. UniQure’s study used an outside database to measure how patients with Huntington’s disease might decline without treatment, known as an external control. UniQure has said it wouldn’t be feasible to run a true randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled study, considered the gold standard, because it wouldn’t be ethical to make people undergo a sham hours-long brain surgery.
The FDA official said the agency “never agreed to accept this distorted comparison” and the FDA “never makes such assurances.” Instead, the “FDA will always say, ‘Well, we have to see the data when we get it.'”
UniQure didn’t immediately comment.
The company’s stock rose more than 10% on Thursday and has fallen 58% this year as of Thursday afternoon.
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US mortgage rates rise to 6% after three-week slide as oil-driven bond yields climb – The Times of India
The average long-term US mortgage rate edged higher this week, ending a three-week decline as bond yields rose amid oil-price pressures linked to the war with Iran.The benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate increased to 6% from 5.98% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said on Thursday. A year ago, the average rate stood at 6.63%, AP reported.The modest uptick breaks a three-week slide in borrowing costs, with mortgage rates having hovered close to the 6% mark for most of this year. Last week’s average had marked the first time the rate dipped below 6% since September 2022, reaching its lowest level in nearly three and a half years.Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, including the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate policy, investor expectations about inflation and economic growth, and movements in the bond market.They typically track the direction of the 10-year US Treasury yield, which lenders use as a benchmark for pricing home loans.The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.14% at midday Thursday, up from around 4% a week earlier.Treasury yields have moved higher in recent days as rising oil prices added fresh inflation concerns, potentially complicating the Federal Reserve’s plans to cut interest rates.
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