Bookmaker closes online and telephone operations

Apr 30 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

TROUBLED bookmaker Neville Porter has closed its online and telephone betting operations days after it suspended trading of its shares on the stock exchange in the face of continued poor trading.

The County Durham company has axed the staff at the call centre for its telephone betting service launched last year and is in talks about how or whether the company will continue in operation.

Managing director David Neville Porter said: “The shares were suspended because of difficult trading times. In the Birtley office, we trimmed staff back, we cut costs but at the end of the day, it was still a difficult trading position, with the expenses outweighing the profits.”

He said the business was operating from the racecourse pitches it owns in the UK and Ireland but its internet and telephone betting operations, which were launched last year, would not be resurrected. Mr Porter worked in the call centre with five other staff, who have been made redundant.

“All the funds have been repaid to the clients, any deposits or cash lodged with us to bet with has been repaid in full,” he said. Negotiations about the company’s future were ongoing and Mr Porter expected to make an announcement in the next fortnight.

Neville Porter, which was listed on the AIM in February last year, made pre-tax losses of £268,756 in the six months to the end of December. When it unveiled those figures in March, the company said it was facing “challenging” conditions and it was “difficult to see any short-term improvement ahead”.

The business was refinanced earlier this year in a bid to put it back on a sound footing. Mr Porter agreed to buy its UK racecourse betting pitches and lease them back to the business in a £350,000 deal. Fellow director Brian Morton also agreed to provide an interest-free advance of £80,000. The monies were to be used as working capital.

The business launched its telephone and online betting wings a year ago.

It spent a sizable amount of the £650,000 it raised on flotation to launch the internet betting system, the Birtley call centre and to buy two race pitches.