Online gaming company to provide cash games to social networking site, including bingo and casinos
Facebook users can already play games supplied by 888 for fun, but now the online company has signed a deal to add the spice of gambling for real.
888 will offer real-money bingo, casino and slot games through Facebook's UK site, starting with bingo, and the news has pushed the company's shares 9p higher to 118.25p. Analysts at Daniel Stewart said:
We see the news as positive for 888 and if the operator succeeds in converting play-for-fun players into real-money players the benefits could prove lucrative. However in our view it is too early at this stage to estimate the economic benefits the operator will derive from the agreement and as a result we maintain our forecasts for now but clearly the risk to our forecasts are to the upside.
Overall the market rallied once more, as Greece came closer to receiving its latest bailout tranche, as the next European summit loomed. Investors were optimistic that the US Federal Reserve might unveil further quantitative easing, which helped push the FTSE 100 20.88 points higher to 5945.85.
Mining groups were in demand, on hopes of a recovery in the global economy. Anglo American added 49.5p to 1882.5p after Barclays - cautiously - raised its rating on the mining group from underweight to equal weight.
A number of companies went ex-dividend including Babcock International, down 5.5p at 983.5p, and Polymetal, which bucked the normal trend and added 27p to £11.43.
BT dipped 1.8p to 234.9p after completing the sale of its remaining stake in Tech Mahindra, the Indian IT business it co-founded 25 years ago, for £115.7m.
Pennon put on 2.5p to 620p despite confirmation it would lose its place in the leading index, to be replaced by TUI Travel, down 0.8p to 286.1p.
Imagination Technologies fell 23.4p to 425p despite the chip designer reporting a 10% rise in half year profits to £16.8m. The company is caught up in a bidding war with US chipmaker Ceva for control of MIPS Technologies. James Goodman at Investec said:
Given the share's weak performance, we are initially encouraged by today's report, with a very strong royalty unit performance (237m units versus our 172m) and guidance to 500m full year units (versus our 429m). However, we calculate a 15% decline in average rates (due to higher volume of lower-end phones) which suggests full year royalty revenue unlikely to move up materially. In addition, Technology margin is down as costs rise and [digital radio business] Pure's loss has doubled. Hold.
Ahead of a trading update on Thursday, HMV rose 0.94p to 4.1p on reports its suppliers were funding the retailer to the tune of £40m over the key Christmas trading period.
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