Penn National Gaming Inc has published its financial results for the third quarter of 2021, declaring revenues of $1.5bn during the measuring period.
The firm noted that despite the impact of Hurricane Ida, the Delta variant, expenses related to the California sports betting ballot initiative, and Barstool Sportsbook launches, Q3 2021 results managed to exceed pre-COVID financials in Q3 2019.
For the quarter, ending September 30, 2021, Penn National reported revenues of $1.5bn, a 10% increase on Q3 2019’s $1.3bn, and a net income of $86m, an 87% improvement on Q3 2019’s $46m.
The firm also recorded an adjusted EBITDA of $364m (Q3 2019: $316m) and an adjusted EBITDAR of $480m (Q3 2019: $412m).
Jay Snowden, President and CEO, commented: “We achieved many significant milestones in the third quarter. We successfully launched the Barstool Sportsbook mobile app in five states (Colorado, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arizona), which more than doubled our footprint.
“In addition, we opened Hollywood Casino York to strong initial results, began to roll out our market-leading cashless, cardless, and contactless (3Cs) technology across the portfolio and continued to derive multiple tangible benefits from our highly differentiated omni-channel strategy. We also continued to generate revenues and EBITDAR significantly above 2019 levels, despite exogenous events that had a one-time impact on our quarter.
“While July was a record month, the second half of August and September was impacted by Hurricane Ida and regional flare-ups of the Delta variant, which reduced property Adjusted EBITDAR and Adjusted EBITDAR margins by an estimated $30m and 85 basis points, respectively. As the operating environment has normalized, we have seen improved results in October.
“Further, Other Segment results included a $12.5m lobbying expense to support the California sports betting initiative and $7.5m in expenses related to new state launches of our Barstool Sportsbook app.
“In addition to the five new launches of our Barstool mobile sportsbook betting app, all of which occurred before the start of the football season, earlier this week, we launched our mobile sports betting app in Iowa, which expands our footprint to 10 states.”
Snowden continued: “Overall, we are benefiting from our increased scale and are driving higher handle and revenue market share across the board while remaining disciplined with our marketing and promotional spend.
“These results underscore our commitment to our business model, which remains focused on near term profitability rather than aggressive marketing aimed at generating short term increases in handle.
“We achieved an important milestone with the closing of our acquisition of Score Media and Gaming Inc (theScore) on October 19. Combined with the power of Barstool Sports, we are now well positioned to be North America’s leading digital, entertainment, sports content, gaming, and technology company.
“Barstool’s wide, top-of-funnel audience reach is highly complementary to the news, scores and stats available on theScore’s best in class media app, which will create a one-stop destination for the sports fan that does not exist today. Further, we are excited to bring theScore’s cutting-edge technology in house, which will provide us with a fully integrated media and betting solution as well as full ownership of our product roadmap.
“As the most popular sports media app in Canada, theScore is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the legalization of single event sports wagering in Ontario when the province is ready for launch. Consistent with our previously disclosed strategy, we anticipate theScore Bet will be our leading brand in Canada while we will continue to lead with Barstool Sportsbook in the US.
“Most importantly, we expect that both brands will benefit from the marketing support of Barstool Sports and integration with theScore’s media app. We are excited to welcome theScore’s rapidly growing team into the Penn National Gaming family and are looking forward to leveraging Canada’s world class talent pool of engineering and technology expertise.”
