888 Sees ‘Abrupt Halt’ In Growth, Say Analysts

888’s shares dipped yesterday when an analyst note suggested that the online gaming operator’s results, released earlier this week, showed consumer-facing growth had “halted abruptly” as the economic slump and currency fluctuations impacted player behaviour.
The note from investment bank Jefferies&Co downgraded the stock and said that until there were stronger signs of the business-to-business (B2B) operation delivering the promised new players and added growth, the shares were fairly valued at around 105p.

The shares ended Thursday down over 6 percent or 6.25p at 95.5p.

The note pointed out that underlying levels of trading at 888 were soft. “There has been an improvement since December’s nadir, but the core casino channel continues to be challenged and the first quarter is expected to be down on the fourth quarter overall,” said William Birch and Anna Barnfather at Jefferies

“With currency moves and lower gameplay impacting in the fourth quarter, this is already a soft comparison while the summer months are seasonally weaker: this all points to a lower run rate for the year than currently expected.”

The Jefferies team noted approvingly that the B2B operation – rebranded this week as Dragonfish – was a “credible” platform with a promising pipeline of partners.

The company this week announced a deal to provide a casino and poker offering for the Racing Post’s readership. Gigi Levy, chief executive at 888, said the firm was talking to 50 possible B2B partners, and was hoping that for this current year the division would contribute 50 percent of pre-tax profits.

But, as Jefferies noted, the B2B operation has yet to replace the growth that was coming from the consumer side. “We hope to see an early conversion of many of these potential partnerships, including some sizeable additions on the scale of the Sportech deal or bigger, but do not expect material uplift before the fourth quarter at the earliest.”

James Hollins, analyst at Daniel Stewart, also observed that current trading was behind expectations. He pointed out that the company had said that first-quarter revenue was 5 percent ahead of the December figure, but that the quarter was still 10 percent down on the previous quarter as a whole.

“This raises some questions over B2C [business-to-consumer] trading, although we are comfortable with our 6 percent year-on-year revenue growth target.” Like Jefferies, Hollins suggested this would be assisted by B2B growth.

Source: http://www.gamblingcompliance.com/

Royal Mail launches B2B database enhancement tool

LONDON - The Royal Mail has launched Data Sure, a tool giving companies a number of ways to improve the information in their business-to-business marketing databases, such as removing gone-aways and finding prospect matches.

Royal Mail claims Data Sure lets companies upgrade and enhance their B2B customer databases in one go, freeing up resources to help win business and identify new prospects.

The tool utilises several data products including some from within Royal Mail's data portfolio such as the business changes and postal address files as well as information from B2B data firms D&B and Experian.

Royal Mail claims the combination of these three companies improves and enhances a customer database to maximum effect and in a cost-effective way. A spokesperson said: "Customers pay a single fixed fee linked to the size of their database to cover a thorough initial audit."

This would include all processing, data enhancements, market profiles and new 'best fit' records.

Data Sure runs through five stages from an initial audit, data improvement, data enhancement, a profile report and finally extension. Extension uses the Business Universe file to find companies that match the criteria of the existing client database and identifies new prospects.

Tony Lamb, head of data development at Royal Mail, said: "All businesses are under greater pressure than ever to win new business and improve sales, but budgets to achieve this have never been tighter in such difficult economic times."

He added that Data Sure "not only helps businesses win new business, it also helps them save money on marketing campaigns by reducing waste and therefore improving effectiveness".

source: http://www.brandrepublic.com/

Verizon to Launch Touch Diamond on April 10

The handset comes for B2B, web and telesales customers at $199.99

It seems that Verizon is getting ready to release the Touch Diamond for all B2B, web and telesales customers as soon as April 10, which is this Friday. One thing that needs to be mentioned is that the full retail channel release date for the device hasn't been set yet, so we should only be able to see the Verizon Touch Diamond available via the Internet, B2B and Telesales at first.

In addition, we also learn that the upcoming mobile phone is expected to feature a price tag of only $199.99 upon the signing of a two-year contract agreement and after mail-in rebate. Those who want to have the handset free of contract would have to pay $469.99 for it.

The Verizon Touch Diamond is reported to come with one major change compared to other versions of the device, namely the fact that its memory has been lowered to 128MB RAM and 256MB ROM, but users will be able to enjoy the Qualcomm 7500A processor running at 528 MHz, along with the 480 x 640 pixel resolution delivered by the handset’s screen.

The specification list of the Verizon Touch Diamond shows that the mobile phone comes with a 3.2-megapixel photo snapper with auto focus, Flash and video recording capabilities, along with Bluetooth connectivity, WiFi, E-mail and Internet capabilities, USB connectivity, music player, Speakerphone, EVDO - Rev. A capability, and a MicroSD memory card slot for up to 16GB of additional storage space.

The phone also brings messaging options that include Text, Picture, Video and Voice, a display that comes with touchscreen capabilities, a virtual, all-touch QWERTY keyboard, Visual Voice Mail, the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional as operating system, support for VZ Navigator, VZAppZone and VZAccess Manager, compatibility with Windows Vista and support for Microsoft Media Player, Pocket Excel, Pocket Internet Explorer, Pocket PowerPoint and Pocket Word.

Source:http://news.softpedia.com/

Kolkata leather importers

Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal is among the five metropolitans in India and also one of the largest centers of commercial operations in the eastern part of India.

Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal is among the five metropolitans in India and also one of the largest centers of commercial operations in the eastern part of India. Lot of national and international companies have their business operations here and in the recent times the city has attracted several foreign firms to start trading here. Kolkata is a large city and business centers are scattered all over it. There are several big markets in different parts of the city where trade deal worth lakhs of rupees take place everyday. Thousands of people in Kolkata earn their bread and butter from export and import businesses. Especially for import traders, Kolkata is a great center as the demand for interstate and international goods and products are always on a high here.

Different types of goods and products that are parts of people’s everyday life are imported by traders in Kolkata in bulk quantities everyday. Leather is one among those. The demand for leather products and accessories always remain on a high in Kolkata and with more and more influence of western culture on the lifestyle and fashion of the city people, the demand is non a continuous rise. Kolkata is home to hundreds of leather importers who earn huge profit from the sale of leather accessories in the city markets. The multi-utility of leather is the main reason behind this growing demand. Apart from jackets and hand gloves for using in the winter, people use leather in the form of shoes, bags, waist belts, wallets, wristwatch bands, spect cases and mobile phone cases. One can always notice crowd outside shops in Kolkata that sell all these leather accessories.

Though there are some tanneries in the outskirts of Kolkata, a major percentage of leather accessories that are sold in the city markets are imported from other states and countries. For leather exporters Kolkata is like a treasure box. There are hundreds of leather exporters in different parts of India and the world who have been maintaining strong business relations with Kolkata for several decades. If you are in leather exporting business, you too can make your balance sheet look better by starting operations in Kolkata.

But before starting, you must now about the leather market in Kolkata as well as the people who are in the leather import businesses. If you are a frequent traveler to the city, communicating with the leather importers may not be a big deal but if you are not so the city may appear like a maze to you. So you need a guide. Internet is the best guide these days. Latest information on everything in the world is available on the web and one can collect data from there very quickly. For people who surf the net with business interests, the B2B portals or the business-to-business portals are the best things to look into. The B2B portals actually serve the purpose of business guides. All kinds of information that business class people may look for are
available on these portals in detail. These portals speak about services and facilities available in a particular city or state, about business a ctivities that take place there and also people who are parts of such activities.

So while searching for any business-related information regarding Kolkata you should look for the city-based B2B portals. There are a few Kolkata-based B2B portals from where you can get detailed information all kinds of business-related topics within seconds. What you need to do is to click on the specific category. If you are looking for lather importers in Kolkata just click on the specific category of any city-based B2B portals. The Kolkata-based B2B portals are loaded with information regarding lather importers in the city and just by clicking on the category you can get all necessary information much faster than going through the pages of yellow pages. As the portals are regularly updated, there is no scope of missing out the latest data. Create a database from the information and start your proceedings. The Kolkata-based B2B portals are always there to guide you.

Source: http://www.bignews.biz/