Thursday, September 08, 2005

Wed - PartyGaming decline takes shine off internet gambling

PartyGaming shares, listed in the UK, fell 33% today when the company gave a downbeat assessment of current growth rates. It also sparked unease about the online gambling sector in general. After all, the investor and analyst community has been rather sceptical and even scathing of such companies since they started going public on stock exchanges recently. The institutional investment community is struggling to get their head around businesses that could by all accounts seem to be operating illegally in the US, one of the largest markets for online gambling.

So, with the demise of PartyGaming's stock, the financial community can feel some satisfaction over their intial pessimism. But this will not last as the sector still has enormous room for innovation and growth. There are a stream of online gaming companies readying to go public over the next twelve months or so and PartyGaming are just about to get promoted to the London Stock Exchange's 100 largest companies by value!! Well, the internet just keeps confouding the critics and technophobe's; none more than the investment community - eh!

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