William Hill shares dive 11% on profit alert

(Close): William Hill shares closed down more than 11% after the bookmaker alerted on earnings.

It said online trading had actually been struck by tougher regulation and "the worst Cheltenham results in current history".

It now expects full-year operating revenue to be between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, down from ₤ 291.4 m last year. As an outcome, the FTSE 250 business saw its shares drop almost 40p to 331p.

However, the benchmark FTSE 100 ended flat, up 6.4 points at 6199.1.

Top riser on the FTSE 100 was B&Q owner Kingfisher. Its shares finished up 6% regardless of reporting a 20% drop in full-year earnings to ₤ 512m.

However, when restructuring costs were removed out, underlying revenues were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.

William Hill stated there were 2 primary aspects behind the weaker-than-expected efficiency from its online company.

It stated it had seen "an acceleration in the variety of time-outs and automated self-exclusions over recent weeks", steps which enable punters to halt gambling with a bookie.

William Hill stated that while the trend was "still developing, we approximate that, should these trends persist around current levels, the following lower earnings will reduce online's revenues by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its revenue margins were lower than anticipated due to the fact that of European football results and last week's Cheltenham horseracing festival, where bookies were hit by large a variety of favourites winning races.

William Hill stated that regardless of its online problems, the more comprehensive group continued "to trade well" and was in line with expectations.

The company likewise stated it was in "innovative discussions" to invest in Openbet, a video gaming software company.

Sterling weak

Elsewhere on the London market, shares in Sports Direct were having another bad day, down an even more 5.6% after dropping about 10% on Tuesday.

Earlier the merchant had actually issued a statement saying that it expected full-year hidden profits to be "at or around the bottom" of a formerly approximated range. The statement was issued following remarks that founder Mike Ashley made to the Times paper on Tuesday.

On the currency markets, the pound stayed weak after having fallen greatly on Tuesday in the wake of the horror attacks in Brussels, which were viewed as increasing the probability of the UK voting to leave the EU.

On Wednesday, sterling fell practically 1% versus the dollar to $1.4087. Against the euro, it lost 0.4% to EUR1.2623.