William Hill shares dive 11% on earnings alert

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

It stated online trading had actually been struck by harder guideline and "the worst Cheltenham results in current history".

It now expects full-year operating earnings to be between ₤ 260m and ₤ 280m, down from ₤ 291.4 m in 2015. As a result, the FTSE 250 company 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 completed up 6% despite reporting a 20% drop in full-year earnings to ₤ 512m.

However, when restructuring expenses were stripped out, underlying earnings were a better-than-expected ₤ 686m.

William Hill stated there were two primary factors behind the weaker-than-expected efficiency from its online business.

It said it had seen "an acceleration in the number of time-outs and automatic self-exclusions over recent weeks", procedures which allow punters to stop betting with a bookie.

William Hill stated that while the trend was "still progressing, we estimate that, must these patterns persist around current levels, the following lower revenues will lower online's profits by ₤ 20-25m in 2016".

Secondly, its revenue margins were lower than expected due to the fact that of European football outcomes and last week's Cheltenham horseracing celebration, where bookmakers were hit by big a number of favourites winning races.

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

The company also stated it remained in "sophisticated conversations" to buy Openbet, a gaming software application firm.

Sterling weak

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

Earlier the yohaig code retailer had actually issued a statement stating that it expected full-year underlying earnings to be "at or around the bottom" of a formerly estimated range. The statement was released following remarks that creator Mike Ashley made to the Times newspaper on Tuesday.

On the currency markets, the pound stayed weak after having actually fallen sharply on Tuesday in the wake of the fear attacks in Brussels, which were seen as increasing the likelihood of the UK ballot to leave the EU.

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