Rank Group Plc (LON:RNK) has announced its interim results for the six months ended 31 December 2025 (‘H1’).
Revenue and profit growth across all businesses
Delivery of at least £100m operating profit remains medium-term focus
Financial highlights
| H1 2025/26 | H1 2024/25 | Change | ||
| FinancialKPIs | Group underlying LFL net gaming revenue (NGR)1,2 | £419.8m | £395.6m | 6% |
| Venues underlying LFL NGR1,2 | £296.1m | £280.8m | 5% | |
| Digital underlying LFL NGR1,2 | £123.7m | £114.8m | 8% | |
| Underlying LFL operating profit1,2 | £40.6m | £35.2m | 15% | |
| Net cash pre IFRS 16 | £39.4m | £24.2m | 63% | |
| Underlying earnings per share2 | 5.6p | 4.8p | 17% | |
| Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) | 15.9% | 13.3% | 2.6 %pts | |
| H1 2025/26 | H1 2024/253 | Change | |||
| Statutoryperformance | Reported NGR | £420.0m | £401.8m | 5% | |
| Total Group operating profit | £31.3m | £35.2m | (11)% | ||
| Profit before taxation | £23.9m | £29.4m | (19)% | ||
| Profit after taxation | £18.5m | £24.9m | (26)% | ||
| Net free cash flow | £3.8m | £4.3m | (12)% | ||
| Net debt | £(165.1)m | £(124.1)m | 33% | ||
| Basic earnings per share | 4.0p | 5.3p | (25)% | ||
| Dividend per share | 1.00p | 0.65p | 54% | ||
| 1. On a like-for-like (‘LFL’) basis which removes the impact of club openings, closures, foreign exchange movements and discontinued operations.2. Excludes separately disclosed items.3. Restated for prior period adjustment. | |||||
Continued improvement in financial performance
| · | Like-for-like (‘LFL’) Net Gaming Revenue (‘NGR’) of £419.8m, up 6% year-on-year with all businesses in growth. |
| · | Underlying LFL operating profit increased 15% to £40.6m (H1 2024/25: £35.2m). |
| · | Statutory Group operating profit of £31.3m (H1 2024/25: £35.2m), impacted by £6.5m loss as a result of the payment fraud in our Spanish businesses. |
| · | Net free cash flow of £3.8m in the period (H1 2024/25: £4.3m). Closing net cash balance (excluding lease liabilities) of £39.4m (H1 2024/25: £24.2m). |
| · | Return on capital employed of 15.9%, up from 13.3% in the prior year. Capital expenditure of £27.6m in the period (H1 2024/25: £27.3m), with FY 2025/26 Capex now expected to be in the range of £50m – £55m. |
| · | The Board has recommended an interim dividend of 1.00 pence per share, an increase of 54% year-on-year, demonstrating the Board’s confidence in the outlook for the Group. |
Further progress against the strategic plan supported by targeted investments
| · | Average NGR per week in Grosvenor venues was £7.8m, up 6% year-on-year. A strong Q1 was followed by a relatively softer Q2, with weaker consumer confidence in the period prior to, and immediately following, the Autumn Budget. Gaming machines were the fastest growing product vertical at +11% year-on-year, +16% in venues which have benefitted from machine installations during H1. |
| · | 850 additional gaming machines installed across 37 Grosvenor venues in H1 2025/26, in line with the previously reported timetable. H2 workstreams are in place to optimise the product offering and fine-tune venue layouts and gaming machine mix, supported by local marketing to build customer awareness and demand. |
| · | Digital LFL NGR grew 9% in the UK with particularly strong growth in Grosvenor online. Mitigations to reduce the impact of the near doubling of Remote Gaming Duty (RGD) from 21% to 40% announced in the Autumn Budget, including cutting above the line media spend and TV sponsorships, have already been implemented or are well advanced. |
| · | In Spain, digital revenues grew 4% in Q2 offsetting a 1% decline in Q1, delivering 1% growth for the half, benefiting from the launch of proprietary apps. A new bingo platform which will remove ongoing capacity issues will go live in Q3. In Portugal, YoBingo was soft launched successfully in November 2025, with a full consumer launch commencing in February 2026. |
| · | Mecca venues grew NGR by 4% on a LFL basis, benefitting from strong bingo liquidity across the estate delivering a competitively attractive customer experience. |
| · | Enracha LFL NGR was up 6% with continued strong growth in gaming machine revenues. |
| · | Safer gambling developments, building on the strong culture of customer protection across the Group, include Rank’s entry in H1 into GamProtect, the cross-operator data-sharing initiative to block highly vulnerable consumers from playing with licensed operators. Additional improvements were made to the central oversight of local decision making in Grosvenor Casinos, enhanced customer monitoring systems have been implemented in Mecca, and further developments have been made to our proprietary online customer monitoring system known as ‘Hawkeye’. |
| · | The overall employee engagement score across the Group increased year-on-year by 0.1 point to 8.2, as our Group-wide commitment to colleague development and wellbeing continues to be well received by colleagues with notable further improvements in attrition rates. |
| · | Our investigation into the Spanish payment fraud incident has been completed, with the Group’s key financial controls now having been further strengthened. Recovery of the funds is unlikely, but we continue to work with the relevant law enforcement agencies and our advisors. |
Current trading and outlook
Following a slightly softer Q2, the Christmas and New Year holiday period saw strong trading across all our businesses and January’s performance has been in line with expectations. The significant increase in RGD to 40% for the UK digital business, and the increase in National Living Wage in Grosvenor and Mecca, will impact profitability in Q4. However, the Group’s mitigating actions to offset as much of this impact as possible are well advanced. Our strong H1 performance underpins our confidence in delivering full year performance in line with expectations.
The Group retains a clear path towards its target of delivering at least £100m annual operating profit in the medium term.
John O’Reilly, Chief Executive of Rank Group Plc said:
“We continue to deliver improving results which demonstrate the resilience of the Group and our ability to take advantage of the opportunities available to us, both online and in our venues.
Customers recognise the investment and improvements we have been making and are responding enthusiastically. Both the underlying metrics and medium-term outlook for the business remain encouraging, and we have the building blocks in place to capitalise on the opportunities ahead of us.
The second half of the year will bring further cost headwinds, principally in our UK digital business, which will be impacted by the UK Government’s huge increase in tax rates. We have already executed measures to mitigate some of this impact, whilst continuing to prioritise customer experience, and the Group will respond with agility as a heavily disrupted landscape takes shape in the UK.
As I retire as CEO of Rank, I would like to pay tribute to my highly talented colleagues across the Group for their enduring commitment to our customers which has again delivered another strong set of results. I am delighted that, as interim CEO, Richard Harris will now take Rank to the next stage of what I am sure is a very bright future.”
Definition of terms:
| · | Net gaming revenue (‘NGR’) is revenue less customer incentives; |
| · | Underlying measures exclude the impact of amortisation of acquired intangibles; profit or loss on disposal of businesses; acquisition and disposal costs including changes to deferred or contingent consideration; impairment charges; reversal of impairment charges; restructuring costs as part of an announced programme; retranslation and remeasurement of foreign currency contingent consideration; discontinued operations, significant material proceeds from tax appeals and the tax impact; and any other one-off events not related to underlying operations. Collectively these items are referred to as separately disclosed items (‘SDIs’); |
| · | Underlying operating profit is operating profit before SDIs |
| · | Underlying earnings per share is calculated by adjusting profit attributable to equity shareholders to exclude SDIs; |
| · | ‘H1 2025/26’ refers to the six-month period to 31 December 2025 and ‘H1 2024/25’ refers to the six-month period to 31 December 2024; |
| · | Like-for-like (‘LFL’) measures have been disclosed in this report to show the impact of club openings, closures, acquired businesses, foreign exchange movements and discontinued operations; |
| · | Prior year LFL measures are amended to show an appropriate comparative for the impact of club openings, disposals, closures, acquired businesses, foreign exchange movements and discontinued operations; |
| · | The Group results make reference to ‘underlying’ results alongside our statutory results, which we believe will be more useful to readers as we manage our business using these adjusted measures. The directors believe that SDIs impair visibility of the underlying performance of the Group’s business because these items are often material, non-recurring and do not relate to the underlying trading performance. Accordingly, these are excluded from our non-GAAP measurement of revenue, EBITDA, operating profit, profit before tax and underlying EPS. Underlying measures are the same as those used for internal reports. Please refer to APMs for further details; |
| · | Venues include Grosvenor venues, Mecca venues and Enracha venues. |
| · | Return on capital employed (ROCE) is calculated as 12-months rolling underlying LFL operating profit divided by average capital employed. Average capital employed is the average of opening and closing capital employed for the 12 month period. |
