Sparks - Bally’s Intralot

Bally’s Intralot (BI) has announced the recommended all-share acqusition of evoke with a share offer of 0.537 new shares for each evoke share, which is equivalent to 52p per evoke share based on BI’s share price of €1.12 per share, giving an implied market value for evoke of £243.1m. There is a cash alternative of 52p per share. The indicated offer price is a small premium to the initial indicated offer of 50p per share and a 138% premium to evoke’s share price of 21.p at the close of business on 9 December 2025, the last day before the announcement of evoke’s strategic review. Since 2022, following the acquisition of William Hill, evoke’s share price has performed poorly, which has left the company with a high level of net debt of c £1.9bn at the end of FY25 versus its market capitalisation.

The acquisition scales BI’s existing online presence so that it will rank as the number two player in UK iGaming and number four in UK online sports betting with pro forma net revenue of €3.2bn and adjusted EBITDA of €856m. It also brings a high presence in retail, a new presence for BI, which represented c 21% of evoke’s adjusted EBITDA in FY25.

The management of BI has previously stated it is confident of transforming evoke’s profitability through better execution. There appears to be plenty of opportunity given in FY25, with evoke reporting a PBT loss of £576m that was burdened with high financial costs and exceptional items. Its adjusted EBITDA margin was c 20% versus BI’s B2C adjusted EBITDA margin of 37.1% in FY25. With the announcement, management has quantified £180m of pre-tax cost and capex savings that will be delivered by the end of the second year following completion of the acquisition.