Flutter Plans $5 Billion Buyback, Boosts US Outlook

(Bloomberg) -- Flutter Entertainment Plc, parent of the FanDuel gambling company, announced plans to repurchase as much as $5 billion of its shares over the next few years as the US sports betting market surges.

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The board authorized the program, which is expected to kick off after the company announces its financial results in November and continue for three-to-four years, Dublin-based Flutter said in a statement ahead of its investor day on Wednesday.

Flutter, which owns FanDuel, the US brand that lets gamblers place bet on college and professional sports, has benefitted from a surge in new customers. The company predicted the US sports and online casino market will reach $63 billion at maturity, up more than 50% from its prior forecast. It issued a global, industry wide forecast of $368 billion by 2030.

Revenue at Flutter is projected to increase 14% annually, reaching about $21 billion in 2027, the company said ahead of a presentation to investors on Wednesday.

“I’ve never been more excited about our business and the opportunity that we see in front of us,” Chief Executive Officer Peter Jackson said in an interview. “We’re seeing excellent momentum across all of our markets and we are growing faster than the market.”

Flutter’s shares were up 8.3% to $247.16 as of 10:35 a.m. in New York. The stock had gained about 27% this year through Tuesday’s close.

Flutter has been growing through internal expansion and acquisitions, which Jackson expects to continue. In the past month, Flutter has announced deals to buy Playtech Plc’s Italian gaming business for $2.6 billion and invest about $350 million in Brazil’s NSX Group in a bet on that still nascent market.

“We like to do lots of things at once,” Jackson said. “All the different components of our business together make us stronger.”

Flutter has leaned into growth in the US, now its largest business, moving its primary share listing to New York from London earlier this year. The American market, where most states have legalized sports betting, has been a draw for Europe’s betting companies, which face increasingly strict regulation on gambling in the UK and the Netherlands.

As part of its forecast, Flutter projected 2027 earnings of over $5 billion before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Analysts were predicting $4.61 billion, the average of nine estimates.

In the US, Flutter sees about $9.7 billion in revenue in 2027 and adjusted earnings of $2.4 billion, according to the company’s forecasts.

(Updates with global 2030 forecast in third paragraph. A previous version of this story was corrected to show revenue projection is for Flutter, not just FanDuel, and US market estimate is “at maturity.”)

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