Aristocrat Leisure

Aristocrat Leisure Limited
Public company
Traded as ASX: ALL
Industry Gambling
Headquarters Sydney, Australia
Key people
 Trevor Croker, CEO
Decrease -$A16 million
Website https://www.aristocrat.com/

Aristocrat Leisure Limited is an Australian gambling machine manufacturer, which has its administrative centre in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde, although the majority of its research and development is also done at its North Ryde site. It has marketing and development offices in South Africa, Russia and the United States.

Aristocrat is the largest gambling machine manufacturer in Australia, and one of the largest manufacturers of slot machines in the world, currently second only to International Game Technology.

History

The company produced its first machine in 1953, and was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1996. The company was founded by Len Ainsworth, whose family[1] maintains a substantial stake in the company, but is now chairman of a different gaming company, Ainsworth Game Technology. Aristocrat is licensed to distribute slot machines and other gaming products in over 200 jurisdictions (note that many countries, such as Australia, have a number of different gaming-licence jurisdictions).

Products and partnerships

Aside from spinning reel slot machines, the company has interests in gambling systems (a computerised network systems that manage slot machines), computerised card game simulations, electronic table games and linked jackpot systems (such as the patented Hyperlink systems). The company has developed the Reel Power system, where players buy reels instead of lines, win combinations in the standard configuration.

Probably the most well known Aristocrat game is Queen of the Nile, with its Egyptian theme, and " More Chilli" with its Mexican theme. However a key revenue driverfor the company is its linked jackpot themes, such as the Cash Express or Jackpot Carnival hyperlink themes, which place large progressive jackpots over a number of machines, usually between 4 and 12, but theoretically up to 256 machines can be linked under one jackpot system.

The company has a number of distribution partnerships, including Sammy Corporation in Japan.

Corporate information

Since March 2017, the CEO has been Trevor Croker, formerly executive vice president for global products, who succeeded Jamie Odell.[2][3]

The company employs 6,000 people in 103 countries. Company revenue during 2004 was in excess of A$1.1 billion. This is in contrast to earlier financial crises that the company has suffered, mainly associated with licence rejections in Nevada and dishonoured contracts in South America.

Aristocrat's CEO blamed the US subprime mortgage crisis for poor financial results in 2008,[4] despite the fact that competing companies have experienced record growth[5] in the same time period. As a result of the expected drop in revenue, the CEO enacted sweeping budget cuts, including large-scale retrenchments of staff from all areas of the business.[6] The company again faced difficult market conditions in 2009 with its full year resulting in a net loss of $157.8 million.[7] In July 2014 Aristocrat agreed to buy Video Gaming Technologies for about $1.3 billion to triple its North American business amid falling profit in Australia.[8] On August 10, 2017, it acquired mobile game developer Plarium for $500 million to enter into mobile gaming[9] On November 30, 2017, it acquired mobile game developer Big Fish Games for US$990 million.[10]

References

  1. ↑ "RICH PICKINGS: Len Ainsworth". Business Spectator. 10 May 2008. Retrieved 7 July 2008.
  2. ↑ "Trevor Croker named chief executive of Aristocrat Leisure". Gaming Intelligence. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  3. ↑ 8 March 2017 at 10:00 PM (8 March 2017). "Aristocrat CEO Trevor Croker flogs shares, pockets $2m to manage 'tax liabilities'". afr.com. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  4. ↑ "Aristocrat feels pain in US". Fairfax Digital. 30 April 2008. Retrieved 2 June 2008.
  5. ↑ "Bally Technologies, Inc. Announces Record Earnings for Third Quarter Fiscal 2008 on Record Revenues of $233 Million". The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. 12 May 2008. Retrieved 2 June 2008.
  6. ↑ "CEO & CFO Presentation, Macquarie conference". asx.com.au. 7 May 2008. Retrieved 2 June 2008.
  7. ↑ "CEO and CFO Presentation Script - Full Year Results 2009" (PDF). 23 February 2010. Retrieved 14 March 2010.
  8. ↑ "Aristocrat to Buy Video Gaming for $1.3 Billion". 7 July 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
  9. ↑ "Plarium acquired in $500 million deal". gamesindustry.biz. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
  10. ↑ "Kentucky Derby operator Churchill Downs selling Big Fish Games for $990M, just three years after initial purchase". 29 November 2017. Retrieved 17 December 2017.
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