Ongame, owner of the world’s third-largest poker site, has confirmed it plans to list on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market in 2006.
Sweden-based Ongame owns and operates pokerroom.com in addition to running the rapidly growing poker software provider PokerNetwork.
The firm has been linked with a public listing since it published its annual results last year.
But Patrik Selin, chief executive of ongame, told eGaming Review the decision had now been made to go for an IPO.
“We are going to go to the stock market, but it takes time to do it right and how it looks now we will be doing it next year,” Selin said.
Ongame posted an operating profit of US$18.25m for the year ending December 2004, from revenues of US$55m.
But Selin declined to place a valuation on the firm, which has grown a further 60% in the firs half of the year.
“The market has changed so fast in six months that if we wait another six months the valuation will be completely different,” he said.
Ongame was founded by two Swedish friends, Oskar Hornell and Claes Lidell, who began playing poker at university.
Oskar’s brother Karl, an expert Java programmer, designed some poker software and the site launched in 1999.
source : egr magazine
