The value of individual shares in Maltese online wagering technologies innovator Kambi Group dropped by almost 4.16% earlier today to approximately $54.93 following news that the firm’s founder had offloaded a significant slice of his shareholding.
The Valletta-headquartered firm used an official Thursday press release to declare that the move from Anders Strom (pictured) saw 2.2% of its shareholding offloaded ‘to Swedish and international institutional investors’ courtesy of ‘an accelerated book-building process’. The Nasdaq Stockholm-listed company moreover revealed that these 675,000 stocks had come with an individual price tag of about $55.56 to earn the iGaming pioneer gross proceeds of slightly over $37.53 million.
Enduring effect:
Kambi Group explained that 50-year-old Strom, who announced late last year that he would not be seeking re-election as its non-executive chairman, had conducted the sale through his Veralda Investment Limited vehicle and now holds roughly 17.5% of its shares. It also proclaimed that this residual shareholding is to become the subject of ‘a customary lock-up’ that is to last for 90 days from the settlement date.
Read a statement from Strom…
“I am very pleased to see the overwhelming interest 
from both current and new shareholders wanting to invest in the growth of Kambi Group. The company has developed into a leading premium sportsbetting technology company with significant opportunities in new and existing markets. By divesting a small part of my shares in Kambi Group, I have affected an elemental reallocation within my overall portfolio of investments. I remain committed as a long-term major shareholder and intend to continue to support Kambi Group through my representation on its board of directors.”
Established exponent:
Strom established Unibet from his London home in 1997 and subsequently led the firm, which rebranded as Kambi Group in 2016, as it became one of the planet’s largest business-to-business sportsbetting service providers and consumer-facing iGaming operators. Despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the company recently saw its aggregated revenues for 2020 rise by 28% year-on-year to $142.63 million as its annual profit surged by 131.7% to $29.21 million.
Football failing:
Despite all of this success and Legal Sports Report nevertheless reported that Kambi Group felt the wrath of several partner operators last Sunday after its turnkey sportsbetting platform was forced to suspend pre-game betting on Super Bowl LV for a full 30 minutes. The source disclosed that this outage was caused by a failure in geolocation compliance technology supplied by an outside vendor and had impacted the American-facing online sportsbook from Penn National Gaming Incorporated, Rush Street Gaming and DraftKings Incorporated.
Speedy solution:
Kristian Nylen serves as Chief Executive Officer for Kambi Group and he reportedly pronounced that his firm was nevertheless able to permanently fix the offending problem ‘seven to eight minutes’ before the beginning of the gridiron contest from Florida and then went on to process the highest volumes in its history.
Reportedly read a statement from Nylen…
“The issue experienced prior to kick-off was related to one particular bet offer for which we increased the number of possible outcomes especially for the Super Bowl. This bet offer was the third most popular offer on the day and, due to the extended number of outcomes, required extra technical capacities as part of our bet validation process. Unfortunately, this additional capacity caused a backlog and slowed, and eventually stopped, the bet validation process for all bets.”