Britain’s highest-paid woman, the Bet365 billionaire Denise Coates, has given herself a 45% pay cut, receiving £150m in salary and dividends last year despite soaring profits at the online gambling company.

The Stoke-based business reported an increase in turnover from £3.4bn to £3.7bn last year, while also cutting costs and benefiting from a one-off gain on the value of its investments.

These three factors catapulted the company to a £626m profit before tax in the year to the end of March 2024, compared with a £60m pre-tax loss the year before.

Coates is known in part for her record-breaking pay packets, which have exceeded £2bn during her time at the helm of Bet365, an online gambling empire that she transformed from a chain of betting shops owned by her father, Peter.

The 57-year-old, who has described herself as the “ultimate gambler”, paid herself £95m this year and is also entitled to at least half of the £110m dividend that the company paid, based on her shareholding of more than 50%.

The total £150m payout is significantly down on the previous year, when she awarded herself £270m, and far below the record-breaking £466m she collected in 2020. In 2021, Coates collected £300m.

The group also donated £120m to the Denise Coates Foundation, a charity she set up that is controlled by members of the Coates family and their employees. The sum is a fifth up on the £100m given to the foundation last year.

In October, analysis by the Guardian found that the donations may have saved Coates’ online gambling empire more in tax than the foundation has yet given to good causes.

The foundation has previously said that it needs to build up large reserves so that it can be self-sustaining in the long term, rather than relying on continued contributions from the company.