Greece’s Intralot H1 profit down on tax hit

Intralot, the world's second-largest lottery systems provider, on Tuesday reported a 39.8% drop in first-half net profit, hurt by a levy Greece imposed on large firms to boost ailing finances.
Intralot offers gaming platforms and operates sports betting and video lotto machines to online casinos and poker in about 50 countries around the world.
The group's net profit fell to 25.3 mln euros, broadly in line with market expectations, as the levy shaved 5.3 mln euros off of its bottom line.
Analysts had forecast net profit of 26.1 mln euros in a recent Reuters poll.
Excluding the windfall tax, net profit dropped 27% to 30.6 mln euros, hurt by a higher gaming tax in Bulgaria and increased payouts to winners.
Operating cash flow rose about 77% to 45.8 mln euros in the first six months and the firm was confident maturing projects in Morocco, Brazil, the United States and Italy would help performance in the coming quarters.
"Results are very much in line with our expectations and strategy for an improvement in operating cash flow generation and stabilisation of profits in 2010," Intralot's Chief Executive Constantinos Antonopoulos said in a statement.
Despite the profit drop, increased betting in Italy during the soccer World Cup in June and the acquisition of a Jamaican gaming operator boosted sales.
Turnover rose 10.8% to 540.9 mln euros, above market expectations.
At 0933 GMT, shares were down 0.6% at 3.10 euros, outperforming Athens bourse's general index which was down 1.8%.
The stock trades 7.8 times its estimated 2010 earnings versus a multiple of 11.8 for Lottomatica, data from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S showed.