Codere's Seventh Straight Better Quarter Lands With Its Sale Still Unresolved

Group gaming revenue up 5.8% to €352.5 million, adjusted EBITDA up 14.1%, and the online arm's best quarter yet on World Cup stakes 180% above 2022. What the market wants is not the numbers but the answer to a strategic review that has been running since the first quarter, with Jefferies and Macquarie engaged.

• Grupo Codere reported its seventh consecutive quarter of improved profitability, with group gaming revenue up 5.8% year on year to €352.5 million and adjusted EBITDA up 14.1% to €57.6 million
• Codere Online posted its best quarter to date, with net gaming revenue up 27% to €69.4 million and IFRS revenue up 25% to €64.4 million
• World Cup stakes reached €63 million, 180% above the 2022 tournament, bringing in nearly 40,000 new customers, with World Cup net gaming revenue more than doubling despite a low sportsbook margin
• Full-year guidance was raised to net gaming revenue of €255 million to €265 million and adjusted EBITDA of €20 million to €25 million
• The strategic review of ownership and sale options begun in the first quarter, with Jefferies and Macquarie engaged, remains unresolved

The Numbers Are Good and the Question Is Elsewhere

Grupo Codere has delivered a seventh straight quarter of improved profitability. Group gaming revenue rose 5.8% year on year to €352.5 million, approximately £302.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA climbed 14.1% to €57.6 million, with the company attributing the gains to Argentina and Spain alongside the continued expansion of its Nasdaq-listed online arm.

Codere Online recorded its best quarter to date. Net gaming revenue rose 27% to €69.4 million and IFRS revenue 25% to €64.4 million. Mexico remained the largest market, with net gaming revenue up 24% to €36.1 million and revenue up 21% to €31.8 million. Spain contributed €27.6 million in online net gaming revenue, a 25% rise, supported by an 11% increase in average monthly active players to 54,400. Colombia, Panama and Argentina together added €5.7 million, up 54%. Across the division, average monthly active players grew 12% to 173,000.

The World Cup was the quarter's obvious catalyst and the company was careful about how much credit it took. Tournament stakes reached €63 million, 180% higher than in 2022, unique users rose around 56% excluding Colombia, and nearly 40,000 new customers joined during the event. World Cup net gaming revenue more than doubled against four years earlier, despite customer-friendly results producing a low sportsbook margin. Chief executive Aviv Sher said the tournament gave "an additional boost to customer activity and engagement", while stressing that growth was broad-based across core markets.

Profitability at the online division improved, with adjusted EBITDA of €5.8 million, up €2.3 million year on year. It posted a quarterly net loss of €1.4 million, but first-half profit was €5.6 million against a €3.1 million loss in the first half of 2025. Chief financial officer Marcus Arildsson said profitability had strengthened while the company continued to invest in expansion. Management raised full-year guidance to net gaming revenue of €255 million to €265 million and adjusted EBITDA of €20 million to €25 million.

The unresolved matter is ownership. Shareholders engaged Jefferies and Macquarie in the first quarter to explore potential transactions, including a full sale of the group at a reported valuation of around €2 billion, a figure that has been questioned given the restructuring Codere went through earlier this year. The group is controlled by a consortium of investment funds that took ownership through that restructuring, having separated Codere Online as a Nasdaq-listed entity in December 2021.

A Seller Wants Exactly This Set of Numbers, and the Timing Is Not an Accident

Seven consecutive quarters of margin improvement, a raised guidance range and a record quarter at the listed subsidiary is the profile a bank takes into a sale process. None of that makes the results less real, and the underlying Latin American growth is not a World Cup artefact: Mexico was up 24% and the smaller markets 54%. But anyone reading this as a routine quarterly update is missing why the disclosure is as detailed as it is. The company has been in the market since the first quarter and needs the second half to look like the first.

The Lottomatica and CIRSA Merger Is the Clock Codere Is Running Against

Lottomatica's absorption of CIRSA, expected to complete in the second quarter of 2027, creates the world's second-largest listed online betting and gaming operator after Flutter, with positions across casinos, sports betting and online gambling in Spain, Italy and Latin America. That is Codere's main Spanish rival becoming considerably harder to compete with, in the same markets, on a defined timetable. A seller wants to close before a buyer can point at that as a reason to discount, which is the most plausible explanation for the pressure for clarity that has built around the review.

The €2bn Number Is the Part Worth Treating Carefully

The reported valuation predates or sits awkwardly alongside this year's restructuring, and it has been questioned for that reason. A consortium of funds that acquired control through a debt restructuring is not a natural long-term holder, which argues for a transaction, but it is also not a seller with the luxury of waiting for a headline price. The realistic read is that the review concludes with something structured, a partial sale or a separation of the online arm from the land-based business, rather than a clean €2 billion exit. The Nasdaq listing of Codere Online already provides the seam along which that could be cut.

Codere has produced the quarter it needed to produce. The half that matters now is the one being negotiated in a bank's offices in Madrid, not the one in the results statement.