Billionaire Kenneth Dart Halts Buying of Flutter Entertainment Shares

Billionaire investor Kenneth Dart has paused buying Flutter Entertainment (NYSE: FLUT) stock, but the move isn’t as bearish as it might seem.

The Irish Times reports that Dart hasn’t purchased shares of the FanDuel parent company in nearly a month—marking one of his longest stretches of inactivity since his stake was first revealed last year.

What started as a relatively small stake in the Paddy Power owner ascended to 20% as of April and now resides around 31.4%. However, it’s unlikely that Dart has activist intentions with Flutter and that’s the case for multiple reasons.

First, he doesn’t have an extensive track record of activism in the myriad companies he’s invested in.

Second, as The Irish Times notes, more than a third of his stake in Flutter is by way of derivatives and swaps. Since he doesn’t directly own at least 30% of the Flutter common stock, he’s not required to make an acquisition offer as would normally be the case under Irish law.

Reading Tea Leaves on Dart’s Flutter Stock Pause

Worth an estimated $4.1 billion, Dart is famously quiet about his investments, making it difficult to parse why he’s currently standing pat on Flutter stock. However, he hasn’t been a seller of the Betfair owner’s shares.

His pause on Flutter activity may be attributable to his engagement with other gaming equities. For example, August regulatory filings indicate he took a 5.8% stake in DraftKings (NASDAQ: DKNG), Flutter’s most director competitor in the U.S.

DraftKings is almost certainly another case where Dart isn’t pursuing an activist agenda, given that CEO and co-founder Jason Robins controls over 90% of the company’s super-voting shares.

However, the pause in Flutter alongside his DraftKings stake suggests Dart may simply be diversifying his exposure across top gaming equities.

Evolution Update

As recently reported, Dart’s stake in Evolution AB breached the 30% threshold, triggering a legal requirement to launch a formal takeover bid for the Swedish gaming supplier. He complied with a $13.8 billion offer, but the move was purely regulatory: Dart explicitly stated he had no desire to acquire the company outright, and Evolution’s board advised shareholders to reject the proposal.

A scant 0.06% of Evolution’s outstanding shares were tendered to Dart, nudging his direct equity stake to 31.6%. When factoring in swap positions, his total economic interest in the company sits at 33.8%.

Under Swedish law, now that the mandatory offer has lapsed and the tender period is complete, Dart can continue accumulating Evolution shares for a full year before triggering another mandatory takeover requirement.