Aristocrat Leisure Limited

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Aristocrat's half-year 2026 result presentation. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask questions during the session, you need to press star 1 and 1 on the telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. This will advise that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to James Coghill, General Manager, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining Aristocrats off year 26 results presentation. I'm James Coghill, General Manager, Investor Relations. I'm joined by Trevor Croker, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director and Sally Demby, Chief Financial Officer. Kerber will start by covering some key highlights from the first half and in each of our businesses. He will then discuss strategic progress and how we are strengthening aristocrats' foundations through AI deployment. Sally will then take you through the group's financial results and balance sheet in more detail and discuss our outlook. This will be followed by a Q&A session. Unless otherwise stated, all figures are presented in reported currency. Please note the usual disclaimer at the back of the presentation. With that I will now hand over to Trevor.

Thanks James and good morning everyone. The first half of FY26 was another period of clear progress for Aristocrat. We delivered a strong first half performance gaining market share across all key segments and setting us up well to deliver on our full year commitments and to continue to grow into the future. Our focus on active and disciplined capital management continued in the half, including accelerating our on-market share buyback program, and this morning we announced a further $1 billion increase to the current program and extension through 12 May 2027. We also continue to deploy our capital to support future growth, making several targeted strategic investments that support aristocrats' long-term growth and resilience, and improve our ability to service the evolving needs of customers and players. In interactive, momentum is building. The executive leadership changed last year and the recent addition of high-caliber talent has positioned us well to deliver on many growth opportunities. And I'm highly encouraged by the recent progress. While there is still work to be done, we remain focused on delivering our FY29 US $1 billion interactive revenue target. We look forward to sharing more details about interactive at our investor briefing on July 1. Across the group, we remain focused on delivering operating leverage and scale benefits by focusing on efficiency and operating as one aristocrat. To this end, we expect to realise $100 million in annualised savings during FY27, while continuing to invest in growth. Finally, our ongoing focus on embracing AI as a positive force for change across the company accelerated over the period, strengthening our foundations, enhancing our strategic advantages and opening up new opportunities with our customers. Slide 3 highlights our underlying results for the period in constant currency. Our risk-crack delivered a strong half-year result, achieving 19% EPSA growth driven by continued operational execution. This reflects strong underlying constant currency revenue growth across all three of our businesses, with over 70% recurring revenue across the group. We also achieved profit margin expansion at the group level, leading to 16% MPA growth or 8% in reported currency. During the period, we capitalised on market conditions, buying back almost $680 million of shares, and we retained significant capacity to continue returning capital to shareholders in the second half. Overall, we're pleased with our first half performance, particularly as several key product launches fall in the second half. Looking ahead, we see strong momentum in the business and expect to deliver MPA growth for the full year to 30 September 2026 on a constant currency basis. Let me provide some highlights of our divisional performance. Strong revenue growth across the group combined with continued cost discipline and gains from our successful IP defence led to a group EBITDA margin uplift of 220 basis points. In gaming, we achieved market share gains in all key regions with exceptional performances in outright sales in North America and ANZ. Gaming operations saw continued gains led by Buffalo Mega Stampede and our pipeline remains robust with high levels of customer interest and strong early performance in recently launched premium games such as Monopoly Big Board Bucks, Spooky Link Grand and Lightning 10 Year Storm. Margin remains strong with a small reduction reflecting product mix given the exceptional outright sales performance. Product maintenance delivered an impressive performance with continued share gains and profit margin expansion reflecting focused investment in user acquisition high-performing content and effective execution of our direct-to-consumer strategy. In interactive, iLottery and content delivered strong growth, partially offset by platforms, which was impacted by our decision to exit the white-level business in the year. Excluding this, revenue growth was 11%. Turning to an update on strategy. Our long-term strategy remains focused on delivering sustainable growth and superior shareholder returns. Over the past six months we've made meaningful progress strengthening our competitive position by continuing to invest in content and capabilities that will expand our global footprint, deepen customer engagement and underpin long-term value creation. Our content is recognised as the best in the industry. We are building on that strength through our global studio model, enabling an enterprise-wide approach to game development and accelerating distribution across channels and markets. We remain focused on improving our speed to market across platforms to enhance monetisation, as evidenced by our second half plans to launch Lightning Link in Interactive, as well as additional high-performing LAN-based games. At the same time, we are focused on expanding in under-penetrated markets, with a particular focus on North American adjacencies, the MEA and the opening of the UAE in 2027. Our platform strategy represents a critical enabler of future growth, presenting new distribution opportunities as well as integrating advanced analytics, mobile connectivity and real-time player engagement capabilities. These strategic technology investments will allow us to deliver more personalised, data-driven experiences to customers and players alike. Our recent acquisition of Awager provides a new platform through which to distribute our content. We also acquired Gaming Analytics earlier this year, a provider of AI-powered tools for real-time player analytics, slot optimisation and marketing automation, designed to operate on top of traditional casino management systems. As we grow, we expect to benefit from our water risk rate operating model, which drives greater alignment, scalability and decision-making effectiveness across the group, ultimately enhancing operating leverage and improving profitability. Aligned with our operating model is a deep commitment to sustainability and compliance necessary to support a vibrant industry. Meanwhile, our financial strength provides flexibility to execute our strategy through diverse environments. Further supporting our strategy are investments in organisational talent and AI. Over the reporting period, we've continued to lift capability and drive change across aristocrat in response to evolving strategic needs and opportunities. In February, we announced the appointment of Bob Sir, Chief Technology Officer, and Daphne Goussard, Chief Operating Officer, EMEA, to the executive leadership team. Bob previously held senior roles at Microsoft, Amazon, and Double Down Interactive. He brings deep expertise in AI, emerging technologies, and delivery of enterprise-level innovation, helping us to significantly accelerate our technology agenda and AI implementations. Daphne was most recently COO at Entain and has decades of commercial and operational leadership experience across multiple global consumer industries. She brings dedicated focus to our growth strategy in EMEA and AI implementation experience. At the same time, we've consolidated marketing as a global function under the leadership of Barry French to optimise impact and efficiency across our brand of portfolios aligned with our One Risk-Cred strategy. As previously announced, we also appointed Dylan Slaney, the CEO of Risk Red Interactive. Dylan is a proven iGaming executive with over 10 years of global leadership experience in the sector and a track record of driving operational excellence and a customer-first approach that delivers transformative growth. We continue to focus on developing and recruiting leadership capability with diverse experience to support the delivery of our strategic objectives. In summary, we believe our strategy and scale positions us well to deliver on our ambitions to continue to gain market share across the business and our $1 billion US interactive revenue target. Combined with our disciplined approach to managing costs across the group, we are well-placed to deliver margin expansion and ultimately long-term shareholder value. While the macro environment remains volatile, historical trends demonstrate that gaming is resilient during periods of economic uncertainty. This pattern is evident in current performance with North American DGR growth in the first half remaining stable overall. Some softness has been observed in destination markets, which are typically more sensitive to discretionary travel and high-end spending. However, these represent around 5% of our North American revenues and have been more than offset by steady performance in regional markets, which benefit from a more consistent local player base. At the same time, operators continue to express a positive outlook, with capital expenditure plans remaining intact, signalling confidence in the sector's medium-term growth trajectory. This resilience is further reinforced by RiskCrest's diversified product portfolio that allows us to serve players wherever they choose to play. We operate in over 65% of regulated gaming markets across North America, but we have market-leading positions, including exposure to several of the industry's fastest-growing segments. Notably, we have a higher weighting toward regional and tribal markets, which historically demonstrate greater stability when destination markets face pressure. In addition, our digital businesses across both our lottery and product landers provide complementary growth with revenues largely driven by microtransactions. These digital revenue streams tend to outperform during periods when broader consumer spending is constrained. Our confidence in Aristocrat's sustained growth and consistent strategic execution stems from a set of unique differentiators that form a powerful ecosystem providing resilience across business cycles. These strategic advantages have enabled the group to navigate challenges from COVID to geopolitical volatility while continuing to outperform and strengthen our market positions. At the core is our market leading portfolio of content, brands and proprietary IP built through discipline and sustained investment in design and development. Our deep library of proven game mechanics and iconic titles have driven consistent market share gains over time. This strategic advantage is reinforced by a globally integrated network of creative studios and world-class talent. Further, Aristocrat is able to truly leverage its content and IP across multiple established distribution channels, enabling us to service a wide range of land-based and digital operators, consumers and governments. Ongoing technology investments to streamline cross-channel porting will strengthen this edge, further supporting our scale and long-term customer partnerships. RiskCraft's deep regulatory expertise also represents a critical advantage. We operate in highly regulated markets, maintaining over 350 licenses globally, a substantial pillar of the ecosystem that limits disruption. Further, our proven compliance capabilities, governance standards and most of all trust of regulators, customers and players built up over decades as a meaningful differentiator and reinforces the company's social license to operate. This trust has forged long-standing customer partnerships which are amplified by our scaled commercialisation capabilities and global sales and distribution network, resulting in superior customer service and consistent share gains across markets. This is further supported by global-scale product delivery capabilities and an extensive network of local service technicians. Sustainability and responsible gameplay have been all these benefits. A strong focus on governance, empowering safer play and community impact enhances resilience and reputation. Looking ahead, AI deployment represents a significant opportunity to further strengthen each of these differentiators, positioning Aristocrat to compete from an even stronger vantage point. AI implementation is rapidly becoming the expected standard across the technology and gaming sectors. Aristocrat's advantage lies in how we apply AI to enhance our core strengths and evolve to drive compounding returns across the business. While we see benefits throughout the organisation, we are focused on three key areas. First, enhancing creativity. AI is significantly improving the productivity of our creative and engineering teams through improvements in process, faster prototyping and creation of base level artwork and animations. Our studios are able to test consumer insights and adapt art packages almost in real time. This is building capacity to focus on high value concept development innovation. Importantly, our differentiation remains grounded in proven game mechanics, creative instinct, deep player understanding and exceptional commercialisation capabilities. Capabilities AI cannot replicate easily. The impact is already evident, where, for example, at Product Madness, we've more than doubled creative productivity, enhancing live ops development and personalisation without headcount growth. Second, we're improving velocity to market. AI is reducing time spent across prototyping, testing, quality assurance and cross-channel porting. This is enabling faster product delivery and increased output across jurisdictions. Some examples are our code conversion platform which has reduced conversion from 16 weeks to one week and regulatory automation which has cut product preparation time in certain processes from eight weeks to three weeks. Third, advancing AI-powered insights and optimisation. We are leveraging extensive data sets across land-based and digital to drive growth and enhance player experiences. For instance, Gaming Analytics is a customer-focused AI business delivering real-time reporting and insights to support decision-making to operators, strengthening our long-term partnerships. We expect to see further benefits across the group as we integrate these differentiated capabilities. AI is becoming a core capability enhancing performance today and improving enterprise process into the future, which will ultimately benefit both our top line and profitability. I'll now hand over to Sally, who will take us through a summary of the group results and outlook.