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spk02: Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Allied Esports Entertainment second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lasse Glassen, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and welcome to the Allied Esports Entertainment 2021 second quarter results conference call. Speaking on the call today is Allied Esports Entertainment's Chief Executive Officer, Claire Wu, and Chief Financial Officer, Tony Hung. Judd Hannigan, who is leading the Allied Esports operations, is also available for the question and answer session. Before I turn the call over to management, please remember that our prepared remarks and responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements. Words such as may, will, expect, intend, plan, believe, seek, could, estimate, judgment, targeting, should, anticipate, goal and variations of these words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those implied by such forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors discussed in the company's public filings, including the risk factors discussed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. In addition, certain of the financial information presented in this call represents non-GAAP financial measures. The company's earnings release, which was issued this afternoon and is available on the company's website, presents definitions of such non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations to the appropriate GAAP measures, and an explanation of why the company believes such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to LID Sports Entertainment's CEO, Claire Wu. Claire?
spk01: Thank you, Nathan, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I will begin by discussing the recent leadership transition at AESE and then an overview of the key operating highlights from this past quarter. In addition, I will provide an update on the company's strategies as our board of directors and the management team evaluate future exciting plans. Tony Hong, our chief financial officer, will follow with additional details on our second quarter financial performance. Similar to recent quarters, the financials we are reporting today pertain to our continuing operations which includes our AI and e-sports operations and the company's top core expenses. As previously announced, we completed the sale of the World Poker Tour, or WPT, to Element Partners earlier in the third quarter, and therefore the WPT results are presented as discontinued operations for the three and six-month period ended June 30th as well as the comparable periods for the previous year. Having been appointed to the role of CEO, President, and the General Counsel of AESE just about five weeks ago, I'm very honored to lead the day-to-day operations of the company. For those of you who are not familiar with my background, I bring more than 50 years of relevant experience to AESE. most recently as Vice President and General Counsel for Asia Pacific Capital Inc., as well as Senior Counsel at the New York Law Firm, David Hunter and Central. In addition, prior to accepting the CEO, President, and the General Counsel positions, I served and will continue to serve as a Director on ABS-C Board. Throughout my career, I have had extensive legal and business experience in cross-border transactions, U.S. securities regulations, mergers and acquisitions, capital market transactions, as well as corporate strategic planning and structuring. I believe this will serve the company well as we look ahead to the future and attract the calls for AASE going forward. On behalf of the entire team, I would also like to express our thanks and gratitude to Frank Ng, who led the company since it became publicly traded two years ago and helped AESDN navigate the complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic. We wish him all the best in his future pursuits. With that, let's move on to an overview of our results for the second quarter of 2021. Overall, I'm pleased with the steady progress of our esports business as demonstrated by the 65% quarter-over-quarter growth in revenue. This growth was driven by the gradual recovery of the in-person panel of our e-sports business as we slowly emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic and continued to benefit from increased food traffic in Las Vegas and the return of live events and social gatherings. In addition, during the second quarter, we saw the early revenue contributions from our multi-platform content panel. While the resumption of in-person events will be an important growth driver of our e-sports revenue in the near term, we have also made good progress over the last several quarters, building out capabilities within our multi-platform content panel. During the quarter, we announced the launch of AE Studios, which will serve as the original content development, storytelling, and the production services for partners of Ally Esports. I will provide additional details on this important initiative later in my remarks. And finally, subsequent to quarter end, We completed the sale of WPT to element partners in an all-cash transaction for $105 million. The sale of WPT is a key milestone as it significantly improves our liquidity position. With over $100 million of cash today, we have significant financial flexibility as we look to maximize shareholders' value through the utilization of our cash and concluding our strategic exploratory process for our esports business. Now, let's turn to our second quarter operational highlights for our esports business. We saw the start of the COVID-19 pandemic recovery in the second quarter as cautionary restrictions were lifted in Las Vegas during the first. This resulted in increased demand for our terminate and production services, and NATO allied exports production of 81 events in the second quarter, an increase of 135% compared to the prior quarter, including 38 pre-territory events and 43 third-party online and in-person productions. Between in-arena and online third-party tournament productions, over 14,200 players competed in online esports-produced tournaments in the second quarter of 2021, as compared to approximately 1,700 players in the pre-quarter. Preparatory productions at the HyperX Esports Arena Las Vegas were up 23% from the player quarter, with the company adding Lockdown, a new fighting game competition, to its weekly schedule, which continues to draw players from all around the United States. In April, the company also hosted a new edition of its Legend series tournament, which was the world's first esports tournament production during live animated commentators in a partnership with motion capture technology leader, Accent. The event deployed a three-day, 14-minute takeoff format that included wagering opportunities for better. During the quarter, we announced WaveSonic as the official gaming monitor and the streamer room partner of HyperX Esports Arena, Las Vegas. As part of this partnership, all players in arena and on the NL esports track in North America have the opportunity to play on the brand of gaming monitors. Additionally, the company partnered with esports and the company creation organizations AT6B Esports sponsored activations with Zapp's potato chips and other branded snacks around NIA Esports in-arena programming, lockdown, and Saturday night speedway. Third-party events increased nearly 15-fold quarter-over-quarter. The significant increase was driven by our new tournament organization partnership with tension-backed streaming platform, Travel, for whom LA Esports will produce over 100 tournaments across North America, Europe, and Latin America throughout 2021. In addition, prior to the lifting of in-person restrictions in early June, the HyperX Esports Arena continued to serve as a COVID-19 safe bubble environment both 5th IP production of the Rainbow Six North American Air, as well as the host of the Zombies World Championship. Although the company's more expansion plans with Salmon Properties and Brockfield Property Partners continue to remain on hold, the NI Esports track will continue to bring gaming activations to fans around the country. To this end, we recently announced a seven-stop e-sports track tour with NASCAR that locked off in working green New York earlier this month and will be making stops at Daytona International Speedway, Caledonia Super Speedway, Michigan International Speedway, Kansas Speedway, Maxwell and Felix Raceway throughout the rest of the summer and into the fall. Throughout the pandemic, Allied Esports had made a significant stretch to advance the company's multi-platform content pair. A foundational effort of this effort was our 24-hour content strategy on Twitch, which saw 4.5 million live views in the second quarter alone and increased followers by 28% from the previous quarter. Altogether, the company has delivered over 30 million live views on its Torch channel since launching the 24-hour strategy in November 2020. As I highlighted at the beginning of our call, we announced the AE Studios during the second quarter. This new division of the company will serve as the original content development story painting, and the production services arm of AI Esports for partners looking for a training solution outside of Esports tournament operations and broadcasts. Through AE Studios, we will leverage our years with digital content creation and world-class production facilities to design and produce digital-first projects for clients and partners spanning a variety of industries such as gaming, entertainment, pop culture, music, and sports. AE Studios has hit the ground running with the production of a 24-episode series of a celebratory showdown for Twitch. The interactive content series features celebrities competing in studio and head-to-head on the virtual versions of some of the top golf clubs in the world. Concurrently, streamers participate from home on the desktop version of the game. The show's second season kicks off on August 24 on Twitch.tv slash Twitch Sports. Distribution of our growing content library, which concurrently holds over 600 hours of esports programming, continue to see strong demand and is now live on seven over-the-top or OTP streaming platforms. Through a distribution agreement, we have along with MoxIP to distribute LI Esports content around the world. We believe this is the beginning of additional distribution opportunities for our content library and will stay over 250 hours. of our esports tournament content air on those platforms. Before turning it over to Tony to discuss our second quarter financials in more detail, I would like to also provide a quick update on the company's longer-term strategy for our esports operations. The rapid growth and the popularity of gaming and esports during the COVID-19 pandemic has driven significant interest in allied exports. With the WPP sale complete, we have began to accelerate our previous announced plan to explore strategic options for the export business, including a possible sale, in order to maximize the shareholder value. As part of the process, we are actively working with Lake Street Capital Markets as an advisor. With that said, No definitive buyer has been identified to purchase the esports business, and there are no active negotiations as yet in respect to the sale of the esports business. In the meantime, we will continue to operate the esports business and execute our business plan. On the performer basis, including process from the WPT sale, our cash position is led of outstanding debt totals $101 million. With this cash, along with any cash that may become available as a result of any sale of the esports business in the future, we intend to explore opportunities to acquire or merge with our existing business. This includes the business in online entertainment, real money gaming, and other gaming sectors. However, the company does not plan to limit itself to any particular industry or geographic location in its efforts to identify or prospective target business. Key criteria for a potential targeted business includes a proven business model, an experienced management team, and accretion to the company's adjusted EBITDA. The company expects to engage with an investment bank to assist in this process. However, I do want to make it clear that at the present, we do not have any specific merger, asset acquisition, reorganization, or other business combinations under consideration or contemplation. We will provide you with an update on our progress with respect to this pursuit on future calls. That concludes my prepared remarks, and at this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Tony Hom, our CFO, for an update on our second quarter financial results. Tony.
spk03: Thank you, Claire. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. While the pandemic continued to impact our business in the second quarter, we saw the beginning of recovery as cautionary restrictions were lifted in June in Las Vegas and economies across the country began to reopen. Demand for our tournaments and production services also increased and Allied Esports experienced meaningful improvements this quarter. In addition, we've continued to make progress on the development of our multi-platform content pillar and announced a new division of the company, AE Studios, during the quarter. Momentum is building, and Allied Esports is well positioned to continue driving improved results in the second half of the year. Now, let's turn to our second quarter results from continuing operations. Total revenues for the second quarter increased 32.9% to $0.8 million compared to the second quarter of 2020. Looking at these results in greater detail, in-person revenues for the second quarter increased 8.1% to $0.7 million compared to 0.6 million in the second quarter of 2020, as a result of the increased number of events and loosened restrictions of operating hours and social distancing measures at our HyperX Esports Arena, Las Vegas. The increase in in-person revenues were partially offset by a decrease in sponsorship revenue due to a lack of in-person activation and truck events in Europe, where the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic remain a concern. Our multi-platform content pillar generated $0.2 million in revenues for the second quarter driven by our new tournament organization partnership with Trovo, the Tencent-backed streaming platform. Total costs and expenses for the second quarter were $5.0 million, down from $5.3 million compared to the prior year period. The year-over-year decrease was primarily the result of the one-time impairment charge of $1.1 million against our investment in ESA during the second quarter of 2020. This decrease was partially offset by several factors. First, in-person pillar costs and expenses increased by 29.2 percent, and selling and marketing expenses increased by 50 percent compared to the prior year period as the recovery of live in-person events grew. Second, general and administrative expenses increased by 25 percent as compared to the second quarter of 2020. This year-over-year increase was primarily due to salaries returning to original levels in 2021 versus temporary lower salaries in the second quarter of 2020 in reaction to the COVID pandemic, as well as increases in legal and professional fees incurred this past quarter in connection with the sale of WPT. We continue to prioritize expense management and actively reduce all non-essential spending across all of our costs and expense items. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was a loss of 3.0 million compared to a loss of 2.2 million in the prior year period. Net loss from continuing operations for the second quarter was 4.3 million compared to a net loss of 10.7 million in the second quarter of 2020. The year-over-year improvement was primarily a result of a one-time non-cash conversion inducement expense of 5.2 million from our debt refinancing that occurred in the prior year period. Now, moving to our balance sheet. At June 30, 2021, our cash position totaled $16.8 million, including $5.0 million of restricted cash and $4.1 million of cash in connection with the WPT business and included in current assets held for sale, but which was available to fund the Allied Esports business until the closing of the WPT sale transaction on July 12, 2021. This compares to our total cash position of $14.2 million at June 30, 2020, which included $5 million of restricted cash and $7.4 million of cash held at WPT. As of June 30, 2021, we had convertible debt and bridge notes totaling $3.4 million in gross principal, which was paid off concurrent with the closing of the WPT sale. We continue to see progress in our esports business, Our in-person pillar is gaining traction, and we are excited to see more activity and events booked for the remainder of the year as we slowly emerge from the pandemic. We also continue to strengthen our offerings in our multi-platform content pillar while judiciously managing our costs and expenses. The significant cash received from the sale of WPT also strengthens our liquidity position to explore strategic options for the esports business and maximize shareholder value. While we are not yet in the clear from the effects of the pandemic, the recovery is certainly underway, and we expect our business to continue to improve in the second half of the year. That concludes our prepared remarks, and we would now like to open the line for Q&A. Operator?
spk02: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press a star, then 2. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question comes from Derek Soderberg with Collier Securities. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, this is Ryan on for dare. Thank you for taking my questions. I'm wondering if you can provide some more detail on the MNA environment out there and how you're prioritizing using the cash. Is this environment favorable at the moment to find growing and profitable companies at a reasonable price? And then can you maybe describe your ideal target and is the company in real money gaming, content producing, or any more detail? And that would be great.
spk01: Hi, Derek. Thank you for the question. Yes, with $100 million cash from the WPT deal, we intend to explore many M&A opportunities with existing business. And like you mentioned, that includes business in online entertainment, real money gaming, and other gaming sectors. With that being said, currently the company does not plan to limit itself to any particular industry or location in its efforts to identify possible potential business. And Tony, do you have anything to add to the topic?
spk03: Yeah, no, Ryan, I think as you've probably been following, the market obviously has been pretty active, you know, for M&A. And I think that's something that we're watching very carefully. And as Claire described, I think the good thing is that we have a pretty broad mandate in terms of looking at M&A activities. So we're not kind of boxed in to have to do a particular deal under a particular timeframe. and then have to do it under poor economic deal terms. So I think that gives us a lot more flexibility to be able to find the right deal that's going to maximize shareholder value.
spk05: Yeah, thank you. And as a follow-up, I'm wondering if you could help us understand your expectations for what cash burn are and where we should be modeling OPEX for the rest of the year. Thank you. Claire, do you want me to go ahead?
spk01: No. I can answer first, and then I'm going to turn that to you for details. Yeah, regarding the cash firm of eSports business, currently our main priority will be continue to grow revenues while at the same time to reduce expense and become a more efficient company. In terms of revenue growth, we already see the in-person revenue bouncing back. and they are very excited about the growth of our multi-platform content panel. As far as the improvement of efficiency side, as the new CEO of the company, I'm leading the team to take a fresh look at all costs and expenses, as well as the elements of our business which are most profitable. Let me turn this to Tony to add in more details.
spk03: Yeah, and Ryan, I guess just to kind of follow up on what Claire said, I would say for the short term, as you've kind of seen from our earnings release probably, you know, historically we've been burning somewhere around $800,000 to a million a month between the kind of esports business as well as our corporate top co expenses. And so for the short term going forward, I would expect that to be kind of a nice placeholder. But as Claire mentioned, you know, obviously we're going to be looking at new revenue opportunities and also, you know, potential ways to identify more operational efficiencies to kind of help bring that down over time.
spk05: Thank you very much. Sure.
spk02: This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you for your support and for joining us on today's call. We look forward to speaking with you again when we report our 2021 third quarter in November. Thank you again for your time and attention this afternoon, and please stay safe and healthy.
spk02: This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.
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