GameSquare Holdings, Inc.

Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss GameSquare eSports first quarter office call 2022 financial results conference call and webcast. On the call today we have GameSquare CEO Justin Canna, CFO Paul Bozocchi, and President and Chairman Kevin Wright. If you would like to join the conference by phone, please click on the link at the bottom of the webcast. During the call, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Before management discusses the results, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements in this call may be forward-looking in nature. Any such forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this call and there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and you should not place any reliance on such statements. Please refer to the forward-looking disclaimer and risk factors in the company's MD&A for the period ended December 31st, 2021 which can be found on the company's profile at sedr.com and on the company's website. The company undertakes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements except as required by applicable law. I will now turn the call over to GameSquare's President, Kevin Wright. Kevin?

Thank you, Eugenia, and good morning, everyone. I'm Kevin Wright, President and Chairman at GameSquare Esports, and I'd like to welcome you to today's conference call to discuss our Q1 2022, financial results for the period ending March 31st, 2022. We have filed on cedar.com yesterday along with the MD&A. I'd highlight that commencing this quarter, the company changed its presentation currency from Canadian dollars to U.S. dollars to reflect our interest in future potential listings in the U.S. as well as to reflect our focus on pursuing business opportunities in the large and rapidly growing U.S. gaming and esports market. I would also like to remind you that during today's call, we will be making comments containing forward-looking information. I invite you to read our financial disclosures for risks and uncertainties that may affect GameSquare's performance in the future. As such, actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, consult our most recent MD&A and filings on CDAR. And unless otherwise indicated, please note all figures are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise noted. With that formality out of the way, And given that we've just spoke with you a month from now, we'll try to keep this quick. I'll turn it over to GameSquare's CEO, Justin Kenna. Justin.

Thanks, Kev. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We held our Q4 call just over a month ago, so we won't rehash all the exciting opportunities and progress that we discussed then. Transcripts and recordings are available on our website at investors.gamesquare.com. What I do want to talk about is the great progress that we've made in the last couple of months to give you a sense of the high growth that we're driving as well as how we're doing on our path to profitability. Despite a seasonally soft Q1, I'm pleased that we have exceeded our internal sales targets and with a month to go in Q2, we have already met our internal sales projections for the quarter. We're really pleased with the sales execution and there are some great opportunities within our sales pipeline across all of our businesses. We've had some high-profile wins with Lenovo, Arterra Labs, Army, and Dairy Mats at Complexity. Companies were recognized for innovative work that they've done for Jack in the Box and Cash App. And we've closed some nice reoccurring revenue opportunities at GCN and at Code Red. As we were active with M&A throughout last year, year-over-year comps are tough. But if you look at how Code Red has trended and And you can find this in our MD&A. Their revenue grew by more than 50% and their gross margin has nearly doubled. This is indicative of how we are managing our business. High revenue growth with margin expansion as a focus. We have also launched new revenue opportunities which are capitalizing on the growing activity and brand involvement within esports and gaming. 4Frame Studios is a great example. Since launching, it has been active providing content production services to existing Gamesware clients and winning business with new brands and esports orgs. Our expectation is that 4th Frame will be a very near-term contributor to profitability and is a great case study about how we can build new businesses that complement our existing business and bolster the incredible talent that we have within the company. Based on the early success of 4th Frame, we are assessing other opportunities that can profitably serve the esports and gaming market as we seek to offer customers more choices. We have also talked about optimizing our businesses with a focus on eliminating expenses that are not supporting the high revenue growth that we are showing across the business. We have identified areas that we can optimize, which include internalizing outsourced costs and ensuring that spending on external contractors is the right decision to support high growth and profitability in the near term. Even before these cost cutting measures, we believe that our private placement and credit facility provide us with the access to capital that will enable us to meet our business objectives, including our recently increased revenue guidance of US 23.5 to US 25 million, or 30 to 32 Canadian, without having to rely on additional equity financing in the near term. We believe that we have built a great platform with great people doing great things, and our audience of more than 220 million is leading to more brand opportunities, as evidenced by Lenovo, Jack in the Box, Cash App, Arterra Labs, and many more. The trend in esports points to growing engagement by global brands, and we believe the Game Square family of companies are at the intersection of culture, commerce, and investment. With that, we'll turn over to our financial performance.