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spk01: Thank you for standing by and welcome to Motorsport Games Inc's first quarter 2023 earnings call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad and to withdraw your question, please press star then two. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference over to Ken Godskin from Motorsport Games. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you and welcome to Motorsport Games' first quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. On today's call is Motorsport Games' Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Hood, and Chief Financial Officer, Jason Potter. By now, everyone should have access to the company's first quarter 2023 earnings press release, filed today after market close. This is available on the investor relations section of Motorsport Games website at www.motorsportgames.com. During the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on this call or to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please refer to today's press release and the company's filings with the SEC, including its most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2023 for a detailed discussion of certain of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. In today's conference call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA as we discuss the first quarter 2023 financial results. You will find a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable gap measures, as well as other related disclosures in the press release issued earlier today. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Stephen Hood, Chief Executive Officer of Motorsport Games. Stephen?
spk04: Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. I'd first like to tackle head-on a question some of you are likely to have around my return to the business some 14 months after my departure. Having put a lot of energy into the formation of Motorsport Games, I've always believed in the opportunity. When I was approached about our potential return and my availability, I reviewed the opportunity and came to the realization that things could be improved and success attained. With a heavy focus on delivery of quality products, service, and entertainment features, I believe we can point the company in the right direction. In only a few weeks since my return, it has been apparent the entire team across the Motorsport Games business are energized about what we can deliver if we are united and decisive. I am firm in my belief about what can be achieved and hope to be a catalyst for the change of fortunes for the most important games business. My background is in game development. I understand the requirements, infrastructure, and innovation necessary to compete in this space. But I also understand that we first need to deliver products to market. This opening period is one of rapid review, reorganization, and tactical progress. My review of the business increased markedly on April 19th when I assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer. This position provides me with the authority necessary to leave no stone unturned when refactoring the business' short, medium, and long-term effectiveness. As a result, and with full support of my leadership team, we have made the decision to close two micro-studios in Orlando, Florida, and Billison, Georgia. This results in a minor headcount reduction, but more importantly, it allows us to architect and manage our development resources in a more effective manner. Fewer physical studios, at least while we refactor and deliver initial releases, will cut out the distractions apparent during our rapid multi-site growth period, which was somewhat forced upon our business during the COVID pandemic. Now that we're out of this period, we should double down on known talent locations, improve visibility of development, and generate a greater sense of team across the organization. Focus extends across all our activities, and as such, I am instilling a culture of togetherness and optimism from the top down. I've seen from afar how our team has been hurt by the inevitable consumer reaction to products like NASCAR Ignition. a title that does not reveal the capability of those who remain with us on this journey. Indeed, I believe we are going to turn a corner and with the right products, win over those who understandably questioned our delivery. We have been deploying resources towards well-regarded legacy platforms such as the NASCAR Heat franchise, progressively bringing it closer to season currency. In the coming days, we'll update the product for the 2022 season, compete with next-gen cars for our fans to enjoy it. We are also working on a review of plans to maintain further support for the existing franchise titles whilst progressing with development around future NASCAR games. I've seen enough since my return to understand that our primary opportunities revolve around our plans at long-tail franchise games like the British Touring Car Championship, IndyCar, innovative opportunities with Le Mans, which includes the World Endurance Championship, and service amplifiers like our evolving competition system which we intend to eventually become an important piece of our strategy in the future. Titles that are the furthest into development that have yet to be showcased by the company. Our planned IndyCar title allows us to move into single-seater racing, an area I know very well and is in development by our Australia Development Studio. This team was together after the acquisition of Carcraft in 2021. It is especially rewarding to see how this long-term play is beginning to come to fruition around the title I have personally hoped to see the light of day since I got into playing video games way back in the day. With the right design, support, and marketing, we believe IndyCar could become the home of single-seat gaming. I believe our partners at IndyCar will come away impressed at our next progress reveal. Great games are not delivered overnight, and there is still much to do on the road to our upcoming releases. but we are taking prior lessons into account for the good of our future product strategy. Of equal importance is the longer-term opportunity around development of our game platform designed to improve upon the capability and stability of our current racing-focused efforts. We believe this will provide us with the technology from which we can push on, developing additional titles. We must move on from the technology and into delivery of entertainment. Our planned Le Mans title allows us to utilize the very best components of our top tier R factor 2 simulation title and align it to an opportunity we believe exists in the racing genre. Think of any popular game these days and you will invariably find that teams of friends are working together to achieve objectives. The racing genre has for decades promoted a sense of ultra competitiveness that I feel prevents rapid growth of the segment. Le Monde, and indeed the World Endurance Championship, revolves around teamwork. It is therefore fitting that our long-planned move into team racing begins with the release of our competition system into the R Factor 2 simulation-style game, which will see a useful growth period thanks to third-party community platform support, as well as our formal quarterly content release strategy. From there, we will gather valuable consumer feedback ahead of a wider release, alongside the upcoming Le Monde Games, which in turn should provide us with valuable insight into the concept of team flow within the racing genre. Beyond our projects with NASCAR, the development of IndyCar, Le Mans, and our aforementioned competition system will provide a valuable step forward for our company. We must think differently and consider how the racing gamer of tomorrow can expect to enjoy their hobby. Our customer is a core audience, and we intend to win them back and impress. We will do that by providing wonderful experiences that do not require us to follow in the slipstream of our various competitors, but instead produce an overall entertainment ecosystem that will benefit their ability to access and enjoy more of what we know makes this genre so special. In some areas, I can say that we are further ahead than I might have imagined prior to my return. I am bringing about greater operational focus and decisiveness to ensure that these projects are given the oxygen they require to be successful. The next 12 to 18 months will be a defining period for the company, and one the team across Motorsport Games and I will relish. In order to deliver on these opportunities tomorrow, we will need to make difficult decisions today. At this time, I'd like to hand it over to Jason Potter, Motorsport Games Chief Financial Officer, to go over our Q1 2023 financial results.
spk06: Thank you, Stephen, and good evening, everyone. As in previous founding calls, I won't be offering any forward-looking guidance today. Instead, I will focus on providing an update on our financial results and highlights from the first quarter of 2023. Unless stated otherwise, all results discussed relate to Q123 and the comparative period of Q122. Our Q1-23 revenues were $1.7 million, a reduction of $1.6 million, or 48% when compared to the same period in the prior year. Our gaming segment accounted for $1.5 million at the decrease, primarily due to less favorable pricing and volume of digital sales in our existing product portfolio, and only one major new console release in 2022 compared to two in 2021, which has negatively impacted our ongoing physical retail. year over year, reporting 0.3 million in Q123 compared to 0.4 million in Q122. Net loss for Q123 was 5.3 million compared to 16 million for Q122, an improvement of 10.7 million. We benefited from no impairment losses in the current quarter, whereas we recorded 9.3 million in impairment losses in Q122. The remaining reduction in net loss of 1.4 million was primarily driven by reduced external marketing spend and lower payroll costs as a result of the actions taken under our previously announced 2022 restructuring program. Under the 2022 restructuring program, we have lowered our overhead costs by approximately 3.9 million on an annualized basis as of the end of Q1 2023. These savings were driven by changes in global headcount and reducing certain overhead expenditures and are the result of more discipline in our spending and efforts to improve our internal processes. Speaking of internal processes, we have previously disclosed material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting in our SEC filings, including our most recently filed Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022. We have taken a number of actions to remediate these deficiencies, and are pleased to conclude two of the three previously identified material weaknesses have been remediated as of March 31, 2023. We will continue to take the necessary steps to remediate the remaining material weakness, which we will consider remediated only when applicable controls are in place, operate effectively for a sufficient period of time, and we conclude through testing that these controls operated as intended. Returning to our fiscal results for Q123, we are reporting an adjusted EBITDA loss of $4.3 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $5.6 million for the same period in the prior year. The improvements in adjusted EBITDA loss are the same as those discussed in respect to the change in net loss for the period and comparative quarter. Consequently, EPS for Q123 was negative $2.33 compared with a negative $12.97 for Q122. Equality continues to be a key focus. As of March 31, 2023, we had a cash and cash equivalents of $5.8 million, an increase of $4.8 million when compared to December 31, 2022, which was primarily driven by three registered direct offerings completed in February 23. Net cash used in operations during Q123 was approximately $5.7 million, representing a net cash burn of $1.9 million a month an increase of $0.3 million when compared to the average monthly cash bound of $1.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2022. As of April 30, 2023, our cash and cash equipment position was reduced by $0.9 million to $4.9 million, which we believe is insufficient to fund our operations for the remainder of 2023. We will need to supplement our available liquidity with additional debt and or equity financing, as well as ongoing cost control initiatives. Thank you all for your time, and now I will turn the call back to Stephen for closing remarks.
spk04: In closing, I would like to thank our shareholders for their support and encouragement as I assume leadership of the company. There are challenges, but given time and resolution to our liquidity situation, I believe that we can address all of them. We can deliver on the promise I believe in from the very formation of the company. Thank you for joining us today, and now let's go to questions. Operator?
spk01: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad and if you are using a speakerphone please pick up the handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question please press star then 2.
spk02: At this time we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Jason Tilchen at Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Great.
spk05: Thanks for taking the question and congrats Steven on taking over as CEO. I think one thing I'm curious about, maybe you could just spend a minute talking about some of the ways that you have either already or that you can improve monetization of the existing game portfolio while the other new titles that you referenced in the prepared remarks are still in progress and that I can follow up. Thanks.
spk04: Sure. Hi, Jason. So very interesting question. So monetization for me is one of the key points of review of the business. So one of the things I'm very keen to do is ensure that the component parts that we have across the organization, certainly the parts that touch the core audience, the player, is appropriately stitched together. And by that, I mean We have properties like Attraction GG, which is a great kind of media hub right now, which reports on gaming news and becomes the go-to site for a lot of breaking news right now, actually. We have this upcoming competition system that will be rebranded at some point when it goes through its formal release. We have the gaming license that we have with NASCAR, British Touring Car, Le Mans, which includes World Endurance Championship, IndyCar. What I'm actually looking at is Instead of just individually monetizing components of those offerings, traditionally games would have DLC that you could purchase in order to add cars or tracks or other unique elements in terms of content offering. How do we actually stitch these things together so that together they are able to monetize the overall entertainment experience? And it's a particular area of focus for me. And it's a question that I've been injecting back into the company since returning. And I think as I've come back somewhat fresh and I have a different perspective on how we move forward, I've been very encouraged by the reception of the teams to understand that we need to work together across departments and offerings in order to monetize the overall effectiveness of that entertainment offering instead of just the traditional game approach of, pumping DLC into products. I think there's a better way of working on this. And I think over the next few weeks, I suspect we'll have some very interesting answers to that. The component pieces are there. And what I'm doing is energizing the team in order to make it a reality. Great.
spk05: That's really helpful. In terms of the way the cash firm was described, the sort of run rate of maybe $1.9 million per month in the first quarter and then sort of the implied cash burn in April was about half of that. So I'm just curious, was there anything one time in terms of what happened in April or has the cash burn declined and sort of, you know, following up on that, is there anything you can share in terms of any updates on when you expect to raise additional capital? Thank you.
spk06: Hey, Jason. It's Jason here. Thanks for the question. You know, what we saw in Q1 is we did see a bit of catch up in terms of bringing down some of the AP position that we'd accumulated, some of the accrued positions that we'd accumulated as we kind of managed our working capital position very closely towards the back end of Q4. And following the RDOs in February, we were able to kind of catch up on some of those payments that we've been managing. And so that's why we see a bit of a higher burn in the first three months of the year. And then we see that drop off in April, where we've kind of caught up with that position and we start to see some of the benefits of the 2022 restructuring program come into play, where we've reduced some of our overhead at this point around 3.9 million on an annualized basis. kind of kicking in. So I think we'll continue to see some of that benefit on a go forward. Obviously, we'll continue to see some bumpiness, you know, where we have royalty commitments and those type of things kicking in, but we should hopefully start to see a little bit of a reduction in the overall cash flow in future periods. In terms of financing efforts, we continue to explore both equity and debt financing. Right now, we don't have anything kind of incremental to announce beyond the ATM facility that we put in place at the end of Q1 and the existing equity line of credit that we got in place at the end of Q4. But otherwise, we do continue to explore other options to try and solve that kind of longer-term liquidity issue.
spk05: Great. That's very helpful. And just one last one from me. Anything that you can share about any planned changes to sort of the timeline for game launches that were sort of scheduled for mid-next year in terms of IndyCar maybe being first? Any changes to that timeline and anything we can share on that front? Thank you.
spk04: I'll take this one, Justin. No planned changes at present. I think the important thing based on the currently publicly stated release windows for the products is that My task right now is to shore up those projects and ensure that they are given the opportunity to succeed. And there's probably a shift in focus with my arrival simply because of my background. I know games very well. It's what I've done for 25 years now. I'm very passionate about product development, but I also appreciate the challenges associated with that. And it's clear at Motorsport Games We've never tried to go toe to toe with some of the giants in the space in terms of development headcount. But I think we are that much more nimble as a result. And as long as we are bold and decisive on our decision making, and I think we can become far more efficient. I don't necessarily mean in terms of cash saving and operational efficiency. I mean, the decision making and the progress that we can make in comparison to some of the giants out in the industry. I think it's about utilising the time that we have available to meet our deadlines and deliver the best possible product. And that requires sometimes myself and others within the leadership team getting into the weeds of development in order to ensure that all of the component pieces of the development project, the infrastructure around them, are working in harmony, ensuring the testing department is working hand in hand with development, ensuring that The PR and the marketing machine is well versed in how to showcase to the best of their ability the upcoming products. I don't think that's always been in the ideal position, and there are efficiencies that we can make there. This is where I'm spending a lot of my time. So in answer to your question, not intending to change the release windows of the projects, but I am spending a lot of time ensuring that we use that available time wisely. The clock is always ticking in development.
spk03: and that adds to the the excitement but we're going great guns to deliver these things great that's very helpful thanks a lot thank you your next question comes from michael kapinski at noble capital markets please go ahead thank you and good evening i most of my questions have been answered but um just a couple Was the drop-off in the cash burn in the second quarter that you alluded to, was that already reflective of the closing of some of those micro offices you mentioned, and how material were those savings from that? And then if you could just, for me, you may have said this, but I was wondering if you could just clarify for me, where have you consolidated the development of the gains for the company? Can you just kind of run through the offices for me and what they are responsible for.
spk06: Yeah, thank you, Michael. This is Jason. I'll pick up the cash burn portion of it, and then I think I'll hand over to Stephen in regards to the consolidation of the development efforts. But in terms of the closing of the micro offices, they really were very small operations for us. So we're not expecting it to have a very significant impact on the cash burn and certainly in the near term where you have severance costs and things like that associated with closing those offices, there will be a slight pickup from that. But I wouldn't expect it overall to have a material impact on the cash burn as a whole.
spk03: Gotcha.
spk04: Hi, Michael. It's Stephen here. Just quickly on the studios and the locations, I think... They're trying to center them around, I call it, known talent locations. There's an incredibly strong talent pool in Europe that we're able to tap into thanks to our key office in the UK being based in Silverstone by the racetrack. Certainly a lot of talent in the UK, a lot of experienced developers here. And with our acquisition of Studio 397 that we made some time ago, that has given us a fantastic network to recruit across Europe and Those European time zones, at least they're conducive to working in harmony in a particular region at a particular time on a particular project. So running out of our UK operation is a lot of European talent. And second to that, centered around the IndyCar title in particular, is our Australia operation, which is centered in Melbourne in Australia. That also has a lot of talent there. particularly because we acquired the remnants of the Black Delta team, the operation that produced Cartcraft, and it's been wonderful to see that operation grow. And certainly since my return, I've been impressed with the rate of growth and talent that's available there. And we have this concept of just trying to center development operations so that it's much easier to monitor progress of development and ensure that we get the right caliber of individuals attached to those known locations. That is perhaps... a rather large departure from how we started at the beginning of the Most Sport Games journey, and one that I think will pay dividends in the long run. So really it's across Europe right now and Australia.
spk03: Completely makes sense. You know, since there were a lot of moving parts in the quarter, I was wondering, does the company still have a line of credit with motorsport networks that it could tap into? I know that there was a debt for equity swap there, but Is that line still open?
spk06: Hi, Michael. Yeah, I mean, the line is still there, so it hasn't been terminated. But as we disclosed in the form, thank you, we have substantial doubt about whether we'll actually receive funds under that facility. So we're not considering that in our kind of liquidity position. And that's why when I talk about cash and cash equivalents and liquidity, I'm focusing purely on the cash that we have on hand.
spk02: Gotcha. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. That does conclude our question and answer session.
spk01: I would like to turn the call back for closing remarks. Thank you.
spk04: Thank you. I would just like to thank everybody on the call today. I am particularly pleased and proud to be back at Motorsport Games. I feel incredibly energised. We're up for the challenge and I think we're able to do great things together. I look forward to more of these conversations and indeed one-to-one conversations with you all at various stages over the coming months and hopefully years. Thank you very much. Thank you.
spk02: Thank you. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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