Motorsport Games Inc.

Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call

5/7/2024

spk04: you if one of the people in the group decides to subscribe so we're looking at the bigger resource and bigger pocket of a group rather than necessarily individuals so we're looking at very innovative ways of trying to make the subscription a must-have for people that really want to get more from this experience but we are not making it a requirement to participate and contribute online if that makes sense
spk02: Yep, absolutely, that's very helpful. And then one last question I had is in terms of the overall cost savings, Obviously, we saw a significant year-over-year improvement on the net EBITDA loss. I'm just curious sort of in terms of obviously the 2022 restructuring and then some of the moves you made in the second half of last year, just sort of in terms of the full impact of those savings relative to what we saw in Q1. Is there sort of more further improvement in terms of cost savings from here, or have we sort of reached a point where the moves that have already been made are now sort of fully reflected in the financial performance?
spk01: Yes, I think this is Stanley. So, you know, the 2022 restructuring program that you mentioned, I think by the end of 2023, we had fully realized the benefits of that. As we disclosed in our Form 10-K, we had restructurings that impacted Australian development studios and some UT employees as well in Q4 of 2023. I think at this point, you know, for Q1, we're down to a monthly operating cash burn of about $300,000. It's definitely lower than Q1 of last year. I think at this point, we've sort of fully realized the benefits of the restructuring program, but we still continue to to look at other ways where we can, you know, reduce our current expenses where it makes sense to do so and it's feasible without that having business.
spk02: Great. Thank you very much for taking the questions.
spk00: Thank you. We'll take our next question from Michael Kopinski with Noble Capital Markets. Your line is open.
spk03: Thank you. And congratulations on your quarter and your release. Stephen, I was wondering if you can review for me the roadmap again for the release of games, DLCs, and the subscription service in particular. Like, what quarters would you be able to kind of identify when those will be available?
spk04: Sure. Well, the real key is when the first piece of content arrives, and we're looking to coincide that with the Le Mans event in June. So... next month is not far away at all. But that for us is the next stepping stone in the progress and the roadmap of Le Mans Ultimate experience. Where you've heard me reference, it has the 2023 season content in there. Understandably, our audience is saying, well, we're watching the 24 season now. We want the product to be as current as possible, especially as there are new cars and manufacturers coming to sport, driver changes and whatnot that people are looking to see reflected the calendar and the circuits and whatnot. So the first piece of content comes online in June, and that's pretty much every two or three months we're looking to launch additional content, ideally in packs. So there may be a new car arriving in June. After that, we're looking at new circuits, and then we start to update the content to make it more current to the 24 season with the different categories of cars that are online. So for us, It's really about trying to conclude this year and ensure that by the end of 24, we have the entirety of the 2024 calendar, the circuit and the cars incorporated in the product. So that really gives us six months to be rolling this out. And we think there's no great urgency in that because we have the entirety of the 23 season. It's not as if we came out of a very, very thin game with very limited content. There's an enormous amount of content in there in terms of the tracks and the cars and the variety on offer for established players and new people coming in over time. But June is when it really starts. So we're about five weeks away from the start of that.
spk03: Gotcha. And when do you anticipate the subscription service to be launched?
spk04: Subscription service, I think, is a case of post-Lamon. We're starting to talk about it now. It tends to be a very sensitive subject in the racing space for some odd reason. For us, this is not really kind of pushing the audience to spend unnecessarily. We know that as we own the ecosystem and we've poured enormous resources into building this ecosystem so that we have the game, we have the online funnel in race control. and we have the services and the features being plugged into that ecosystem experience so that you and your friends can really feel as though you're a part of a story. You feel like you're the superstars in this. Those features do come in at this expense, and we're looking for players to invest in this journey with us. So the subscription is probably all being well coming online around July or August this year.
spk03: Gotcha. And then I know there generally is a bell curve to sales. I was just wondering, can you give us a sense of how long the tail has been for the sale of Le Mans into the second quarter?
spk04: Well, look, Le Mans, we knew that out of the gate as an early access title, we'd have, you know, originally we thought it would be a hard sell, you know, an early access title, not an existing franchise based on a sport that hasn't had a video game. in place for many, many years, but actually out of the gate, it just stormed away. It was superb for us. Now we're expecting and understand that those sales dip as we're heading to Le Mans. So we see that being the next peak. It drops off over time because we haven't been injecting the product with new content, but what we have been doing is injecting fixes and improvements and occasionally new features. that really ramps up next month. So we expect the next spike, and that's going to be critical for us in terms of the marketing visibility, the player update, the numbers coming into the product, and the general vibe around that experience at Le Mans is going to be enormously beneficial to us, we expect.
spk03: And then my final question, do racing games offer themselves to modifications by user content creators? I was just wondering if mods are an opportunity for you in the future.
spk04: Yeah, yeah, good question. Mods in the racing space, for some titles, you can consider it to be the lifeblood of titles, but typically they're titles that have been left dormant for a while by the original developers, i.e. they move on to the next shiny thing, and they need the priority of getting the loan. Users tend to fill that gap, and there are a lot of talented people out there that make amazing content for legacy titles. Because we're so new, there really isn't any mod content for The Monultimate. And that's not a path that we're proactively trying to encourage. Primarily because it's new, but also you've got to understand we have the rFactor 2 platform in our portfolio that has a lot of user generated content, much of which gets sold through the Steam store or free modifications available elsewhere. And that's a fertile ground. It's got a long history of this. Lamont Ultimate was built to be much cleaner. And I talk about the ecosystem, but really it's about the experience being much cleaner and afresh for users. Because in our Factor 2 that's been around for a long, long time, the quality can vary massively, massively in terms of the user-generated content. And some of it is probably way past its sell-by date for some users. But Le Mans Ultimate is a shiny new thing that has a far higher kind of standard, and we're really selling that as a premium product, and that experience has to be first rate, and that means we curate that content, and all of that content right now comes from within the Motorsport Games team.
spk03: Gotcha. Well, good luck. Thank you. Thank you, Martin.
spk00: We have no further questions in the queue at this time. I will turn the program back over to Mr. Hood for any additional remarks.
spk04: Thank you. I'd just like to close by offering my thanks to everybody attending this call. It's much appreciated. We are feeling very positive about this Q1. We do see it as a stepping stone, and I'd like to thank you all again for your time.
spk00: This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time, and have a wonderful day.
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