Scientific Games Corp

Welcome to the Scientific Games fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Ruby and I will be your moderator for today's call. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, please press start followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Jim Bombasi, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations to begin.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone. During today's call, we will provide a business strategy update along with a discussion of our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results and operating performance, followed by a question and answer period. With me today are Chairman Jamie O'Dell, Vice Chair Tony Corsanos, CEO Barry Cottle and CFO Connie James. In terms of our prepared remarks, Jamie, Tony, Barry and Connie will first provide a business strategy update. This will then be followed by Barry and Connie discussing our fourth quarter and full year results. We will then take your questions. Our call today will contain statements that include forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed during the call. For information regarding these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our earnings release issued earlier this afternoon. The materials related to this call posted on our website and our findings with the SEC. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. A description of each non-GAAP measure and a reconciliation of each non-GAAP measure to the most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release as well as in the investor section on our website. On September 27, 2021, we announced that we had entered into a definitive agreement to sell our sports betting business to Endeavor. And on October 27, we announced that we had entered into a definitive agreement to sell our lottery business to Brookfield Business Partners. Beginning in the third quarter of 2021, we have reflected these businesses as discontinued operations in our consolidated statement of operations and reflected the assets and liabilities of these businesses as held for sale in our consolidated balance sheets for all periods presented. We are reporting our results of continuing operations in three business segments, gaming, side play, and iGaming. iGaming is our former digital business segment, excluding sports betting. Amounts and disclosures referring to combined include both our continuing and discontinued operations. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. A replay of this webcast and accompanying materials will be archived in the investor section of our website at scientificgames.com. supplemental reference slides are available on our investor relations website to help facilitate your review of the company's results, including an earnings presentation and historical recast business segment information. Now, let me turn the call over to Jamie.

Thank you for joining the call today. Before we get to today's update and the earnings presentation, Tony and I wanted to share our perspective on this company's journey over the last year and a half, the insights which drove our investment thesis, and the material changes in financial outcomes which will result. From the outset, we recognize the enormous opportunity to drive increased shareholder value through restructuring the balance sheet, redefining the portfolio, and becoming a sustainable growth company. Very encouragingly, we've already seen the early stages of this strategy successfully executed and starting to deliver improved metrics and the associated increased value we target for our investors, our customers, and our employees. We originally joined the team as consultants to the gaming business, partnering with Barry and his senior leadership team. We quickly developed a highly effective relationship with Barry. The complementary nature of combining our land-based experiences with his exceptional mobile gaming experience proved immediately powerful. As we developed our collective thinking, we became fully aligned that the company was ready for and capable of transformative change, beginning with optimizing the portfolio. Scientific Games was essentially functioning as a holding company for a diverse set of assets. And while many of these assets were incredibly valuable, they were poorly integrated. There was no core vision of how they fit together or how they could complement each other and thereby deliver incremental value. There was no clear and coherent argument for investment. And importantly, the company was hamstrung by high levels of debt and plagued by recurring leadership changes. The debt burden resulted in gearing levels around 10 times AUBA, limiting the ability to invest in growth and distracting management from focusing on some core fundamentals. The company lacked strategic vision and direction due to the complexity of the portfolio and the debt burden it carried. Despite these limitations, we were convinced that the company had the potential for enormous growth. And most importantly, we had the right team and that they were energized and ready to drive a positive change program at all levels. While we were immediately impressed by the potential of key leaders and creative talent already in the business, the company has also added significant new talent during the last 18 months. We've been attracted by the excitement of this transformational change. Within that mix of assets, we saw a well-established leading position in the land-based game, as well as leading positions in a number of other key strategic areas, like mobile games and iGaming, which provided a strong platform for transformation and a clear pathway for success. Now, I will turn it over to Tony.