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spk08: Good day. My name is Rob and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Genius Sports third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press the star one. Thank you. I will now turn the conference over to Genius Sports. You may now begin.
spk15: Thank you and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statement should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20F filed with the SEC on March 30, 2023. During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable US GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniussports.com. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Locke.
spk04: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. We're happy to report quarterly financial results ahead of expectations for the seventh consecutive quarter. And for the third time this year, we are once again raising our four year guidance. For the full year, we are now expecting adjusted EBITDA growth of over 230% to $53 million and 830 basis point margin improvement over last year, along with a step into positive free cash flow territory as we start to demonstrate this quarter. We have achieved these significant financial milestones ahead of expectations due to our disciplined execution throughout the year, balancing growth and profitability whilst continuing to strengthen our long-term position with our most important partners. Our position, now even more secure through high-profile new partnerships and renewables that we announced recently, provides us with the opportunity to reiterate with confidence the near, medium and long-term strategic and financial path forward. On today's call, we will cover a few key topics to emphasise these points. We will discuss how our league relationships are growing stronger through the deployment of new technology. We will provide more detail on our innovative product set, including the launch of BetVision, which is completely unique in the market and revolutionises the way sports bettors engage with the NFL and its sportsbook partners. And we will review how this accrues to our benefit in the form of steady revenue growth, EBITDA margin expansion and free cash flow generation. To start, let's recap the financial results from the quarter. We reported group revenue of $102 million, beating our guidance of $100 million and representing a 29% year-on-year growth. This translated to $18 million of Group Adjusted EBITDA, exceeding our guidance to $17 million and representing nearly 2.5 times growth versus last year. We have also consistently expanded our Group Adjusted EBITDA margins in each quarter this year. This quarter, our margins improved to 17%, up from 10% in quarter three, 2022. further demonstrating the operating leverage of our business model. Nick will cover in greater detail in his section, but you will see how we again remain disciplined on costs and reported lower gap operating expenses in this quarter compared to the prior year, even as we grew top line by nearly 30%. This type of quarterly performance is exactly what makes the business model unique in the market. Looking ahead, we are also raising our full year 2023 revenue in EBITDA guidance to $412 and $53 million respectively, well above our initial expectations of $391 million and $41 million at the start of the year. This represents meaningful EBITDA margin improvements from 5% in the full year 2022 to 13% in 2023. Importantly, we have also reached a critical inflection point in free cash flow generation. Throughout the year, we have reiterated our expectation to become free cash flow positive in H2, and after reporting a positive quarter, we are reaffirming this outlook. As we look ahead to the outer years, we also remain confident in our ability to achieve the long-term EBITDA margin target in excess of 30%. As I mentioned earlier, what gives us confidence is the high visibility of our fixed cost base going forward, particularly as we have just renewed and extended our NFL rights agreement through 2028, along with a growing demand for our products and services from all customer segments in our business, leagues, sportsbooks, broadcasters and brands and sponsors. As we discussed last quarter, it is critical to understand that genius technology is the reason why leagues renew, extend and expand our partnerships, often without even running a competitive tender process. To put it simply, the more deeply integrated we are within the league's digital ecosystem, the stickier we become as a partner to that league, offering greater value beyond the fees we pay to data rights alone. The more time we have integrate technology the stronger our position becomes which gives us greater confidence in our ability to maintain those relationships over time through the deployment of new technology genius is already an integral partner of the digital infrastructure supporting the sports ecosystem leagues like the nfl or english premier league for instance are utilizing genius tech enabled solutions to drive forward their key initiatives across sports betting fan engagement and broadcast innovation, to name a few. This technological entrenchment is a key pillar of our partnership and reinforces our competitive advantage. It is exactly how we continue to strengthen our moat and gain more confidence in our ability to renew deals and deliver on our long-term financial model. Whenever you see us expand our technology offering in partnerships with leagues, you should understand this is not only incremental revenue, but also as genius, becoming even more deeply engrained with our partners. On slide six, you will find just a few examples of this from the quarter. For instance, with the NFL, we have added new features to each of the broadcasts we have been working with this season, including Amazon Prime, CBS, TSN, or the NFL streaming subscription service called NFL Plus. who we recently announced to deal with to power AI driven data visualizations and graphics. One example that you may have seen on Thursday Night Football is our AI and machine learning technology now identifying potential defensive blitzes or open receivers, bringing even more insights into the viewing experience and all in real time. At the start of the year, one of our goals was to distribute this technology as wide as possible as we aim to make these features ubiquitous with live sports broadcast. We have executed on this plan throughout the year as Genius is now augmenting every single NFL game on one platform or another. On one hand, this demonstrates the importance of our technology to the NFL broadcast, but equally, this represents a critical milestone for the broadcast distribution of this technology. Similarly, we have also signed a new partnership with Premier League Productions to enhance live broadcasts of English Premier League matches across 185 countries with rich insights and data-driven augmentations. The alternate broadcast called Premier League Data Zone allows viewers to see player names, passing accuracy, shot speeds and pitch maps all interwoven into the live broadcast through the unique L-bar. This is currently being utilised by 19 different broadcasts across the EMEA and APAC regions, as well as the Americas, and reinforces our wide ranging partnership with Football Datacode. We encourage anyone listening on the call to explore this new innovation in broadcast and see for yourselves how we're helping leagues and their broadcast partners better engage their fans in new creative ways. Each week brings a new wave of positive public responses to these innovations. which further validates the idea that fans enjoy having the option to watch live stores with these enhanced features. The technology integration with leads across the globe is the most effective way for us to protect our data rights, strengthen our competitive moat, create more ways for leads to better activate their partners and fans, and of course, drive new pools of revenue for our business. This brings us to BetVision. BetVision is a first of its kind product that is differentiated from anything else in the market. While live streaming has existed on Sportsbook apps for several years, the key difference in BetVision is the combination of all our best technology assets that are unique to Genius. Real-time NFL stats, live betting markets, computer vision and augmentation capabilities, and integrated bet slips. This sets us up on the path to revolutionize sports betting experience and represents the first genuine example of the convergence of sports betting media and broadcast. For those who have not yet seen the product, BetVision is a single platform where users can view the lowest latency stream of NFL games, find real-time data, control the level of broadcast enhancements, and place bets all from within the video player. In other words, users can find everything they need all in one place, giving our Sportsbook customers and lead partners a critical tool to attract the sticky, engaged fan that they all want. Importantly, it also simplifies and enhances the discoverability of in-play betting. BetVision now delivers many of the features that users want to see alongside their in-play betting experience. And although it's still in early days and early in the season, the initial results in September have been very encouraging. First, 54% of the total number of bets made by BetVision streamers were in-play bets. Of the total betting handle or dollar volume bets from BetVision streamers, 83% was from in-play betting. This compares to the 20 to 25% we have seen historically in the US. We've also seen that in-play handle from streamers increased by 121% since week one, and overall handle per streamer has increased by 87% in that same time period. These data points should highlight how BetVision drives higher engagement and more betting volume for our Sportsbook partners. The growth of in-play volume from BetVision is a clear demonstration that we can achieve our longer-term expectations of 70% to 80%. like we have seen in more mature markets. This is important to us because we own 5% to 6% share of in-play gaming revenue, which is roughly three times higher than our pre-match revenue share. So as we continue to increase the in-play betting, we directly benefit from this higher revenue share at no incremental cost, therefore contributing to our profitability at near 100% margin. To close, you should hopefully have a better understanding of how our technology is solidifying our position with the leagues and helping all of our partners better engage fans and drive profitability. We're delivering on our strategic objectives and this is translating into consistent financial results ahead of expectations. I'll now hand the call to Nick to cover these financial results in more detail.
spk12: Thank you, Mark. You've already heard that the group level numbers from Mark and we're pleased to report revenue and adjusted EBITDA ahead of expectations for the third time this year. Much of the outperformance was in our betting product, which contributed $66 million of revenue in the quarter. This exceeded our guidance by $2 million and represented 34% year-on-year growth, the highest annual growth rate in almost two years. We exceeded our expectations despite operator win margins being lower than the comparable period last year, as you have heard them discuss over the previous few weeks. Our performance was driven by multiple tailwinds in the sports betting industry across the globe, new customer wins, and continued growth with our global sportsbook partners through the cross-sell of additional services and higher utilization of content. Our media revenue was $23 million in the quarter, only slightly behind our guidance of $24 million, mostly due to sportsbooks pulling some of their advertising spend forward in Q2, as we mentioned on the last call. That said, our media segment returned to the type of strong growth we expected against more normalized comps, with growth of 28% year on year. On a group adjusted EBITDA basis, we've reported $18 million, beating our guidance of $17 million and representing nearly two and a half times growth compared to Q3 of 2022. On the right-hand side of slide 10, I'd like to highlight the consistent growth in adjusted EBITDA we've demonstrated throughout the year. Year to date, we have grown our adjusted EBITDA by $28 million compared to last year, representing a 56% incremental margin of the revenue growth of $50 million. You will see how our adjusted EBITDA margins have expanded in each quarter this year, beginning in Q1, where we improved by nearly 1,200 basis points year-on-year, to the Q2 improvement of over 600 basis points and the Q3 improvement of 770 basis points. This is true on a group margin basis as well. In each quarter, our gross margins have materially improved year on year. Most recently, in Q2 and Q3, we improved our gross margins by 1,500 to 1,600 basis points. This is driven by a cost structure that, as we've said before, can support significantly higher revenues. If you look at page 15, you will see for the nine months ended the 30th of September, our cost of revenue, sales and marketing, R&D and G&A are all down on a gap basis over the comparable timeframe from 2022. We have long discussed the operating leverage of this business, and we're now proving this in our year-to-date results. Looking ahead, we expect to finish the year well ahead of where we initially guided, and now aim to deliver $412 million in group revenue and $53 million in group adjusted EBITDA. And this assumes an exchange rate of 1.25, consistent with our assumptions last quarter. Importantly, we also finished the quarter with $116 million of cash on the balance sheet, ahead of our closing balance in Q2, and we maintain our expectation to be cash flow positive in H2. And with that, we will conclude our prepared remarks and open the line to Q&A.
spk08: At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdall from Craig Hallam. Your line is open.
spk01: Hey, guys. Morning, afternoon. I want to start with Florida. So the Seminole Tribe, via the Hard Rock app, relaunched last week. Are they a genius data customer, and how do you think about that opportunity?
spk03: Hey Ryan, it's Mark. Yes, they are a data customer. Obviously, it's very good news. We supported them this weekend with their launch. There's some sort of nuance to the launch at the moment. They've gone live only with customers that have historically downloaded their app. So at the moment, we're sort of viewing it very, very positively. It was a you know, a significant opportunity that, you know, just been cautious to begin with. And overall, you know, we think this is very positive. The other thing that's probably worth just mentioning is it really sort of demonstrates our operational leverage and, you know, the underlying business model that, you know, as a new state comes on board, we're immediately able to support that state with additional product at virtually no extra cost. So it drops through at near 100% margin for us.
spk01: And then just on Petlijan, Appreciate those first couple week metrics he gave on the prepared remarks. Given that, I guess, has that changed your asking price or negotiating leverage with the other sportsbooks besides that original three that you launched with? And then kind of second to that, I guess, what needs to happen to get the big two sportsbooks to use it?
spk03: Look, you know, I've said right from the beginning, this is about, you know, not only with BetVision, but with our wider augmentation products. You know, it's about ubiquity and it's changing user behavior. I think this is a really positive start. And, you know, we've got close relationships with those sportsbooks. I've said a number of times that we're going through a, you know, through a process at the moment of, you know, contract renewals that will be coming up over the next period. And obviously, any negotiations we have are going to be part of those wider renewals. The other part of your question was, sorry, remind me of the second question you had.
spk01: Yeah, you kind of answered it. It was mainly just the big two sports books. And if there's anything, I guess, to push them along, you kind of answered it, I think.
spk03: Yeah, we feel super positive about our position. You know, we're feeling good about that.
spk01: Great. Thanks, Mark. Nice results and execution. Good luck, guys.
spk08: Your next question comes from the line of Bernie McTernan from Needham & Company. Your line is open.
spk13: Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just a follow-up on the Hard Rock question. Same thing, but for ESPN bets launching this week, any thoughts on how that will impact the business and what's contemplated in the 4Q guide?
spk03: Yeah, I mean, good question again. And thanks for sort of highlighting that. But it's bluntly the same answer. They are a customer and, you know, we see the opportunities as very exciting for the business. And again, underlying, you know, underlying operational leverage that we've got.
spk12: Yeah. Hi, Bernie, it's Nick. And specifically on the Q4 guide, I think Mark alluded to it in the last call. These are very positive long term trends for us. They don't make any significant difference in the short term, given we're dealing with, what, five or six weeks of a season when, as you know as well, Bernie, 70% of our revenues are still outside of the U.S.
spk13: Understood. And then with the hire of Manny Puentes, former CTO of MediaMath, can you talk about some of the changes or developments that's going to be happening in the advertising product?
spk03: Yeah, look, I mean, I think I've been fairly clear about our strategy in the advertising market over time. It's, you know, it's obviously growing very nicely. You've seen that come through in our results. Manny is, you know, I mean, you know, a fantastic hire for us. You know, he's very... very well respected in the ad tech market. He's been the pioneer of a number of the ad tech platforms out there. And he's a big part of what we're focusing on. Clearly, brands, agencies are a big focus for us, for the business. And the development of our ad tech platform and the development of the technology in that that you know, really is incremental growth in the business. You know, there's no sort of big bangs we're expecting is a big part of our strategy. And again, we're seeing real value coming from it. So we're, you know, frankly, Manny's a great hire and we're really excited to be working with him.
spk13: Great. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Nick.
spk08: And your next question comes from a line of Jordan Bender from JMP Securities. Your line is open.
spk10: Great. Thanks for taking my question. Good morning. Are you seeing for BetVision, are you seeing the incremental player, those people watching, are they coming from traditional cable viewing or is there kind of enough evidence to say those are two screen watching bettors? Thank you.
spk03: yeah i mean just to be clear we obviously don't have any specific data about the crossover between cable and um and and vet vision but but this is about second screen experience you know there's um you know there's a lot of you know there's a lot of value a lot of like um incremental um additional um product sets that we rolled out with that vision with the augmentation um and um you know the whilst you know we're treating it cautiously um you know because they are sort of small sample sizes and and we want to we want to be very cautious about what we're saying, that the initial results are incredibly positive. One thing that's probably worth, I think is a sort of interesting take that you may, you may not sort of be, you know, be too focused on is we've obviously talked historically about the shift of in play, you know, to, you know, we expect a much higher, you know, you know, the US market to be a large in play market in the same way that the European market is just to remind people on the call, you know, roughly sort of 78% of all bets in, you know, in a mature market are made in play. And what we've sort of said consistently is that, you know, a lot of the growth is going to come from product-led growth. And, you know, if you remember, FanDuel announced in their results a few months ago that 67% of their NFL bets were made by people who didn't leave the homepage. You know, my comment at the time, I think, was that, you know, we're very much focused on helping the bookmakers, helping the sportsbooks, to drive their players to in-play betting through better products. That's how we're helping that transition. And this is a really good example of that. And frankly, it's also a really good proof point that the bookmakers are taking the transition of players from pre-match or from even home-made bettors to, you know, to sort of more sophisticated in-play players is something that we're, you know, we're sort of, you know, seeing very positively. So we're incredibly excited about this product. It, you know, demonstrates the strength of the augmentation product line, strength of second spectrum. And again, we're seeing it very well received in the market.
spk10: Great. And then you guys are having several board members leave the company. Can you just kind of talk to what you're looking for to fill those seats? Thank you.
spk04: Sorry, can you say that again? We're looking... Yep.
spk10: Can you guys just kind of talk to who you're looking for, the qualities of the people that you're looking for to fill those board seats?
spk03: Yeah, look, I mean, you know, we've had a very strong board and it's, you know, it's done a very good job for the company. This is a natural transition, you know, as board members come to the end of their terms. You know, going forward, you know, we're looking for, you know, I guess all the sort of obvious stuff, people to support the growth of the company, you know, provide us with you know, the continued ability to scale and, you know, leverage the business in public markets and, you know, continue to mature as a public company. So, I mean, it's an active process that we are now running and, you know, we're excited about some of the quality of the candidates coming through.
spk10: Thank you very much.
spk08: Your next question comes from a line of Joshua Marin from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
spk14: Hi. Could you remind us on your exposure with European soccer holds that other sportsbooks and competitors have called out? Is there any color to add there?
spk12: Hey, Josh. It's Nick. Our European business isn't massively exposed to holds. As you know, most of our European business is on what's known as a fixed fee basis. and therefore individual results or individual weekends don't have any significant issues for us in terms of our revenue recognition.
spk14: Okay, thank you.
spk08: Your next question comes from the line of Mike Higgy from Benchmark & Company. Your line is open.
spk00: Hey, Mark, Nick, Charles, Brandon. Good morning, guys. Good afternoon. Great quarter. Nice to see that pre-cash flow. Congratulations. Just two questions. One on that vision. Just curious if you could double-click there on how you think about scaling the product. Obviously, you can add more operators and get that. You were asked that. But how you think about, I guess, scaling within the operators? that you have and or maybe other sports leagues, Mark, you could add over time besides the NFL. Obviously, it's a compelling product. And how you think about materiality as you scale it, whether it's impactful for 24 or we should think beyond that. Second question is on... your model. I mean, clearly it's working here. Incremental margins off the charts. Margins are growing, obviously. But curious how you think about efficiency. You know, your primary peer here is taking another look at their offbacks, they're optimizing, they're reducing headcount. Just curious how you're thinking about your overall offbacks and if you think there's efficiencies you can find. Thanks, guys.
spk03: Okay, let's sort of take those backwards because there's quite a lot in there. So, look, in terms of incremental margins, I mean, yeah, you're right. I mean, they're coming through really nicely. It really is demonstrating, as I said before, kind of the operational leverage in the business and we're really happy about that. In terms of the scale of the business, we feel we're right-sized. We've been very careful about cost control. We've managed the business very well over the period. And I think at the moment, we're seeing the underlying cost base right-sized, if anything. We may even look at potentially a small reduction in some of the capital outlay. And a lot of the reason that we're able to do that is because a lot of the growth in the future, a lot of the focus in the business is second spectrum and what we've been doing there. And really, when we bought that business, we bought a business that had an awful lot of investment in it. So there's a lot of companies out there that are trying to move into the AI machine learning computer vision space. I think it's very difficult to do that. But certainly, it's the case if you are even trying to do that, you need to spend a lot of money. Now, we've already spent a lot of money. We know probably over $250 million, I think, has been invested in second spectrum, that computer vision, machine learning, AI, augmentation. technology that's now really delivering hard revenues and really delivering growth which i'll come on to in a second with that vision but but i think that you know from our point of view you know we're not foreseeing any sort of um you know major material changes in um the way we're operating the business we feel we're doing it um in the right way we feel we're right sized and and we will you know you know if anything be um you know um you know with the way it's operating at the moment be potentially reducing some of those cross lines On the BET Vision product, there was a lot in that question, and so it gives me a bit of space to talk about it. I mean, look, in terms of scaling, I think there are two main areas, and you correctly highlighted them, that are obvious. One is the number of operators. And again, our model here is about making sure that we distribute the BET Vision product in the same way that we're trying to do with the augmentation products, and frankly, having a lot of success with our augmentation products. to as many different um customers as possible and again that changes customer behavior it gets ingrained and and people are starting to see real value and that value again has been highlighted in some of the metrics that we've shared today with the results although you know we are being cautious about that um in terms of the sports clearly our technology is not only um uh focused on on the nfl i mean obviously the nfl's you know a huge part of our our um you know our partnership base um but also you know the work that we've done you know with premier league productions recently is worth highlighting because it's maybe not always obvious to people um we we have a very sophisticated um soccer product that um again premier league productions which is the commercial arm that um distributes um uh european sorry uk soccer to um global um broadcasters They have taken second spectrum and they are using second spectrum to augment that soccer broadcast to multiple different jurisdictions that they're selling their streams in, including in the States, you'll see on Peacock. So the reason that's interesting is, firstly, it goes to our second spectrum technology, which is, again, the broadcast market is good for us. But also, in terms of specifically BET Vision, it shows you the capabilities that we have with additional sports. So soccer is something that we've done. Basketball is obviously something we're very sophisticated in as well and is available to us. So we've got the ability to augment there. The sort of final area that's probably less sort of obvious with the BET Vision stuff is around some of the advertising and sponsorship work. Now, clearly, you know, putting out these augmented streams gives us the ability to create new content, and that new content, you know, is open for either the bookmakers to, you know, advertise effectively to themselves, retarget, reactivate their own customers, but also potentially bringing partners there. So that's another stream of business that we'll be looking into over the coming period. Hopefully that sort of answers a question on that, Mike.
spk00: Yeah, Mark, the only other piece, and thank you for that. That was great. The only other piece was how you think about, maybe it's too early days here, but if we should be thinking about some level of impact, obviously you've got the, the stickiness and the right speed impact, that's more qualitative, I guess, but will obviously feed math. But just how you're thinking about whether or not this can be a driver for you in 24 or if we should be thinking more medium term.
spk03: Yeah, look, I mean, There's sort of two parts to that, I guess. The first is the shift of US sports betting in play is a clear focus for us. I mean, just to remind you, you know, we take about one and a quarter percent pre-match and somewhere between five and six percent of in-play betting. So not only through the VetVision product do you see an increase in the volume or increase in handle, as I went through in my remarks, but we're also taking somewhat two, three times the amount of share of that. So there's a compounding effect there that's obviously material to our business. And in terms of some of the growth that's coming out of the business and some of the numbers that we'll indicate in the future, that will obviously be contained within that.
spk00: Thanks, Bob. Thanks, guys.
spk08: Your next question comes from the line of Jason Besanet from Citi. Your line is open.
spk05: Hi. Good morning. You guys have a very good track record in terms of delivering financials that are consistent or ahead of your guidance. And I guess my question is, as we think about sort of next quarter and you Offering up guidance for 2024 I'd be curious, the one or two things that are swing factors next year, like what are one or two things that could break your way or work against you as we think the 24.
spk03: Yeah, look, there's a number of sort of, I guess, you know, the underlying business is, you know, is reasonably predictable. And, you know, I appreciate you saying that, you know, we've got a good track record. And, you know, I think that's, you know, a function of us having really strong visibility, you know, over the underlying cost base, but also, you know, really over the way that we structured our contracts. 2024 is an important year for us in terms of renegotiations with our bookmaker clients, the addition of new products such as Better Vision, combined with the cycle of NFL renewals that we've talked about coming through with the US sportsbooks. So, you know, those contract negotiations are very important to us. You know, again, we've got a very good track record with our partners of doing, you know, doing deals. You know, we've been doing this a very long time, so we understand, you know, how to structure mutually, you know, beneficial partnerships on an ongoing basis. So that pricing is a function, is a focus of us. I think... know on the cost side you know we it's it's reasonably straightforward um again we've got you know we've got a we've got a very good grip um of our underlying cost base um you know we've got incredibly good visibility and i think one of the important things to highlight again here is that you know our our um you know our rights deals that we've got um you know they go out into the future and we've got really good visibility we know how much um we're going to be paying our partners over the coming over the coming years. And what that allows us to do is to be very diligent with our cost management. And I think that combined with the fact that we don't need to do any other rights deals, we've got everything we need. I've said it many, many times. I'll say it again. means that we don't expect there to be, if a right deal comes up or something comes up that we think is particularly important, then obviously we'll participate in it. But frankly, we're only going to do that if it marries with the strategy of generating Sam Tickle- You know, profitable growth. So, you know, again, we feel quite good about that. So at the moment, you know, we feel like Sam Tickle- You know 2024 is is a is a highly predictable, you know, year for us. We understand where we are the commercial partnerships is not without some risk around Sam Tickle- Some of the renegotiation, but equally, you know, we've got an incredible strength of product. So I would, I would think that we will have a lot of success in that in that on that basis.
spk05: Can I just ask one to follow up? The timing of those contract renewals on the revenue side, will those contracts sort of be known knowns by the time you give 24 guidance or it will be known unknown?
spk03: They are known unknowns. We know that we don't know. And that will be the case, frankly, until a lot further into the year. Okay. Thank you.
spk08: Your next question comes from the line of Clark Lampin from BT IG your line is open.
spk09: Thanks very much morning i've got to i'll ask another I guess sort of known unknown question. Nick you're back to generating free cash you highlighted sort of value exchange with new services as part of that partner renegotiation process I guess i'm just curious as we're thinking about these sort of future stages of renegotiation approaching. how you might think about product and that sort of value exchange. Would you look to build more of this sort of incremental product internally with your own resources? Is this something you could use the balance sheet to boost and sort of improve over time? That's question one.
spk12: Yeah, hey, Clark. It's Nick. It's about balance, I guess, is probably the headline to that answer. we absolutely will continue to develop new products. We are a technology business. I mean, one of the great things about BetVision that Mark touched on in the answer just earlier to Mike's question was getting it out there and getting it used by all the sports books is then enables us really to use that as a platform to then develop further products and ingrain ourselves and drive further revenues on it. So that's kind of how we're looking at it from the betting side. And it's exactly the same really from the media side. Indeed, Again, Mark answered the question earlier about our recruitment in the senior leadership of that area. That's a really good example where we're looking, we will develop more product, but going back to my headline, it's going to be about balance, making sure that we're financially disciplined in doing so and making sure we live within our means.
spk09: Understood. And then maybe on the ad business, for Josh, it sounds like the third quarter was a little bit more front-loaded in terms of endemic customer spending and As we're thinking about the sort of implied acceleration for the current quarter, have you seen a pickup in customer spend that sort of underpins or supports that? Are you seeing maybe more of a seasonal push with brand customer cohorts? Thank you.
spk11: Hi, Clark. It's Josh here. Yeah, to answer your question, I mean, it's pretty consistent in terms of the spend that we're seeing. I mean, Q4 is big for the is significant quarter for the sports book business for advertising. It always has been and will continue to be so. And then as we look to continue to grow the sort of brand space and as people have touched on the hiring there and us sort of very much focused on that, we're seeing some good progress in that area of the business, particularly with it being Q4 and a big spend quarter for a lot of sort of traditional endemic brands around sport.
spk06: um and i expect you know the seasonality that we see in the betting business around sport to be in that area as well because that's that's our specialism your next question comes from the line of eric martinuli from lake street your line is open yeah on the cash flow projections i was just curious to know what your expectation is for capex for the year and i think uh The capitalized software number you said historically around $40 million for the year, but those two numbers would be helpful.
spk12: Yeah, hi, Eric. Yeah, you're right. We've been spending around about $10 million of capitalized development costs really for the last sort of two or, you know, certainly probably 24 months has been running at that and expecting this quarter to be of a similar level on that position. So it's going to be around about $14 million. CapEx for the quarter is going to be relatively minor. It might be $1 or $2 million in the quarter, but nothing more than that.
spk06: Got it. Thank you.
spk08: Your next question comes from the line of Brett Knobloch from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.
spk02: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the quarter. I guess I have two. First, on the betting technology segment, the kind of revenue outperformance there, Could you maybe parse out the drivers behind that a little bit more? Was it maybe NFL performing better from a GGR perspective, or was it a win rate perspective, or were there other factors at play? And then on the Ryder Cup and the Rugby World Cup announcements, could you maybe highlight what that means for your business over maybe the medium to long term? Is that maybe more building a base to drive additional media revenue, or how should we think about that? Thank you.
spk12: I'll take the first part and I'll hand over to Josh for the second piece. On the first piece, look, we've always talked about, particularly in the betting business, about the multiple leaders of growth. And you've heard us talk about that before. And we've really seen those right across 2023. And the encouraging thing for us is also growth across the world as well. I think both European and American businesses are up 30% year on year. and that's really coming from a mix of things. That's coming from new custom winds, it's coming from pricing in the European markets, but it's also coming from additional services and utilization we're seeing. So we're seeing it right across the board, and we're very happy with that growth. There's a small benefit of tailwind of foreign exchange within the international business that accounts for a small proportion of the growth. I think the underlying growth is around about 26% once you strip out foreign exchange. And I'll let Josh pick up the specific around those biannual events.
spk11: Hi there. It's really for us, you know, those relationships with the Rugby World Cup and Ryder Cup are just, you know, a continuation of us having sticky relationships with our sports partners. You know, as a reminder, we built the FIFA World Cup platform. We do a ton of stuff for the NFL. And there's a whole host of reasons that people take those products from us. But, you know, around helping our partners understand their audience and feeding that back into the sponsorship models and being able to communicate to their fans better. It's all part of our overall strategy.
spk14: Perfect.
spk08: And again, if you'd like to ask a question, it's star one in your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Robin Farley from UBS. Your line is open.
spk07: Great, thank you. I had two questions. One is, last quarter you had updated the FX rates that you use in your revenue guidance, and I think it had added to your full-year outlook. This quarter you didn't change, you didn't update for current FX rates, and so I'm just wondering if you did, can you quantify what impact that would have on the revenue guidance, which I guess at this point would just be for Q4? And then also I wanted to clarify the earlier comment about the known unknowns. You were talking about the you won't know new negotiated terms until later in 2024. Are those terms that would not be effective until 2025, or would they impact 2024? And, you know, we just wouldn't know in your initial guidance. In other words, when do those new terms become effective? Thanks.
spk12: Hey, Robin. I'll just take this one the other way while I remember the second part of the question. Mark's right in terms of the unknowns. I think Jason's question was talking around about Easter, around about the end of Q1. Most of the negotiations, the contracts roll out mid-summer, really for the start of the new NFL season. So they will be effective for 24, but it will be the last few months of 24 rather than knowing about them when we give 24 guidance, which we'd anticipate doing at the four-year results. On the FX piece, Robin, your question was, so we are giving the guidance right now at around about 1.25%. Actually, current foreign exchange is actually below that now. It's around about 1.22, so there's a sort of $1 to $2 million risk on those numbers in relation purely to foreign exchange, which is why we've not moved Q4's position. When I look at the Q3 position that we've just reported, I think we originally had it at 97 with the original guide at the start of the year. And we've got that to 100, I think, over the course of the last couple of quarters, which I think I called out was mainly foreign exchange related. So the outperformance to 102 to 100 is the underlying outperformance of the business.
spk07: Okay, that's super helpful. Thank you very much.
spk08: And there are no further questions at this time this concludes today's conference call, thank you for your participation, you may now disconnect. This concludes today's conference call.
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