Super Group (SGHC) Ltd

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Supergroup's results for the third quarter of 2023. During this call, Supergroup may make comments of a forward-looking nature that are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors discussed further in its SEC filing that could cause its actual results to differ materially from historical results or from the company's forecast. Supergroup assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements other than as required by law. On today's call, Supergroup may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are in addition to and not a substitute for measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. Supergroup has provided a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP figures in the press release issued earlier today and available on the investor relations page of Supergroup's website. In addition, Supergroup will speak to its financial results and metrics for third quarter 2023 in two parts, highlighting Supergroup's profitable and cash generative global business separately from its investment into the U.S. This aligns with the annual guidance that Supergroup has provided for 2023 and is consistent with both how Supergroup views its business internally and how Supergroup will report going forward. Supergroup recommends that investors refer to its supplementary presentation posted to their website. On this call, I'm joined by Neil Menesche, Chief Executive Officer, and Alinda Van Wick, Chief Financial Officer. During the question and answer session, we will also be joined by Richard Hassan, President and Chief Operating Officer.

And now I'd like to turn the floor over to Neil.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Supergroup's Quarter 3 2023 earnings call. We are delighted to follow up a terrific first half of the year with yet another quarter of solid results. Ex the US, total revenue was 349 million euros, an all-time record for a third quarter. Our customer numbers continue to show tremendous growth, so much so we set some other records this quarter. For starters, we reached an average of about 4 million unique active monthly customers. And during the month of September, we saw a new daily high of 1.7 million customers using our platform. In September, we also set new records for highest depositing day and highest depositing month. These records demonstrate our success in attracting and retaining high-quality customers with sustainable deposit values over the long term. And that's important in achieving consistent top-line growth moving forward. For the quarter, our operational EBITDA ex-US was €64 million, resulting in an EBITDA margin of 18%. The combination of increased scale and the realization of cost efficiencies in the right areas is having a positive impact. And we continue to press towards our goal of a long-term margin of over 20%. And Linda will dive into financials in further detail, but first I want to provide an update on some other achievements and changes. A key contributor to customer growth is our portfolio of sports partnerships, which continues to attract fresh eyeballs to the Betway brand. We have just become the global betting partner for one of the leading English Premier League teams, Arsenal. Arsenal has a massive worldwide following, and we are incredibly proud to partner with them and look forward to bringing the best content and experiences to fans all over the world. Supergroup has a global footprint, and this diversity provides a natural mitigation against market-specific headwinds. We take a nimble approach with our existing territories, and we are not afraid to make difficult decisions. About a month ago, we announced that we will no longer be operating in India, effective October 1st. due to a newly imposed general sales tax, which significantly limits the achievable returns in this market. We have seen this type of closure before, with over two decades of experience in navigating these types of challenges, and we remain focused on our existing markets as well as new opportunities around the world. Now to provide an update on some of our key jurisdictions. Africa continues to be an exciting region for us as we build scale in our footprint of over seven regulated countries. Year on year, we saw an increase in our African customer base of over 55%, with this growth translating into strong revenue numbers for the region. In Europe, the UK was a standout performer, similar to previous quarters. It has now been over a year since we bought JumpBank Gaming into the group, and we are very pleased with the added contribution this acquisition has made to our UK casino product. The JumpBank team members have been working hard to identify new territories for expansion, and just last month they went live in Ontario. For Canada overall, we saw growth in both the sports and casino products. In Ontario, we saw year-on-year growth in the sports product for the first time since the transition to the regulated market. a really promising sign heading into the next quarter and beyond. In the U.S., four out of nine states are operating on Betway global technology, with the remaining states expected to come on board by early next year. We anticipate the rollout of this technology to have a big impact in the U.S., and we will be able to give more specifics at a later date. For now, we continue to follow the plan that we outlined at the beginning of the year. Our next steps are as follows. We will first complete the planned migration of our systems to the five remaining states. Then we'll begin a more targeted marketing campaign, keeping a close eye on the returns generated on a state-by-state basis. We are aware the U.S. market requires a significant investment to succeed. We are not afraid to invest. That's always been part of our strategy. We do this everywhere else around the world on a calculated, risk-adjusted basis to achieve a sustainable level of certainty about the return that we can generate. The DGC investment will be undertaken so long as we believe that there is an attractive ROI and we actively evaluate this potential. We've said before that one of our main priorities and uses of cash will be bringing our sportsbook technology in-house. We continue to engage with Apricot about this and look forward to updating you further during our next call. Finally, before I hand over to Linda, I'd like to point out how well we've overcome some obstacles this past quarter. As you know, our sports betting segment can be subject to a volatile margin. Across the industry, September did not have a great sports margin, in particular for English and European football. Despite this, our revenue performance was really robust. And a glimpse into the fourth quarter showed that the last two weeks of October also resulted in an unprecedented number of customer-friendly results in football. Football is our most popular sport to bet on, and all those wins for our customers meant a negative sports margin for October. And yet, we navigated through that. We also know that winning customers are happy customers. They remain loyal, satisfied, and engaged customers. Our data shows this. And on the 28th of October, we set a new daily customer record of just under 1.9 million customers, surpassing the record of 1.7 million customers, which we set in September. So, despite the challenges, I remain encouraged. Big picture, we can't control all of the sports margins, but our diverse offerings make for a robust, resilient business. And in the third quarter, more than 80% of our net revenue was generated from online casinos, as we continue to expand our 24-7 iGaming customer base. I'll now hand the call over to Linda to discuss the financials in greater detail. Linda.