Super Group (SGHC) Ltd

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Supergroup's results for the first quarter of 2024. My name is Jake Bozzano, Vice President of ICR. 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 filings 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 an 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 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 2024, and it's 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 am joined by Neil Menasche, Chief Executive Officer, and during the Q&A session, we will be joined by Linda VanVick, Chief Financial Officer, and Richard Hasson, President and Chief Commercial Officer. And now I would like to turn the call over to Neil. Neil?

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Supergroup's first quarter 2024 earnings call. Before I discuss this quarter, I'd like to quickly touch on a change to the format of our earnings calls. Starting today, our prepared remarks will be shorted in before, but we are posting a more detailed investor presentation to our website. We hope to use this time each quarter for greater dialogue with the sales side community and to answer as many questions as possible. Let's now dive into the quarter. We are off to a phenomenal start for Q1. Total revenue ex-US was the highest ever for first quarter at 374 million euros. This represents growth of 13%, which in constant currency is even more impressive at 17%. Adjusted EBITDA ex-US also set a first quarter record at 69 million euros. That's 29% growth from last year and a healthy margin of over 18%. The strong performance this quarter can be largely attributed to our focus and continued investment into core markets. We continue to invest in marketing and as a percentage of net revenue was 27%. This ratio It's always higher in the first half of the year, and we expect this to trend back towards 25% for the full year. The approach here is simple. We enhance our future growth profile by ongoing reinvestment into areas that are yielding the highest ROI. We are pleased with the progress we have made on the realization of cost efficiencies. Our operating expenses as a percentage of net revenue fell to below 19% for the quarter, as compared to 22% in Q1 2023. This is an ongoing process, and while we continue to invest into high growth areas of the business, we remain focused on streamlining our expenses, creating leaner, more efficient operating model. This then further enhances the operating leverage that is inherent in our business. with every bit of incremental revenue meaningfully contributing to our EBITDA margin. Across the globe, we continue to optimize our footprint. Outside the U.S., we have identified a handful of smaller markets where we do not see a long-term path to profitability and in the process of shutting them down. Within the U.S., the review of our strategy continues. We are in the midst of analyzing our broad range of options and look forward to updating you in the near future. I'm glad to inform you that we've entered into definitive agreements to assume full control of the Sportsbook software technology. As highlighted in today's press release, we have agreed on a favorable risk-sharing deal structure, which includes an upfront consideration and a contingent earn-out. Pending the necessary regulatory approvals, we are excited to put this deal to bed and will be working closely with our dedicated Apricot team to further integrate the technology into our business. As for our balance sheet, our financial position remains really strong, with no debt and unrestricted cash of €289 million at the end of the quarter. We continue to assess the best use of this balance, including the possibility of returning cash to our shareholders. And a final note, our terrific Q1 momentum extended right into April. I'll now turn the call over to the operator to open the call up for questions. Operator?

Thanks, Neil. We'll now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star key followed by the one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Questions will be taken in the order received. Should you wish to cancel your request, please press the star key followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please give us a moment to compile the queue. First question comes from the line of Jed Kelly of Oppenheimer. Jed, please go ahead.

Hey, great. Thanks, guys, for taking my question. Can you just talk about the decision to bring your tech stack in-house and then how we should potentially view that accelerating your sports betting? And then also, as we think about the balance of the year, can you talk about any comps we should be aware of in the back half? And then Given that you did beat, I think you beat one QE, but, you know, 10 million above RF Smith. Any reason you didn't feel the need to raise guidance? Thanks.

Okay. Hi, it's Neil here. So, listen, we've talked about this for a long time. We've been in long negotiations to sort out our, to get our Betway Global tech stack. We've now got it for the sports, and I think it's super important for us. because it allows us to manage the teams together as one. We can obviously decide more on the roadmap, decide exactly what we want. And remember, we are a tech company. The basis is everything lies in the customer, the software we deliver and the experience we deliver to our customers. So for us, it's been a long time in the making, and we're super excited about this.

Chet, regarding the rising of guidance, thank you for your question. As we said, we're ecstatic that Q1 has started off with such a good momentum, continuing into April, but it's still very early days for the year. And we will consider our position towards the end of Q2. Got it.

And then just as a follow-up, can you just give us how we should view your success of iCasino in Canada? You know, where is that coming from? And then can you speak to any potential impact if Alberta legalizes betting?

Okay, so it's Neil here. So, obviously, we've seen good growth in Canada year on year, and it remains a good market for us. In Ontario, we are pleased with our performance. Our customer retention in Ontario is now better than it was before regulation, and our customer values are as good as they ever were. And so for us, remember, we see Canada province by province. So the same way as it regulated in Ontario, we've obviously learned what we did well, then what we didn't. And we'll just apply that to any other provinces that have come about.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason Tilton of Canaccord.

Jason, please go ahead.

Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. First thing I wanted to ask about is Africa. There's been really strong momentum there for several quarters now. Your revenue mix is up significantly year over year in that market. I'm just wondering if there's anything additional you could provide in terms of what's working there from a product perspective and sort of what does the roadmap look like for additional markets that you could enter in Africa over the next year or two?

Hi, it's Neil again. So Africa is really doing well for us. Remember across Africa, we've only just recently launched our Jackpot City pure play casino. So that's got lots of growth ahead of it. We are seeing obviously great customer acquisition, great customer retention. In seven markets across Africa, there's still more growth in those individual markets. One or two of them are obviously excelling more than the others. So the work there is to make sure that every market can be as good as the other as our two largest ones. But again, I think our product offering is unique. We own our own tech stack there, and we are super localized for the region.

That's really helpful. One or two other quick follow-ups. In terms of the Apricot deal, I was wondering if there's a way you can quantify sort of the cost savings there. that you expect to generate on an annual basis by having the sort of full ownership rather than having to sort of pay as a licensor?

Hi, Jason. Linda here. We are very excited about that possibility because you have now previously two significant teams on different sides now working together and we are quite far ahead with planning around resourcing and integrating the teams to work more effectively together and to have a better output as well as just tracking against one set of expectations, the teams just effectively work better together. So that was definitely on the forefront of doing this deal is to make it more cost efficient for us as a company.

And then I'll just add, Neil, here, and I'll just add also with the tech stack, we can then offer that into our Africa business when we feel the need to. Plus, if any M&A comes available, we've got the tech stack to be able to deliver on that. So it's been a long time in negotiations, but we are finally done.

Okay, great. That's really helpful. And just one quick final cleanup question here. In terms of the U.S., the law sort of expanded year over year. Just wondering if there's anything to call out. Was there anything one time in the quarter? And any sort of additional call or you can provide a nice strategic review. Thank you.

Hey, Jason. So, yeah, looking at quarter one, it was the end of the completion of the migration onto the Betway global technology that happened during March. some investment into marketing during the quarter. And then as we look to Q2, we expect the investment to be lower than it was during quarter one.

Great. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Mike Hickey of Benchmark. Mike, please go ahead.

Hey, Neil. Richard, Linda, Jake, congrats, guys. Great quarter. Thanks for taking our questions. Just again on Africa, the rather unique burn out there, Neil. I'm sort of curious on that piece if you have anything incremental. It looks like some longevity there to maybe a payment. And then you talk about flexibility for organic growth. and M&A opportunities. I'm curious on that, and if there's any sort of potential benefit to the US piece that you're obviously trying to figure out.

Okay, so I'll go first. So on the Acregon, as you can see, it's got a contingent earn out, and that's obviously, I mean, we have to more than double the revenue that it's currently on. So I think it's a risk-sharing approach then. And then the earn out's based on different thresholds NGR net gaming revenue that the sports book itself delivers. So I think it's all incentivized long term. But I think for the initial payment of 100 million euros plus in the 40 million, I think that's a really good deal based on the tech stack that we're getting and that it comes under our stuff. So I think overall, it's we managed to find a good ground between them and us to be able to deliver on this deal. And I think going forward, it allows us to, as Linda said, integrate the teams, get going, understand the priorities, and add on any other new businesses or African business if we see fit on our trading platform to be able to integrate it there. So long term, I think this makes great sense and gives us a great foundation now.

On M&A, Richard. Yep, yep.

I think the point that Neil was making is our ability, now that we own the sportsbook technology, is to apply that, should we proceed with any M&A, we're able to apply the technology to those businesses that we may acquire.

Yeah, I guess the question was, is this M&A and organic growth with your own tech stack, does that help your U.S. business? Is that part of sort of the thinking about the broad brushstrokes and how you sort of reshape the U.S. business. Does that play into that potentially?

Yeah, so the technology definitely forms part of our evaluation. As we said before, we're going through a detailed analysis of our options in the U.S., and the technology will be something which we consider as part of that process.

I guess, is it worth sort of just laying out the, you know, thinking about just, again, broad brushstrokes here, guys, in terms of some of the options you're considering on your U.S. business?

Sure. So, high level, you know, we're evaluating, let's say, everything apart from the status quo. So, as we told you in the last release, we are not happy with the status quo. Nothing's off the table at this stage. And it ranges from, say, a complete exit all the way to status quo and everything in between. So we're going through extensive analysis at this point with the intention of coming back to you as soon as we can.

Okay, fair enough. I guess on the regulatory environment in the U.S., you guys have quite the background running a global business for as long as you have. Just sort of curious, any updates here on the U.S. regulatory environment, the sort of pressure that's sort of early innings here and how that sort of could impact your business and how that plays into sort of how you're, again, looking to sort of reshape your approach to the U.S.? ?

So I think absolutely, you know, we've seen regulation and regulation becomes harder, then they come less hard, etc. And we've seen it from the UK, which has now relaxed some of its restrictions, the same as Spain. So I think the US is still early days in that journey. And, you know, it's also dependent on the regulations, the tax rates. Obviously, we're taking that all into account. But we've seen it without a negotiate through that. And for us, really, the U.S. states are no different to the countries. If we can see a way to profitability, we will then do them. And if we can't, then we have to take other action. But again, it's all about the extra revenue, the margins we can achieve in these states and in each country. And again, our operating leverage worldwide is really at maximum potential here because every bit, as I said, of it, every bit of extra revenue, we deliver much higher EBITDA margins. And that's what this business is about. And what we have to do is take those margins, take the fitness of our marketing, the investment we're making in marketing and into these countries and make sure we're getting the best returns we can. And that's what we've been working for the last two years, that and getting our cost structures right.

You know, when you're in states in the U.S. that has casino and sports books, you've got your bet, weigh, and spend sort of working together. What's the... profitability of those particular states?

I think they're probably better. Any state that's got casino in it is a much more profitable state for us. Even if you look today, overall, we make up 80% of the revenue between retro and spin is made up of casinos. I think it's quite obvious where the money is, and that's what we'll be targeting. You know, we target that more, and that's why we're super excited about Africa and Jetpot City that we've launched all, starting to launch more across the world because that's added casino revenue into the mix.

I guess, Neil, you know, there is sort of, I think, the view that U.S. is a sports book market, but it seems like, you know, with only 6% of the, population here legalized on casino, that the feeling is that maybe the second stage of growth is the legalization of casino, which is sort of your lead spot. So I'm sort of curious, do you believe that the U.S. is in a position to sort of accelerate legalization and the casino over time? And do you think that that, in fact, would be maybe the inflection point where you have both of those vehicles, your Betway and Spin, working together that you could sort of elevate your profitability potential and growth?

I think absolutely, but obviously casino regulation sometimes seems to take much longer than the sports, right? And different countries and different states have different views on the sports and casino. But for us across the globe is whenever there's sports and casino, that's our sweet spot. And my biggest thing with all these markets is is and we've talked about it before is is is the black market operators in those markets and the regulators having to regulate well um action the black market operators because we've seen some european countries where they've regulated us but then the black market operators continue and then you get a total mis misalignment between what what the regulated people can do and um what what what the unregulated so so there's that and that with the regulations but again For us, we've got a great brand in sports, being Betway, and, of course, that's got a big casino business within it, and then, of course, we've got Spin. So we're perfectly poised to be able to take on these opportunities, but we've got to take on the right opportunities and give us the right profitability and the right returns.

Yes, Neil, last question for me. You've been gracious. Thank you. I mean, given sort of how crucial... The US market is given the opportunity to sort of awaken the casino side and really getting your sweet spot running both those assets together. I mean, how would you wait the probability, I guess, of a full. Exit in the US versus maybe just a recalibration of the states where you can concentrate and minimize your losses and or potential. M&A, which I don't know your appetite for a transformational deal, but I think they're out there. It just seems like the idea of exiting, given how much potential there is, particularly in casino, like you said, maybe it takes some time, but the upside here could be tremendous. So could you just sort of help us work through that?

So I think the way you explained it is perfectly correct. Of course, when it comes to transformational M&A, you can't do a deal if the other party is well overvalued. That's number one. You've only got one chance at a transformational deal, and you've got to get it right, and it's got to be fair-valued both sides. That's the first point. The second point, when it comes to the U.S., absolutely. What you say is we're looking at all the options, we understand all the options, and we've got to make a decision that is long-term in the best interest of it. And again, as you pointed out, casino is our bread and butter, so we want to be able to find a way to profitability in those markets. And that's absolutely. And listen, this is a waiting game. You know, again, over time, different states can regulate. And you've got to be in play to have a chance of success. And we fully understand that. But there's a cost for being in play. And we've just got to make sure what that cost is and weigh the two up.

Thanks, Tess. Great job on the quarter. Thank you. Our next question comes from Bernie McTiernan of Needham. Bernie, please go ahead.

Hey, this is Stephanos Christ calling in for Bernie. Thanks for taking our questions. First on Apricot, kind of a nitpicky question, but the wording said the transaction brings Supergroup closer to its goal of fully owning and controlling its tech. Are there other parts of the tech stack that you're looking to acquire or maybe build in-house? Just your thoughts there. Thanks.

Yeah, so just on that, remember different parts of our business, some of them own our PAM and some don't. So I suppose the sportsbook is now completely owned once we get regulatory approval. So that's why. So that's what I was referring to. So there are some of the PAM that we don't own, but then we've got businesses that do own it. So we've actually got everything now in the tech stack that we need.

Got it. Thanks. And then the migration onto the Betway global technology completed at the end of March. Is there anything you could speak to since that integration? I guess it's been a little over a month now.

Yeah, just that it has been a relatively short period of time. And all of that data, which we're now getting post-migration, is the exact data that we're using and analyzing in order to make the best decision about exactly what the right strategy is for the U.S. So it's still a matter of weeks. And that process, obviously, is being prioritized at the highest level. But we're going through that data from this new platform. And that's what's going to feed into the ultimate decision about the best way forward.

I mean, I'll just add in there, but it definitely is much better than what we were on before, like significantly.

Got it. Thanks. And then this last one for me, if there are any updates on Brazil regulation or anything you're looking to come in the near term.

I guess like many others, we are actively looking at the market, understanding the process through licensing and going through the processes with any market that's regulating about, you know, forming a view about the ability to make long-term profits, and then we'll apply for a license there if we see fit.

Got it. Thank you. At this time, there are no more questions. Thank you again for joining today's call.

Conference call has now ended.