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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gaylee, your chorus call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the OPAP-SA conference call and live webcast question and answer session to discuss the first quarter 2025 financial results. Please note a video presentation has been distributed and is also available on the OPAP Investor Relations website. All participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jan Karas, Chairman and CEO of Opapese. Mr. Karas, you may now proceed.

Thank you very much, Kelly. Good evening or morning and welcome to our regular Q1 2025 results conference call. Hopefully, you had a chance to join the results of the presentation we shared with you later today. As you have seen, 2025 has started well with the results. Solid organic growth driven by continued momentum in online and robust retail makes us confident that we will deliver our outlook for 2025. Key contributors in Q1 to this success have been sports betting and iGaming, while Joker experienced a boost from favorable checkpot rollovers and, very importantly, generous record-breaking So I'm looking forward to, together with Pavel, on my side to discuss with you, and I suggest we go ahead and jump straight into the Q&A session. Geli, over to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Raziotis Samatis with EuroBank Equities. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hello, Verne. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two. If that's okay, maybe we could take them one at a time for clarity. So my first question has to do with online. Could you comment on the current competitive positioning in the online segment? Have you been gaining market share versus peers? particularly in casino and sports betting, especially since market data points to mid-teens growth in Q1 for online compared with your plus 20%. So how sustainable do you view the growth achieved in Q1, please? Thank you.

Thank you. So let's go one by one. Yes, we are growing our market share in our non-exclusive online portfolio. The growth, as you have seen, was pretty strong in Q1, and we have no reason to believe that we should see any slowdown. So we hope we will continue on the positive trend.

Okay, related to that actually, how has your own sportsbook been performing? Has this grown in sync with the overall growth that you've been reporting in your digital offering? Do you actually have any specific targets for your own digital offering within the next two to three years, please? Thank you.

Okay. Apologies if it was not clear. Well, we consider all of our online business, but you are most likely referring to what is operated on the OPAP brand versus the human brand. So specifically in Q1, we have seen a bigger year-over-year growth of our OPAP sports betting and iCasino proposition, but that at the same time is something that makes sense with respect to the market share of Stichemann versus OPAP. So overall, there has been a strong and positive trend. And we certainly work with an ambition that we should continue strengthening our position in both of the roles following our dual strategy.

Okay, thank you. And my other question relates to the recent award of the Lotto concession in Italy, where OPAP's parent company, Allwin, was part of the winning consortium. Do you have any comments as to the extent to which this could serve as a blueprint for the core concession license renewal program? And maybe if you could share any early thoughts on how the experience or approach in Italy might inform your preparations once the renewal process formally kicks off, please. Thank you.

Listen, when it comes to Italian license, as you correctly noted, this is our parent company, Allwin Agenda, not an op-up agenda, so I'd like to abstain from commenting in any way on the tender itself. In terms of how it may be linked or not to the licensing process, hearing is again, as I'm sure you are aware, a licenses exercise, a super complex exercise where a large amount of factors is influencing the discussion. And finally, one of the most important elements, the price. As such, that would be a complete speculation from my side to, at this point, comment on how much we believe specifically this year, Italian auto tender will have an influence on what will be happening here in Greece. Okay, no problem. Thank you so much. Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Kurtesis Iakovos with Pireo Securities. Please go ahead.

With the renewal of Hellenic Lottery's license, recently there were some press reports indicating that the Growth Fund plans to proceed with a tender offer. Do you have any information related to this? And if this is the case, how would you plan to participate in the tender offer? Would you go by yourselves or would you go through a consortium, if you have any thoughts on this? And second question has to do with the dividend policy. Assuming, despite the fact that you have a tough come since the second half of the year, assuming that you will have a better performance for 2025, would you consider increasing the interim and final dividend for 2025 versus 2024? Thank you very much.

Thank you for your questions. I'll take the first one, and Pavel will follow with the second question of yours. So, on the first one, regarding the Hellenic O3 license and the tender, just for the whole audience to be on the same page, the license is expiring in May 2026, or best at the end of April. As we have informed you before, we certainly have expressed our interest in this license. Recently, indeed, a new law was ratified which promotes the tender for the license of state lotteries by the Growth Fund, which is running and will be running the relevant process. So when it comes to where we are right now, this is exactly the stage. We are waiting for the Growth Fund to officially start the tender, and we will certainly want to – we will certainly proceed with our application. sub-question specific form and shape of our submission, that is something that I would not like to comment on at this moment. We will keep you updated when the time comes.

Okay, good afternoon from me. I will take the second question on dividend. Our policy remains in place, that is to distribute the bulk of net profits with a minimum of one euro dividend per share. So given the guidance we have provided, you may expect accordingly the dividend at least at similar level like last year. And of course, we will consider also interim dividend payment. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Ponton Rosso with Edison Group. Please go ahead.

Hello, Jan, Pavel. A couple of questions for me. My first question is on lotteries. So revenue grew by 34%, 14% growth in online players. Now, I understand that Joker was a big benefit to that, but in more normalized ways, can I just ask, are you seeing an increase in spend per user on lotteries?

So, if I may, is this the end of your question?

You sounded like you want to say something.

No, I just want to make sure I don't interrupt you. So, is this the end of your question? So, indeed, like you said, Joker was big. That was a historical jackpot and that obviously had a bit of an unprecedented customer base behavior. We have seen some impact on Kino in that matter when it comes to year-over-year comparison, but overall lottery segments certainly recorded a promising 5.5% increase year-over-year in GGR, and Kino, our flagship game, we have seen pretty stable in the same period when looking across countries. retail and online. So overall we are happy. I cannot answer your question exactly and accurately when it comes to ARPU because as you know there is a large part of the retail base or retail GGR that we don't capture as a data point linking revenues to a specific customer and also it is important to know that in Q1 there is obviously a major inflow of occasional customers that is then diluting the ARPU per player, but overall, I believe, based on tracking the active players, both regular as well as occasional, as well as the overall revenues we have across all these key KPIs, the positive trend that we wish to see.

Thank you. And my second question on VLTs. There's some good information in the presentation, so thank you. You're refurbishing lots of cabinets, and there are still lots that haven't been refurbished. So I was wondering if you could give some indication of the relative performance of those that have been refurbished or upgraded versus those that haven't.

Yes, thank you. The overall, I cannot give you from the top of my head here a specific number, but it's certainly an initiative that is paying off, otherwise we would not be doing it. This is not something that only OPAP is involved, but also our VLT vendors are involved, and it makes sense to all the parties involved. Putting aside this is an industry best practice when it comes to the renewal of the machine, putting aside that this is a clearly customer research confirmed initiative, we are seeing a revenue impact. Now, specific impact per machine. differs based on the vendor, the machine, the locality, so there is overall, there is no one-size-fits-all answer as every machine we put in brings 30% increase in GGR per machine per day. I cannot make any such statement, but overall, this is something that we see working and certainly for the part of the network that we have covered so far. As with any economy of scale, obviously when it comes to the tail and bringing some of the last hundreds of machines, the efficiency, the incremental efficiency of every single machine upgraded is decreasing, but so far everything that we have done and everything that we have in our plans pays off. Last but not least, the whole cycle is spread across multiple years. So while some parts of the network will be refreshed, some other parts will be already going into the next round when it comes to specific vendors and specific locations. So this is also important to highlight that this is not a one-time exercise, but this is pretty much becoming now a continuity.

Thank you, Jan.

The next question is from the line of Madhavraj Parish with Patelek Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. The first one refers to the legacy concession, which expires in 2030. And if I remember correctly, in the previous conference call, you had said that you have signaled your interest in initiating early negotiations for that concession. So the question is, if you got back any feedback from the government side. That's my first question.

Thank you very much. Indeed, we are of course interested in extending our rights. This is one of the major agendas for us when it comes to exclusive game licenses beyond 2030. And indeed, we have publicly referred to this. So the relevant discussions have not started yet. So I don't have any updates for you on that front. But should there be any development, we will update you accordingly because we are well aware how much important topic it is for the investors community.

On our side, we certainly are ready to start the discussions. Okay, that's clear. Thank you very much. And the second question refers to the current trading. I mean, do you have any updates on any specific developments, let's say sports betting margins? Are you seeing anything unusual so far into Q2? That's it. Thanks.

As we have stated before, our guidance for the year remains unchanged, and rest assured we would not be stating it if we would see any concerning trends. So we will come back to you with more details in the next quarterly results, but we are not seeing anything that would make us concerned about our own statement that we made.

I hope that answers your question. Of course, of course, that's clear. And the final thing is, when do you plan to initiate your newly voted through share-by-back scheme, and how active do you expect to be on that?

Thank you. scale the buyback again. So at the moment that is not in the plan, but we have the flexibility following the approval of the annual general meeting.

That's very clear. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. Once again, to register for a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Karas for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you very much and thank you very much all for being with us today and for your questions. I hope we have covered everything that you wanted to ask today. But as always, our investor relationships team will be happy to address any additional questions you may have in the next days and explore your inquiries in more detail. We are looking forward to speaking with you again post-summer for our Q2 2025 financial results call. Thank you very much for being with us today, and I wish you a great day, week, month, and summer. Thank you. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good afternoon.