Lottomatica Group Spa

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to L'Automatica Q1 2025 results presentation. I'm here today with our CEO, Guglielmo Angelozzi, and our CFO, Lorenzo Vallangher. Now the floor directly to Guglielmo for the presentation. Guglielmo, please.

Thank you, Mirko. Good morning, everybody. Very happy To start with page two of the presentation, we're off with a very good start of the year. This is at market level. Online market continues to grow in a very healthy manner in the first quarter of 2025, with 18% up compared to last year. Payout for sports is very good, better than the normalized levels, both online and retail, and much better than the same period last year. And Lotomatica continues to outperform the market. This results into the best Q1 ever for us at $220 million. million euros of EBITDA, which is 47% up on our reported base compared to the same quarter of last year. Let's now go to page number three. It's important here to There's a bunch of things in this call, and we wanted to focus on the short-term good news, which are several, but also then have a deep dive on the structural advantages. In terms of short-term good news, We're happy to announce that we increased the target synergies for the PWO former SKS integration of 12.5 million euros, all cost synergies, which brings the target at 87 million euros by 2026. 61% of the synergies are already secured to date. And another very important element that I want to share is that the platform migration is underway and on track. This is usually the most complex part of an integration. All tech developments have been completed and we've pressed the button both for the retail and online. And the migration process will proceed and complete during the summer, most likely ahead of the original plans. The second very good news is that, as you know, but it's important to stress it, that successfully refinanced more than 50% of our debt, 1.1 billion euros, with rate savings in interest costs of 24 million euros per year. At the same time, we've received an upgrade on the rating, both by Standard & Poor's and by Moody's, and we've extended all maturities to 2030 and beyond. Last but not least on the short-term good news is that following the authorization from the AGM on the share buyback, The board, as yesterday evening, approved the start of the buyback by June, by next month, basically for the next 18 months, up to 10%, which is roughly 500 million euros. And this is... Again, a reaffirmation of our discipline on capital allocation and focus on shareholders' return. Now, going on to the structural advantages, given the macroeconomic context we are in, we thought it was important to stress again a couple of things which relate to more to the sector and to the sector in Italy. and not only to the company itself. Well, first of all, we have not even written it, but we are resilient to tariffs. That's pretty much self-explanatory. But more importantly, we believe the business is very resilient to macroadvance in general. This was the case in previous economic shocks and recessions. Think about 2007-2010 global crisis, global financial crisis, high inflation period lately. So resiliency to the tariffs, resiliency to slowdown of GDP, resiliency to inflation, all very good news underpinned, in our case, also by a business model which relies upon a franchising model. So with a big part of our cost base, which is, by the way, variable. The other point is around the business model. We've talked several times about what are the key elements at the base of our success and we've highlighted a few, but we want to take the occasion, like we did last time, in focusing on the long-term opportunity of the channel switch. to focus a little more on what's really at the heart of our competitive advantage, what has been at the heart for now and for the future. And so on top of the omnichannel, on top of the multi-brand, what is this asset which we call Automatica Core? which is basically about a unified technology, data, processes, and organization, which is delivering superior competitive performance. Now, let's go for a second to page number four. I don't want to spend too much time here. You have plenty of data. that allow you to compare the GGR of the Italian market, of course our addressable market, to, for example, the GDP changes. The first graph on the left is during the period of the global financial crisis. The graph in the center is what's happened pre-COVID, during COVID, and after COVID, and also lately the reaction of the Italian market to inflation. also compared to other discretionary consumer spending sectors. So the Italian gaming market has proven to be very resilient. Now let's go to next page, page number five, and let's deep dive to the source, one of the sources of our competitive advantage, also hopefully for the years to come. We've seen this model in the past. These are the six pillars of our business model, which are the backbone of what we're doing. And of course, there is omni-channel. Of course, there is multi-brand. But we wanted to show you how the other four elements really are built inside and how you should look at them in reading the current performance and also helping you understand where the company is going. It all starts with the proprietary technology. in terms of gaming platform and then AI platform. Then it goes into our integration capabilities. When you talk about integration capabilities, many times people think about the integration that you do of companies when you buy them. And that's, of course, a great source of value which we've been able to leverage in the past few years and currently. But there's a part within it which is really about the integration of data, customer experiences, processes, digital marketing capabilities that together with the proprietary technology drive an excellent offer and maximize customer engagement. Let's go one layer deeper. Page number six. What does this really mean? When we talk about proprietary technology in terms of gaming platform, it means that we do own our tech stack. It's just called Pegasus. All the key modules are in house, the player account management, promo engine, the betting platform, the risk management, and I can go on for a while. And these assets are integrated across the brands. This is a first huge enabler of value creation and of what I'll tell you in a minute. Second side is the proprietary cross-brand AI platform, which is called LAMP, which is based on a dedicated data lake. It's based on the integration with the gaming platforms with external modules like the CRM. with external data sources, market trends, geolocation data, third-party data vendors. I'll get that into a minute. This is the enabler. Then going one layer up, most importantly, data. We have, apart from transactional data, we have a huge amount of behavioral and third-party data which provide an incredibly insightful in-depth single customer view. We have tens of data sources, hundreds of digital custom variables, hundreds of business custom variables, and we have tools, which you can see under the voice customer experience, which allow us to accumulate additional behavioral data on the customer experience. How is the customer moving in its journey through our assets? How can we replicate and improve the customer journey through the hard analysis of this data? This is done through processes and practices which are built around an operating model which is customer journey led. So it's in the view of the customer. And of course, several advanced digital marketing assets, which I'll talk in a minute. These all together lead to offer excellence and customer engagement of quality. which now we've opened a couple of items for each of them, and I'm still at the theory part, but we want to share with you the framework. Then we'll go into a few examples and numbers. You want your offer to be large and deep. All this infrastructure that I mentioned to you allows us to have a wide and deep offer to meet the preferences of a large set of customers, improves the opportunities of cross-selling, and improves our capability to do the proper pricing both in sports betting and in casino. In terms of customer engagement, the two most notable items are that we are able, through this infrastructure, to do customized activation, basically relevant content at the relevant time in general, but also to the relevant customer in terms of communication, which is our capability to personalize messages and content upscale through different platforms, offering a very unique proposition and communication to every single platform. In a nutshell, which is page number seven, this Lottomatica core is in the end an integrated Martech ecosystem, which realizes a strong integration between transactional data, All of us, all of the players in the industry have a ton of transactional data, but we are able to put this data together with deep behavioral data, deep third-party data, and this allows us with our engines, with our models, with our AI agents to boost personalization and maximize customer engagement. Now, three quick examples, and then I'll get to the bottom line of this. Page number eight, A couple of examples on offer excellence. AI-led risk management. We've set up an agent which basically does, accepts roughly half, 45% of the sports betting tickets automatically, which means two things. We improve payout and we improve customer experience. 150 milliseconds on average to accept these tickets. This is great, and the percentage of tickets which are managed this way is increasing through time. On the other side of the slide, you can find another application of this MarTech ecosystem, which is, you know, unfortunately, we have bots betting against us, and they're very smart, so we've set up an agent which is fighting against this, basically. We first launched that on the Two most important brands, Goldbet and, most important in terms of size, Goldbet and Betel Automatica. And as you can see, after a while of using this system, basically the, let's call them, approaches from these bots have basically gone to zero. Then we moved out onto Betflag, same story. So this is basically about early inhibition of non-profitable speculative users. Just to give you an idea, the average payout of these tickets which have been rejected is 104%. And after a while, these guys, these bots, they turn somewhere else because clearly they're making less money with us. Another example is on the offer excellence page number nine, an AI agent for predictive model of casino content offering. The standard way for casino offering is usually static or algo-based. It goes to the generic player. You don't target the player. It's the marketing team choosing which products to list and how out of the library. You can have some algo-based proposition, which is relatively static. You can put new content and so forth. But this is for, you know, all the players. Then we are switching to an AI-based system, which is driven by the behavior of relevant clusters of customers, driven by the potential popularity of some games for certain relevant clusters of players. It's based on pricing, so the payout, the RTP of the games. And, you know, there are lots more variables that can be added than we are adding to the model. The important point is this is player-specific. It's already in production. It's in production on a subset of customers, and it's going to be extended over time to the entire customer base. And this is about the breadth and depth of the offer. It's about the customer experience and it's about the pricing also. Another example is tailor-based communication for the customer base to boost engagement and ARPU. You can study, these are examples clearly, you can study from time to time relevant clusters of players, for example, those who have... lately lost money on sport or casino or both. And you can do tailored communication or bonuses to them. And we've seen that you can have a material improvement of the weekly ARPU of those who are subject to this type of campaign vis-à-vis the others. Or you can go, for example, in sports, but you can reply the same on casino. You can identify a group of customers which is particularly sensitive to certain type of triggers in terms of novelty of bets on some soccer teams or on some players. And there is an example here of a day of main teams match when the agenda, when the calendar was full. compared to another period of time, Pisa, Vellino, Foggia, three teams which are not particularly usually in the top tier, but when there was less offer in the calendar. And with this type of engagement, we've been able to achieve huge numbers on, say, second-tier matches compared to first-tier matches when the calendar was crowded. Last but not least, another example of customer engagement. If you're able to identify preferences in your customer base, for example, the type of sports, the type of leagues, the type of teams, and you have an AI agent which allows you to generate a campaign automatically, for the relevant target talking about the image creation and the creation of the the campaign you can achieve you can literally do this in a minute in a minute compared to like hours or half a day of work which means this is basically online real time and it's scalable and the click-through rate When you present content which is in line with the preferences of your cluster of customers, it's three times, the click-through rate improves three times, and with this, the economics. So these are examples, but this is to show you page number 12. that, you know, we started these in 2023 with Goldbet and Better. Now then we applied a part of this to Betflag. Now when the migration is completed, these and additional features will be applied to Planet Twin and then next year to Totosi. So the story in the end is this is a source of information sustainable competitive advantage. But full potential is yet to be captured because it has to go through all brands. It has to go full scale on all brands. And we can add, and we have plans to add more and more features along the way. So I hope this helps put it in context, also having a long-term perspective on what we're doing. Now with this, I hand over to Lawrence. Lawrence, please.

Thank you, Guglielmo. On page 14, as Guglielmo said, we had a good start of the year with revenues growing plus 33% year-on-year, reaching 586 million euros in Q1 2025, compared to 440 million in Q1 2024. EBITDA is up 47%, totaling 220 million euros in Q1 2025, compared to 150 million euros in Q1 2024. Margins have also increased from 34% to 37.6%, also supported by the favorable payout this quarter. Moving to page 15 and looking at the financials by segment, we continue to see strong growth year on year in online revenues, plus 59%, as well as sports franchise was also plus 59%, and broadly flat in gaming. Similarly, Looking at adjusted EBITDA, online has grown 55% year-on-year, sports franchise at 132%, and gaming flat. So you can see at the margins and as a result also the growth in sports franchise has benefited from favorable sports payout in this quarter. We're on to operating cash flow. So if you look at the left-hand side, you can see the profile of our capex spend for the first quarter. So recurring capex are flat year-on-year at 21 million euros, broadly in line with what we had last year. And this is comparing versus Q1 2024 that does not include PwO. So this shows you just the scalability of our model in terms of capex. Concession capex are in line with the guidance we have given this year. So we spent 15 million euros this quarter. And the 29 million euros of one-off growth capex include predominantly carryover items that we had guided to in our full year 2024 results. So carryover bolt-ons of 15 million euros and deferred payments of 4 million euros. This excludes gold debt. On top of this, we've also got the integration costs in CapEx and related to the PwO that amount to 10 million euros. If you're at the right-hand side, you can appreciate the year-on-year improvement on the operating cash flow where we increased from 110 million euros in Q1 2024 to 184 million in Q1 2025. And this is driven by the improvement in EBITDA, as well as benefiting from the scalable CapEx that we just discussed. We go to page 17, so we can see the evolution of the net debt decreasing to 1.8 billion euros at the end of the quarter, so in terms of net financial debt. We have EBITDA of 220 million euros if you look at the path from end of year 24 to end of first quarter 25. So EBITDA of 220 million euros. Networking capital slightly negative. It's typical of the seasonality, of our seasonality. 65 million euros of capex that we described earlier. Then we paid 10 million euros to the sellers of Goldbet. This is again in line with guidance. We had 27 million euros of payments due. We paid 10, so we're now left with a bit more than 17 million euros left to pay. Then you have financial expenses and leases of 29 million euros and other items, which include integration costs of about 11 million euros. This brings us to a net leverage level of 2.1 turns. So we're at the lower end of our financial policy that we've stated we've had since the time of IPO. We want to stay in a range of between two to two and a half terms on a steady state basis. And this also makes it the right time to start our buyback program. Page 18. This is a quick recap of the refinancing in which we refinanced a bit more than half of our total debt stack. We did it on the 24th of April. where we refined 1.1 billion to redeem the 565 million senior secured notes due 2028 and 500 million euros of floating rate notes due 2030. This was attractively priced at 4.78, resulting in a run rate savings of 24 million euros per annum and an overall cost of debt slightly above 5%. Our credit rating also has been reviewed one notch up to BB by S&P and to BA2 by Moody's. And with that, we completed the presentation.

Thank you. This is the course call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and 2. We kindly ask you to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question is from Clark Lampen of BTIG.

Thanks very much for taking the questions. The first question is going to be on the online migration for the casino ecosystem. Normalized growth this quarter downticked slightly on a sequential basis. And I know that's a good thing as it relates to forward growth of the online ecosystem. I'm curious if you're seeing any signs that the migration is picking up pace. And if so, how we should think about modeling growth over the balance of the year. Second question that I have is on the data and personalization push. I'm curious if you could give us some context around how early on we are. I know that across the brand portfolio, about three of the five brands have some degree of coverage right now. But would it be possible to give us a little bit more color around player-based penetration or even what you might expect in terms of derivative benefits for engagement? or spending. And then last question just on housekeeping. The buyback, Lawrence, is that something you expect to deploy programmatically, more opportunistically? Any color there would be appreciated. Thank you again.

Sure. I could start with the third one. So the buyback program, we will follow it. We will put in place a program with a bank that has the capabilities to carry out the buyback. And I would say it will be a programmatic program. It will be programmatic, but as we've always said, we have the flexibility. We'll always have the flexibility to interrupt it at any point in time should there be more attractive opportunities of capital deployment. I think on your first question, if you think about the growth, I mean, we continue to see and we do not change sort of our perspectives on how we look at sort of growth for the various segments as we've discussed. These are just our best estimates of market growth, but broadly speaking, we always continue to see online market growth in the mid-teens, sports franchise growth in the mid-single-digit, and gaming in line with the latest trends that we've seen declining mid-single-digit. So this is, that framework hasn't changed. Now if you look at, and this is pretty much, you know, this is pretty much validated if you look at, particularly if you look at sort of the iGaming, for example, it has grown in the high teens in the quarter. So we continue to see this trend holding true. Sports in general tends to be harder to predict on a You know, month by month, because you would have to predict also the payout. But clearly, when you look at year-on-year performance, especially when you have more sort of unimportant distance between the payouts, so if you have very high payouts and very low payouts, So you have to look at the GGR and the beds clearly get impacted by some impact in relation to the payout because of just the recycling of beds. But for that, we continue to hold the view that on a normalized basis, that the GGR growth of the market for sports is in the mid-single digit, for sports retail. For iSports, we continue to see this in the teens.

I'll take Clark, the one on data and personalization. Look, a lot has been done, but there's a lot to go. Let's start from the brands. The two brands which are most advanced on this simply everything. for historical reasons where we started creating the infrastructure are Golbit and Lottomatica. Better is the sports version of Lottomatica. And now with the migration of PwO, Planet Twin is going to be basically by the end of the year onto the very same level. So those two brands are going to be equal. Then you have Golbet, which is already on a part. of the infrastructure, mostly on sports, but not all of it. So that will require a little more time. And Toto C will be mainly a topic of next year after the startup is gone and the brand is stabilized. So a lot has been done in terms of brand, a lot more to go. features, this depends very much on the area you look at. Let me make some examples. The first example on the risk management. On the risk management, I will tell you that in terms of how much the features pretty much in every respect on risk management are already in execution on the entire customer base. So in this case, it's more a topic of brand extension, not feature extension, which is already running on full scale, but you have to extend it on the brands. still on offer excellence when you come to AI predictive modeling of casino content offering. That's in production on a subset of customers. So the feature is there. It's already operational. We have not put anything in here, which is at the concept project stage. It's already stuff which is up and running, but it's up and running on a subset of the customers. So the first point here is extending that in a safe manner to the entire customer base, and then you have brand extension. So you have two levers here. When it comes to personalization, it's still very early in the sense that it's up and running. It's working on a subset of the campaigns and of the customer base. There is a ton of additional elements that you can take into account to increase the level of personalization. I mentioned the type of sport, the league, the team, but you can add a lot more. So here you have new features, the extension to the entire customer base, and of course the extension to all the brands. So it depends very much on what you're looking at. But the concept, the playbook is the same. Now the infrastructure is there. Everything is there. So it's a matter of once you have something new, roll it to the entire customer base, increase the feature, roll it to all the brands. does exactly where we are and where the big opportunities, but it's all stuff that it's up and running with a huge potential of extension.

Very helpful. Thank you.

The next question is from Ed Young of Morgan Stanley.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The first question is around online growth. As you've shown in the presentation, the online market delivered good growth in Q1, but March was a bit weaker, particularly in sport. The data shows that April saw good growth in iGaming. Did you see something similar in terms of a recovery quarter to date in sports, i.e. should we view March as a blip or is there anything to call out? The second is on the regulatory outlook. Just wonder if you had any updated thoughts or expectation for the ongoing new licensing process and how your development and conversations for TOTC are going. And then third, with the buyback, you've talked about it competing with M&A and Lawrence today you spoke about flexibility. I wonder if on the M&A front you could just give any updated thoughts on the markets and your view on Italy or outside of Italy and what the competition and assets and price expectations look like at this point. Thank you.

I'll take the first and the third. So the short answer, it's quite a blip in the sense that iGaming has been good and I think the numbers for the sports just came out on IGMEG two minutes ago. And you'll see a sort of market growth of 15% April on April, April 25 and April 24. So we continue to see good growth in the market. I think on number three, how we look at M&A, I think it's more of the same of what we discussed previously. There's not really much to say about competition on the assets we maintain now. our framework of analysis of M&A, which is Europe B2C regulated and the second verticals in which we operate. I think there are clear opportunities that we continue to monitor and it's at the right time. We'll talk about it if there's... if there's anything relevant to talk about. But I would say that nothing has changed in terms of our approach to M&A internationally. And in Italy, there is what we're talking about, continuing very selectively our bolt-on strategy.

Yeah, so I don't know the license. I'll make a very quick comment also on growth. So the licensing for online continues as planned. Applications are due by end of May. We don't see any sign... for the moment being of any intention to postpone the date for the submission of the application, so we stick to the base case of the awarding of the new concessions in September. TOTC continues to have a good momentum, both for the customer base that we've already put together is showing good traction but also in terms of interest. As we said, it's very likely given the fact that continuing to operate the current concession until the very last minute comes basically at zero cost for the existing players that that the transition in whichever direction or whatever else is done at the very last minute because that is the thing which makes but we confirm both the timing, the approach, and the good commercial traction that we see in the project. And then let me tell you, we'll be happy in any case. Also, if TOTOC does a little less than we planned and we gain extra market share on the other brands because of the redistribution of the market share, the important point for us is the total. But so far, so good. a super quick comment on on the online growth lawrence mentioned continues to be very healthy in uh in in april uh for for all uh uh segments so uh also because march you had you know there was such a good payout and so much spending in January and February that you have to consider that when you look at the March data. So April looks very healthy. I think it's also... a very good sign that when you come and look at the total market share for us in April, the total online, that's aligned to Q4, which has been the highest quarter ever, with the difference that we are in the middle of a migration, which is usually a complex period. We've seen it in the past. We've seen it at the time of L'Automatica. So April, we match basically the Q4 market share, the highest ever, really in the middle of a large migration. I think it's pretty good. It's pretty reassuring.

Great. Thank you for the call.

Thank you. The next question is from Estelle of JP Morgan.

Hi. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one on the drop-through from GGR to NGR, on online specifically, at the GGR level, it was plus 25% year-on-year and plus 17% at the NGR level, just to understand there. And same question, but I guess opposite direction within the gaming franchise. We've seen GDR minus 5% year-on-year and flat at the NGR level. And just last one, do you have any updates at all on the timing of the process for the retail concession? Thank you.

I can take the first two, maybe start from the second one. On the gaming retail side and the gaming franchise, well, we are benefiting from the bolt-ons that we've carried out also last year, which, as we had indicated also for this year, at an EBITDA level, broadly stays flat. And then the impact of the distribution and sourcing is positive on the revenue side because of the way we account for the margin of AWPs. So when we move from indirect to direct, you move from margin to gross revenues. So that's more of an accounting effect. But if you look at the, again, at the EBITDA level, you're probably going to continue to see a flat year on year. Again, predominantly as a result of bolt-ons. The first one in online, sort of from GGR to NGR, and here it's from GGR to revenues. It's partly a bit because of some of the segments, a mixed effect of the segments growing year on year. And it's also a bit more of a promotional activity that are predominantly linked also to the fact that we are going through the integration of PWO.

So, Estelle, on the retail concession process, look, we understand there is an advanced, very advanced draft on the government side, on the regulatory ministry of finance side. which, I mean, looks pretty well thought and balanced, same type of, again, balanced and constructive approach of the online framework. Of course, it's a completely different type of business, so that's not... you cannot make a match but i'm talking about in terms of uh quality of the uh regulation it's uh but again the point there is uh that has to be uh negotiated with with the regions uh and uh and and it has to be taken from there so We can appreciate there is a lot of focus and very positive efforts on the regulatory and government side on this. Again, there is a very rational and balanced approach, again. then it will have to go through the discussions with the region. So it's hard to make a forecast. I would say the overall judgment on this is, I would say, positive, both for the focus, the effort, and the balanced approach.

okay thank you the next question is from fabio pavan of mediobanca yes hi good morning all uh congratulations for the results and thank you for for the presentation i would just have to follow up on this first one is a question on the pwo uh improved synergy target uh Could you elaborate a little bit more on this? You were expecting the potential improvement in recent past, or is this something you have been discovering recently? The second question is related to the core part of the presentation. When you're referring on the potential expansion and then for 25 and then the scale up for 26. This is something which has to do with all the brands or with some brands in particular. Thank you.

So I'll take the first one. So the improved synergies, it is predominantly related to the distribution costs in PwO. So how we look at the distribution contracts with the network. So it's in alignment with the rest of the with the standards of our group. We disclose the level of synergies once we feel we have a high degree of confidence that we can achieve them. So now is the right time because we have a high degree of confidence of achieving the 12.5 million and hence the announcement.

So Fabio, on the L'Automatica call, well look, this is an infrastructure, it's basically a product that is going to cover all brands. So the endpoint of this is the maximum amount of feature on the entire customer base on all brands. That's the end game. Then, of course, you get there through a process because you add new features every time. You scale it up on the customer base, depending on the feature, taking into account different complexities, and you move it to the various brands, also taking into account the history of those brands, there's no doubt about the endpoint. All features and always improving, all customer base, all brands.

Thank you.

The next question is from Andrew Tam of Redburn Atlantic.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just the first one, just in terms of the personalization work to drive the increasing ARPU. How should I be thinking about it in terms of, is this an initiative to, you know, improve your bonusing and promo efficiency? Or should I be thinking about this in terms of driving higher staking volumes and staking growth from the end customers here? And then secondly, just a housekeeping question, just on the buybacks, obviously a significant shareholder has been selling down in recent times. Just thinking through how that buyback works around potential sell downs from significant shareholders and things like that from a timing perspective, please. Thanks.

Yeah, so Andrew, this is Guglielmo. So the personalization point, and this is just an example here of something which we're already doing. There's many other things here. The concept here is, the overall concept is, each client wants something different in terms of product, slightly different offer. The way you communicate to them and the way you basically bonus and make promotions to them. So this is on point number two and three. This is not about the offer clearly, this specific example. But the first effect of these should be double. So you should ideally increase the share of wallet because you become more meaningful to that client. You get nearer to that client. And another way to see that is that with the same money, marketing money, you should get more, or if you want to get the same, you should spend less money. So that is about the existing customer base. But then, of course, given the fact that this can be used with clearly... less variables available, but also on prospects. Respecting this, you have tons of regulations to respect, but it can be used for prospects. It can be used for customers which are at a very early stage, so maybe also to reduce churn, not with customers that are already pretty sticky to you and you want to increase the share of wallet, Depending on the phase, on the target that you use, and depending on the phase where the customer is, you can use this for multiple reasons. The base application would be A customer you already own, basically own between commerce, and you increase the share wallet and you improve the marketing efficiency. But then you can use the early stages also to drive down churn and build a quicker engagement. But with a more limited set of variables, you could use that potentially also on prospects. So that's the idea.

On the second question for the buyback, I mean, these are on-market purchases that are mainly run by a program or an algorithm, if you wish. So the buyback cannot be directed to a specific shareholder, including investors. the largest shareholder that you were talking about. And in particular, in light of the Italian rules, you have to treat everyone equally. So look at them as an absolutely standard sort of buyback with on-market purchases.

Got it. Just to follow up on the personalization question, How much of that personalization comes from what you know about the customer from your retail channel and your existing omnichannel approach versus just acquiring customers exclusively through the online channel?

Currently, the amount of knowledge that we have from the customers that we acquire from the retail comes once they are online, so you start to know them. Because before, when they are in the retail, you don't really know them. Of course, you have some background data, but this background data, like third-party data, are usually not enough to drive an effective hyper-personalized approach. So the short answer to your question is, if they remain fully retail, there are other tools that we use, but not for the personalization. If they are retail and then they migrate online, so they get an account and you start observing the behavior, then they get into the loop and it's a significant part of the customer base which goes through that journey. But if it stays a pure retail customer, then this is not the key tool. Got it. Thank you. You're welcome.

The next question is from Domenico Ghilotti of Equita.

Good morning. A few follow-ups and a question. So the first follow-up is on the buyback. So I'm trying to understand. So if you complete the buyback, basically you have a mid-to-wide single-digit EPS accretion. So should I assume that this is a benchmark also for your M&A? So you are looking at something that is more accretive and you are setting some kind of benchmark for the buyback. Second, on the synergies... Just to follow up on the phasing, so if you can remind us where you are today and how much can be delivered by the end of this year and next year, considering also your upgraded guidance. And last, just... For a clarification, so if I have to take the Q1 normalized basis, what are you in terms of online margin? Because I think that you were targeting something like mid-50s as a structural level.

Okay, to maybe go with various points. On the first question for the buyback, yeah, for sure, this EPS equation is definitely a metric that we look at when we assess M&A. It's not the only one. Just from a financial perspective, there's also a strategic element, but from a financial perspective, yes, it's a metric, but it's not the only one that we look at when we assess M&A opportunities. But it is a good benchmark, as we mentioned a number of times earlier. I totally agree. On the synergy side, the incremental synergies, we expect to see them in full in 2026. We would not change the... It's because it's a rolling process that takes time. The implementation of the... review of all the sort of contracts with the network is again by nature a rolling process so for this year we would not want to commit to a number yet and sort of conservative cases that you don't assume any for this year and we'll see the full extent with the full run rate synergies next year so the 12.5 million. Well, the online margin, if we look at it on a normalized basis, it's probably about around a point lower. This is the effect of the payout. Just a few things to keep in mind. One is when we look at margins on a quarterly basis, obviously margins – also vary depending on the level of activity that you have in that particular quarter. If you spread your fixed costs over equally amongst all the quarters, the quarters that have higher margins are the ones where you have higher revenues. So Q1 and Q4 tend to have better margins, typically. Things may change temporarily, but we're talking about principles. The second consideration I would make on the margins is on the last call we said that with the inclusion of PwO, we would expect to see margins in the low 50s, and that as we continue to grow over time, we will see it is not unreasonable to expect that we get into the mid-50s, more in the medium term. Okay, thank you.

The next question is from Chiara Pampurini of Intermonte.

Thank you. Good morning. I have a couple of questions. The first one is on TotoSea. We will see its impact from 2026 with the online concession. But I want to know if the project is already ongoing, if you are already closing some deals. And the second question is if you can give us some color on bolt-on acquisition ongoing.

Thank you. Yeah, for sure, it's ongoing, it's up and running. It's already... I mean, the full year impact is 2026, but we expect the uptake to be in Q4 as the cut-off date for the current concession is... is September. And yes, we've already signed deals. It's ready. There's already market share attached to that and growing. So short answer, it's operational. It's working well. It has traction. And we are preparing for the cutoff date, which is September, to see, hopefully, a ramp-up in Q4 and then the full speed in 26th. On the Boltons, we continue to look at them with a very strong filter in the sense that We are very selective about the quality of the assets. We are more and more selective about the quality of the assets that we look at, and we continue to be disciplined on price. But for sure there are some interesting factors opportunities out there that we continue to scout and we will continue to execute on. So, Donald Lawrence, if you want to add something on this point.

I think you covered them. I mean, what you've seen in the first quarter is the carryover from 2024 where we closed a number of deals, and that's what you see in the CapEx. And then going forward, as Guillermo said, we're working on a pipeline, and we continue to maintain the same discipline on price. And therefore, sort of when that will materialize, you will – So we'll disclose them as they become, as we are more progressed.

Okay, thank you. The next question is from Simone Davis of Deutsche Bank.

Yeah, hi, guys. Two from me, please. Firstly, on the buyback, should we assume that that's an 18-month linear progression in terms of the buybacks, or is there any reason why you shouldn't accelerate that process and move more aggressively? to the front end? And secondly, how much capacity do you think that leaves you in terms of acquisition spend and how far above the two to two and a half times leverage range would you be prepared to go for the right kind of deal?

I mean, it all depends also on how the algorithm works. You know, over the buyback period, it is... I mean, but the intention is to go up to 500 million. The easiest way to model it is, as you suggest, with the linear interpolation. It also depends on, you know, given the vast majority... Mostly this will be funded by our cash flow generation. So it's... If we see that there is an opportunity to accelerate, we'll have to think about that and see a bit later in the process whether that's worth doing. Again, here we want to make sure that because we are now completing the integration and we feel that we are, on a steady-state basis in a good place on leverage at the low end. You know, we want to continue to remain. We committed to our financial policy. We want to stay where we are. That's our zone of comfort, and we will stay between two and two-and-a-half turns. Now, in terms of M&A, which is more for exceptional, let's say, extraordinary sort of activity, so M&A, We could exceed the two and a half turns, but I think this is not a hard guidance, but on a soft basis, we don't see going above three times.

Great. Thank you very much.

The next question is from Andrea Bonfa, Banca Acros.

Hello, morning to everybody. Most of my questions have been already answered, but I got a curiosity again on M&A. In the light of the shared buyback, can we rule out any M&A for this year? And secondly, are you definitely looking more abroad than Italy? How is the state of the art? Thank you very much.

No, I mean the buyback tool allows you to stop anytime. So we have no constraints on, I mean the buyback does not provide a constraint. The buyback is for us a tool to allocate capital on a given the attractive returns that it offers. We can stop at it anytime. So if there's a an attractive opportunity, we stop to buy back and we do M&A. That's as simple. So there's no time constraints on that. In terms of... At the M&A, clearly, what we said is now, in Italy, we're just talking about, for the time being, we're talking about bolt-ons. And so as we discussed, I think, on the question that Ed asked earlier, M&A, international M&A, will continue to adopt the same framework of analysis, so the situations we monitor all fall within this framework. And it's, again, Europe B2C regulated and verticals in which we operate. So businesses that we know well, can price well, and understand well. So this is the framework that we have been continuing to look, you know, we've been continuing to do it for a while, and we'll continue like this going forward.

Okay, thank you very much.

Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Thank you, operator. If there is no more questions, I think we can close the call. Thank you all for participating. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining the conference. This is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.