Catena Media plc

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Catena Media's Q1 Interim Report. I am Manuel Stan, and today I am joined by our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Giroux. Today, we will be speaking to our Q1 Interim Report, related financials, and our strategy and outlook. We will start today's presentation with a high-level summary of the most important developments in the quarter. Q1 showed a continued underperformance across both casino and sports segments, resulting in a 3% revenue decline compared to Q4. The adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 9% after two quarters moving in the right direction. On the back of the poor performance, we have taken significant measures to streamline operations and cut costs. These measures include flattening the organization by removing a senior management layer, plus review and removal of certain external services. The elimination of more than 50 roles across the organization, estimated to generate annual cost savings of 4.5 to 5 million euro. And the consolidation of our tech stack, expected to generate annual cost savings of more than 0.8 million euro. On the positive side, during the quarter, we continue to see improved performance in our efforts to diversify the group's revenue streams, which include segments like sub-affiliation and CRM. Moving on to the financial summary. Q1 revenue from continued operations was €9.8 million, representing a 39% year-on-year decline and a 3% quarter-on-quarter decline. While the decline remains disappointing, the level is signaling that the steep declines of past quarters are now behind us. Looking forward, the year-on-year comparables in the next quarters will improve. The adjusted EBITDA was €0.9 million, down 3 percentage points from the same period previous year. This was a disappointing step down after having previously reached the highest level in five quarters in Q4 2024. However, with the recent measures mentioned above, we are confident we will continue to see solid profitability improvements in the next quarters. North America contributed 89% of the group revenue, marginally down from 90% the previous year. From segment perspective, sports decreased 69% to 1.7 million euros. While the poor performance remains the chief reason, tough yearly comparables including market launches and media partnerships also play a significant role in the yearly decline. North American casino revenue decreased 20% year-on-year, however recorded a marginal 2% quarter-on-quarter increase. Mike will go into further details regarding the geographical and segment split results later in the presentation. Organic search score. Last year, we started showcasing our average ranking score for the 70 plus most important keywords across Catena Media's owned and operated products. The core of the keywords remains mostly unchanged, but factors like seasonality, new segments, or new markets may result in changes to the list. The list has been updated during Q1. At the end of Q4, we saw back-to-back Google algorithmic updates, which had impact on the rankings and performance heading into Q1. The high volatility continued in Q1, as you can see in the graph on this slide. At the end of the period, our average score was 6.22, the highest, meaning the worst, score since we have started measuring and reporting this indicator. While this is suboptimal, we are pleased to see that the positive direction at the end of the quarter.

will now hand off to mike to give an in-depth update to our financial performance thank you manu and good evening moving into our financial analysis from a geographical split perspective we concluded the quarter at 8.8 million euro in revenue in north america down from 14.3 million for the corresponding quarter last year and relatively stable with a 1% decrease from the 8.9 million that we saw in Q4 2024. It is important to note that we have achieved greater data granularity through this quarter and therefore we've reclassified our geographic costs and are now allocating more costs to the operational regions versus shared central services. This applies the entire 2024 comparative period and a detailed workbook is now available on our website with the changes. Adjusted EBITDA in North America decreased to 3.4 million, 11% lower than last year, corresponding to a margin of 39%. This is a year-on-year 12 percentage point increase in our North American margin. Adjusted EBITDA is 31% higher than Q4 2024, despite relatively flat revenue in the quarter, reflecting the effectiveness of our cost management programs. North America amounted to 89% of group revenue in the last quarter, a marginal decrease of 1% versus last year. Looking at our North America segments, sports was down 69% versus last year. This poor performance was driven by a lack of comparable state launch in 2025, as North Carolina launched in March 2024, and also the increased competition that we've been seeing over the last 12 months. Our North America sports business declined by 12% versus Q4 2024. Some of this shift is expected with seasonality, but it was still a disappointing result showing that much work and investment is needed to bring our sports business back into profitability. Our North America casino business decreased by 20% versus Q1 2024. This was an underwhelming increase of 2% versus Q4 2024 as competitive pressures driven by the volatile search rankings continued to affect our results. Media partnerships also played a role in the year-on-year revenue declines across sports and casino, as these were not adversely affected by the Google algorithm update until mid Q2 of 2024. Looking at the rest of the world, this non-core geographical segment accounted for 11% of revenue and contains our Esports, APAC and Latin America businesses. We saw revenue of 1.1 million euros, which is a decrease of 37% versus last year. Adjusted EBITDA decreased by 22% versus last year. However, our margin increased to 55% as we decreased costs to align with the revenue trends. Moving on to our full company segment performance, we saw a very large decline in our sports revenue to 2.1 million euros versus 6.1 million euros for Q1 2024. NDCs also decreased by 69%. This was driven by underperformance at several bands and challenging comparables from the North Carolina launch in March, 2024 and the year on year effect of exiting certain media partnerships. Our sports business declined by 12% versus Q4, 2024 with declines across the North America and the rest of the world brands. Losses in our sports business decreased by 7% versus last year as cost control measures took effect. We continue to invest adequately in the segment to turn it around and return to profitability. The casino segment accounted for 78% of group revenue. Revenue decreased 23%, but we had very active media partnerships through Q1, 2024. Casino revenue is flat versus Q4, 2024. The rest-of-world business, which is primarily legacy revenue share from non-core assets, decreased by 44% versus last year. The North America casino business decreased by 20% versus last year. Adjusted EBITDA in the casino segment decreased by 34% versus the same quarter in 2024, with a smaller margin decrease of 5 percentage points owing to our cost management programs. Moving on to our cost development. I'd like to start off the discussion on our cost development around some reclassifications in our financial statements that affect the current and past periods. We strive to provide accurate and transparent financial information and have made great progress in improving our financial data granularity over the past few quarters, following the implementation of our product-led operating model. The changes that we have made are that individuals providing full-time services to the group, like outsourced software engineers, have been reclassified from other operating expenses to personnel expenses. Direct costs associated with media partnerships have been reclassified between sports and casino based on the percentage of revenue each partnership generated. This means that our Q1 and Q2 2024 sport and casino margins have changed significantly. And the last reclassification was that our shared product related costs like senior manager salaries or generic software subscriptions have been reclassified to North America and rest of world in our segment note. This provides a more balanced view of our administrative and corporate costs in the current and comparable periods. While the reclassifications have no impact on our total cost base, we made these changes to be back to January 2024 in the spirit of consistency and transparency. For your convenience, our website has been updated to include a detailed workbook comparing the original tables to our reclassified values. Continuing on to our Q1 cost development and taking into consideration the reclassifications mentioned previously, Our adjusted cost base decreased 62% versus Q1 2024 and increased 3% versus Q4 2024. Our Q1 2025 direct costs increased by €300,000 versus Q4 2024 as our sub-affiliation business grew. This increase was partially offset by lower other operating and personnel expenses. Following our Q4 report, we stated that we did not anticipate further major changes to our cost base at that time. Unfortunately, we did not see the growth or progress in leading indicators that we expected, and we've since announced significant cost cuts focusing on our personnel expenses that will result in reductions of 4.5 to 5 million on an annualized basis. Total items affecting comparability in the quarter were €350,000. The vast majority of these are associated with restructuring and the previously committed share-based compensation adjustments. Moving on to our financial position. After another consecutive quarter of minimal cash flows from operations, it's added extra pressure to our financial position. The proceeds from previously divested assets have ensured that we remain in a position to repay our senior bond in June, but we are not generating sufficient cash from operations to continue paying the high ongoing interest costs associated with hybrid capital security at this time. As mentioned in a press release earlier today and in our chairman's comments in this interim report, we do not intend to redeem the hybrid capital security in the short term. Additionally, we plan to defer the interest payments on this instrument. Excluding the hybrid capital security, we had a net cash position of 3.2 million euros after taking into consideration our previously repurchased senior bonds. We are intending to cancel the repurchased bonds held by Catena Media and repay the remaining senior bonds or redeem them on schedule in June. Looking into our capital structure, our cash balance at the end of the quarter was 24.6 million euros. We reported a net cash position of 3.2 million euros at the end of March, excluding the hybrid capital securities, which do not have a maturity date. It is important to note that the final proceeds from one remaining past divestment is not conditional on any performance targets and all payments to date have been received according to plan. We intend to use our net cash position in upcoming proceeds from past divestments to repay the senior bond due in June. We currently have no outstanding financial commitments relating to prior acquisitions. I will now hand back over to Manu to give us an update on the strategy and outlook.

Thank you, Mike. We'll now have a look into the strategy and outlook for the next quarters. Another quarter without significant regulatory movements in North America, with overall market penetration remaining at approximately 50% for online sports betting and only 16% for online casino, indicating the remaining sizeable future opportunity. In 2025, we expect two new market launches in North America. Missouri, following the November 2024 ballot vote, the Missouri Gaming Commission is diligently proceeding towards market launch, and the market is expected to go live sometime late Q3 or Q4. Alberta is expected to legalize online sports betting and casino this year, but no clear market launch date is set yet. Alberta will follow a model similar to Ontario, including both online sports betting and online casino. Moving on to our strategic focus areas. As laid out in the previous reports, our current strategy is focused on three key pillars, people, product, and profit. From people perspective, the key initiatives during the quarter include right-size the organization by eliminating more than 50 roles, flattening the organization by fully removing a senior management layer, continue to focus on building our hubs with our Malta hub now hosting approximately 50% of our workforce, and hybrid office presence is planned for the second half of the year in our hub locations as previously announced. From product perspective, the key initiatives include continue to develop on our sub-affiliate vertical based on the strong demand from both operators and affiliates, further improve our CRM capabilities and expand our casino database to best position our brands for future casino state launches, and focus on our flagship brand, Bonus.com, which has seen positive signs towards the end of the quarter. Our third and last strategic pillar is profit. First and foremost, we are disappointed to see a profitability decline after two quarters of consecutive progress. The measures implemented as a result, including rightsizing the organization and the tech stack consolidation, are expected to generate total annual cost savings of around 5 to 6 million euros. The management is confident these measures will have a significant impact in the coming quarters. Lastly, let's recap the key takeaways from our report. Revenue declined 3% quarter-on-quarter, signaling stabilization in our core North American market. Therefore, we don't expect to reach double-digit revenue organic growth in 2025, but we expect to reach double-digit growth in group-adjusted EBITDA for the year. €3.5 million from divestment proceeds expected by the end of May. Net interest bearing debt, excluding hybrid capital securities, expected to be cleared in June 2025 with the repayment of the senior bond. Interest payments on the hybrid capital securities to be deferred starting in July. Regulatory progress in North America remains slow with no significant development during the quarter. We continue to see encouraging progress in the areas focused on diversifying revenue streams, such as sub-affiliates and CRM. And last but not least, significant cost measures taken across the organization, the elimination of 50 plus roles, and the tech stack consolidation resulting in total annual cost savings of 5 to 6 million euros. Thank you very much for listening to our today's presentation. I will now hand over to Mike to move on to the Q&A session of our report and open up for questions.

Thank you, Manu. I'll now open it up for questions. If you want to ask a question, please press pound on your telephone keypad.

The next question comes from Oscar Ronquist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Hi, Oscar.

Thank you. Hi, good evening, guys. So I would just like to start off with the sub-affiliation contribution, which you said dampened the margin a little bit. So could you, I mean, give some color on the margin difference between, I mean, obviously it's a very high drop through from like the publishing business, but Any sort of color on the sub-affiliation, margin contribution, and also if you could say anything, I mean, sort of expand a bit on how much that contributed to the quarter and how much that sort of weighed on the EBITDA levels in Q1, thanks.

Yeah, I can answer that to a certain extent. So from like an industry perspective, when you look at other sources that are non-SEO, SEO usually has a higher margin business than other areas, which could be seen as PPC or paid media or sub affiliation. Generally margins across the industry are somewhere in the 15 to 25% in those parts of the businesses. I'm not able to reveal obviously our exact margins because that's commercial information that's important to keep confidential, but fair to say that the industry area would probably be accurate. What was the second part of the question, sorry, Oscar?

Yeah, no, just on the revenue side as well, I mean, so I'm just looking to understand approximately how much the core business, you know, excluding the sub-affiliation went in Q1.

Okay, so if you look at the slide that had the cost development on it, that slide shows the increase in direct cost. The vast majority of that, as we stated, came from our sub-affiliation business. So again, we're not putting that information out in the report and therefore I can't comment to it necessarily right now, but you can probably take that as an indication using industry averages to kind of figure that out.

Perfect. Thank you. Just the next question, a little bit of detail, but just the savings that you are implementing at the moment, could we expect that to contribute already from the middle of Q2, or does that take a quarter or two for you to implement?

Yeah, so we've started implementing those savings, so it will be part of the way through the quarter, obviously. and any costs associated with severance and that sort of stuff will be treated as an item affecting comparability. So from that perspective, there will be a partial quarter impact with closer to a full quarter impact occurring in Q3.

Perfect, thank you. Then just, trying to understand the difference between your company specific impact on the top line and also by the market development. You talked a lot about increasing market competition and so on. Could you just expand a little bit on how the market dynamics are at the moment? Are we seeing pressures from CPA levels or is it that the operators are more focusing on customer retention instead and driving value from RQ rather than going for new acquisitions.

I'll let Manu speak to that one, so Manu, if you want to take that.

sure thank you oscar uh i think as we previously communicated we have seen some pressure on cpa levels but uh i i still think that katina media is in a very strong position from from that perspective and um i don't think that that's a key indicator i think if we're talking more about the seo segment we have there we see much much more increased competition I think if you're also trying to separate the casino segment versus the sportsbook segment, you will see that in the sportsbook segment, the competition is much greater with a lot of companies from inside the industry and outside the industry getting more involved into terms that are relevant for the industry. So I think from that perspective, we see the biggest growth. From casino perspective, it remains challenging. It remains a good level of competition, but that's the part where we have proven to be more successful with our strategy. From acquisition versus CRM perspective, I think that's definitely the journey that you see most of the operators in North America, as you've seen in Europe and other parts in the world that are more mature with operators trying to focus more and more on the retention level. But also we're trying to be as responsive as possible to that and try to be a partner from that perspective and make sure that our properties, our products, our brands are not 100 percent focused on acquiring customers, but also add value later in the customer journey for our partners by exposing promotions that they run, by exposing the number of games that they run and so on and so forth. Even if that may have a shorter term impact, let's say on overall customer acquisition, we think that they help our partnership in the long run, which will have a positive impact on the CPA rates that we can maintain with our partners.

Perfect. Thank you. Just have a final one. I guess divided into two questions but I've asked this before but if you could just update us on your latest news on the on the sweep side you commented a little bit on it in the report I mean obviously been some discussions around that among the legislators and also we've seen you know kind of a push into the prediction markets early now in 2025 Is that something that you see as a monetization opportunity, competitors, or if you're rather unaffected by that? Thank you.

Thank you, Oscar. So on the first part on sweepstakes, I think pretty consistent with what we've said previously, that there is obviously some regulatory movement in terms of sweepstakes. We have seen some of the states sending cease and desist letters to some of the operators in those states. And as previously communicated, we are definitely supporting regulation in the casino segment and this is favorable for the long-term industry sustainability we are not operating in any of the states where sweeps are clearly not legal so we've exited states where we had to and we continue to operate in the states where Obviously, we can operate. However, as communicated previously, for us, SWIPS is a segment of the casino segment and we want to best position ourselves for the long-term regulation of the casino segment by continuing to build our brands and databases. So that remains a key focus for us. As communicated in the previous reports, as well as in this report, CRM is one of the areas where we continue to invest and we see very good progress quarter on quarter. So we'll continue to do that. And a lot of the effort in that CRM part is put into the casino vertical in states that are yet to regulate online casino, but they currently offer sweepstakes. So I think that remains our strategy for that segment. When it comes to sports prediction markets and so on, I think it's a new vertical that obviously we're embracing. We do not have any position in terms of how that will develop. But for time being, we're trying to monetize that part of the industry and be one of the forefront players in anything to do with this kind of markets.

Perfect. That was all for me. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Oskar. Thank you, Oskar. That marks the last caller who's requested to ask any questions. So I'm going to move over to some questions that were submitted by text, essentially. So Manu, I have a few for you to start with, which is, the first one is, what can you say about the cost cuts?

Thanks, Mike. I think it's very important to highlight that the main objective for us was to improve efficiency across the organization. That includes everything from simplifying processes, removing organizational layers, clarifying responsibilities, and so on. The consolidation of tech is a great example. The aim is to improve efficiency by simplifying and consolidating the tech stack. And the outcome includes a significant cost saving. From personnel perspective, again, the efficiency implies a flatter, less complex organization. But unfortunately, that also implies less people. At the end of the day, our aim is to be more agile, be more efficient. The measures done are meant to position us to do that.

Thanks, Manu. The next question that came in is, are you considering to use products like bonus.com for other markets other than the US market, since you have some great domains for other markets.

Yeah. I'll take that one, Mike, also. Thank you. Our short-term goal, since the new management took over, is to make sure we have consistent focus on our core markets, right? North America and products while diversifying revenue risk across our non-SEO sources. However, of course, it's part of our long-term plan to expand strong assets like Bonus.com to other markets like we have in Mexico or Brazil. However, these expectations require a decent level of investment for many months or more uh before yielding results so i think in short in the short term the answer is that we need to focus and make sure that we've got the right right base in place for our core markets but in the long run it is definitely a play that we are considering thanks manu uh and another question for you uh can you explain the underperformance in q1 Thank you. From revenue perspective, we can break it down into geography segment or search versus non-search. If we're looking at the last few quarters, the North American casino performance is relatively stable, while the rest of the world and the sports segments continue to be the biggest challenge for us. So while from geographical perspective, this is in line with our strategy, again, North America casino remains relatively flat, From segment perspective, we have to continue to invest in our sports vertical and try to best position ourselves for the upcoming sports season. From search versus non-search perspective, obviously, we continue to feel the impact of Google Algo changes over the last few quarters while we continue focusing on diversifying revenue streams. As mentioned throughout the presentation, we see verticals like sub-affiliation and CRM reaching new heights pretty much every quarter, so continue to invest in that. Lastly, from profitability perspective, the changes that we've done recently are the biggest steps we have taken to improve the efficiency and cut costs since the new management took over. While we cannot commit that this will be the last cuts we make, I think we genuinely believe that this put us in a very good place to deliver significantly improved profitability in the following quarters.

All right. Thanks, Manu. And I have one final question for you that came in, which is, How intermingled is the sports and casino segments? Does casino use sports as a funnel in some way?

I think from operators' perspective, there's definitely a much bigger overlap or a cross-sell from the two products. From media or affiliate perspective, there are still two different segments, if you will. And I think, as we said earlier, for us, we have found a way to connect to casino users much easier than we are. We're doing it in sports and we're not that successful in the sports side. I think you may say that they are, but for us, they still represent two different vertical of customers, two different segments.

All right. Thank you. There's a few questions that come in more on the financial side, so I'll kind of answer those myself. So the first one is, why have you reclassified the costs, I guess, going back to 2024? And so the simple reason in that is that we had investor feedback and we agree that the changes give a better understanding of how the business is operating and provide more accurate reporting. It's important to note that we reclassified. There's no change in the actual cost base year on year or anything like that. It's just a reclassification of how we're treating certain costs to make it more understandable and useful for investors, essentially. And then we had a question about why did we make the decision to defer interest payments on the hybrid? And so I'll, again, try to answer that one to the best of my ability, which is it was not an easy decision. We need to point out that in the last 12 months, we repaid our revolving credit facility. And in June, we're going to redeem the last of our senior bonds. So the only outstanding obligation that we're going to be left with is the hybrid capital securities. And so for the first time in a while, the financial burden on Katina Media is actually much lighter. But at the same time, we've struggled operationally and the interest payments are very high compared to our recent operating cash flows. So the decision to defer the interest payments on the capital securities came from a mutual desire from management and the board to give Katina Media a chance to get back on our feet. We also wanted to give bondholders as much advance notice that we could once this became a discussion point. Therefore, we did not delay in making the decision until closer to the next interest payment so that they had that foreknowledge that that's where we're going. We've also worked in the last quarters with streamlining the organization, removing unprofitable media partnerships and reducing costs. And we now find ourselves with the need to make more tech facing investments in our platforms, in data and other areas. And we believe that deferring the interest payment gives us the freedom to focus on that and our strategy and our execution to deliver actual results. That's that one. The next one that I had was, what's your future plan for financing? And I can say that ideally none. We want Katina Media to be self-sustaining, grow organically. But of course, in the future, if there's opportunity for strategic investments, then financing would be considered. And I have another question kind of about the financing, which is, are you planning any new issuance or issue? And as of right now, we do not have any plans to take any dilutive actions. Same message as the last number of quarters. There's no plans in the works for that. And then I have another one on the hybrid capital. And it says, are there any consequences to deferring the interest payments? And the answer is that yes, there are. We cannot distribute dividends. We can't do share repurchases. We can't distribute funds to any subordinate debt holders that we may have. So there are real consequences to deferring the interest payments. There's also additional interest that is then accrued on those. And we would then have to pay that interest off before the original interest. So it's definitely not something that we'd made a decision lightly to do. And then the final question on the hybrids that I had come in is how long are you planning to defer the payments? And unfortunately that one, I can't give a specific timeline. The answer is that we'll stop the deferral of payments and pay the outstanding interest when the company's in a better financial position and it's responsible to do so. The goal here is relatively simple. Return to growth, improve our margins, and generate a solid cash flow. We've already taken significant steps towards that by streamlining the organization, but there's still a lot of work to be done and deferring the interest payments will let us to continue that transformation. So I guess that's the best I can answer that one at this point. So with that, I'll hand it back over to Manu for any closing remarks. And thank you everyone for tuning in.

Thank you, Mike. So just to recap, Q1 was overall a very disappointing quarter for us. Revenue was 3% down from the previous quarter, but the adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 9% after two quarters where we saw it moving in the right direction. That led to significant measures that have been taken to address the future profitability, including the elimination of more than 50 roles, as well as the tech stack consolidation that we talked about, which together are expected to result in annual cost savings of 5 to 6 million euros. In order to optimize our financial structure and to create the headroom needed for tech-facing investments we must make, we intend not to redeem the hybrid capital security in the short term, as Mike talked about. And additionally, we plan to defer the interest payments rate on this instrument starting in July. That said, thank you all for joining today's call. Looking forward to hosting you for our Q2 report on August 12th. Thank you very much.