Kambi Group plc

Good morning, everyone. We are here today to present our Q3 2022 report presentation. And today with me, I have our CEO, Christian Milen, and our CEO, David Kenyon. We will start to present the quarter. And after presentation, you are very welcome to send your questions through the website, or you can also call in to ask them here. So once again, very welcome and over to you, Christian.

Thank you, Mia. So yeah, good morning everyone. I will begin with a brief overview. Turn to the next slide please. After which David will go through the financial performance. And after that I will go in a little bit more depth on the quarter before we're taking some questions. So, highlights of the quarter. First of all, I'm quite pleased with 12% operating turnover growth during the quarter. Q3 is notoriously a very weak quarter of the year. Very little sport going on. Especially since we started in the US, it has become even higher seasonality impact seasonally. Since the two big sports, the American football only has one month in September and the basketball doesn't start until mid-October. This year we also have some extra headwinds with DraftKings having some turnover in early of the quarter. And we also last year had a big soccer tournament, the Euros, which had the last matches last year. More about the impact of that they will talk about. We also are in... down, tough global economic situation. I would say for us the impact is a little bit softer since we have a lot of business in the Americas where the economics looks slightly better and also we have a very strong currency in the dollar. Outside of that, I think we have done five signings during the last three months, so very happy about where we're going there. Especially Great Canadian that came after the end of the quarter is a great signing, which I will talk more about later on. During quarter we also signed front-end specialist shape games which will have a great impact on our offer where they are having a front-end which is something very much desired by our prospects and it fits very very well into our story and I will talk more about that later. And finally, we have identified BetBuilder as the first product we will go with a modernized offer. And we'll talk more about that later. And the plan is still the same. We're planning to launch this for market in Q1. But first, over to you, David.

Thanks, Christian. Turn to slide four. So yeah, we saw overall a robust financial performance this quarter. We continue to be profitable. We used our powerful balance sheet to fund the purchase of Shape Games. And we look forward to a very busy sporting calendar in Q4. Revenue of £36.7 million was driven by operator turnover growth of 12% and an operator trading margin of 9.5%. And it's against the comparative you see there, 41.6 million, which included around 30% from DraftKings in its last quarter under contract with us last year. Costs before FX and before the shape acquisition, or costs of shape which were added to the P&L, were 32.8 million, which was in the forecast range we gave last quarter. And this led to an operating profit of 3.9 million for the quarter, at a margin of 10.6%. The net cash position of 38.1 million reflects the 35 million we used to acquire shape gains during the quarter. The agreement with Penn that we announced recently has seen the 12.5 million termination fee paid after the quarter end. So I can expect this cash balance to increase significantly during Q4. Turning to slide five. This is the operator turnover index. It sets out an aggregation of the results for operators. The blue columns are an indexed turnover across the portfolio, and the orange line is the operator trading margin, again, aggregated across the portfolio. This trading margin for the quarter was 9.5%, very high this quarter, against 9% in Q3 last year. Year on year, the turnover went from 573 to 640, despite this increase in operator trading margin. Actually, it should be noted there are some factors increasing the comparative that were against the 573. So firstly, DraftKings, the tail end of their business, actually did fall into Q3 last year. So that added around 40 to the index in Q3 2021. And also the last seven matches of the Euro 2020 soccer tournament also in Q3 last year, which added around 20 to the index. But these positives last year were offset by a number of factors, including new customers we launched since then and new markets we've launched into, Connecticut, Louisiana, New York, amongst others. I really want to drill down into that 640 because it's quite an interesting quarter. We start with July with a very quiet sporting calendar. Then during August, we see the return of the major European soccer leagues. And then in September, in the middle of the month, the NFL season starts. So we see a very rapid progression of the index turnover during the quarter, up to 257 in the month of September. Rolling that forward into Q4, in October onwards, of course, we'll see full months of NFL and soccer. The NBA season also started last week, and the college basketball season will begin in mid-November. On top of that, the Soccer World Cup also starts in mid-November and runs for a month before the major European soccer leagues resume in short order after that. So I think the Q4 sporting calendar is going to be extremely busy and this September run rate you see here should be exceeded each month in Q4. Turning to slide 7, the revenue conversion chart. So at constant exchange rates, operator turnover was up 5% on Q3 last year. This was boosted by the dollar being stronger than last year versus the euro. This grew the growth to 12% in total. As I mentioned, the operator trading margin was higher than last year at 9.5%, up from 9%. Whilst tax and marketing deductibles were also higher than last year, with increased taxes that we shared in the Netherlands, Connecticut and New York amongst others. The biggest factor on this chart, of course, is in the other column. and it's a significant negative impact this quarter. The biggest single item there is DraftKings. So in Q3 2021, approximately 30% of our revenue came from DraftKings, and the vast majority of that was shown in the other column in Q3 last year. That, of course, disappears this year. But that negative is offset by, to some degree, by fixed revenues from Mohegan Sun, by our revenues from Avios, and also by the revenues from Shape, which accounted for around a million euros in the month of September. So the net effect of all those items is a 12% decrease in our revenue to 36.7 million. Turning to the cash flow on slide eight. So our opening cash balance at the start of the quarter was 81.6 million. And as you see, the biggest single item affecting the cash was the acquisition of Shape. We used 35 million of our cash, and that took the closing balance to around 45 million. As I mentioned, I think this balance will increase significantly during the quarter. Not only do we expect the very busy sporting calendar to generate good results, but also the recent agreement with Penn has seen that $12.5 million come into the bank for Canby since quarter end. And finally, I wanted to introduce Shape Games. From a financial perspective, we've brought a profitable and fast-growing company. They work with a number of major operators, including Danske Spiel, Norsk Tipping, and Jack Entertainment. Their revenue model works in a number of ways. They offer it in different ways to different operators, but it can be either through fixed fees, a revenue share, or on a per-resource basis. The biggest cost they have is their staff. They have around 70 staff, mainly based at the head office in Copenhagen. And we look forward to a successful partnership going forward. So with that, I hand you back to Christian.

Thank you, David. And I will continue on shape. So, I mean, we are always looking to improve our offering. And I think one area where we have for a long time taken a very conscious decision is to not invest in native front-end applications. At this point, we felt that this is something that more and more of our prospects and customer base are asking for. And therefore, we have for some time been partnering up with especially Shape when it comes to native frontends. So this deal was very natural for us. We knew the company very well and we felt that we had a very good cultural fit. But on top of that, I mean, what we get here is a front end that is very customizable. That gives our operators even more differentiation capabilities. They have also developed a wide range of engagement products such as an AI driven recommendation engine. They have a lot of social features and they have a free to play application as well that Jack Entertainment are currently using, waiting for the state of Ohio to regulate. So in short, I think we have taken a major leap when it comes to user experience. And I think Shape Games is a great fit for us and comes, as David mentioned, with some fantastic customers themselves. On top of that, I think ShapeGames can really benefit from gaining access to our partner network and possibly make a few customers of our existing customers. We have been talking a lot about the modernization the last couple of quarters and the plan is still progressing very well. Now we have come to a decision that the first product we will modernize is the BetBuilder. The BetBuilder, I think we have been winning awards because we have a very standout product in the market. Now we have basketball being launched just in time for the NBA season. We have a full suite of the US sports and with that also the five biggest team sports for the Camby network. We have looked a little bit on the interest and we feel that there is definitely an interest in the market and it will give us a possibility to penetrate the market. A market that we have currently not really have an access to. So we're really looking forward to this. The plan is still to go to market with modular services in Q1 in 2023. We have done a lot of signings. In the last three months, we have done five signings during Q3, four of them. Oakland, which have been a customer of ours through Churchill for some time, but now we have a contract with them on their own. And with that, we also added... the online to what we had before in retail in Arkansas. We have Elani which has a very large casino in Washington state which means that we enter the 90th year state with Washington. I think this is a state that we foresee being only retail for some time. So having one of the best located casinos in the state is very, very good for us. Thirdly, we have Mohegan, which we have had a relationship online, but now also we have an own property deal launching in two casinos in the state of Ontario. and lastly on this slide we have on this which are operating in Argentina and with this agreement we can expand our reach in in the in Argentina market from three provinces currently to potentially ten so Very happy about that. Of course, we have also been busy with launches. And of course, the biggest one this quarter has been re-entering the Netherlands with Kindred. And as Kindred reported themselves during their capital markets day, They have done better than they expected and taken quite a decent share already of the market in the Netherlands again. We have, of course, as I mentioned earlier, launched the online sportsbook for Mohegan in Ontario. And finally, we have done six partner launches in the U.S. Two of them worth mentioning is the first entry for MaximBet in Indiana. And also we have launched Penn in the state of Kansas. After Q3, we have done probably what I believe is the most important deal to talk about here, and that is the Great Canadian Entertainment. Great Canadian is one of the largest casino operators in Canada. And we will be launching in 10 properties in Ontario to start with. Great Canadian is also owned by Apollo, which owns numerous other gaming assets. So hopefully that means that we have an easier access to some other potential partners in the future. We also mentioned after Q3 we have come to an agreement with Penn. This agreement means that Penn will stay on for retail to somewhere in 2024. More importantly, it also means that we will receive $27.5 million in early termination fees, but also a transition fee that will be spread out over the remaining period here. We have agreed to cooperate with some additional state launches. We have done Kansas just recently and we have a few others that we will do late this year or early next year. I think it's very important also to point out that during this time up until they leave us, we will, of course, continue to make commission on their revenues for the part of the business that we continue to operate, which is... More or less everything we operate now up until Q3 2023 and after that all of the retail properties for another period of time. So to summarize the quarter, with the acquisition of Shape, I think we have taken a major leap forward on the user experience side. I believe we are putting ourselves in a great position with the product we have at the moment. We have very positive commercial momentum with five signings during the last three months. And most notably, as I mentioned, a great Canadian. And I also would like to mention that the pipeline remains still very strong. And I think we're very well positioned to withstand the global economic outlook. I think B2B business will thrive going forward. Also the sporting calendar is at its busiest and we're looking forward to see all the big US leagues up and running soon and we're looking forward for a World Cup in November and December. So with that, thank you very much and let's take some questions.

Thank you very much, Christian and David. It sounds like you are pleased with the quarter despite a very quiet body calendar and very excited about the future. As I mentioned in the beginning, you can either send the questions to me here through the webpage or you can call in. So we're going to start with the questions from the phone. So over to you, operator.

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Oscar Ronquist from ABG. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning, guys. First off, I just wanted to hear your thoughts about the sort of the turnover growth sequentially. You said that you're pleased with the quarter. So when we have like Rush Street in Mexico, Kindred, Netherlands, Ontario ramp up, Penn, Kansas, sort of the like-for-like growth excluding all the sort of headwinds I mean, it should be down quite a lot from Q2 levels. So can you just explain to me, I mean, obviously we have some sort of seasonality, but are we sort of thinking that that seasonality impact isn't as great as you might think?

I think, I mean, the seasonal impact between the quarters is massive, and I think you will see that in Q4 now, as I said, I mean, or as David said, I mean, we expect all three months in Q4 to quite handsomely beat out September, and We had, as we mentioned, a few headwinds when it comes to seasonality as well, especially when it comes to having some revenues still from DraftKings, but mainly having the ending of the Euro Championships from last year.

All right, so that's why we saw better sequential, obviously. But, I mean, sort of Q2 should also be a very quiet sporting calendar, as you also mentioned in the last conference call, right? I mean, the U.S. sports are sort of ending in April, and then the NFL is ending in February. So Q2 should be really quiet as well.

No, I mean, the basketball or the NBA, I mean, I think the finals is usually in June. So that is going on for quite much more of a time. You have the soccer is usually ending somewhere late May. And the ice hockey also have a finals in June. So... Q2 is usually a much better quarter than Q3 also.

I think the other point to point out is the off-rater trading margin, which was a point higher here in Q3 versus Q2, which of course has somewhat of a dampening effect on this Q3 number for the turnover.

All right, got it. So then just on the operating expenses, so sort of excluding the shape games acquisition, which obviously comes with some staff, I think that your sort of FTEs are not up really that much since Q2, and it wasn't really up that much from Q1 to Q2 either. So are you sort of not hiring people at the moment, or how should we think about that going forward?

Yes, good question. I think, I mean, obviously there's impact of attrition as well. So it's not been a massively conscious decision to this stage to stop hiring. It's more been making sure we can fill the gaps. But I think more importantly is what we talk about going forward. You know, we've been standing here and talking about slowing down our rate of cost growth, ultimately, because we've been spending on projects such as automation, which are intended to be able to lead to longer-term cost growth slowdown. So I'm really pleased that we can announce today that we will be slowing that rate of cost growth. At the same time as we're seeing inflationary pressures on quite a few parts of our cost base, I think it's really important we don't ignore that and we take tight grip on that and make sure that when we do make new signings, like the ones Christian's talked about, that they will lead to kind of to prove the scalability in the business model, which we've also been talking about. So, yeah, the main thing is to look forward, and we'll give more details in future releases about what this cost growth will look like next year. But, you know, just take it from us that we are working on making sure that cost growth does slow down.

All right. And does the slowing cost growth have anything to do with revenues? coming in slower than you expected or sort of the pipeline coming in slower than you expected?

No, I think, as David said, I mean, first and foremost, I think it is a product of us being able to automate more and more in the future. And also, I think, I mean, we have some obvious synergies that we need to realize when it comes to our own front and development and development. what we now can do with shape so no I wouldn't say that it has very much to do with slower revenue growth it's more about that we feel this is a very very good time for us to become more prudent with our costs and now we really see that we have opportunities with more automation and some synergy wins to come.

All right, understood. Just a final question. You talked a lot about the sort of strong pipeline that you see. Is it anything that have changed over the last year or is it anything that have changed from your what you're seeing now relative to what you've seen sort of one year ago. And the great Canadian signing, is that sort of the great pipeline that you have been talking about? Is that included there or should we see that sort of better signings or larger signings further on, what you think?

I will obviously not comment on what signings we will do, but of course Great Canadian was a part of the pipeline before we signed them. But I would also say that, I mean, it's still very strong. And coming just back from G2E, I feel we are in a very, very good shape going forward.

All right, understood. I think I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Ed Young from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I've got two questions, please. First of all, in your remarks, you said that the impact of macroeconomics would have been softened by your large exposure to the early stage US market. and also currency was a sort of factor in there. Just to be clear do you think you've seen some impact of softness from the macroeconomic environment? Are you just saying that broadly, it will be harder to spot because of your mix. So have you seen any? And then second of all, on the bet builder, I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the modularization there. One of the issues that operators who have outsourced that product from other suppliers have found is that there's essentially been a friction between the odds generated or odds used within the within the same game parlay and those from the remainder of their book, and that's created some UX issues. How are you solving those if you're modulating the product to give to a supplier who already has their own trading and risk book for the rest of their offer? Thanks.

So on your first question, I mean, it's so hard to see what is the cause and what it would have been if everything was still the same. I mean, since the seasonality is such a big part of our turnover, we obviously have new customers that are growing quite handsomely. I'm more saying that it's quite obvious that with the cost of living going up quite significantly, it will have an impact on what people can spend on entertainment and gaming in particular here. So it will have an impact and I'm sure it has had some impact already. On your second question about BetBuilder, I think this is one of the big reasons we strongly believe that we have an opportunity here. I think we have a significantly stronger product than the other B2B options out there. And I think we also may have a solution to the problem going forward on how to harmonize the pricing.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Victor Harburg from Dansky Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning. So follow up on the pipeline. You talked about the opportunity of a European operator that might have come to RoadSAM when it comes to their tech development. Is that opportunity still there?

There are still opportunities out there, absolutely.

Okay. And ABOS, how much did that contribute? You mentioned the shape contribution.

Yeah. Hi, Victor. ABRC was around half a million euros in revenue and about 0.1 on the EBIT line.

So roughly trading in line with where it has been the past couple of quarters then. Is there any seasonality in that? Is it going as planned or...? What do you expect from Amelbius?

I mean, it's not so much seasonality, but I think the path to greater profitability will be when they move into making revenue from the odds on esports, which is certainly in the pipeline, and certainly we'd hope to, in the first half of next year, be showing that increased profitability from that revenue.

And that's when you're going to launch that?

That's the plan.

Yep. Okay. On the turnover growth, turnover index, when you slice it up in the quarter that just went by and looking into Q4, do you expect all three months to be better than September? Sounds like you expect each month to be better than the previous. Is that how we should read it as well? November better than October, December better than November and so forth, given the schedule?

Yes, I think certainly November should be better than October. The tricky thing is the World Cup, I mean, it is a great tournament. It also means that a lot of domestic soccer leagues is taking a pause. So I struggle a little bit to feel confident on... If it's a positive or a negative with the World Cup for that period. For the long term it's surely a positive because the fixtures in the domestic leagues they have to be played at some point. But I'm sure that November will be stronger than October. I would guess that December will probably be on par maybe with November or possibly slightly worse.

Looking at shape, could you describe your P&L model, the drivers, what to expect in terms of growth? Doubling its revenue this year, but that's from customers going live. What to expect here? What's the market growth rate and what's the opportunity for them to grow under your umbrella?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's two ways they're going to grow their revenues. One is upselling of services. So they offer quite a broad range of services and obviously they can enter with an operator with one service and then expand the offering. So that's certainly one and that would be one way of growing that revenue. Secondly is new customers. I mean, currently with kind of just under 10, 9 or 10 customers, you know, there's clear potential for that number to increase. And I think with their fantastic offering, that's absolutely the plan that they can keep selling just at the start of their journey, really.

And the P&L model, is there any recurring revenues in their rev share, one-time fees, how does it work?

It's really a mixture, and it's flexed per operator. Some have part fixed and part rev share, and it's almost on a case-by-case, but it's only... You can say the costs are also linked to the revenue in a large degree because they're a lot driven by development costs that they're providing onto the operators. So they're already profitable and there's absolutely reason to think that profitability grows as they sign more customers and upsell their services.

And in terms of their profitability, any...

capitalizations in there that affects that the cash flow will be mismatched with the earnings or is it taking over the over the P&L the investments it's I mean there is some capitalization but nothing that I don't think materially impacts the the profitability we talked about in the press release I think it was 2.8 million last year and we talked about that potentially doubling this year

Okay. And could you also help us with the phasing? If they're doubling their revenues this year from going live with new customers, what's the phasing of the time number of them going live? Was that all during the first part of this year? So we see the majority of the effect in 2022 or any effects from that also to be seen in 2023?

I think certainly some went live earlier this year. I haven't got the exact phrasing on top of my head, actually.

Yeah, I mean, Jack Entertainment, of course, is live. We have a free-to-play solution at the moment, but we expect the market to open in January. So I guess that's obviously making a difference.

Okay. How many? Could you also, you mentioned on the ownership of Great Canadian and Apollo being there, you mentioned that could potentially mean something for other partnerships going forward. Could you expand on that comment?

not very much but of course being on the map of the owners as a supplier to Great Canadian it should if anything have a positive impact at least thank you very much thank you thank you

I now hand it back to the speaker for web questions. Over to you.

Thank you very much. Christian, I will start with you and modularization. The first one is, how does the timeline look for launching BetBuilder as a standalone service?

Yeah, as I said, I mean, I hope for us to go to market as I previously communicated in Q1. Obviously, I don't know when we sign the first customers. So that is a trickier timeline to point to.

Okay, and here's a question regarding the pricing model of a modularized sportsbook. Is it higher than regular take rate or how does it work? Anything you can comment on?

No, I don't want to comment on that until we actually go to market with it.

Okay. And another question is that if you plan to launch other models as well in the future rather than BetBuilder?

Absolutely, and we will continue communicating about this when we have more to communicate.

Okay, David, question for you. Why have the buybacks been halting during a period of a volatile stock price? Anything you can say about buybacks?

Well, you saw that it made a massive acquisition for us, fully in cash during the quarter, so we've known about that and we've been working towards that. I think the important thing now is we build that cash balance back up. That gives us potential either for future M&A or more buybacks in the future. But for now, we obviously need some level of cash to stay in the business. But as soon as we can build it back up again, that opens up the door for those kinds of transactions in the future.

Our customers require a strong balance sheet as well. I think it's important to remember. Thank you. Can you also, David, elaborate other operating expenses, why it's up there?

What's up from Q2? Yeah, well, Q2, we had a huge FX gain, which depressed those other OPEX. So we did have a gain in Q3, but it was much smaller than the one we had in Q2, which kind of artificially plays with the numbers. There was a few small extra costs we took in Q3, for example, the legal costs with the shape acquisition. But by far, the biggest impact on that one is the FX.

Thank you. Another question for you, Christian. Have you seen any customers transferring in Europe from internal solution to Camby?

We have seen a few, but it's not very recent. But I definitely see that this is something we hope for and expect to happen. Yeah, we actually have one quite recently, and that is a Belgian lottery, which transferred from Barone Technology to ours a year ago, roughly.

Okay, great. Here is another bad modularization for you, Christian. Are you confident you can also sell modular service like BetBuilder to big T1 US players?

I mean, there are limited amount of big players, of course, but I'm confident we have a product to sell to them. And I'm sure we will have discussions with them.

A few questions regarding future revenue. It's probably hard for you to answer that, but anything you can say what it can look like. It decreases the time, for sure.

No, I can't comment on future revenues.

No.

I can say this much. I don't expect modernized services to be a main part of our revenues. What I do expect is that we will create a relationship with customers and being able to sell more and more services to them. So I think... For us it's more about getting a relationship with the tier one operators again and being able to sell more and more services to them and eventually our belief is that you will see a much much bigger part of the services being outsourced but it will probably take a few years.

Here's a general question, I think. What do you see in the business in general in regards to M&A as the market matures, primarily with big players expressing their intention to enter the market?

I mean, I guess it will probably not be so much M&A going on in the near future. It will probably be much, much harder to find capital. I think it's probably quite a large disparity between the valuation of listed companies and what companies that are not listed are looking at. So long term, of course, I think that you will see more and more M&A, which is just a natural part of a business.

Another one for you, Christian. What do we expect in terms of B2B competition space changes when SB Tech is dropping off? What do you think about expansion into Asia? Two questions here.

Yeah, first one, I mean, there is some competition out there. I think we are quite alone in the premium segment at the moment. But, I mean, yeah, you see some competition out there. Of course, I'm not very keen on mentioning names of our competitors. Asia, I think... It's very exciting. It's probably a few years away still. We obviously are waiting for a regulated market. But we have mentioned before, we think India and Japan is probably two of the countries that are most likely to happen in the closest timeframe. But it's probably three to five years away.

Okay, I think we're running out of time here. So thank you very much for sending in your questions. And thank you for listening in to us. We will be back with our Q4 report on the 22nd of February. So we're looking forward to see you again. And as always, if you have questions, feel free to reach out to the IO department, either to myself or to Chris. And I wish you a very good afternoon or morning, wherever you are. Goodbye.

Thank you.