Kindred Group plc

Good morning and welcome to Kindred's Q2 results presentation. My name is Martin Arnell and I'm an equity analyst with D&B Markets in Stockholm and I'm here to host the Q&A presentation after management's results presentation. And with that I want to hand over to Nils Andén, the interim CEO of Kindred.

Thank you, Martin, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Kindred's Q2 results presentation. First of all, this is my first quarterly presentation, and I'm really pleased and proud to stand here to present a really strong Q2 results, which is a real testament to this organization and the great team we have, but also to the strength of our underlying business model. With me today, I have Patrick Kortman, our interim CFO, who is going to run through the financials a little bit later in the presentation. Before we start, I would just like to give a thank you to Henrik Tjernström who left this quarter for his many years of fantastic contribution to the Kindred Group as a CEO, as a CFO and as a board member. I would also like to give a short comment on the strategic review that we're currently undertaking. The review is continuing according to plan and we are working closely with the board as management to ensure that we can maximize shareholder value and other stakeholder value in the company. There are no short-term changes to our operations on the back of the strategic review. However, as already communicated by the board, there is no firm deadline on the strategic review and neither will we be providing any interim updates on the strategic review. and hence we will unfortunately not be able to answer any specific questions on the strategic review today but we will of course in due time present the outcome of the of the strategic review we are of course happy to take any questions on the q2 results of course So today we're going to go through some of the Q2 highlights and after that a short business overview. Then I will hand over to Patrick to run through the financials for the quarter and I will come back with a sum up of the Q2 results and then we will move into a Q&A session. If we look at our Q2 results, we saw some really strong performance across markets and product segments, including a very strong continued growth in the Netherlands. We saw a solid growth of active customers at 17% year on year. We also saw an all-time high of 82% share of locally regulated gross winnings revenue, which we deem very important for our long-term sustainability of the business model. We also showed, as a testament to the scalability of the business, a really robust underlying EBITDA margin improvement. And we can really see how we can scale this as revenue grows. We also had an important event in the quarter where we took one of the important steps in our one platform strategy to be able to bring the Kindred platform to all the customers we serve by launching our platform in New Jersey on the 10th of May. We subsequently also launched in Pennsylvania on the 10th of July after the quarter end. If we take a snapshot of the results, we could see that our strong product offering combined with our continued focus on cost optimization really improved profitability in Q2. We saw revenue come in at £307 million, which was a 29% growth year on year. As we have communicated previously, we have seen really strong growth in Netherlands, but we've also seen some headwinds in Belgium and Norway. So if we remove these three markets, we could see that the underlying growth across all the other markets came in at 7% for the quarter. We're also very happy to see that our underlying EBTA grew with 120% compared to the same time period last year, and an underlying EBTA margin of 18%. Excluding our North American operations, the underlying EBTA margin came in at 20%. The free cash flow was only £3 million, and even though we saw some really solid underlying EBITDA increase, we had some negative net working capital movements due to fluctuations in the timing of tax and supplier payments. and i mentioned the strong growth in active customers of 17 percent and for the first time in a long time we actually have some net debt it's only three million pounds but this is due to the fact that we in q2 paid dividends and continued our share buyback program So, moving into a little bit of the business overview. If we look at Q2, it's mentioned the share of locally regulated revenues was at an all-time high of 82%. Our regulated revenues are now higher than our entire 2019 revenues, which is a real testament to the strategy we've had. We can also see that our locally regulated revenues are growing substantially quicker than our dot-com revenues. This is important for us, as we've communicated previously. It gives us a long term predictability on our revenues, but it also showcased the sustainability of the revenues and enables us to secure long term market positions. If you look at the right-hand graph here, we can see the strength of our underlying business model. Even though we're at an all-time high on betting duties, north of 300 million pounds, we can clearly see that the improvements in the EBTA margin are starting to bear fruit. As we saw when Sweden regulated in 2019, we had an impact on the EBTA margin, but we quickly rebounded. Similarly, we had a drop in the EBITDA margin last year as Netherlands re-regulated, but we are well on the path to our long-term guidance of 21-22% as we communicated in our Capital Markets Day last year. If we look at the growth in actives, it came in at 1.56 million for the quarter, which was a 17% increase compared to 2022. Excluding the Netherlands, however, we had a roughly flat development of the customer base. What we also saw in Q2 was a slight increase in RPU, a 9% increase. This was driven predominantly by the slightly higher than average sportsbook margin for the quarter. Generally speaking, we see that our RPU and inflation are fairly well correlated and they tend to grow at the same rate. As we've said previously, our view on this is sustainable growth is really about growing our active customer base quicker than growing our ARPU. But it's also worth mentioning that with the enhanced customer due diligence that we're performing in pretty much all of our markets, we have a much more sustainable customer base today than in the past. If we look at the product segment update, sports betting saw an increase of 19% year on year. This was supported by the above long-term average sports betting margin. Excluding the Netherlands, gross winnings declined by 1%, but this was predominantly due to the adverse impact we have from the regulatory headwinds in Belgium and Norway. Casino and game segment increased by 37% year-on-year, and when excluding the Netherlands, this increase was 3%. We're really focusing on continuing to build a very strong and diverse casino product. In the quarter, we released 18 exclusive slots and signed three new suppliers. In the other segment, poker grew very nicely, but the other games, predominantly bingo, declined. So the totality of the other segment was roughly flat year on year. If we look at the sports betting margin, it was well ahead of the long-term average in the quarter. It came in at 11.3% after free bets versus 9.3% in the same period last year. This was positively influenced by a number of factors. We had some favorable sports results, but we've also seen a really strong uptick in the popularity of our BetBuilder product, which has an inherently higher margin than, for example, singles. We also saw a changing market mix. What that means is that we saw that, for example, France and Netherlands took a larger share of the revenues compared to last year, and those two markets specifically have a higher underlying margin than the average across other markets. We've also been working very dedicatedly to ensure that we get optimal return around bonus cost. This meant that we managed to have a lower bonus cost this quarter compared to last year, and that contributed roughly 0.4 percentage point of the increase. The weighted long-term average sports margin after free bets is 9.6 if we look at the past 12 quarters. But as you will have seen in the past, even though it's volatile, between quarters, it has sort of a gradually increasing trend over time due to the factors I just explained, but also to the optimization of trading that we do across the business. If we look at our regional updates, Western Europe gross winnings increased by 51%. That is, of course, predominantly driven by the Netherlands. If we exclude the Netherlands, it declined by 2%, again, adversely impacted by the headwinds we see in Belgium. But it's still really nice to see that we are able to continue to grow our UK business that reported 8% growth in the quarter. In the Nordics, we saw a decrease by 4%. We had a very strong growth in Denmark, but that was offset by the continued impact that we see from the changes that we did to our offering for Norwegian customers in Q4 last year. In the CES region, gross winnings increased by a very nice 26%. Strong growth in particularly Romania and Italy drove this. And in the other segment, we had a fairly flat development. We saw a positive growth trend in North America, but this was offset by a negative gross winnings development in Australia. North America, then. We've continued to see some really good encouraging signs. In Q2, our gross winnings revenue came in at 8.4 million pounds, which was a 17% growth in constant currency. This is driven by the continued focus on the multi-product states, as we've communicated previously, which have seen increased activity and increased player values across our footprint. It's also really nice to see that our underlying EBTA loss has improved compared to last year by 31%. If we look forward to the second half of the year, we do see that some of these losses will increase as the weighting of the partnerships and sponsorships we have in North America are focused on the second half of the year when the American football season is active. As I mentioned previously, as part of our one platform strategy, we strongly believe that the Kindred platform is the best in the business. We are very keen to bring that to all the customers we have in all markets and brands. And in Q2, we launched the platform in New Jersey, and in just the beginning of Q3, we launched it in Pennsylvania. We've seen some really strong significant improvements in retention and conversion numbers for our New Jersey business on the back of the platform migration. We have seen a daily average gross win go up by almost two times. And similarly, the conversion rates from registration to new depositing players have almost doubled. This is really bringing us great confidence in our platform and the ability to serve our customers with the absolutely best product they can have. Netherlands is a very pleasant topic to discuss, as you can imagine. We are continuing to see really strong performance in the Netherlands. We had roughly 218,000 active customers in Q2 23, and we reached a gross winnings revenue of just north of 63 million pounds. And this was a sequential increase of 13% in local currency. The daily average gross winnings revenue is now at a level of 83% of what we achieved in the last quarter before trading ceased in the re-regulation process. We estimate that we have now actually reached the number one position in the market that we communicated we wanted to reach at the end of the year. This is based on our internal research data and Google search data. The official market share data will come out in August, but we are very confident that we have now reached the number one position. As many of you will know, there's also a ban on untargeted advertising from 1st of July in the Netherlands. We have worked very diligently to secure the key deals within the market before this deadline to ensure continued strong visibility. I'd like to call out, for example, that we have signed a deal with ESPN and RDDVC, the number one football league in the Netherlands, to become the official betting partner for the next coming two years. We also want to highlight Relax Gaming's stellar performance. It continues to show really solid growth with a 40% revenue growth in Q2 and then 72% EBTA growth in Q2. The growth is really driven by broader distribution and very successful game launches in the quarter and an underlying EBTA contribution of £5 million, which is representing a very healthy 41% margin. This means that Relax now contributes almost 10% of the EBTA for the total group. The pipeline is very strong for Relax. They've signed 50 new operators and 160 supplier partner to operator deals during the quarter. Relax also had an exceptionally strong business driven by their aggregator business in March. And that's why we are not seeing sequential growth. If you look on month to month development, we are on a very positive trajectory. It's also worth mentioning that we are working on the overall synergies between Relax and Kindred, and in the quarter we saw the third exclusive casino game launched, and we are planning to scale up the usage of this exclusive content in the coming quarters. In terms of journey towards zero, we are continuing to focus and we have a very determined focus on sustainability in our business. We're very pleased to report that the share of gross winnings revenue from high risk players in Q2 was at an all time low of 3.1%. And equally as important that the improvement effect after intervention was up to 86.4%, which increased from 83% in Q1. We started this journey in 2021 and we're very humble to the task. But we also know we need the support of the wider ecosystem to really continue this journey. We need the support of regulators, our other operators and competitors in the sector, the continued work we do with treatment centers across the markets we work in. But I just want to call out something else on this slide, which is that we really see the growth of the social segments increasing over time, and that is a very healthy development in our customer database. One way to collaborate around this dedicated focus we have on a sustainable industry as a whole is to participate in the Sustainable Gambling Conference in 2024 in London on the 20th of March. You're all welcome and we are really looking forward to seeing you there. I am now going to hand over to Patrick to run through some of the financial numbers for Q2.

Thank you, Niels, and good morning from my behalf as well. So Q2 delivered a very solid growth of 29% and with revenues reaching 307.3 million. This is actually the fourth highest quarter ever and the second highest Q2 ever. The strong growth, as we have heard earlier this morning, is really driven by strong performance in many of our key markets. That includes Netherlands, of course, but also the UK, Romania, Denmark, North America, strong performance. At the same time, we continue to see headwinds in Belgium and Norway. And if you would exclude these three markets, Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway, we would have seen a revenue increase of 7%, which is a strong testament to the broader portfolio markets and also gives us confidence for the coming quarters and the ability to grow. Cost optimization remains in focus to further improve profitability. And the actions taken at the start of the year to optimize the cost base are now starting to show results. If we start from the left on cost of sales, as a percentage of revenues, we continue to see a downward trend. We're in Q1 and Q2 now coming in at 14.7% of the revenues. And that can be compared to 14.8% in the first quarter of the year. This is a result of increased scalability, continued drive for efficiencies and the growing importance of relax for the group. Marketing costs increased year over year, but we continue to see improved scalability on the marketing cost side, which came in at 20.3% of revenues. And this is a back of significantly improved marketing efficiency across our market portfolio. This is also a result of reduced marketing spend in North America in line with our previous communication and also by reduced marketing in Norway to align with the NGA requirements. We have previously communicated that we expect marketing costs to come in at around 23% for the full year 2023. Now with six months into the year, we see or we expect this to be slightly lower than that at 22 to 23% of revenues for the full 2023. Within salaries and our OPEX, we're starting to see improved scalability. In connection with the Q1 report, we communicated that we expect salaries and other OPEX totals, the total OPEX to be at around 65 million per quarter for the remaining quarters of the year. Now in Q2, we came in slightly below the 65 million mark. And as a result of the strict cost control, we expect that to remain on those levels going forward. So the strong revenue growth combined with the focus on costs contributed to significantly increased profitability, with the underlying EBITDA reaching 55.7 million, which is 120% year-over-year increase. With this underlying EBITDA, we reached a margin of 18%. And if you would exclude North America, the underlying EBITDA margin was 20%. This gives us strong confidence in our financial targets for 2025, which are 21 to 22%. And for the first half of the year, the underlying EBDA reached 105.1 million. And you will remember that we had 3 million of non-recurring costs burdening the first quarter results. So excluding these non-recurring costs, we would have had an underlying EBDA of 108 million approximately. And with this, we are very confident in reaching our full year guidance of at least 200 million. The currency markets have been very volatile recently, and we have seen fairly limited FX movements or limited FX impacts on our revenues, which is less than 1%. We had a positive effect of 2.5 million from FX on our underlying EBITDA. Other FX gains amounted to 5.7 million. These are mainly unrealized gains related to retranslation of FX on current assets and liabilities. And with this, the FX impact on net profits amounted to 8.4 million for the quarter. We had a solid start of the third quarter with the daily average gross winnings revenue of 2.93 million. And this is a 1% increase compared to the full Q3 2022 in constant currencies and a decline of 1% in reported currencies. However, if you compare this 2.93 million to the exactly same period last year, we saw a growth of approximately 20%. It should be remembered that this, first of all, is a very short period of time, and then secondly, that this is seasonally a very quiet period from a sports calendar perspective, and this can also be seen in the blue bar of the chart with the decline in the sports betting revenues. However, at the same time, we continue to see a solid development in CanSino and other products. And as normal, we do expect now the activity to pick up again as the league starts their next season. The Belgium League will be first out starting already this weekend. And then we have Premier League and the French League starting the seasons on the 11th of August. So with that, I hand over to Nils again for final concluding remarks. Thank you, Patrick.

So before we head into the Q&A session, just a brief summary of Q2. We're very happy and proud to stand here to deliver a solid growth across the whole footprint and a real testament to the scalability of our operations. As mentioned, we had an underlying revenue growth of 29% and an EBTA margin of 18%. This is really a proof of the scalability of our operations where we see this increased profitability. And we are very confident, as Patrick mentioned, in our long term guidance for 2025. Also, we are confident in our guidance for 2023 of reaching an underlying EBITDA of at least 200 million pounds. We also see that we are able to continue to leverage the value from relaxed gaming that is growing very handsomely with a 47% growth in the quarter and an underlying EBITDA contribution of £5 million. Also worth mentioning that the Kindred Sportsbook platform is proceeding according to plan, and we remain set to launch it in a test market by the end of this year to further mitigate our risk and drive further scalability within the business. As Patrick mentioned, We are in a bit of a slow period right now in the year, but we're looking forward to a very busy sports calendar. We've already seen that the Women's World Cup has kicked off, and although it's in a time zone that's not very beneficial to our European footprint, we have seen an increase in turnover on the World Cup by 55% already compared to the last Women's World Cup held in 2019. And as we said, we are really looking forward to all the major football leagues kicking off in the middle, early parts of August. So with that, I'd like to conclude our Q2 presentation and invite Martin back for a Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you, Nils and Patrick, for that presentation. I'll start off with a few questions on my own before I let the telephone conference in. And please feel free to send in questions online if you're at the webcast. So, yeah, with that, my first question, I think, to you, Nils, I mean, how does it feel to take over from a legend like Shandstrom in this company?

It's a little bit daunting, of course. He was the longest tenured CEO on the NASDAQ Stockholm Exchange, but it's also super exciting. And I think we have a very well-run company here. We have a very strong organization and I think the Q2 results that we're able to deliver in a time of change is really a testament to the organization's ability to continue to deliver. So I'm super excited and really looking forward to the challenge.

If you have to pick one item, what were you most satisfied with in the quarter?

It's hard to pick one. I would say two. I think our continued growth in Netherlands is really nice to see. And again, the whole organization has really been corralled in ensuring that we can get back to that number one position. And it just showcases what we can do as an organization when we all get behind the goal. And then I think it's also really nice to see the scalability of the operations and that we are able to deliver an 18% margin already now, given that we've guided on 21, 22 and 25.

And flip side of that question, the key challenges, is that to return to momentum in Belgium, Norway or reduce the losses in the US or what would you highlight as the most key?

I think for me, the key challenges are really around Belgium. That's, I think, our number one challenge. I'm very pleased to see that we had some sequential growth in Belgium, which to me indicates that we've kind of bottomed out there. And we have a lot of very solid plans to return to growth, although in the near future, we have very hard comparables. That is probably our number one challenge. And then, of course, maintaining the strict cost control we have in the organization right now that really shows up in our P&L at the moment as well.

When would you expect comparatives to normalize in Belgium and Norway?

I would say roughly similar timeframe for both of them, which would be towards the end of the year when we had made the majority of changes in both markets. So towards the end of the year, early next year.

And why do you expect, you know, what's the explanation behind, you know, slight improvement in Belgium, would you say?

I think there are a couple of things driving that. One is of course our close dialogue with the Belgian regulator to ensure that there's a level playing field in Belgium. We have adhered strictly to the guidelines from the Belgian regulator, but of course we need all the operators within that ecosystem to do that. But also a dedicated focus, similarly to what we've had in the Netherlands, to ensuring that we turn every stone in our Belgian business. and optimize both marketing spend, rewards, and our offering on a day-to-day basis.

And when it comes to the outlook, you repeated the ambition of EBITDA at least 200 million. Is that cautious, given that you reported 105 million in the first half? Are you implicitly saying that the second half will be lower than the first half? Can you give any sort of color on the risk, upside or downside, to the guidance?

We normally don't give annual guidances and therefore we felt it prudent to remain with the one that we issued in January. But as I think we've proven in the first half year, we're very confident that we can come in above that or at least 200 million pounds for the year.

And I think that's important to highlight that it's a floor guidance rather than

I guess so at least 200 million is yeah we're confident with yeah so at least this you know around 10 million or so is something like that we'll come back to that at a later stage okay thank you and Patrick maybe you can comment a little bit more on the cost efficiency initiatives we're clearly seeing it bearing fruit here in your underlying EBTA, and you expect that to continue. I think you're guided for 65 million admin expenses per quarter going forward. What have you done? Give some more color on that, please.

We obviously put that in three different buckets, if you so will. Obviously, the first one was to reduce losses in North America. And as you have seen already now during the first couple of quarters, we have been at around 5 million, slightly more in losses, which is a significant decline compared to last year. That's one of the initiatives here was to reduce marketing spend ahead of our platform launches. The second one was to review our pipeline with investment projects and where we have delayed some projects and also some of them we have completely scrapped. And this is to give room for more important strategic projects like KSP and allow investments in those. And then thirdly, it's around cost control, having a recruitment freeze for non-essential roles and not doing automatic replacements of all roles when we have attrition, but really scrutinizing and see if replacements are needed. I think those are really the key initiatives and that has now started to bear fruit.

And I also want to ask you on the trading statement, of course, it looked like kind of stable if you compare the first days of the quarter compared to the full average of the quarter last year. But if you do the like for like calculation, I think you mentioned around 20% growth. Right. Can you just give some clarity on how you can have that kind of balance? I guess it has a lot to do with the leagues. They start in the latter part of Q3. What kind of indication do you expect? 20%? Is that an okay indication for the full quarter or the second half?

Yeah, we will not give any guidance for the full year, but this is obviously the most quiet period of the year in a year like this when we don't have a men's football major tournament. And we obviously had Wimbledon here in the beginning of the quarter, and now the Women's World Cup started a couple of days back. But really it's around the sportsbook activity and really what's on stream to bet on. And now with the league starting in here over the next few days and weeks, we expect them to the activity to pick up. When you compare the approximately 20% compared to the same period last year, I think it's worth remembering that Netherlands is included in those numbers, but it was very much in a ramp-up phase at that point in time as we opened up in Netherlands again on the 4th of July.

And follow up on that would be, if you exclude Norway and Belgium, where we've had some challenges, and the Netherlands, you're at 7% growth in Q2. Is that a number you're satisfied with? Is that a number that you think represents the market in Europe or even slightly better? Or how should we look at that?

Yeah, there's obviously markets where we clearly outgrow the market and other markets where it's more broadly in line or slightly below the market growth. But the market growth is probably around 7% to 10%, something in our footprint more broadly in Europe. And I think obviously we exclude Netherlands now for comparison reasons, but Netherlands is our most important market at the moment in terms of size and it's very much part of our business. So I think it's sometimes even a little bit unfair to exclude it because that's also where we put a lot of focus and really see a good return on the focus that we put in.

Okay, excellent. Thanks. I think it's time to let in the conference call for questions.

If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Oscar Ronquist from ABG. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. So first of all, I just wanted to start with the trading update. So you say that you're quite happy with the trading update and you're pointing towards 18, 19 or even 20 percent increase just like for like relative to the Q or the start of Q3 last year. So I'm just thinking of some dynamics here. As you probably mentioned, the Netherlands was only contributing 150K per day in the beginning, and it was also like 19 days, I think. And then just the Sportsbook margin, I think it's around 20% stronger than the average. And thirdly, just the Wimbledon being solely in July compared to last year when we also had a little bit of Wimbledon in June. So how should we think about the trading update sort of underlying, if you could add, some additional flavor and also point towards any sort of macro implications or perhaps casino seasonality that we should be aware of in the beginning of Q3. Thank you.

Yeah, so maybe I can start. So as we highlighted here earlier today, it's really the slow period of the year, this beginning of the third quarter. And As we also showed on the graph and the trading update slide, the casino and other products have held up pretty well, even if a large part of our customers are perhaps already on vacation, etc. Whereas the decline compared to the full quarter last year is really coming from Sportsbook. And Netherlands, as you rightly pointed out, it's only included for maybe 19 days of the comparative period, if you really compare like for like period. And if I recall it right, when we gave our trading update in connection with Q3 last year, we said that the daily average revenue for Netherlands had been 150,000 per day. So maybe that's a number to take with you. But I think this is a very normal seasonality in the business in a year like this, where we don't have a men's World Cup or European Championships. And this will also mean that now when the league starts again in the coming days, that we will have a significant uptick on the activity on the sportsbook side.

All right. Thank you. Just on the Q2 numbers then. So I think that the marketing spend is staying a bit lower than you initially maybe expected yourself when you announced the sort of 23-ish percentage of sales as a sort of marketing guidance for the full year. And now you're pointing towards 22 and 23%. So just wanted to get some flavor on the marketing spend decrease as a percentage of sales, while I think that, I mean, you're obviously growing a little bit lower than the market if we could just exclude the Netherlands. I know it's not like totally fair to exclude the Netherlands, but you're pointing towards a 7% year-over-year growth, excluding Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium. But that is also slightly supported by like a 23% stronger sports win margin compared to last year. So I think the sort of underlying reason growth here is maybe a bit slower than that and pretty substantial amount below the market growth. So how do you think about like the marketing spend in relation to the growth numbers that you are putting out here underlying and then what you expect to see in the future? Thank you.

Obviously, for us, it's important to get a good return on marketing spend, and this is an area that we worked very diligently with. When we gave the guidance of approximately 23% for the full year, we perhaps didn't... didn't assume the efficiency that we get in the Netherlands full out. And that's one of the key factor here to be in low that we get a very strong return on the investment spent in the Netherlands at the moment. And then I highlighted a few others there during the presentation. For instance, North America, where we have reduced the marketing spend quite significantly, and also Norway. So these combined then with a solid growth takes down the actual percentage. Now going into the second half of the year, we will increase marketing spend in absolute terms. And that's also the reason why we expect the percentage as a percentage of revenue to be slightly higher than during the first half of the year.

I think it's also worth mentioning that we cease trading in Germany and looking to cease our trading in Austria, which is also driving down the marketing spend, of course, in comparison to last year. So that's also a contributing factor.

All right. Perfect. Thank you. But just to follow up and just on the question with the sort of underlying growth. So can you say that you're more like pointing towards, I mean, being happy with the overall growth, including the Netherlands, sort of like for like, and we should rather see that as I mean, the best indicator of your total growth ahead, that that will be sort of a focus market and the remaining part will maybe see a bit of market share decrease because you're focusing a lot on the Netherlands. Is that correct?

I think that's a little bit too strong to say. We, of course, expect to continue to grow in the Netherlands, but we are very, very focused on ensuring that we can take market shares in our core markets. As I mentioned, when you look at the numbers, we also have the seizure of trading in Germany and Austria that are impacting the totality of the growth. so that will of course be removed from the comparables as we go forward so i think you know we we are definitely not looking to lose market shares in any of our core markets all right just uh one more just on on the sports betting side so i noticed that your sports betting stakes are down year over year two percent despite including the netherlands in

in this quarter, which was obviously not in the Q2 last year, was driven a little bit by, as we have talked about, the stronger sports book margin, but also a quite steep decline of free bets as a percentage of sports betting sales. So can you just talk about your sports betting momentum? Are you focusing more on the casino side at the moment? Or how should we think about the mix between sports and casino? Thank you.

So if we look at the sports betting product, I think there's a couple of different things contributing to that, right? So yes, higher margin will invariably mean lower turnover and vice versa. But I also think there's a change in our underlying customer segments. As we are progressing through sort of the Moving towards a much more sustainable database, we've also seen that we've had to lose some of the larger customers that may be turned over a lot of money, but had very low margins for us. So I think it's also a reflection of a sustainable customer database. On the free bet side, we're very happy with this. This is basically the day-to-day optimization we do over our bonus band. We want to make sure that the right customer gets rewarded, and this is something we worked extremely hard on over the last year. Hence, we see a decrease in that without really affecting our customer values, our underlying customer values, if we've seen an RPU increase, even though the free bet cost has gone down. So this is sort of normal operation for us to really optimize that spend.

Got it. Perfect. Thank you. Just a final, just a short one, if maybe for participants, Patrick, I suppose, just the run rate gross margin in North America, if you could add anything on that now that you have migrated in Pennsylvania and New Jersey towards your proprietary platform. Thank you.

Yeah, we haven't given any guidance or updates on the margin side, so we'll have to come back to that in connection with them with the Q3 report.

Understood. Perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

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

Good morning. My first question is for Nils. Could you perhaps talk a little bit and just clarify the role you've been given by the board? Obviously, you're the interim CEO. Does that mean you have the freedom to make sort of major changes operational changes or even strategic changes, or given there is the context, the strategic review behind you, is your job really to run the business within the rails that it's currently running on? And then part B to that, which I guess you can expand as much as you wish, is I appreciate you being in the business for a decent time, but having sat in the seat you're now sat in, is there anything that you would like to or are running already differently to your predecessor?

Thank you. Good question. Yes, I am at the moment just the interim, as you rightly pointed out. And I think that's a fairly normal procedure, given that we are in the middle of the strategic review. We have said that we are not making any near-term changes, large changes to the business. as we are in the middle of the strategic review. As part of the strategic review, we're turning over every stone in the company, and once it's concluded, we will communicate what that entails. But at the moment, there are no bigger near-term changes to our strategy. And your second question to that, you know, for me, looking forward, I mean, we have a very good focus at the moment in the business, which is really about, as we mentioned, keeping our costs under really tight control and making sure we can take market shares in our most important markets. And I think that's ample for us at the moment. And then once we have concluded the strategic review, we will, of course, communicate around that. Sorry, I can't say any more than that at the moment.

No, that's very helpful. Thank you. I guess the second question is, I think when the review was originally initiated, there was a sense it would take two to three months, whatever it might be, which is about where we are now. I appreciate you can't give an update or interim or deadline, but could I just ask in the most general terms, Have the management changes that have undergone this year sort of severely disrupted the process of it happening, or is it sort of not really affected it? And, you know, you can't give a timing, but it's not dramatically changed. I wonder if you could perhaps help us at least at that level.

No, absolutely. No, we're super happy to talk about that. I think the strategic review is progressing according to plan. The management is working very close with the board to go through all it entails, and we're comfortable in the pace and the direction of it. And yes, there's been management changes, but we have a very strong organization here at Kindred, and we're very confident in our forward outlook.

Very helpful. Thank you. And then finally, on North America, you spoke about a higher sort of weighting, if you like, of some of your marketing deals connected to the NFL season. Of course, the NFL season is also the prime customer acquisition period. The KPIs you've got look like they're on a like-for-like basis, much more promising than on your previous technology. You're in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. You're two of your big states. So could you also talk a little bit about What's your ambition to invest behind that? There's the fixed marketing and sponsorship. I get that. But also, if you've got a sort of positive setup to achieve good character LTV, then are you going to also put your foot down on that one if you've given some sort of color around the mentality you've got for states where you have replatformed? Thanks.

Yeah, we haven't given a fixed number and I don't think we can because ultimately it's about profitable growth, right? So as we scale our investments, we're not going from zero to 100 overnight anywhere basically that we operate. But we do it in a very sort of consistent fashion to ensure, as you say, we have really good fundamental unit economics. and irrespective of the market we're in if we see really good unit economics we increase investments and you know it's the same for north america as it is for denmark or the netherlands i would say so we haven't given any specific guidance but if we see good returns we invest okay thank you okay the next question comes from a margaret jacevich from carnegie please go ahead

Good morning, guys. Just a quick question on France here. You mentioned in the report that a gambling conference took place in the French parliament. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I also read that they're looking to potentially legalize online casino from 2025, initially only for local operators. So if you could just provide some color on that and what the possible implications would be for you.

Thanks. We are, of course, excited about the potential regulation of iGaming in France. We are following it very closely. And yes, there has been some proposals, but there's nothing on the table that we've seen that has sort of a decent likelihood of passing. But we're following it very closely. you know as you say france is a big market for us and any potential eye gaming regulation would be super positive for us as a group but there definitely is an increased sort of chatter about it but we we have yet to see something that we deem as likely to be able to pause at the moment at least okay thank you that's very helpful and just a quick follow-on on that if you could you know provide any sort of estimate or approximation of

how big the French casino market would be compared to, let's say, the Netherlands or other European markets.

Thanks. I couldn't give any estimates of how big it could be. There's been quite a lot of different numbers flying around now in connection with the latest noise coming from the French market about potential legislation. But I've seen some numbers in the billions. It's obviously a big population-wise market. But there are obviously no hard facts. As of today, there are no licensed regimes. So all the iGaming happening out of France would be in the dot-com market.

Okay. Thank you very much. That's super helpful. All for me.

Thank you. Thank you.

The next question comes from Simon Davies from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah, morning, guys. A few from me, please. Can we kick off with the Netherlands? It looks like the Q2 run rate was around 80% of pre-licensing peak revenues. When do you think you can get back to a level above pre-licensing revenues? And also, when do you think you can not hit previous run rate in terms of EBITDA? And adding on to that, what do you think the effects will be of the marketing restrictions coming through? Obviously beneficial for margin, but presumably not so beneficial for growth in the market. Second was on Germany, only pulled out of the licensing process a year ago. Do you have any plans to reenter the market on the basis of showing some signs of stabilization? And lastly, tax rate up to 16.3%. I think it was for the second quarter. Is that a reasonable guide for the full year? Obviously, a big step up from 22 levels. And do you think it goes up higher in 24 and 25? Thank you.

So which one was the last? What was the 16 point? What was that?

Well, it's just over 16% in terms of tax rate.

Tax rate. Yeah. Okay, so let's start with Netherlands. Obviously, we have had a continued very strong sequential growth in Q2, reaching 699,000 daily average revenue. It's a market where we clearly believe that we are taking market share. And we believe also with the marketing restrictions coming in that it will be more difficult for smaller operators who maybe have not secured the same level of marketing deals as we have to compete efficiency. And we believe that this is actually a pretty good position to be in. as a market leader in the market and then with very high entry barriers also for potential newcomers.

I think just to comment on future growth in the Netherlands, we see we have still potential to grow, one, by being one of the market leaders, but also the inherent growth in the market is very strong. There's a fairly low proportion of online to offline penetration, And also we see the sort of average customer yield is below markets like Belgium and the UK. So I think there are two sort of strong underlying growth factors in the market to begin with.

And then Germany. So, yes, indeed, we closed down our operations in July last year. And at the moment, we don't have plans to re-enter, I would say, in the near term. But obviously, we're keeping an eye on the developments in Germany, and I wouldn't rule out that it's a possible market to re-enter sometime in the future. And then on tax rate, we don't give any guidance on the tax rate, but obviously with the pillar three, there will be an upward trend on the tax in the future. And we'll come back then at later stage to talk more about that once it's implemented across our markets.

Great, thank you. Just on the Netherlands, I mean, I think the usual rule of thumb was with regulating markets, it took two to three years to get back to previous levels of profitability. Do you think that's a reasonable assumption for the Netherlands?

So, yeah, we're now 83% of the Q3 2020, 21 revenue level. And obviously we are below on profits. What we can say about the profits in the Netherlands is actually that we are above the group average gross contribution level already in the Netherlands. But it's obviously challenging to come back to the previous pre-regulation profitability levels, just given the fact of the high betting duties in the market.

Great.

Thank you. Okay, I think that was it from the telephone conference. And I see that time flies here. So it's time to round off this presentation. But I want to finish off with one or two, if I may. Just a follow up on that, you know, the strategic review. I know you don't want to share much color on it so far, but... Is there anything you can say about potential timing? I think you said that you've come in the middle of it. Is there some sort of indication?

We unfortunately haven't put a deadline on the strategic review. I think it's progressing really well to plan, but you'll have to bear with us and have some patience as we work through it. Once it's finalized, we will communicate, but we haven't set any deadline. as of yet.

Okay, thanks. And my final question, I have to ask you on sustainability before we round off and you know, this journey to zero, your way to go, you know, what's the most important for you in order to sort of take the real steps there?

Yeah, so it's a journey towards zero. And as we mentioned, I think it's an important part of not only creating a sustainable ecosystem, but also part of our company ethos. We are working very diligently, but as I mentioned, this is not something that we can do in isolation. We need the support of regulators. We need the support of our other peers in this industry to really further drive it. But we still have a range of actions that we're working on internally. to ensure that we can continue to drive it further downwards. But it is something that we truly see as something that we have to do together in the whole system to really get towards the zero mark.

Okay. Thank you, both of you, for the presentation. And thanks to all of you listening in and with questions online. I think it's time to wrap it up.

Thank you very much. Thank you.