Stillfront Group AB (publ)

Good morning and welcome to the Stillfront Q3 presentation. I'm Alexis Pont, the CEO of Stillfront, and I will be joined later by Tim Holland, our interim CFO. I would like to start with a slight focus on Europe. As you can see, we had solid progress in Europe. We said a few quarters ago that we were in an investment phase in Europe in the first half of the year, and that we would start reaping some of those rewards towards the later part of the year. As you can see, Europe returned to growth for the first time since Q1 of 2024. If so, in Q3, where the growth was just under 1%. What is important to say here, this is before the launch of the main new games that will happen in Q4. Those big new games, as a reminder, will be Big Farm Homestead that will launch towards the end of the year and will be within the big franchise and will build on the success that we had with Sunshine Island. Another big game that we announced previously that will launch in Q4 is Warhammer 40,000, which is a big, important new launch on the Supremacy franchise with a major IP. We also soft-launched with a narrative franchise the Unfolded Webtoon Stories game with the Webtoon IP, and that soft launch is having some encouraging results. The marketing efforts also that we'll have in what we call Q5, which is right after Christmas. It's a good time to basically start scaling game. We'll see most of that revenue come into next year. Obviously, that will impact the margins in Europe in Q4. But I just want to show that we say that we were going to basically really work on building up Europe in the first part of the year. And so I'm very happy to see that and to be able to share that we are now reaping some of the results with the existing franchises, which are kind of showing the results in terms of live operations and how that is really performing. And also obviously excited about the new launches in our core business area of Europe. If we go into the KPIs that you have in Europe, so that resulted in a net revenue of 643 million SEC. That's up 0.6% year on year. UAC was at 207 million SEC. It's relatively stable. We were able to It applied quite a lot of UA, especially in supremacy at the beginning of the quarter. Then towards the end of the quarter, it was a bit harder to put more UA. But overall, I think we're at a healthy level in UA for Europe. And as you know, every quarter, it varies a lot whether we're able to place UA or not place UA. So that's something that we're always very, very attentive to. Adjusted to BTAC was solid at 154 million, which is a margin of 24%. Our key franchises in Europe grew by 0.4%. Good performance. I was very happy, in particular, with Albion Online, who started doing a lot of investments in product marketing. I told you that I wanted... the company to be less dependent on performance marketing and Albion Online is a great game to be doing more product marketing and they had a really strong effort in product marketing which actually has borne fruit and has been successful and that gives me a lot of confidence for that franchise going forward. The smaller franchises actually grew faster in Europe. That was mostly due to, from our Playa studio, a smaller franchise called Shakes and Fidget, which performed well year on year and also had a small new launch called Mobile Dungeon, which helped that franchise scale a little bit. So that's Europe. Very happy with the results in Europe. Continuing on to North America, as you know, and as we said from the beginning, North America has been our turnaround case. It's been really our problem child. It's the only business area that has negative growth. It is the business area that's actually dragging us down overall in terms of organic growth. Without North America, we would have very healthy growth across the group since both Europe and MENA and APAC are growing business areas. But that being said, we're continuing our turnaround efforts in North America, and we are deliberately focusing on profitability. That's really what we want to do. We want to find the right level. We've made some very serious cost cutting in North America. I think we have a much healthier base now in that area. We also took some very hard decisions, moving games to other business areas. And I would say that a lot of that work is done now. We ended up with basically 246 million sec of revenues. That's 32.9% down year on year. So that's what is dragging down the organic growth. UAC was 110 million sec. As I said before, we are extremely disciplined about UAC and what games it goes to. And we've really increased the discipline in North America around that. And that obviously has an impact on the net revenue profile of the business area. But then it also resulted in a large increase in our adjusted EBITDA, which was 36 million SEC, which is a 15% margin. I think most of you will recall that North America was barely profitable a few quarters ago, and that obviously is a big change that now North America net positive contributor to our EBITDA margin. And I think this is just a much more healthy base to work from. Both key franchises and other franchises were down in North America. Now really the challenge for North America is going to be to work from that base. I do expect the decline to continue into Q4 as we're continuing with our discipline, but I do also expect North America to continue to be a net positive contributor in terms of EBITDA as we work on improving things there. Mina and APAC continued solid growth. Actually, growth has slightly increased quarter on quarter. Very happy with Mina and APAC. You know, we have, if you look at our key franchises, they grew by more than 18%. That's, you know, and going into even more detail, both Joe Walker and the board, Ludo franchise from Moonfrog, had very healthy double-digit growth. Very, very solid situation in mean and APAC. Small level of UAC, there's very little dependency on UAC in APAC. I think actually we do have an opportunity there to boost a little bit the growth in the future, and most more likely in 2026, particularly for the board franchise, if we're able to place a bit more UAC there. But that's something that we're going to do carefully and slowly and, you know, just basically the way. And with discipline, as we've been very disciplined all the time. And adjusted EBITDA as a result has continued to increase significantly with 276 million SEC, which is a 57% margin. So that's basically the main things on this side. I will now pass on to our interim CFO, Tim, to talk a little bit about finance.

Thank you, Alexis, and good morning, everyone. On a group level, revenues declined by 7.8% organically, coupled with a 6% foreign exchange headwind. Our net revenue declined from 1,595 million sec down to 1,373 million sec. And that was driven by a few different things, but primarily it was driven by BA North America and specifically Word and HGM franchises. And as Alexis noted, we are much more focused on the profitability of those titles. So we did decrease user acquisition on a year-over-year basis. However, when you do decrease UA, that's obviously gonna increase profitability, but it is gonna decrease net revenue. But that was partly offset by strong performance in BA Europe. As Alexis noted, we're almost at one percentage point of organic growth for BA Europe. And that was driven by strong performance for BIG, for Albion Online, and for Supremacy as well. And we also had strong performance from BA MENA APAC, where we got to almost three percentage points of organic growth. And that was driven again by Jaw Walker and board franchises. Looking at UAC, UAC came down year over year from $462 million down to $336 million SEC. And that was driven primarily by year over year declines in UA spend for HGM and for Word. Looking at adjusted EBITDA, that's up year over year from 385 million SEC up to 436 million SEC. I should note that's a 13% point increase on an absolute basis year over year. And our net revenue obviously declined by 14%, but we are showing strong margin resilience even with that net revenue decline. Adjusted EBITDA came in at 32% in terms of margin. Again, that's up 8 percentage points compared to Q3 of 2024. Again, that's primarily driven by decreased UAC as a percentage of net revenue. But one thing to point out as well is our gross margin has improved on a year-over-year basis from 80 to 83 percentage points. And that's due to the continued success of our webshop rollout where we've improved our direct-to-consumer share of revenue year-over-year from 33% up to 44 percentage points in Q3 of 2025. Looking at our LTM free cashflow, that's down slightly year over year. Last time we spoke, we reported 1,089 million sec in terms of LTM free cashflow. That's down to 974 million sec, but that change is primarily related to working capital adjustments, which is a natural part of our business. So you are gonna see that fluctuation from positive to negative in terms of our working capital adjustments. Next slide, please. Digging a bit further into our cash flow generation, cash flow before changes in networking capital came in at 357 million sec, of which is 77 million sec in paid financial expenses. That's down year over year from 101 million sec down to 77 million sec. The decrease that you're seeing there is due to two things. That's primarily due to a reduced interest rate environment, and then also a reduction in our interest bearing debt. Of that cashflow from operations before changes in networking capital, there is taxes paid of 90 million sec. That's up year over year from 42 million sec up to 90 million sec. The reason for the increase is primarily due to JawWalker where we're paying taxes for JawWalker in the UAE now under that new legislation where you have to pay 9% of your corporate taxable income there. I should note that we are under CFC taxation in Sweden, so we will be getting a credit back for that amount. So the 42 to 50 amount is more of a normalized basis for our taxes paid. Net working capital came in at 47 million sec, negative 47 million sec. And that is due to negative 98 million sec in terms of liabilities. That negative movement for liabilities is due to a reduction in our UAC, but that was partly offset by positive impact of 51 million sec for our receivables. And that's primarily due to reduced net revenue. Looking at cashflow from investment activities that came in at 119 million sec. And that was primarily driven by 116 million sec in terms of product development. I should note that that's about 8.5% of our net revenue spent on product development. Last year, it was 9.4%. So we are spending less in terms of product development. However, we are taking a much more targeted approach in terms of product development. by specifically spending more in Europe, spending more in MENA APAC. We were spending less in terms of VA North America. Looking at our cashflow from financing activities that came in at 326 million sec, that was primarily driven by 335 million sec that was used to pay down our RCF. That's up year over year. And that shows our continued focus on deleveraging this business. Turning now to our free cash flow, you can see our free cash flow for the LTM basis was 974 million sec. That is up year over year from 835 million sec. And the difference between the two values primarily comes from reduced financing charges, reduced product development, and it's partly offset by taxes paid. And this table on the right primarily shows what we've done with that free cash flow. So we had obviously the cash portion of our, of our earnouts at 618 million sec. Then we also reduced our borrowings by 268 million sec. Again, that's up year over year. And then we had our share buybacks for 142 million sec over the LTM basis. And I will note, and as you probably saw from the press release this morning, we have announced a new program that will begin tomorrow. Next slide, please. Looking at our financial position, our financial position, total net debt decreased from 5.9 billion last year in Q3 of 2024, all the way down to 5.1 billion SEC. That's a reduction of almost 800 million, again, showing our focus on deleveraging this business. The middle table shows our maturity profile. The maturity profile remains strong. As you know, we don't have any major maturities until 2027. That large bar there of 2.9 billion SEC represents 1 billion for a bond that's due in 2027. The RCF drawn of 1.2 billion SEC and 0.7 billion SEC in terms of the RSEK term loan. Then we have a bond due in 2028 and a bond due in 2029. Looking at the right table, that's our net debt to EBITDA. We came in at 2.06x for our leverage ratio. That's obviously above where we want to be for our 2x leverage ratio target. However, we are down sequentially from Q2 2025. We're down from 2.18 down to 2.06. And then on a year-over-year basis, down from 2.08 to 2.06. I should note excluding earnouts, we are at 1.87X. And then we'll flip to the next slide here. Then this is the last slide before I'll pass it back to Alexis. But as we've noted in our report this morning, we are announcing the conclusion of our cost optimization program, which has been driven by fixed cost savings and direct cost savings. And this has been announced one quarter early. We view this program as being a fantastic success. As I noted, we've saved a significant amount of costs specifically with fixed costs in North America. And we've been very successful with our direct cost savings with the rollout of the web shop, improving our gross margin. Going forward, we're, of course, going to continue to focus on cost savings and direct cost improvements. However, we want to take a balanced approach to invest in our key franchises and invest in the future of Stillfront. And with that, I'll hand it back to Alexis. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim. Um, so basically to conclude, um, we are starting to deliver on what we set ourselves to deliver a year ago. Um, we have concluded the cost optimization program, uh, Corey in advance, uh, the maximum level that we, uh, that we had set. Um, we are, Advancing very decisively with the turnaround in North America and making sure that it's got a healthier base and a healthier profitability. We are returning to this era in Europe to a more healthy level organic growth while still having solid margins and a very interesting pipeline of new games coming in. And we have MENA and APAC that is continuing to go from strength to strength. And we're also leveraging some of the talent there to move some of the games that we have in North America into that region. So we are Still very much at the beginning of what we would like to deliver, but we are definitely seeing the first signs that our strategy is working, which gives me a lot of confidence, but also makes me extremely thankful to all the teams at Stillfront. In terms of our key focus going forward, we're going to continue to focus relentlessly our investments on the key franchises. That is something that we will do more and more and more. We obviously, we're a games company, so we will continue focusing on successfully launching new games. But as you can see from our CapEx with a lot more disciplined approach, but at the same time, I want to make sure that we have the right level of ambition. We will continue with our discipline of delivering on strong margins and cash flow. And obviously, we are continuing to execute on the strategic review. You've seen that we've done some game closures this past quarter. We've also announced that we'll likely do some extra game closures. And we're also looking at still very carefully at some potential divestments. So with that, I think we are ready to take your questions, and thank you very much for your attention. Tim, if you can join me.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Eric Larson from SEB. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I have two questions. First off, I appreciate the outlook comments here on Q4. And as I understand it, you're wording on Europe as we will potentially see weaker organic growth rates in Q4 versus what we saw here in Q3. But are you still confident on the ability to grow sequentially here, just to sort of get a feeling on the magnitude?

Yeah, maybe I can take that question first and then Tim, you can build up. So yes, as we've indicated, we do believe that Europe might potentially be a little weaker in Q4, but still it will be a completely different level to what you saw in Q1 and Q2. The reason why it's very difficult for us to really know where Europe will be is a lot of it depends on the year that we're able to allocate for supremacy. And also, most of the impact of the new games will be in the later part of the year and also towards next year. And it's very difficult to basically balance what will happen there. But it's definitely on another level going forward. And we're very confident that we've kind of, you know, found a new rhythm for Europe now.

Yeah, I mean, just as Alexis said, there's going to be variability from quarter to quarter, but we do believe in long-term improvement in Europe. And then, as Alexis mentioned as well, that's going to be heavily influenced by the new games.

Okay, thanks for that, Kalle. Then, second and final question. Looking at your debt structure, it seems that You might at least start to look at some refinancing next year. So I just wanted to hear some thoughts, how you think about the capital allocation. I guess you have reducing the absolute debt, giving back to shareholders, considering the earnouts, et cetera. So any thoughts there would be interesting to hear.

Yeah, I mean, we're going to get back to that. You know, I think that our debt structure is strong. We have our maturity profile. Everything's primarily due in 2027 onwards. And that's a good timing as well because our earnouts will be finalized in 2027 as well. So what we'll do with the extra cash could be amortizing much more on our RCF. We could also potentially do dividends. We could do acquisitions, but we'll get back to that at the appropriate time.

Okay, thank you. That's all for me. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Rasmus Engberg from Kepler Shoebrew. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I love how they pronounce Shoebrew. Thanks for taking my question. Warhammer Supremacy, when is that game supposed to be out?

Hi, Rasmus. Good to hear from you. So basically, we are having an initial launch, I think, around the end of this month, which will be a soft launch. And then we expect to basically scale the launch during the year to have basically a larger launch towards the end of the year. So Q4, the later part of Q4. Okay, thanks.

And, you know, would you dare to say anything about Europe for next year? Do you think it's going to be largely stable then? Or, you know, you've taken some measures with launches and improvement of titles. Is Europe stable from these levels going forward? Or how do you think about it?

Yeah, I mean, the way we're thinking about it is we did a lot of work that was necessary to be done in Europe. We're really focusing our investments, focusing on the key franchises, making sure that we have a proper pipeline going forward. We're seeing the results, I think, basically more or less when we expected them, which is good. And that gives me very solid confidence for next year.

And these new measures, you talk about closing some further games in North America or potentially lowering them. That sounds like there are more fixed cost savings sort of outside of the program or how should we think about that? Is that going to be reinvested in something or?

Yeah, I think there's a time to be doing cost savings and there's a time to go on the offensive. I think we've done what we had to do in terms of cost savings. And any further savings that we might receive from other game closures and all that, it is very much our intention to reinvest and to go on the offensive and to strengthen our pipeline. I think we have a strong base to do that. I think the cleanup... that we had to do has mostly been done. Now it's about really being more aggressive going forward.

Would it be possible to talk about sort of the better part of North America? Is that a stable part? How much is it? Is it possible to give any indication on that?

I mean, we don't do, you know, breakdowns of business areas, obviously. I mean, I'll let Tim want to build up, but obviously we have some key franchises in North America. Some of those key franchises, I think, have really good potential, but they need to increase their performance. I think we... We've really raised the bar in terms of what we consider as good performance. I think there is a few franchises in North America that could do well. Some can do well within North America. Others, clearly, we didn't have the team or the right resources to make them work in North America, for example, like Word. And that's why we moved our Word games to MoonFrog in India, where the team there, a lot of people are former Zynga people that worked actually on Word games. So it was a perfect match. So we'll be kind of very direct with that. But yes, there's some good elements in North America, but they're going to have to demonstrate over the next three to six months that they can deliver, basically.

All right. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Yeah, nothing further to add other than, you know, we have some very strong franchises in North America. Like BitLife, there's probably nothing like it globally in terms of that title. And so we have high hopes for that title. But of course, we do need to see some stronger performance in that region.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Well, on behalf of Tim and myself, thank you very much for joining this call on the Q3 Stillfront results. As I just said, we're executing on what we said we were going to do. And we are happy to start seeing the first results of our strategy. And obviously, we aim to continue to deliver over this over the next quarters. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you.