Starbreeze AB (publ)

Warm welcome to Starbreeze presentation of the first quarter of 2025. My name is Adolf Kristiansson, Starbreeze's newly appointed CEO. The last six to eight weeks have been eventful for Starbreeze Entertainment, including my appointment at the end of Q1. Briefly about myself. After completing my MBA in the US, I joined the game group to lead its operations across the Nordics and Central Europe, overseeing more than 100 retail locations, including two headquarters. Over a five-year period, my team and I successfully turned the business into a profitable operation. I then joined Eltor & Garts in Switzerland, initially leading international sales alignment but I quickly pivoted towards digital transformation, building and scaling a global digital publishing organization across four continents. We manage EA end-to-end platform partnerships with PlayStation, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Steam, playing a pivotal role in EA's digital acceleration and its tenfold increase in market cap. I later spearheaded global commercial strategies for blockbuster franchises such as FIFA, FC, Battlefield, Apex Legends, and Star Wars. And most recently, I served on the board of the Thunderbolt Group. And today, I'm currently here, the CEO of Starpeace, one of Sweden's most iconic studios. I bring over 20 years of industry experience to the role and my focus is clear. To transform Starpeace into a sustainable, player-centric and high-performing business that delivers long-term value to its employees, players and shareholders alike. We recently announced the reacquisition of the full rights to the Payday franchise and our decision to part ways with our partners at PlayOn. As the publisher of records for Payday, we will now manage direct relationships with platform holders, bringing numerous strategic and operational advantages. This marks an important step forward as we remain fully committed to the future of the franchise, including Payday 3. This shift enables us to accelerate content development and releases for the payday franchise, pursue transmedia licensing opportunities, secure 100% of the net revenue, market the game with full creative freedom, and to establish a lean and agile publishing function tailored to our needs. Our ambition is to position Payday as the cornerstone of our company and solidify our leadership in the heist genre. We envision the franchise structured into four key pillars. Payday Legendary, encompassing Payday the Heist, Payday 2, and Payday 2 Crime Wave Edition. Secondly, Payday Core, which includes Payday 3 and all future HD Payday projects. Thirdly, Payday Partnerships, covering collaborations like our Roblox venture with Payday Notoriety and our Krafton partnerships on Payday and PUBG. And finally, payday lore and licensing. Our transmedia arm will bring to life rich backstories of our iconic characters, exploring their personal struggles and the events that led them to the life of crime. This is an area we're especially excited to develop further, which will add tremendous value to the franchise. We have a packed schedule ahead of us in Q2. On May 22nd, Out of Sight launches on most platforms, an exceptional game with innovative mechanics crafted by our talented friends at the gang. The following day, May 23rd, our D&D Baxter team will complete the vertical slice of the game, providing a clear snapshot of the final product to share with potential partners. Then on May 26th, we're rolling out a Payday 3 update, featuring a new paid heist, a new weapon, and the much anticipated defense system, Armor 2.0. Finally, on May 27th, RoboQuest will debut on PlayStation, opening the doors for over 100 million players to experience this exciting co-op shooter. And with that, I hand over the baton to my partner in crime, Starbreeze CFO Mats Juhl.

Thank you, AK. So let's do some number crunching as well. As always, we go through our group financials. So starting up with the first quarter, we had a strong quarter when it comes to net sales. We saw net sales amount into 67.7 million, which is an increase compared to the same period last year with 11.1 million. Partly driven, of course, by the revenue associated with payday being game of the month on PlayStation Plus. Fantastic opportunity. We saw both good revenue coming in, but also a large player activity. So there was a lot of people trying out the game, which was fantastic and a good opportunity for the future as well. In total, Payday actually generated about 45.4 million in net revenue over the quarter, which is good. If you look on our result, EBTA, it amounted to 15.7 million compared to 48.5 million, which is, if you only look on the numbers, a big decrease. But as we mentioned in our report as well, there are one-off effects that's affecting both last year, but also this year. So if you adjust for those, we are in line with previous year, where we see a slight increase in EBTA for the quarter compared to last year. And based on our depreciation plan for period three, we depreciated 44.5 million during the quarter, which is a much lower level compared to previous year. And as I mentioned before, the depreciation plan was quite forward leaning after the release of the game. And now we are more at the lower level each quarter. We continue to invest into our games, both Payday and Baxter, of course, and also other projects that affects our profit and loss as well. So we see a negative result of 29.4 million, mostly driven by the investments we continue to do into all our projects. Our cash flow for the quarter was slightly negative with 11.7 million. We didn't have any inflow of cash regarding PS Plus or the sales for the quarter. That was delayed due to the negotiations we had with our partner. But we see a positive effect now in Q2 of about 95 million, which is actually related to previous periods as well. So we closed the quarter with 130 million in cash, taken into account cash that actually came in shortly after we closed the Q1. We have a cash position of about 220 million, which is good and stable, healthy positions. little bit more about the cash flow we closed 2024 with a cash position of 192 million and during q1 this year we have a negative cash flow from operating activities related to our games of 12 million we continue to invest into pd3 and backstage i mentioned and this year we invested 46 million in game development during the quarter and made a total investment of 53.4 million over the quarter Part of our revenue related to Payday 3 is recognized as financing during the quarter related to development of content not currently released. That together with IFRS adjustments sums up to 4 million in positive effect during the quarter. We closed the quarter with the cash positions and as I mentioned with 130 million. And please take into account also then the 95 million that we gained now in the beginning of Q2. So looking at our expenses for the quarter, I mentioned before that we are at a decent level when it comes to our expenses. We've been working with that to focus on our expenses to get them down in general. For the quarter, we saw direct cost amounting to 45.2 million, decrease compared to last year, mainly relates to lower depreciation of intangible assets and lower revenue share on third-party games. So compared to quarter last year, we had quite high revenue share related to third-party publishing games. Selling and marketing amounted to 8 million, 8.3 million. These expenses mainly relates to cost for personnel working with marketing or PR activities for our games, both our own games, but also third party publishing games. Our administrative expenses amounted to 29.1 million. And here as well, we have one time effects affecting the comparable period that was related to long term incentive program. As we talked about last year, then we had a reversal. So actually a positive effect in previous year. um since we ended that program and didn't have a full payout on it um so it's 15.1 million we also see some one-time if items in this quarter related to depreciation for our old office premises of 16.5 million so adjusted for that our administrative cost is for a quarter remains in line with previous quarters which is good we don't see any increased cost underlying costs We had about 180 employees at the end of the period that decreased with 11 employees compared to the same period last year. This is also in line with what we talked about before when it comes to both refocusing our staff to Stockholm. So we're building up the new tech department here in Stockholm and by that also closing down an entity or party in France. So we also see some changes related to our team here in Stockholm where we do the necessary adjustments that we need to do to be aligned with the project we have at the moment. So that's a good thing. Finally, looking into our balance sheet, our integrable assets amounts to 394 million, mainly capitalized expenses for game development and IP rights. We also have property and plant and equipment that amounts to 51 million. which of right of use assets for the office lease the new office amounts to 39 million so that sums up to the majority of that our current assets amount to 132 million and mainly relates to prepaid expenses and trade receivables and i mentioned our cash position a couple of times already 130 million And furthermore, as you know, our external non-current liabilities have been amortized and the remaining part mainly relates to lease liabilities for office lease and taxes. So very low debt. And our current liabilities of 190 million mainly relates to accrued expenses and trade pay wells. So a slim, very focused balance sheet is one. To sum the quarter up then, we have had a good split of sales between our different games. We had Payday 3 in a positive trend, and we look forward to releasing more content in May. Our work for hire with Crofton continues with full team towards the end of the year, and we have a good healthy cash position to further invest both into Payday 3 and Baxter and other opportunities that we see. And back to you, AK.

Yes, thank you, Mats. In summary, acquiring the publishing rights to the Payday franchise was a critical milestone for Starbreeze and the future of the Payday franchise. At the same time, we secured Embracer as a strategic investor, further strengthening our position. Project Buster continues to move forward with a vertical slide set for completion later this month. We're heading into an unprecedented level of theory in Q2 and with a strong cost position and limited depth, we are well equipped to execute on our strategy. And I believe we're heading into Q&A. Yes. you for that presentation so we have quite a few questions here from the chat the first one do you have any updates on a tv or film version of payday um update yes i mean it's very important that we remove the pledge and reacquire the publishing rights of of payday that was required before we could enter into any kind of negotiations with movie or TV studios. There's a long line of interested parties which we have started to talk to, and we'll be continuing those discussions over the next few months. But all in all, very positive.

Thank you. There's, I think, a need from the chat to get some clarification. We now get... or Starbiz now gets 100% of the net revenue for Payday 3. Mats, can you clarify what the status is with the Digital Brothers split?

Yes, as we mentioned previously as well, there is a rev-sharp based on Payday 3 towards our Italian friends, Digital Brothers, related to when Starbiz acquired the rights or distribution rights for Payday back in 2016. So that's a 33% royalty based on our profit that we make on payday three. So when the game has recouped all expenses and also the ongoing or current development expenses and we see a positive result for the game, then that should be split with 33% to Digital Brothers and 67% to us, which is uh compared to before um before when we had play on as a partner on board um we received 50 percent of the net proceeds for for the games and play on kept 50 percent and then out of our 50 percent 33 percent should have been paid down to digital growth so this is a good thing both for us and also for digital brothers since um it's better to share a bigger or larger amount of revenue so it's a good thing for us and a good thing for our digital brothers

And now that you have more freedom of the payday IP following the reacquisition of the publishing rights, will you consider revitalizing content updates in payday 2? And if yes, when can we expect this to be implemented?

Yes, we have at least one small content update ready for Payday 2, which we will release over the next weeks or months. We haven't decided how we're going to progress with this, but this needs to be a very clear plan for both Payday 2 and Payday 3. Both franchises or both iterations of the franchise are very important to us, very close to our heart. So we'll make sure that we have a great pipeline in place for Payday 3 and keep Payday 2 well and alive with updates going forward.

Regarding the 95 million settlement with play on expected this quarter, Mats, can you clarify whether this amount is net of the 33 million raised in the directed share issue or should we expect the full 95 as a separate inflow?

The 95 million that I highlighted is the total amount that we received in Q2 related both to the rights issue and also the settlement when it comes to payday 3 and the rights for payday as a franchise.

Can you or do you want to give any updates on your discussions with potential partners for Project Backstage? Have there been any notable developments during or after the quarter?

We had very good discussions with partners at GDC and post-GDC. That was positive, but it was very clear that the partners want to see more of how the final product would look. And therefore, we are producing the vertical slice. That is actually shaping extremely well. So we're now starting the round two with all of our partners where they will have access to the vertical slides and also to give them a bit more flavor in terms of what our plans are for the end product. All in all, very positive. And I expect there to be a number of interested parties to partner with us on this process.

Last question. Adolf, as the newly appointed CEO, in the near term?

Well, that's a long list. But if we think about the top priorities, I think, as we talked about, Payday is at our core and we need to make sure that the buckets that I described earlier, that we're working across all of them, all of the franchises, the transmedia opportunities for the franchise, which will enhance the valuation of the franchise itself and the future of Payday. What does that mean? I'm a strong believer as well is that we as a company need to develop with players at the center of everything we do. So all decisions that we're making, whether it's a business decision or a development decision, that should always have players in mind first and foremost. So that's something that is very important to me. and the only rational way forward for the studio. We need to look at the way we're making games. Is there an opportunity for us to be more effective? We need to look at how Game development, as you know, is changing a lot. And we want to stay at the forefront of the technical development in terms of how games should be made in the future. I would say those are the key priorities. Of course, Baxter plays into that as well. We need to make sure that we produce a great game and that justifies this amazing franchise we're working on, Dungeons & Dragons. And so far, after joining Starbreeze, I've been very, very impressed with the teams here, very impressed with the potential, and I see a very bright future ahead for the studio.

Yes. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thanks for all the questions. Keep them coming, and we'll see you before too long.