Starbreeze AB (publ)

Good morning, and welcome to the third quarter presentation of Starbreeze Entertainment's results. The key highlights of this quarter include the strategic refocus with Payday at the core, where we unfortunately had to make the decision to discontinue Project Baxter. Project was great, but it was the right decision to make to basically refocus our company on Payday with Payday at its core. We updated our strategy and expanded into the heisting genre. The quarter was good in terms of strong operating cash flow, which is supported by about 35% increase in revenue versus last year. We expanded the Payday team to about 65 people and we are now progressing well in terms of changing the model of the game to a live service engagement model. We also launched our partnership with Sidetrack Studios in terms of maintaining Payday 2 going forward. Payday is a platform of growth Paytay is our core franchise and our growth engine. Expanding the Paytay universe into new formats and platforms remains a priority for the company. We have select premium projects and strategic partnerships that will broaden the reach and diversify their revenues. The strategic focus aligns with the global IP trend concentration of proven franchises. This focused model deepens the player engagement, strengthens the brand equity and creates a scalable foundation for sustainable value creation. We can see across the industry, major studios are refocusing their efforts on the strongest franchises and most loyal communities. We are already there. with clarity of purpose and owning one of the most recognizable global IPs in gaming and a clear path to disciplined growth. By challenging our resources into payday and selective strategic initiatives, we will reduce complexity, improve predictability, enhance our returns. The expanded team is now in place and a general new manager, which are now driving the rebuild of the live engagement model of Payday 3. There are continuous updates to gameplay, onboarding and technical stack on the roadmap. Also, sequence updates and patches look to improve retention and sentiment for the game. The roadmap is focused on consistent content cadence and community connection. The goal remains clear to deliver Payday experiences that are rewarding, dynamic, and connected like never before. In terms of our partnerships, as I said earlier, we secured our long-term support for Payday 2 through partnership with Sidetrack Games. The team is deeply rooted in the Payday community and engine expertise. It ensures continued support and updates for millions of fans of Payday 2. This also allows Starbiz to focus internal resources solely on Payday 3 and future experiences. We are now a focused and aligned organization. We have aligned the organization around clarity and accountability. Simplified structure enables faster decision making. Empowered teams to deliver creatively with clear P&L ownership. And we have renewed focus on cross-functional collaboration and studio synergy. We are bringing the company closer together. fostering creativity, accountability and sustainable delivery. We are executing with focus. We continue to strengthen the Payday 3 live operations and player retention. We are expanding beyond the Payday universe to new platforms, UFN, Roblox and beyond. We are deepening our strategic partnerships and co-labs to diversify revenues and broaden the reach. At the same time, we are maintaining our cost discipline and operational efficiency. In summary, we are now our strongest arborist, built on focus, creativity, and resilience. Now I want to hand over to Mats Juhl to talk about our financials.

Thank you, Eike. Just to go in a little bit to the number crunch in them for the quarter. If you're looking at the net sales for the quarter, it amounted to 58.4 million compared to 42.7 in the same quarter last year, a good growth of 15.7 million. If you look on the payday franchise, it generated about 32.6 million during the quarter in net revenue compared to 34.4 million last year, more or less in line with the previous year. Work for Hire, our public project, generated about 20 million during the quarter and will continue up until the year end, which is a good thing. Our EBTA for the quarter amounted to 19.3 million. In the reported numbers, a slight decrease compared to 21.4 million last year. Keep in mind that in the same quarter last year, we had runoff effects of about 5 million related to reversal of the previously expensed cost for personnel expenses. So adjusting for that in the EBITDA, we saw a good growth in the EBITDA as well. And if you have followed us in the news, you know that we sent out the press release related to the closing of Project Baxter. Related to that, we also did an impairment, of course, of that project that hits us a little bit. So we reported the non-cash impairment related to Project Baxter of 262 million. increasing accounted depreciations to 304.7 million during the quarter. It's a one-off effect, and you will not see that kind of effect going forward related to that project. And depreciations will continue to decrease in the coming quarters. As previously said in previous calls as well, depreciations are going down over time. We do continue to invest into our projects, and the total loss for the quarter amounted to 285.9 million. We closed the quarter with a healthy cash position of 135 million. We saw that we had a positive effect from cash receipt, both related to payday, of course, but also for the work for hire project. So the healthy cash position that we close with enables us to continue to both invest into payday and other experiences going forward. If you look at the full nine months up until September, we reported a net revenue of 179.9 million, a growth compared to last year with almost 30%, which is good. Our EBITDA amounted to 40.9 million, and our cash flow for the first nine months was positive with 49.2 million. And as we talked about before, and as I usually say, we are not happy with the net sales for the first nine months. We see that we have room for improvement. We see that the measures we're taking and the investments we're doing into our games now will have a positive effect going forward. Our core focus is to continue to grow both under the Payday franchise, but also to be careful on how we spend the cash we have at hand. So if you look on a little bit more on the cash flow development for the full nine months, we closed previous year with the cash position of 192 million. During our first nine months, we had a positive cash flow from operating activities related to our game stand of 49 million. The investments made into Payday and historically on Baxter so far this year amount to 130.8 million. In total, we made investments of almost 142 million up until end of September. Part of our revenue related to Payday 3 was also in third quarter recognized as financing. This will change going forward and from fourth quarter and onwards there will be no financing activities related to Payday 3 reported. We will have all revenue coming into Starbase first hand. During the first nine months, we also did a directed share issue of 33 million, actually done in the second quarter, and had a positive effect of 33 million. In total, our financing activities have had a positive effect over the year so far of 36.1 million. And as I said, we closed the period with a healthy cash position of 135 million. On the expense side, of course, the direct cost reported during the quarter is heavily impacted by the impairment. Again, it's a non-cash impact and it amounts to 262 million. Total direct cost amounts to 320.8 million. We see that if you're looking forward, you see that our direct costs continue to decrease. And due to both the efforts we take when it comes to cost efficiency and streamlining of our organization, you will see that trend continue. So focus is on keeping control of our cost as well. Selling and marketing amounted to almost 6 million during the quarter. The expenses mainly relates to staffing, working with the marketing and PR activities, of course, also for the games that we have in our portfolio. Administrative expenses amounted to slightly over 14 million in the quarter. Last year's same period was positively impacted by the reversal done of previously expensed personnel costs, as I mentioned. of about 5 million. So we are when it comes to admin expenses in line with expectations and we will see decreased expenses going forward in that area as well. Reported other expenses during the quarter. This is only related to valuation of assets and liabilities in foreign currency. So it's currency translation expenses that's reported under other expenses. Number of employees by the end of September amounts to 156 people. The recent changes we've done within staffing related to the closing of Project Baxter is not reflected in the September numbers, and you will see that effect in the coming quarter. And if you look into our balance sheet finally then, our intangible assets after the impairment amounts to 151 million. It mainly consists of capitalized expenses for game development and our IP rights that we own. Property, plant and equipment amounts to 47 million. Right of use assets for office lease is a majority of that and it amounts to 34 million. Our current assets amount to 60 million and mainly relates to prepaid expenses and trade receivables. And cash then, of course, as mentioned, 135 million. Furthermore, our external non-current liabilities of 64 million mainly relates to lease liabilities for the office and also tax and prepaid revenue related to a previous project. Our current liabilities of 56 million mainly relates to accrued expenses and trade payrolls. Currently, we have no interest bearing depth in the company, which enables us then to report a very healthy balance sheet and a good foundation for continuing to build on Starbreeze. To sum up the quarter from the financial side, we see good progress in many areas. Even though the third quarter is heavily impacted by the impairment, of course, we see improvements in the coming quarters, both when it comes to focus on our expenses, but also constant improvement in sales and efficiency. So we have a good foundation to continue to improve our numbers going forward.

Yeah, so to finish off, as I said earlier, we are much more focused than before with the decisions that we've recently been making. We have the operating cast to keep on developing and building experiences based on the Payday franchise going forward. We have now secured support for Payday 2. and because we are servicing essentially tens of thousands of players who are playing that game every day. Payday 3 team has hit the ground running, is now building the backend systems, upgrading the engine to Unreal 5, which is the newest engine from Epic. We are renewing, reworking through all of our heists and our content. And we are now getting into an updating cadence, which is going to be on a monthly basis starting in December. So clearly War Focus company. And I want to thank all the teams and our people and our developers who are working so hard to bring this fantastic product to market. And I want to also to thank our players to keep on heisting. Thank you so much. Thank you.