Thunderful Group AB

Good morning and welcome to today's presentation of Thunderfield Group's financial results for the third quarter. My name is Dennis Bergen and I'm an equity analyst at Carnegie. I'm here today with the company's CEO Anders Maikvist and CFO Lennart Sparud, who will present the company's financial and development throughout the third quarter for the coming approximately 40 minutes, which then will be followed by a Q&A session that I will moderate. Please feel free to submit any questions in the message box below the stream, and I will make sure to read them in the Q&A session. With that, I think it's time to kick off your presentation.

Thank you, Dennis. Good morning and welcome to today's presentation of Thunderfall Group's financial results for the third quarter. Today's presenters are me, Anders Maikvist, as acting CEO, and also with me today is our CFO, Lennart Spadud. Today's presentation includes the key highlights in this third quarter, some background of Thunderfall Group and our segments, and some explanation of our diversified revenue streams in Thunderfall Games, where I will also touch briefly on the recent reorganizations in both games and distribution. Lennart will then guide you through the financials and finally we will round this off by giving you some background and details to the binding agreement of an acquisition of the British game developer Jump Ship that we announced earlier today. So starting with the key highlights from the Q3 report, Thunderfall Games delivers EBITDA of 51 million SEK and is back on profit generating levels in line with the comparison quarter of the three week quarters. The releases in Thunderfall Games in this quarter have contributed with 10 million SEK in net sales. That is higher than in previous quarters and together with the new structure, which has been very well received internally, this strengthened the team in games and lays a pretty good foundation for continued growth, both organic and through acquisitions. The inventory levels in distribution have been reduced by 94 million SEK year-over-year and with 140 million SEK from the end of June up until the end of October. We still have November ahead of us and that's typically the best sales month in distribution. There's still pressure margins in distribution both caused by high OPEX for logistics and also from gross margin pressure caused by closeout sales and discounts in Nordic Games Supply and Arma Toys. For the third quarter we had an operating income growth of 9% where the game segment grew by 21% while the distribution segment had negative growth of minus 7%. Both adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA had negative growth of minus 21% and minus 29% respectively. The profitability decrease is all related to the distribution segment where we are affected not only by high OPEX for logistics as in the previous quarters but now also lower gross margins caused by discounts and closeout sales. Our main focus now in both the third quarter and the fourth quarter is to reduce the inventory levels in both Nordic Games Supply and Armaltoys and that focus has been impacting profitability in the third quarter. So the inventory levels are being reduced. Total inventory reduction from end of June up until the end of October is minus 140 million SEK. Finally, Burgsala, our Nintendo distribution business, has okay EBITDA performance this quarter, and Thunderfall Games reaches an EBITDA of 51.3, which is basically in line with the comparison quarter after three quarters with weak profit levels. So let's have a quick look at Thunderfall Group and our two segments. I will also briefly mention some of the changes that we have implemented up until today. So Thunderfall Group operates in two segments, games and distribution. While the distribution business covers the Nordics, the games business is global. We sell our games all over the world. We are now almost 450 employees. We have 12 internal games in development at this moment and 20 games from external developers in our pipeline. Across the segments, we manage a portfolio of around 100 brands and we've kept our famous Nintendo partnership for more than 40 years. So this is a financial trend overview for both segments. CFO Leonard will guide you through the details in both segments. So I'd like to use the slides to elaborate a little bit on the current trends in each segment. Starting with games, our net sales is up with almost 19 million SEK year over year and almost 3 million SEK from previous quarter. But the composition of net sales in this quarter is vastly different from the comparison quarter in which we still had nearly all of the Swedish game developers in externally financed game development projects. So basically over the last 12 months we've built a new structure with much more diversified revenue streams and the net sales growth quarter of a quarter indicates that we are in the right direction. Continuing with distribution, the main driver for net sales decline year over year is Nordic Game Supply. Amatois is actually growing year over year. So both companies have started closeout sales and discounts in the third quarter. And in Amatois, we see an expected development where closeout sales is adding to the normal sales, while for Nordic Game Supply, the negative market sentiment results in significant negative growth, even though we actually do closeout sales and discounts. So looking ahead, the general retail market sentiment in the Nordics is nowadays far from positive. But for Thunderfall Distribution so far, we have not seen any negative impact on demand in Bergsala or Amatoys. But for Nordic Games Supply, however, we are experiencing significant demand decline and a lot of uncertainties among the retail customers. For Thunderful Games, this is a new slide that is presenting the transition from our old structure of studios, publishing and investments in Thunderful Games to our new structure based on the four pillars of diversified revenues. The old division studios is represented in both co-development and IP building, while the old division publishing is represented in the IP building pillar only. Our former division investment has now been split up in partners and investments. So in line with these four pillars of diversified revenues, we have also changed reporting lines and structure and created an integrated decentralized structure with four business units aligned to the four revenue pillars. The new structure has been well received by the leadership team and I'm very confident that we are now laying a foundation to secure entrepreneurial freedom with the decentralized business units, while at the same time we are supporting the business units with our support functions, all led by experienced professionals to support the entrepreneurs in reaching their visions and goals. So shortly to tell you a little bit more about the four pillars of diversified revenues, I'll start from the left with our co-development pillar. This pillar currently includes two of the studios, primarily developing games based on IPs from external licensees. This revenue stream contributes with predictable revenues with stable and high margins, but it also contributes with rev share from the developed games. There is no need for investments from Thunderfall within this revenue stream. Next, our IP building pillar is represented by all other studios, focusing on our own IPs. And this is also where we do publishing both of our own IPs, but also when we help external studios to build up their IPs. This revenue stream is dependent on a high rate of investments, but we can also get high profitability levels when published games reach commercial success. As for our partner activities, this is where we are helping external game development studios to self-publish their games. As with co-development, this pillar contributes with predictable revenues and with revenue shares from games that our partners are self-publishing. Also in this pillar, there is no need for investments. And lastly, the investment pillar ranges from investments in early prototype phases in specific game projects to acquisitions of larger companies. This revenue stream is naturally dependent on investments, but we also get revenue shares from the game projects where we have invested. Next on, our distribution segment. It consists of three companies. First, there's BergSala, that has led the license to sell the Nintendo products in the Nordics and Baltics for more than 40 years. Then there's AmoToys, our toy distributor with a distribution portfolio of around 80 brands, including some of the most popular toy brands. And finally, there's Nordic Game Supply that distributes gaming accessories, gaming merchandise and boxed video games, including products from brands like Razer and HyperX. There has also been some changes in distribution. Bergsala's managing director Henrik Mathiasson has been appointed interim managing director also in Nordic Game Supply. We've removed the layer chief distribution officer and the two managing directors in the three distribution companies are now reporting directly to me. We've done this to increase our focus on inventory reduction, and since the market conditions in Nordic Games Supply are worsening, we have implemented cost initiatives, including a 20% cut on workforce. We will see some effects of this from the fourth quarter, but we will also see full effects from the first quarter 23. For the releases in this quarter, we've released three games, all developed by external studios. The released games have contributed with almost 10 million SEK in net sales, which is the highest amount since we started presenting this earlier this year. After the quarter, we've released five more games, of which two have been developed internally, including today's release of Somerville from Jump Ship that we've announced this morning. Excluding Somerville, the other games released after the quarter have already, up until today, delivered net sales contribution higher than what we achieved in the third quarter. Gaming media GamesRadar published an article in October listing the top 10 LEGO games ever released and the very best LEGO game ever released according to GamesRadar is LEGO Brick Tales from Thunderful Publishing. So it's very pleasing to see that our production and marketing teams are finally now experiencing sales successes from external games. Both teams have been working really hard with all the releases that we have for the second half in 2022 and also in 2023. And I believe the successes boost morale and self-confidence ahead of our major releases now in 2023. So the new studio Jump Ship is releasing its sci-fi adventure Somerville as of today. At Thunderfall we expect a net sales contribution from Jump Ship and this game in excess of 70 million SEK from today up until the end of this fourth quarter. Here are the 12 titles we have in internal development, and there's now only one of them left to be released this year. It's Wavetail, a game created by Thunderfuss Studio in Gothenburg, and so far only released on Stadia. The upcoming release in December will be for PC and all consoles. For 2023, there's now seven releases planned, six of them currently planned for the first half of 2023. Games worth monitoring a bit extra in the first half next year includes PC console SteamWorld game with project name Coffee, as well as CodeSync's PC game under project name Cicada. For the external pipeline in Thunderfall Publishing, we now have a pipeline of 20 games, two more to be shipped this year and 14 currently planned for 2023. Some of the games announced for 2023 having received high interest and positive feedback includes Planet of Lana, Replaced and Wordless. Planet of Lana was successfully announced at Gamescom with very positive feedback from press. And lastly, it will of course be interesting to see how LEGO Brick Tales will be received by players on mobile platforms. With this, I'm handing over to our CFO, Lennart Sparud, who will guide you through the financials.

Thank you, Anders, and hello everyone. The third quarter was a solid financial quarter for the game segment, but a weak quarter for the distribution segment. To guide you through the details, starting with net sales development, where we have seen a growth of minus 5% year over year, reaching just above 700 million SEK in the quarter. The game segment has a growth of 19% and the distribution segment a growth of approximately minus 8%. For adjusted EBITDA the growth is minus 24 million SEC or minus 29% reaching 60 million SEC in the third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA in the game segment came in just above last year and the distribution segment showed an adjusted EBITDA growth of minus 24 million SEC. The cash flow from operating activities was better in this quarter versus the comparison quarter, even though it was still negative. We reached a negative cash flow from operating activities of minus 71 million SEK compared to minus 86 million SEK in the comparison quarter. Less inventory buildup in distribution contributes with a cash flow of 70 million SEK in Q3 2022. Looking on segment level, for Thunderfall Games we have seen a growth in net sales year over year of 19%, reaching 180 million SEC in this quarter. Organic growth in games is minus 4% and growth from companies acquired in the last 12 months is 23%. Breaking down the organic growth, only CodeSync and StageClear are contributing with organic growth in the third quarter. In total, the old core Thunderfall Games companies have a growth of minus 20%. The reason for this is that ThunderFull Development had external financing in the comparison quarter, while there is no external financing for any development project in this quarter. And it's mainly RoboTeddy driving the positive net sales growth and adjusted EBITDA contribution in the quarter in the games segment. Speaking about investment in games, we have reached a total investments of 54 million SEK in the third quarter. For development CapEx, we have reached 28 million SEC. This is partly because we have more developers employed. We have now reached 309 developers in the group, but the main driver is that most developers are now working on games not being externally financed. For the distribution segment, we see an overall net sales growth year over year of minus 8%. Breaking it down in subsidiaries, We can see that Bergisala is decreasing with minus 5%, driven by less availability of hardware compared to the comparison quarter. And this is due to lack of components and not logistic obstacles. Nordic Game Supply is increasing with minus 26% due to a general lower market demand for game accessories. We will have difficulties matching the comparison quarter also in the last quarter this year. Arma Toys, on the other hand, has a growth of 16% year over year. For profitability, measured in EBTA in distribution, the segment has an overall growth of minus 22 million SEC or minus 55%. Bergsvallars EBITDA delta is down 4.4 million SEC. Sorry. This is primarily explained by lower net sales, negative FX effects and increased costs for personnel and logistics. In Nordic Game Supply, the EBITDA delta of minus 8.7 million SEK is primarily explained by lower gross profit and higher marketing costs and sales expenses. The lower gross profit comes from lower net sales. Even though net sales are up 16% in Omotoist, the EBITDA delta is minus 9.3 million SEK. This is explained by pressure on margins from clearance sales of inventories and continued high logistics overhead. To sum up the profitability challenges in distribution, it's important to understand that the EBITDA margin pressure that we are guiding for in Q4 is affecting primarily Nordic Game Supply and to some extent also AmoToys. Bergsala will continue to be affected by disruptions to hardware deliveries during the last quarter as a consequence of the lack of components. We continue to work hard on reducing the inventory levels and we'll continue to do that throughout the year. The inventory level is 70 million SEK lower than the end of Q2 and preliminary figures by the end of October, as Anders mentioned before, shows another 70 million SEK in reduction of inventory level. Regarding the net sales development, we can see that the Thunderfall Games segment has an organic growth of minus 4% and the acquisition driven growth is 23%. The old core Thunderfall Games companies have a growth of minus 20% in the third quarter. As mentioned before, Robothead is the main driving factor to the non-organic net sales growth in the quarter. Also looking ahead, we should not forget the impact the acquisition of Jumpship will have on our financial figures. Regarding the EBITDA development for the adjusted EBITDA, the situation for the organic companies is similar to the negative sales development. That said, the negative organic adjusted EBITDA growth in almost all companies in the game segment. And again, the all-Thunderful game companies are affected by the lack of external financing. The acquired gaming companies Roboted and Early Morning Studios have a positive adjusted EBITDA contribution of 40 million SEK. In terms of adjusted EBITDA, this quarter is the strongest so far by the games segment. Adjusted EBITDA in the distribution segment is negatively affected by pressure margins from clearance sales of inventories in AmoToys and NGS and continued high logistics overhead. Then a final slide. As mentioned earlier in this financial section, the cash flow from operating activity was better in this quarter versus the comparison quarter, even though it was negative. The key driver behind the negative cash flow is a net effect in core working capital in distribution segment with a negative net contribution of minus 106 million SEK. By the end of the quarter, we had 223 million SEK in total available cash if we include unutilized credit facilities. In the third quarter, we have made cash earner payments of 13.6 million SEK in total. Net debt by the end of the quarter is 377 million SEK, resulting in a net debt over the last 12 months EBITDA ratio of 1.1. And that was the end of the financial section. I now hand over to Anders again.

Thank you, Lennart. Events after the quarter includes the acquisition of Jumpship that we announced earlier this morning. So earlier today we announced that we have entered into a binding agreement for the acquisition of Jumpship Limited. Closing of the acquisition is expected later today. Jump Ship was founded in 2017 and has since then been developing their first game, the sci-fi adventure Somerville, being released today. Jump Ship is headquartered in Guildford in the UK. It currently has a team size of 26 people, and the two founders and sellers are Chris Olson, the creator of the Somerville universe, and Dino Patti, former CEO and co-founder of Playdead, famous for game successes such as Limbo and Inside. At Thunderfall we estimate that Jumpship will contribute with net sales in excess of the 70 million SEK in the fourth quarter post the acquisition. So Jumpship will become a new studio in Thunderfall's IP building pillar. Jumpship has a small but very talented team and the leadership team has a great creativity versus business balance evolved over many years of experience. As with all of IP-building studios, Jump Ship will retain creative autonomy to continue develop top-class story-driven narrative games, but they will also be supported by Thunderfall's support functions led by our senior professionals. Somerville is released today and adds another strong IP to Thunderfall's studios. Jump Ship's co-founder and executive producer Dino Patti has also been appointed strategic advisor in Thunderful Games to help us develop Thunderful Games while he also keeps his current position in Jump Ship. To the right is a quick overview of the leadership team, all being shareholders and all incentivized by the earnout structure. Dino Patti was the co-founder of Playded, one of the most successful indie studios in the world. Dino was the commercial driving force at Playded and has since partnered with Chris Olsen. Chris is the creative mind behind Somerville. With a strong background in films, Chris has brought his cinematic DNA to the studio. Claire Bossert is a seasoned production manager with experience from AAA studios. And Georgie is a talented art director with history of working on successful AAA titles. The financial details for this transaction is an upfront consideration of £6 million, a repayment of existing shareholder loans worth £2 million and a total maximum earn-out consideration of £24 million. All considerations are payable in cash only. The earnout period stretches from November 22 up until December 27. And for accumulated EBIT in jumpship up to £12 million, the sellers receive 50% of EBIT each financial year, payable annually. And for accumulated EBIT in jumpship over £12 million and up to £24 million, the sellers receive 75% of EBIT each financial year, payable annually. There's no historical revenues in Jump Ship, so it's difficult to describe multiples, but at Thunderfall we expect Jump Ship to contribute with net sales in excess of 70 million SEK now in the fourth quarter post the acquisition. The cash consideration is financed with the available cash and agreed and existing credit facilities. And with this, thank you for listening to this presentation. Don't forget that Summerville is being released today, so it's a wonderful game that everyone should try. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you for the presentation. And I would just like to remind everyone of the opportunities to submit questions using the message box, and I'll make sure to read them afterwards. So, starting off with some questions on the recent acquisition. You mentioned that you expect plus 70 million SEK in contribution here in Q4. About half of Q4 has passed, of course, and they are released in the game today. But could you provide some comments around how, I mean, How can we be that comfortable in the guidance on the expected contributions?

Yes, well of course, the game is being released today and there are some pre-orders and agreements and contracts making us confident that we will have net sales in excess of 70 million SEK up until the end of this year.

And also, I mean, we noticed that you don't guide on profitability additions, but could you provide some comments around the sort of what one should expect in general terms regarding the profitability levels of a studio of this kind?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, well, the studio is a pretty small but very talented team. So the team size is about 25 people. And that means that, you know, with revenues being in excess of 70 million SEK, we could expect fairly high profit margins on that.

And what does the pipeline or upcoming activity look like? Does Jump Ship have any other games in the pipeline or will the main project going forward be Summerwool? Moreover, what is the longer term plan for this studio?

Yeah, sure. The game is being released today. They have already started conceptualizing new ideas and new prototypes. We've been looking into those and we are very pleased with what we've seen. So there's nothing short term in the pipeline that will be released since they have a release as of today. But there's already ideas and concepts and prototypes being in development for future releases.

And then we have also received a follow-up question on the expected contribution for Q4. Should one expect cash flow to be similar to the revenue that you guide for or has it received any cash up front?

Yes, there have been, it's sort of a mix, it's a split. There have been some cash up front but there's also cash coming in now in the fourth quarter.

Okay. And then we are receiving some follow ups here on Jump Ship. What can you say regarding sort of deals in Jump Ship going forward that risks the acquisition?

Yes, now we've already guided for our expectations on net sales being in excess of 70 million SEK already in this quarter. But of course, as with all games that we have in development, we are always talking to different partners to do different types of deals. So that's always a part of the strategy. What we most often don't want to do is that we don't want to go too exclusive. We want to release the games on as many platforms as possible. But there's always a negotiation when it comes to pricing versus potential for the other platforms.

And how do you generally go about the timing of the acquisition? I mean, given challenges within distribution with regards to financing from the balance sheet perspective?

Well, this acquisition is not something that we came up with just a week ago. We've been discussing this with the founders of Jump Ship for almost a year now. So, I mean, based on the fact that they were developing a game and we had, you know, fairly good ideas of when the game was going to be released and also based on the fact that Thalaffa Group has been through some struggles when it comes to networking capital at least this year. So this is kind of something that we started to initiate again after we've seen the The inventory reduction, so up until October, the inventory has been reduced with 140 million SEK and then we still have November and December ahead of us. So we feel that the timing is actually pretty good. So by paying 6 plus 2 million pounds after this inventory reduction has already been completed and we also know what we have in the pipeline for the inventory reduction. So we are pretty confident with doing the acquisition timing wise.

And on the inventory reductions, we have received a follow-up question. Should we expect the inventory levels to decrease at a similar rate in November and December as well? And also, when will we see a positive impact on OPEX in distribution?

First question is difficult to guide on. As stated before, one can say that, I mean, looking at the Q3 numbers, the core networking capital is actually increasing basically because accounts receivables is increasing quite much. So this basically means that I started my position 10th of August and we've We've really pushed the inventory reduction efforts since then. So we had a bigger share than normally of the net sales being in the latter half of the quarter, basically being September. So that means that the snapshot picture by the end of September has high accounts receivables. So now we've also kind of presented the inventory reduction level in October, which was the same as for the entire third quarter. But basically most of the inventory reduction in the third quarter actually happened in September. So now we have November and December ahead of us, typically the two best sales months in terms of seasonality and distribution. Then you never know, especially with these challenging times, right? But this is basically where we are and then we've already bought most of the products that we are going to sell in November and December. So I would expect that the inventory reduction continues. Okay. And then you had a second question as well.

Yeah, when are we starting to see improvements to OPEX in distribution?

Yes, in Nordic Game Supply, we kind of got it for that here in the presentation that we've done some initiatives in the third quarter. We see small effects of that in the fourth quarter and then full effects in the first quarter next year.

Okay. And on games, what's your view on the performance? If you would look at it from a development, publishing or investment side or perhaps using the four pillar perspective that you use?

Yeah, I think the happy message here, the things that we look at very promising is actually the contribution from the releases in this quarter. It was basically Cursed Golf bringing most of the revenues to the group. As I kind of stated, the marketing team and the production team has been working very hard. As you know, we've been having challenges historically with the releases, especially of externally developed titles. Now we see in the third quarter that we are actually getting some net sales contribution from this. It was also higher in the second quarter than it was in the first quarter. And now we've already presented here that in the fourth quarter, it's already now higher than what it was in the third quarter. So I think we're basically on the right track here. We're doing better efforts and the sales achievements that we see are getting better and better. We have a good momentum, I'd say, and the team is doing really good work.

So new games performing well, according to you, Amin?

Yeah, but I mean, we've kind of already said that in the fourth quarter the net sales contribution will be higher than what it was in the third quarter. So that's of course positive. In addition to that, we have the Somerville deal, which is of course a very positive net sales contribution for us. So...

And in terms of organic entities, so to say, and external financing, what's the status there? If one would sort of look back to what you mentioned in relation to the Q1 report and sort of on upcoming platform deals.

Yeah, we went through the internal pipeline and I pointed out two other games in the internal pipeline you should look for a little bit more than the others. There was the SteamWorld IP game Coffee and then also Cicada from CodeSync. So I think those are the, now we've for the first time presented that those are planned to be released in the first half of 2023. And, you know, when we announce them, we, you know, you will get some more information of when they're going to be released, of course. But I think hopefully that will impact net sales in especially Thunderfall development in a positive way.

We have a question here on the sort of statement that you expect new releases to sell far more than SEC 10 millions in Q4. But with regards to LEGO BrickTales and Hero of Nostalgia, how have these two performed relative to your expectations? And could you please elaborate on the relative sales performance between PC and console?

Yes, I didn't say far better to be clear, but better than in the third quarter. But yes, these two titles are the main contributors so far of the games that we have released. As for LEGO Brick Tales, it's been consoles, especially one console is doing pretty good at the moment. So, I mean, if you compare all the consoles versus PC, it's currently better on consoles, mostly driven by one of the consoles.

Okay. Among Us VR released the 11th of November. Could you expand on the revenue share for Roboteady and how the game is selling in relation to internal expectations?

Yes, that is one of the partners that we are working with. And in general, the revenue shares are very low, like a single digit low for games where we have partnerships. But then I think the specific games, as I think everyone has been able to see, is performing well on the platform.

It seems like Robothead is doing well. Would it be possible to, perhaps not in detail, but in a more broader sense, provide a better overview of the revenue that stems from consulting fees versus retainers on released games?

Yes, it's definitely so that the rev share part of the revenues, if you just see it as rev shares from games and consultancy fees, then it's really so that the rev share is the main contributor.

And also, if we would look at the games pipeline for next year, we have a couple of Steamware titles and the announced PC console title for Code Sync that I would assume attracts quite much internal focus. How do you think about these releases for next year?

Oh, it's difficult to say before we have kind of announced them, but they will be announced fairly short in a good time before they are actually being released. And I say that those are the kind of key titles that CodeSync's IP building part of the team has been working on and also one of the studios in Sweden. So as always, when we are going to release internal titles, we... You never know, do we feel good about it or are we just looking at all the small bugs that you constantly are working on solving. But in general I'd say that the sentiment within the team is positive for both of these games.

Would it perhaps be possible to give an indication of the sort of investment value to be released as compared to this year or perhaps more relevant 2021?

If we do a relative kind of comparison, if we compare to the kind of three games that we launched second half 2021, because before we did the IPO, we actually communicated quite much about those three titles and the development budgets. I'd say that both of these games have a slightly lower development budget than the three games that we released in second half 2021. Not much, but slightly lower.

Okay.

So if we would look at the distribution segment then, I mean, it's clear that you have taken some extractions and you previously talked about this action plan being implemented and we're now seeing reduced inventory levels. But if one instead would look at sort of the three different units within the distribution, what does the situation look like? Where do you find, I mean, where is the situation most challenging? What is sort of the outlook there?

Yeah, we start from the positive side. Bergsala is doing all well and fine. Both net sales and EBITDA for the third quarter was okay, as we mentioned. And I'd say that for the fourth quarter, our main challenge is basically what Kind of what Nintendo also officially said when they published their report that there's some supply chain constraints, basically not based on the supply chain, but based on the production of the Nintendo hardware. So what will be limiting our net sales development in the fourth quarter will actually be the availability of hardware. Otherwise, we had a really good Splatoon 3 release in the third quarter, and now we have the Pokémon release in the fourth quarter, which is, you know, looking very good. So, Bergsola is all well and fine. You know, one can imagine that the inventory levels will be low at the end of the year, since the main constraint that we have is basically that we are lacking hardware to sell. So we will sell everything that we have, basically. Then for AmoToys, I mean, the general demand in the market for the toys that we are distributing is actually good. I mean, net sales is pretty good. Even though we have closeout sales and discounts, we managed to stay profitable this quarter. Typically, the fourth quarter sees higher net sales than the third quarter. Our main products, Squishmattles, for example, still huge demand. We will continue with the inventory reduction plan. But I think Amatoys is actually going according to expectations, also including the inventory reduction plan. main challenge for us is is really is not a game supply it's you know based on the general retail challenges in the market we're selling fairly expensive products that no one really needs to buy every year so this is the general demand in the market this is not really not really comfortable for us. So we try to, you know, we do the closeout sales, we try to do some discounts, but it's difficult when price doesn't really work. So we are reducing the inventory levels. We have done some achievements in the third quarter. We expect to continue that in the fourth quarter. But in general, I'd say that kind of guidance for net sales in Nordic Game Supply, that is where we have the challenge. And that is also the company where we've cannot take any immediate cost initiatives as well.

And in terms of the nature of the products, do you see any risks of end-guess products being outdated?

I wouldn't see that risk. Basically, the main risk we have with those type of products are when there's new consoles coming. If you had a lot of accessories to PlayStation 4, when PlayStation 5 was being released, that was of course a problem. We did not have that. And now we are, you know, within the console generations. So I don't really see, you know, a risk for the products that, you know, no one will want to buy them. I think the challenges with demand right now is basically because the purchasing power of individual consumers right now.

Okay. We have received a couple of more questions from viewers. One questioning whether there is some collaboration with Lyngeleds new studio Moonhood, or has he left Thunderfool completely?

Klaus Lyngeled has been helping us for a while in evaluating the game titles that we have. He's on a consultancy basing. He's been helping our head of development in Thunderfall development. But otherwise, he's started this Moonhood studio. Klaus is a game developer. It's always his dream to create another fantastic game project. I think that will be his main focus going forward. But he's still... You know, he has still been helping the studio. And also, you can see the shareholder list in the report that we published today. He has actually bought shares and seems confident that the company is going in the right direction. So that's positive.

And then we have a question on Rising Star. Still ongoing, if that's the case. What does the expectations or future plans look like?

Rising Star Games is our oldest publishing company. We have quite many games that have been published by Rising Star Games historically. We still have employees kind of being employed in the legal entity, Rising Star Games. But over time, I mean, we created the new marketing team and the new production team based on employees in Head Up, Rising Star Games, CodeSync and Thunderful Publishing. So basically we're now working under the new label, Thunderfall Publishing. New, but yeah, the updated label. And that means that we are, you know, I believe it's fairly unlikely that we are signing a lot of more titles in Rising Star Games. It could be that we could be signing a few of these Japanese titles, but I wouldn't expect that we sign very many titles. But the company is still alive, and of course it's, It's somewhat of a very small cash cow since it's mostly back catalogue sales with games that we have already depreciated fully.

Okay. And on earnouts, you had some revaluations affecting some items this quarter. Net effect was approximately zero, I think you mentioned in the report. But how should one think, I mean, what is really the rationale behind adjusting the earnouts for CodeSync? And also, should one expect this to also affect other acquired companies in the group?

I think that CodeSync is the main contributor to Thunderfall Games. It's important for us to keep the old sellers, six of them, incentivized and motivated. One of the lessons learned is that the earn-up period that we had when we did the deal, which was shortly before the IPO, October 2020, Maybe it was a bit too short. I mean, the acquisition that we announced today, we have an earnout period from November 22 up until December 27. So by doing this, there was a good timing since we had the change in the Robot Teddy earnout in the same quarter. And overall, we feel that this is a commercially good decision. So...

Okay. And then finally, I think you mentioned on the distribution side, you mentioned that you are seeing effects from sort of a weaker consumer. But otherwise, how do you generally go about your sort of resilience to macroeconomic driven factors?

Yeah, again, then within distribution, I mean, we haven't so far been impacted in Bergsal and Amatoys. I wouldn't say that, even though the general market retail trend is quite negative at the moment here in the Nordics. But we only face that in Nordic Game Supply. So we are somewhat lucky that in both Bergsal and Amatoys, there's still a fairly strong demand for our products. within games i'd say that we are such a small player in the global games industry so i mean what we see now in the third quarter and and you know hopefully what we're gathered for in the fourth quarter it's actually our own efforts that is driving the net sales contribution you know more than the general gaming market even though the gaming market might be down a few single digit percentages If we do a really good release or if our team members are really motivated and working really, really good with the back catalog sales compared to previous years when we kind of build up the company, that will have a much bigger effect than if the general global gaming market is down 1, 2, 3, 4, 5%.

We have received a question on a statement in the report concerning the Swedish FSA and information given in relation to the publication of the year-end report for 2020. Could you please give some more information on this? What is it all about and what is the worst case scenario?

I can take that one. I don't want to speculate about the worst case scenario because we don't know. And we have an ongoing dialogue with Finansinspektionen, which is called in Swedish. I use the Swedish word, if it's okay. It's easier. As you all know, we published a press release, I think it was end of September somewhere. And after that, we have received some questions from Finansinspektionen. And we have answered all the questions. And the other day, we received another question, which we are now working with. And from our side, it's all under control. Having said that, there is nothing further to communicate at this stage in this matter. But it's correct, it concerns the year-end report for 2020. Okay.

So basically, the final question from my side then is, if we look to Q4 and perhaps more interesting, 2023, what is top of the agenda?

Oh, I'd say that when we looked at the pipeline in games, what we've been looking at is I named up a couple of the titles in the internal pipeline, Coffee and Cicada. And then for the external pipeline, I mean, we had a really good Gamescom event this year, 250 square meters booth. We had nine playable demos, eight of them from the external studios. Some of the games received really good press, Lego Brick Tales that we have now announced, and also Planet Atlanta, which is coming spring 2023. So we have that game, we have a couple of the other kind of hyped games in the pipeline, Replace being one of them, we announced Wordless at Gamescom, for example, so I think There are some interesting titles in the pipeline in both the internal and external ones that could potentially become triggers. I mean, you never know if a game will sell or not before it's being released, but at least it feels like there's more traction to our pipeline from press and journalists and gaming consumers in general. And then in addition to this, of course, I mean, now today we announced the acquisition of Jump Ship and, you know, Somerville is being released today. We've only talked about sales estimates for the fourth quarter, but I mean, obviously the game will continue to sell over the next four quarters in 2023. I think games is looking promising. Moving on to distribution. As I said before, in Nordic Games Supply, we've initiated cost initiatives. We will see effects from that in the first quarter next year. I also believe that this kind of gross margin pressure and the high OPEX costs that we've been having in both Armatoys and Nordic Games Supply, I mean, really... And I think this is important, but really the main focus for us up until the end of this year is to reduce the inventory levels. That means that OPEX for logistics costs will definitely be lower in 2023 than what they have been in the first half of this year. So that should, everything else being on the same levels, that should kind of increase EBITDA levels. Then it's of course challenging, you know, what is the consumer purchasing power looking like next year? But again, most companies have already been affected. Bergsell and Amatois have not really been affected so far. So from that perspective, it feels more comfortable than for many other distribution companies, I guess.

Got it. So I think we're out of questions both on my side and from the viewers. So with that said, thank you to everyone that has submitted questions and thank you for answering my questions.

Thank you.