Rivalry Corp.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rivalry Corp Q2 2022 results conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you need assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, August 25, 2022. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Vincic. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Our speakers on today's call will be Stephen Saltz, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Rivalry Corp, and Kata Corey, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind listeners that certain statements made during this conference call presentation may constitute forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of rivalry corporates, subsidiary entities, or the industry in which it operates to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. When used in this conference call presentation, such statements use words such as may, will, expect, believe, plan, and other similar terminology. These statements reflect management's current expectations regarding future events and operational performance and speak only as of the date of this presentation. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, including those risk factors identified in the company's prospectus dated September 17, 2021, under the heading risk factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, other than as required under securities legislation. I'd now like to turn the call over to Stephen Saltz. Stephen?

Thank you, John, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. Although it has been relatively quiet over the summer since our Q1 report, I can assure you that the team has been very busy with the results of our work to become very clear over the coming months. We have a strong seasonal period ahead of us and various product-level catalysts that we're excited about. Speaking to that seasonality, in our Q2 release, we included our July betting handle figures, which stood at $23.4 million, or nearly two-thirds of what we did in all of Q2. That is up 66% month-over-month and 162% year-over-year. August betting handle is trending strong as well, continuing our momentum in Q3. As we head into September, we see the kickoff of the regular season of the NFL. Although rivalry continues to be e-sports heavy in terms of our betting activity, in Ontario, the Gen Z demographic we are effective at serving has more diverse interests than we see in some of our other jurisdictions where e-sports is more mature. We will be driving an authentically rivalry effort in Ontario to participate in the NFL season action. From September into early October, we'll also see the expected release of a third-party casino offering in our Isle of Man jurisdiction. player testing of new original game IP from rivalry, complementing Rushlane with anticipated full game release later in Q4, and an enhanced traditional sports betting offering to complement the arrival of the NFL season and gearing towards the World Cup in November. October sees two of the biggest esports events of the year, League of Legends Worlds and Dota 2, the International, where we will be actively, where we will be activating across all our markets in a meaningful way. The tail end of the month and into November, is a CSGO major in Rio, Brazil. These CSGO major events are typically four times a year and represent the biggest moments for CSGO every year. The combination of these events across the top three esports titles globally, we expect to drive meaningful betting activity to all of our markets. It is during this October and November window that we anticipate the initial release of our originally developed mobile app in Ontario to help drive further customer activity and overall adoption. Moving further into November and December, you then have the World Cup, This is a universal sports fan moment globally that traditional sports fans and esports fans alike flock to. We expect World Cup activity over this period to drive further activity at Rivalry. In the midst of all this, I'm happy to announce today for the first time that we'll be hosting an Investor Day early October that will highlight the tremendous growth of Rivalry over its first 12 months as a public company. All efforts I just noted in highlighting key leadership across the company and providing even more detail on what's to come for Rivalry moving forward. This is all to say we expect to have a catalyst and performance-driven number of months ahead, punctuated by increased capital markets efforts to better daylight rivalry to the investment community. Circling back to Q2, we launched in our first two regulated markets, Ontario and Australia. As noted then and on our Q1 call, in new markets, we start slow on spend, taking in feedback, conducting user testing, iterating against it, and building brand awareness in parallel. As underlying key performance indicators hit our target range, we then increase spend accordingly. The most critical piece of our strategy is cost-effective customer acquisition. Our peers will often do the inverse of this, deploying their highest spend in the initial flurry of a market launch through promotions, bonusing, and various marketing deals, which then tapers off over time as they see their competitors in the market cool off on spend as well. Initial results and commentary out of Ontario validate our approach. It has been clear that there was little to no first-mover advantage that justified spending heavily at launch, We will continue to take our more methodical approach that suits our strategy and our customer base. This crawl, walk, and run strategy detailed more heavily in our August investor deck is a playbook that has delivered results over these last years, prioritizing operating leverage so we can deploy spend to scale a market with compound effects rather than linear. Further, as we've noted in the past, in the esports calendar, Q2 and Q4 are seasonally slower quarters, while major esports events typically fall in Q1 and Q3. making those quarters seasonally stronger. On that basis, we would expect to see sequential declines in our key metrics in Q2. That was very modestly the case this quarter, with our betting handle of $38.4 million down marginally from Q1's all-time high of $40.2 million. More accurately, though, to reflect the relative seasonality, our betting handle nearly doubled year-over-year from Q2 2021. Positively, we overcame the seasonality effects to deliver sequential growth in several key items, Our revenue of $5.3 million was our best quarter ever, and gross profit of $2.1 million was also a record, nearly equaling full-year 2021 gross profit, up 206% year-over-year and 201% sequentially. This demonstrates the level of profitability we are capable of generating. Cata, our CFO, will detail more what can be expected on a go-forward basis at our stage. So at this point, I will turn the call over to Cata to review our second quarter results in greater detail.