Playstudios Inc

NASDAQ:MYPS

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Operator]

Greetings, and welcome to the PLAYSTUDIOS' Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Samir Jain, Head of Investor Relations and Treasury. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

[Samir Jain, executive]

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for PLAYSTUDIOS' Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. Joining me on the call today are Chairman and CEO, Andrew Pascal; and our CFO, Scott Peterson.

Before we begin, let me remind you that during the course of this call we will make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current expectations and beliefs and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings for a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that may affect our future results.

I'd like to remind everyone that we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures during this call. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Our results are prepared in accordance with GAAP, and a reconciliation to comparable GAAP measures will be provided in our second quarter earnings release and in our SEC filings.

With that, I'll pass the call to Andrew.

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Thank you, Samir, and welcome, everyone, to our second quarter 2024 earnings call. As always, our commentary today is in addition to the financial disclosures we made in our press release. I encourage you to take a look at the release for a summary of our recent performance.

We were very active this quarter, completing many of the strategic initiatives we've been discussing for some time. As such, I'd like to use my time today to discuss these efforts in greater detail and let Scott follow with a summary of the quarter and our 2024 outlook.

I'd like to start by offering some general observations and thoughts. This call marks our 3-year anniversary since becoming a public company. When we made the transition, we shared our vision and plans for our future. We described our intention to expand our portfolio of games, scale our collection of players, enrich and more fully leverage our loyalty program, and diversify our business. While our path to achieving these goals has been a bit different than originally imagined, we stand here today having made meaningful progress.

From 2021 to 2023, please consider that we've expanded our game portfolio from 4 social casino apps to a collection of 20 games across most of the popular casual categories. Among them is the beloved Tetris franchise, a game we acquired along with the exclusive mobile rights for up to 8 more years.

We've increased our daily active players, or DAU, nearly 230% from 1.5 million to 3.4 million players. We unified our myVIP loyalty program across our primary apps, and since the program's inception, extended nearly 900 million of real-world benefits to our players across a collection of nearly 600 unique rewards.

We scaled revenues 8% from $287 million to $311 million. More importantly, we diversified our mix of business, with AdMon games now accounting for roughly 19% of our revenues and direct off-platform purchases accounting for nearly 4% of our current sales. And we've increased adjusted AEBITDA margins by 620 basis points, resulting in adjusted AEBITDA growing from $39.5 million to $62.3 million or nearly 60%.

I should note that we accomplished these things while contending with the structural challenges with user acquisition brought on by Apple and Google's changes to their data privacy and advertising practices. The secular contraction within our primary social casino game genre increased competition for game assets among companies looking to grow inorganically in an attempt of being a De-SPAC public company.

These dynamics along with our lack of trading volume that continued to put downward pressure on our stock price. In response, we've been opportunistic and repurchased nearly 15% of the company's Class A common stock while maintaining a solid balance sheet with over $100 million of cash, no debt and over $80 million of borrowing capacity.

I offer these reflections to set some context for our current performance and outlook. We're stronger, bigger, more diversified and more profitable today than when we went public just 3 years ago. I assure you we remain focused on continuing to strengthen our company for the long term, and we'll continue to make decisions that we believe will better position us for the future.

With that said, let's narrow our focus and discuss the key events from this past quarter. Let's start with our playGAMES division and Tetris. The iconic brand had its 40th anniversary in June and we celebrated with 2 major initiatives: the refresh of Tetris Prime and the initial limited release of a brand-new game Tetris Block Puzzle.

The refresh of our Tetris Prime product enhances the look and feel of the existing game and aligns it to be more consistent with the rest of our portfolio. The game's new contemporary feel includes new animation, sound effects and a choice between the classic marathon mode and a new faster-paced adventure mode with additional levels. Player feedback has been positive and we're optimistic the changes will further increase interest in the game.

The launch of Tetris Block Puzzle represents our first extension of the Tetris franchise in the beginnings of our long-term ambition to establish it as a premier mobile gaming franchise. The game combines the popular block puzzle format with Tetris' incredible brand recognition. Players can choose between a adventure mode, which offers level-based progression, and high score mode, which challenges players to surpass their previous best scores.

The game is now available globally, and we're actively testing and optimizing our user acquisition strategies in anticipation of a full-scale promoted launch in the coming months. I want to remind everyone that like any new game, the outcome and ultimate success is indeterminate. However, early game metrics show promise and player feedback has been positive.

In addition to our block puzzle app, we're working on other new Tetris teams and are hopeful that the third game in the franchise will be released later this year or early in 2025. Our recent acquisition of Pixode allows us to combine the innovative execution of their highly engaging block puzzle game with the strength of the Tetris brand. Much like the superscale games such as Coin Master and Monopoly Go!, Pixode combines the proven raid and defend mechanic with the popular block puzzle game format.

We believe thoughtfully applying the Tetris brand to this game could substantially upend the category and drive meaningful ARPDAU. As evidenced by the modest upfront cash payment of under $5 million, this is an early-stage company and there is much work to be done to produce an engaging and scalable product. However, we're excited about this opportunity and believe the founders and talent at Pixode will prove to be an incredible asset for our company.

Beyond these recent accomplishments, we continue to work on our ongoing initiatives to strengthen our game portfolio and position us for growth. These include improving the monetization trends in myVEGAS and myKONAMI, growing profits in Brainium, expanding our mix of direct off-platform business and the adoption and renewed merchandising of myVIP in all of our primary titles.

I'm pleased with the progress we made this quarter and wanted to share some highlights. myVEGAS and myKONAMI are both showing increases in ARPDAU and in the percentage of paying users. As popular games with a significant base of daily and monthly players, the primary opportunity is to more effectively convert and monetize them. The rise in percentage of paying users suggests this is happening, which is very encouraging.

Brainium is also seeing an increase in ARPDAU driven largely by new advertising formats. This was part of our thesis when we acquired the company at the end of 2022 as we believe the games were not monetizing at optimal rates. Our direct business has been steadily increasing through the year and was roughly 4.5% of total revenues this quarter. Our goal remains to continue to increase our direct business by leveraging our loyalty model to incentivize off-platform purchases.

Finally, on myVIP adoption, we made significant progress this quarter and expect a full refresh of our myVIP branding and functionality to be completed by year-end. Collectively, with these key initiatives and our plans going forward, we remain keenly focused on expanding our audience, scaling revenues, improving margins and driving higher profits.

Let's shift our focus and share some highlights within our playAWARDS division. We kicked off a key strategic initiative this quarter with the launch of our myVIP World Tournament of Slots. This campaign embodies the unique position of our company, allowing us to integrate in-game features and content with real-world events and value in unparalleled ways.

The inaugural tournament will be hosted by the Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas and will take place October 24 through 27. 500 dedicated players will be competing for a top cash price of $1 million and the title of World's Greatest Slot Player. We're already seeing a buzz building across our games as players buy one of the coveted tickets to the tournament. We expect the tournament to drive an increase in player engagement and increase the brand awareness of our games, but it will also continue the momentum we're seeing in our myVIP program by bringing more attention to this industry-leading platform.

We continue to work on advancing myVIP's technologies and adding new players and rewards partners to this ecosystem. This quarter, we added numerous brands such as Sonos, Six Flags, Regal Cinemas and the Disneyland Resort. We now have 131 rewards partners that offered over $160 million in retail rewards during the quarter. No other gaming publisher offers anything close to our collection of benefits, which we believe to be a significant competitive advantage for our company.

Before I turn the call over to Scott, I'd like to touch on a few other general topics. On the M&A front, we continue to aggressively seek and qualify additional opportunities. Our goal remains to find large transformative acquisitions that can increase the scope and reach of our business. These opportunities are limited and difficult to execute, but we remain diligent in their pursuit. As Pixode demonstrates, the search for these acquisitions does not disqualify smaller opportunities that we believe can be additive to our business.

Beyond M&A, we remain committed to using our capital to support the organic growth of our core businesses in addition to repurchasing our stock. On the latter, I was pleased we were able to execute the purchase of Microsoft's interest of 11.7 million shares in the quarter. The purchase was done at a meaningful discount to the average trading price of our shares and removed the potential overhang of a prolonged disposition by Microsoft in the secondary markets.

Despite the continuing pressure on our stock price, we believe the intrinsic value of our company is well above where it's been marked by the public markets today. We have 46 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization, and we'll continue to evaluate opportunities to acquire our stock.

So those are some of the more noteworthy highlights. I'll now turn the call over to Scott to discuss the quarterly results and our outlook for the year. Scott?

[Scott Peterson, executive]

Thank you, Andrew. In addition to today's press release, our Form 10-Q will be filed shortly. Please look to those filings for a comprehensive summary of our second quarter results.

Net revenues in the quarter were $72.6 million, a 7% decrease versus a year ago. Weaker results were driven by softness in our social casino portfolio, which continues to be negatively impacted by an industry-wide slowdown. We continue to expect this category to remain challenged throughout the year. As discussed in past calls, our focus remains on the opportunities unique to our games, and we believe the progress there can drive growth despite a challenging backdrop.

Our casual portfolio continues to perform strongly with notable strength of Brainium. Andrew discussed some of the other drivers, and I will reiterate that we expect the continued scaling of advertising and the full adoption of loyalty to support ongoing momentum. Likewise, Tetris Prime continues to grow, and our hope is that the addition of Tetris Block Puzzle will drive even more interest in the franchise.

Second quarter consolidated adjusted AEBITDA was $14.1 million compared to $16.3 million a year ago. As would be expected with a decline in revenue, we also experienced a decline in operating margins as the impact of our fixed costs were accentuated. We believe that our revenue will strengthen in the future, and as it does, we expect margins to return to their recent levels. Longer term, we still believe our business can reach margin parity with our peers.

The second quarter also marked the last period in '24 where we will compare against the previously disclosed nonrecurring licensing agreement. That agreement added nearly $2 million to our revenue in the second quarter of '23, most of which flowed directly to adjusted AEBITDA.

DAU was 3.2 million and MAU was 13.6 million, down 12% and 2%, respectively, from last year. DAU declines were driven by social casino and Brainium, continuing the first quarter trends. Tetris continued to see a pickup in users, though the growth was moderated from the first quarter when interest peaked due to Willis Gibson beating the game.

ARPDAU for the first quarter was $0.25, up 9% from a year ago results. Similar to the first quarter, we saw double-digit ARPDAU gains in myVEGAS, myKONAMI and Brainium.

We've been working on specific monetization initiatives in these games, so the results are very encouraging. We are still implementing changes and believe further gains are possible.

Turning to playAWARDS. We continued to make progress expanding the functionality and scope of platform. We closed the quarter with 570 available rewards and 131 reward partners. Partners added this quarter include the Disneyland Resort, Regal Cinemas, Sonos and Six Flags. Over 500,000 rewards were purchased during the quarter, a 12% increase from a year ago. We remain focused on the full integration of playAWARDS in myVIP and continue to seek out opportunities to monetize the platform.

We ended the quarter with approximately $106 million in cash, no borrowings and full availability of our $81 million revolver. As Andrew mentioned, we purchased nearly 9% of our Class A shares from Microsoft, accounting for the majority of the sequential decline in our cash balance.

Our share repurchase authorization stands at 46 million, and we continue to do share buybacks as an accretive and compelling use of our capital. Similarly, our broader capital allocation goals remain the same: investing in our games, building and scaling playAWARDS and the pursuit of strategic and accretive M&A.

Lastly, our 2024 outlook. Given the weakness in the broader social casino category in the first 6 months and our expectations for continued softness throughout the year, we are revising our 2024 guidance. We now project revenue will be between $285 million and $295 million, and consolidated adjusted AEBITDA will be between $55 million and $60 million. These compared to our prior forecast of between $315 million and $325 million in revenue and between $65 million and $70 million of consolidated adjusted AEBITDA.

I will now turn the call back to Andrew for some closing remarks.

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Thank you, Scott. Despite these secular challenges in social casino, I remain bullish on our business. In little over a year, we've grown our mix of casual revenues from virtually 0% to over 20%. We've expanded our adjusted AEBITDA margins by over 600 basis points since '21 and raised adjusted AEBITDA by close to 60%. We secured the mobile license for the highly valuable Tetris brand for the next 8 years, and have already launched a new Tetris game. We're hard at work developing new titles and making Tetris a multi-game franchise.

With the purchase of our shares owned by Microsoft, we bought back approximately 10% of our outstanding Class A common stock this year and close to 15% since we initiated our current program in November of 2022.

Our balance sheet remains pristine with no leverage and close to $1 in cash per share. While these accomplishments are absent in our share price, we remain committed to increasing the intrinsic value of the company and believe our stock price will ultimately reflect its true value.

Lastly, I want to thank our talented teams across the globe that remain so committed to our company, our players and our products. It's their passion and dedication that enables us to continue to move forward and further position the company for future success.

Operator, please open the lines for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

[Ryan Sigdahl, analyst]

Maybe I want to start with guidance. Fully kind of aware of the industry challenges that are present for you guys and everybody. But looking at the second half implied revenue guidance, previously, it was implying kind of up mid-single digits, now it's down high-single digits. I guess anything besides the industry headwinds to call out? Whether anything had slipped? Or puts, takes, I guess, within your business, I guess, for such a wide swing in the back half?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

No. I mean it's really -- the change in the trajectory of the business is concentrated in, I think, 2 areas relative to what was our forecast. First is what's happening in social casino. And quite frankly, if you look across our 3 core titles, the shortfall is almost entirely attributed to one. And there's actually, I think, more positive signs associated with the other 2. But the social casino category just continues to be challenging.

And then the other is we had anticipated that we would be scaling at this point our Tetris Block Puzzle product. It's in the market. It's open more generally across all of the primary markets. But we're not yet investing as aggressively as we originally anticipated in scaling it up. We certainly hope to be doing that in the coming months. The game is a great game. All of the metrics are very healthy. The challenge that we're having right now is just optimizing our capacity to acquire players. And so we get some amount of organic traffic, but it's modest relative to our other Tetris products. And we need to stimulate more growth by being able to go and invest and acquire new users affordably and profitably. And it's just proven to be super challenging. There are incumbents in the category that are spending a lot of money making the cost per install nearly prohibitive.

We think we'll overcome it because we have what we believe is without question the strongest product in the category. And so we're exploring and testing a variety of different strategies and tactics. So we hope to be able to do that before the end of the year. But those are the 2 reasons really for the change in the overall forecast: social casino, one product within the portfolio specifically, and the delay in scaling our Block Puzzle product.

[Ryan Sigdahl, analyst]

Helpful. And then just switching over to playAWARDS. Any update -- or I guess can you update on the pipeline of potential customers and monetizing that in a B2B fashion?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

No, nothing material to really provide just yet. I can tell you that we're continuing to look at those opportunities. We've been a bit more consumed with the focus on stabilizing the core casino portfolio and a bunch of initiatives and rationalizing the cost structure of the business in the light of where revenues are pacing. So the team is intensely focused right now on the cost structure of the business and continue to refine it. And then we'll be able to free up the mindshare that's needed in order to really advance that aspect of our business. But right now, stabilize the core business, focus on what we believe to be the more near-term drivers of growth, and also make sure that the cost structure of the business is being attended to. So that's what we're focused on.

[Ryan Sigdahl, analyst]

Last one for me. Just anything from a Q3 to Q4 cadence from a cost standpoint, whether it be advertising or customer acquisition, competing against the election or the myVIP World Tournament of Slots, how much of material potentially impact that is? But just anything to be aware from kind of a cost and/or a sequential standpoint into Q3, Q4?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Nothing meaningful. I mean there's -- obviously, the fourth quarter seasonality. I mean you highlight the election. Not entirely sure how that's going to impact some of the investments we make on UA front. But no, nothing meaningful to get at.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Cory Carpenter with JPMorgan.

[Cory Carpenter, analyst]

I got 2. Maybe to start, just hoping you could expand a bit on the myVEGAS and KONAMI initiatives. Maybe what exactly you're doing and how far along you are on that journey? And then you just mentioned, Andrew, there's one game that's lagging. Are the things you're doing here that you think could be expanded to other games in the portfolio and applied it and helpful, in that manner?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Sure. So myVEGAS and KONAMI -- I'll start with myVEGAS. I mean myVEGAS continues to be the bright spot in the portfolio. It's actually been growing at a double-digit rate year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter, month-over-month. So it has solid momentum, and it actually gives us a sense that there is an opportunity for us to stabilize the overall casino portfolio and enjoy some modest growth from it. There's work to do, though.

In the case of KONAMI, its performance is generally flat, so it's stable. It's not enjoying any growth for the moment. But we believe that it too is on a path where it can enjoy some modest growth. POP! Slots has seen contraction. Particularly over this last quarter, there was a pretty meaningful deceleration in its performance. A lot of it was a function of some things that we did in the way that we are managing the economy of that product. And without getting into specifics, I would say that its underperformance was as much a function of how we operated the product as it was a reflection of overall market conditions. Historically, that product has been a major contributor for us, and we expect that as we address the issues that we've identified that it will continue to be.

As far as the changes that we made, if you recall back in the second quarter of last year, we went through a fairly meaningful restructuring of the casino portfolio. myVEGAS and KONAMI were owned and managed -- when I say owned, they were run by teams that were based one in Asia, myVEGAS' case, and out of Austin, in the case of KONAMI. We elected to concentrate our casino portfolio and run it out of our Tel Aviv studio, where there was deep talent and we felt that the products could benefit from their shared experience.

So we went through that restructuring and completed it in the second quarter. It started to stabilize and get some traction as we moved through the third quarter. That momentum was disrupted a little bit with the conflict in Israel, which has proven to continue to add complexity to the things that we're trying to do. But we ultimately did, in fact, accomplish what we set out to do, which was reconstitute new leadership teams focused on advancing those products.

In the case of both myVEGAS and KONAMI, we're seeing encouraging results. We unfortunately have not seen or had the same experience at the top, but continue to bear down and stabilize and feel like there's an opportunity for us to reset that product.

[Cory Carpenter, analyst]

And then just for a follow-up. Tetris, so a big uplift in 1Q from the player beating the game. How was the response to the 40th anniversary in terms of just consumer excitement? And I know Tetris did some specific marketing around it. How do consumers respond to that relative to our expectations?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Yes. I mean relative to our expectations, it felt quite short of them. And we saw some uptick in organic traffic, but relative to our experience from the first quarter with what we refer to as the Willis effect, not nearly the same. So we didn't see the same kind of interest and social engagement and activation that would have translated to the kind of growth that we had imagined. So it fell short of our expectations.

With that said, we've kind of reloaded. This is the year of Tetris' 40th anniversary. We've got some other cool things that we're doing with some interesting campaigns and influencers that we'll continue to take advantage of, its milestone birthday, and we'll see if we can find a way to generate that organic interest. But we still feel like there's an opportunity there.

And with that said, the year-over-year performance for Tetris continues to be strong. So when you look at how it's performed this quarter relative to the same quarter last year, it's up. And we'll continue, as I said, support it and take advantage of these opportunities.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Aaron Lee with Macquarie.

[Aaron Lee, analyst]

I just want to dig in a little deeper on the Tetris -- the new Tetris product. Can you just talk a little bit more about what you're seeing in the early days, the engagement, retention, and maybe any cross-sell opportunities to your existing Tetris game? And I know you mentioned you guys are still looking in the right place to kind of scale up the marketing. But can you just talk about how you would judge what is the right time to kind of lean into this game a little bit more or what you would like to see before you make that choice?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Sure. So as far as the game is concerned, what we're seeing -- the retention is very strong. Early retention is definitely where you would want and need it to be so that you can go and start stacking cohorts and scaling to the audience. And that's holding up as we see those cohorts mature. So the day 30 retention is strong, again, in keeping with what we would want to see in that cohort. Then it's really about our capacity to go and acquire new players at a price that allows us to get the returns that we're looking for within the time horizon we're holding the game to, currently look for at about an 18-month payback on the paid acquisition.

And in light of where we're seeing CPIs right now, that's a bit challenged. With that said, I can share that in the last 30 days, the team has done a great job when we see CPIs coming down. So the way that we are talking about the product, converting traffic and ultimately, driving installs and retaining installs, the metrics are improving. And that is what will dictate when we're ready to invest in it more aggressively. It's when the cost of acquiring a player hits a certain threshold that allows us to confidently achieve a return on that player within the 18-month horizon that we've set for it. As we hit that threshold, we'll start layering in more UA investment.

[Aaron Lee, analyst]

Got it. That's very helpful. And just broadly, I want to touch on your cost structure. How are you guys thinking about your cost structure right now? Do you feel like it's in the right place? Or are there opportunities to become more efficient while also making sure that you don't impact your product pipeline and the things that you have planned?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Well, it's not in the right place in light of our current revenue pace. And so I can tell you as the senior team as a broader leadership team, we're constantly looking at how and where we can improve our efficiency and productivity and support our products more efficiently and take costs out of the business. That is an active, ongoing and discipline that the team is intensely focused on.

With that said, it's complicated because we want to continue to service and support our products with the new content and features that they need in order to sustain or ultimately improve their performance. And then in addition to sustaining the existing products, they are the investments that we're making in the initiatives that we think are going to drive our future growth, which are largely focused on Tetris as a franchise.

So we believe in those opportunities between Tetris and playAWARDS. We're going to continue to invest in them because we're growth-oriented as a business. And so I would -- and of course, we don't get credit for that today. In fact, it compromises our margins and overall performance because those initiatives aren't yet contributing to our top line performance or growth.

But we believe in them. I think that we're applying the right level of rigor in the way that we're analyzing our progress and the performance of those initiatives and looking at and testing their market fit in order to get them right and ready to scale. And we believe that the investments we make in them in relationship to the asymmetrical upside that they represent is absolutely the right thing for us to be doing. So we're being, I think, vigilant about looking for and taking the cost out of our business without adversely impact its current momentum, and then strategically investing in our new initiatives that are going to drive our future growth.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Clark Lampen with BTIG.

[William Lampen, analyst]

[Technical Difficulty] but the game that you were talking about within your social casino portfolio where you're seeing some pressure right now, is this sort of similar to what you [Technical Difficulty] with the new Tetris [Technical Difficulty] trying to scale up [Technical Difficulty] sort of match to your threshold? Or is there an issue with the engagement? Just love to understand I guess what's behind on the pressure? And then maybe more broadly how [Technical Difficulty] think it is.

The second question I have is, I just wanted to follow up to your comments around sort of in playAWARDS opportunity. Could you help, I guess, kind of articulate for us what it is that you see, I guess? And understanding that resources are being devoted elsewhere right now, what is it so far that sort of hurt the scale average [ score ] right now? Is there kind of sort of the [Technical Difficulty] motion, you've experienced a little bit more friction with [Technical Difficulty] onboarding? Any insights, I guess, [Technical Difficulty] would be appreciated.

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Okay. You were breaking up quite a bit, but I think I was able to decipher the 2 questions. The first one, you were asking about the game within the casino portfolio that is underperforming, not meeting our expectations, and was that a result of a similar dynamic that we're seeing on the Tetris product that I just described, that it's a function of being able to go into the market and acquire players at a price that warranted or justified in order to drive future growth. The short answer is, no, that's not the reason.

POP! Slots has always been a strong game and it's been the leader in terms of its capacity to monetize the existing audience. The problems with the product has to do with some of the things we did in managing its underlying economy, meaning, the amount of value and play time that we afford to the players for free, and when it is that we introduce friction into their cycle of play that requires that they actually start to spend money. It's complicated.

We made some decisions that ultimately resulted in players not monetizing to the same degree. They're still active within our network and playing, but able to play without spending as much, is the short of it. It's not the entire issue. It is one of the fundamental issues. It since has been focused on and there's a number of things we're going to do to address it. Some of the initial things we've already done and we've seen some improvement already. And so I would say a very different set of issues that have impacted the performance of that product.

Unfortunately, it's the largest of our products in our entire portfolio, so a 8% to 9% reduction in its performance is pretty material as far as the overall pace and outlook. So while most of our other products, whether they are the other 2 social casino products or our casual games, are actually stable or growing year-over-year. That growth was more than offset by the compromises within POP! Slots.

So a different set of issues. The team is intensely focused on them. We've done a bunch of things already to rehabilitate that product. And we feel like we have a clear plan for how is that we're going to restore it and get it to a place where it's at least stable, if not growing modestly.

I think on your second question, you just wanted a bit more color on playAWARDS. And it is an opportunity. And I alluded in responding to an earlier question that the leadership team across the company is intensely focused on really looking at rationalizing our business and how and where it is that we can pull cost out of the company and make sure that the things that we are focused on are the more immediate things that will translate to value. And so the playAWARDS team is very focused on adopting and optimizing the playAWARDS program within our own portfolio of games. So not spending as much time advancing the platform to be provided to a third party.

We have done a bunch of work, which I alluded to in the last couple of calls, around getting out into the market and speaking with a number of different game publishers about their potential interest in teaming up with us and serving as a pilot partner to adopt the programs that they too could test whether or not they would enjoy the same kinds of long-term retention and loyalty lift benefits that we see in our portfolio. And so while we still believe there is that opportunity, it's not commanding or getting as much of our attention right now. So I hope that answers the playAWARDS question.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from Martin Yang with Oppenheimer & Company.

[Martin Yang, analyst]

My one question is about the timing of the third Tetris game. Is the launch plan relating to the third game tied to how you scale Tetris Block Puzzle and how the current UA campaign trends would then inform on your division on the third Tetris game's launch date?

[Unknown Executive]

Is this third game dependent on how long Puzzle does the release date.

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

No. The short answer is no. I mean, we really look at each of these games in terms of -- they each -- we have an overall strategy for Tetris. There's a continuum of products that satisfy what the Tetris purist would want to play and what we believe a new more casual Tetris player might react and respond to. And the games each have a distinct position along that kind of strategic continuum, if you will. And so they're all advancing independent of one another. We believe that as we get them into the market and start to scale them, that we can look at the opportunities to cross-promote. If someone moves from being a more casual player to a more sophisticated player to then at Tetris purist, we think we can help move some of those players across the portfolio of products.

But they all get advanced independently, put in the market and tested independently, and they have to justify their ongoing investment both in the development effort as well as, ultimately, the scaling and marketing of them. So what I do hope, though, is that the products that are in the market today, Tetris Prime and Tetris Block Puzzle, both the successes and challenges that we're having in the way that we're marketing them will definitely inform our strategy and approach for how it is that we look to launch the successive or the next set of products within the franchise. But they're not dependent on one game working for us to continue to advance and invest in another product.

[Martin Yang, analyst]

I have a follow-up. As you referenced cross-promotion, can you maybe generally describe how much cross-promotion have you applied across all the games, including social casino and the casual portfolio?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Yes, it's a great question. Not nearly enough. So it was one of the core aspects of our whole thesis and frankly, our own experience in the past. When we introduce new products, we incorporate the loyalty program, we aggressively cross-promote and we communicate all the benefits to the player of actually adopting and engaging with one of our new games are adopting our loyalty program into our other titles so that we have the capacity to not just cross promote them, but to incentivize the adoption and playing of our other products is not something that we've executed on to our expectations. So we're in the cycle of that. We're just a few months away from having the program unified and being it to manage it, as I just described. So we should be able to see better performance and harvesting of players from our existing network that we've not yet really seen the full benefit of.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from David Pang with Stifel.

[David Pang, analyst]

Just wanted to follow up on the myVEGAS title. And given the improving trends for the title, are there plans to invest in marketing for the game?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Yes, we do today. In fact, we just recently -- we're constantly on a cycle of every 2 weeks doing a wholesale evaluation of every title in the portfolio and what its marketing budget is and whether there need to be adjustments. And keep in mind, the campaigns for these titles are managed literally daily, if not the intraday, but the overall budget that we're allocating gets revisited every 2 weeks, and we've just elected to allocate more marketing dollars to that type. So yes, it's worthy of it, and we're going to start spending on -- more money than we have.

[David Pang, analyst]

And just would love to hear your thoughts on what's causing the persistent weakness for the overall social casino category. Are you seeing any impact from iGaming? Is there any kind of overlap there on the player base?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

I don't think it's coming from iGaming. I think it's coming from a new form of free-to-play casino products, which is the sweepstakes category. If you're looking at the sweepstakes industry and its growth over the past several years, it's gone from $0.5 million industry to nearly a $3 billion industry this year. And these sweepstakes products are free-to-play social casino products. They're just accessed initially through the web. They have companion mobile apps. Most of the activity, 70% plus of the engagement in these products is through a mobile device.

So it is I would say, a complement to, if not part of what I would characterize as part of the social casino category. And so if you were to look at really the headwinds that everybody -- the purist social casino players on mobile and desktop, like the primary, I think, headwinds are coming out of this emergence of the sweepstakes opportunities.

And so what is it about them that is so interesting and compelling? They have a dual currency model when they initiate play, they get a bunch of currency that they play for free, and then there's a mode that they can toggle into that allows them to actually play with a currency that they can accumulate and cash out for real cash value. And that fits within the sweepstakes, laws and statutes across all the different states. There's about 45 states that accommodate or allow sweepstakes form of gaming. So I would say more than the pure interactive gambling is the sweepstakes products that are really fighting into the more traditional social casino market.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Greg Gibas with Northland Securities.

[Gregory Gibas, analyst]

I wanted to get a sense of kind of within your updated guidance, what you assume for performance within the social casino versus the casual categories in the back half?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Yes, we generally kind of assumed similar trends to what we're seeing today in terms of pace. I mean we believe it will stabilize POP!, but generally, we're going to continue to be pressure on social casino as a category coming from, as I just described. We think some of the broader market dynamics, the emergence of sweeps. So, and we'll talk about kind of our strategies and plans for sweeps on a future call when we're in a better position too. But as far as the social casino category, we're generally forecasting similar performance to what we've experienced so far this year.

[Gregory Gibas, analyst]

And regarding kind of what you said about M&A, seeking large transformative acquisitions, kind of hard to come by, hard to get over the finish line. How active do you expect it to be maybe in the back half? Should we expect some smaller opportunities like we saw from Pixode? And then given your commentary on the sweepstakes category, does it make sense for you guys to maybe pursue that?

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Jason, do you want to take that question?

[Jason Hahn, executive]

Yes, sure. So we remain aggressive but disciplined in our pursuit of M&A. It's certainly something we're focused on. At all times, we have an active pipeline of companies that we are pursuing that fit into the various buckets, some of which are in that transformative bucket that are meaningful scale, but will obviously are more complex and harder to pull off as you alluded to. And some of which are really attractive, more tuck-in acquisitions that we think are strategically compelling and accretive that we can go after. And so we remain open to all of those different opportunities that can add value to the business and be accretive to either our gross or to our margin profile.

When it comes to the sweepstakes business, we continue to look at different opportunities to evaluate that space. We're being very thoughtful in the way that we enter that space and consider all the different opportunities there as well, given how big of a market it has become and how dynamic it is, we want to be thoughtful, but we can expect to hear more from us around that in the future.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand the floor back to management for closing remarks.

[Andrew Pascal, executive]

Thanks very much. So look, before we conclude the call, I just want to reaffirm a couple of key things. First of all, as a management leadership team, we are intensely focused on making sure that our business is operating efficiently and productively and that where there is an opportunity for us to take cost out of the business and improve our margins we're going to find it, and we're going to do it.

But we're also a company that is deeply committed to future growth. It's not as deterministic as we'd like it to be. We're creating products that don't have functional utility, their entertainment products that appeal to people, more of an emotional claim. We believe in the opportunities that we're investing in. We're going to continue to invest in those things because of the future growth they represent. And hopefully, we'll continue to find the right balance between optimizing the performance of our business as it is today as challenging as the environment is, while still investing in those things are going to drive our future growth.

So I appreciate that it's certainly difficult to engender the kind of confidence from the investor community that we would hope and want particularly when we're having to adjust our guidance. But I believe that I, along with the team are doing all the things that we need to do to be responsible and reacting to both our current performance while still staying focused on what we can and should be investing in, in order to scale up our business and build the kind of confidence going forward.

So I appreciate everybody's time, continued support, and I look forward to talking about our progress on our upcoming calls. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

And with that, we conclude today's conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a good day. Thank you.