PlayAGS Inc

NYSE:AGS

Earnings Call Analysis

Record Shipments and Strong Cash Flow

Global shipments soared by 36% year-over-year, reaching a record 1,519 units in the fourth quarter, with average selling prices up by 7%. Fueled by the Spectra cabinets and diverse game content, the company expects to exceed the current 3% growth consensus. Free cash flow hit $11 million in Q4, and 2023's total approximated $27 million. With a disciplined approach, 2024 free cash flow growth is projected at 25% or more, and net leverage is forecasted to reduce to 2.7x-3x. The company will bolster its international reach, leveraging new cabinet launches. While 2024 margins are expected to improve modestly, the company is poised for long-term success with its strategic expansion into new gaming sectors like mechanical reel and jumbo products.

A Record-Setting Year for Global Unit Shipments

AGS saw remarkable growth in 2023, culminating in a fourth-quarter surge of global unit shipments by 36% year-over-year, reaching a record of 1,519 units. This marked the third consecutive quarter of growth exceeding 30%. Such impressive results stem from sustained momentum in the Spectra 43 line, the inception of the Spectra 49 cabinet, and an expanded customer base now close to 180 unique customers.

Robust Expansion in the Gaming Operations Segment

Continuing an 11-quarter streak, the company's Gaming Operations (game ops) segment saw a record $31.68 RPD, driven by robust growth in the domestic premium game footprint and optimization of the core unit installed base. With a domestic EGM installed base on a moderate long-term growth trajectory, AGS looks to outperform Wall Street's gross gaming revenue expectations by expanding its premium product mix and optimizing its asset base throughout 2024.

International Market Success and Future Stability

The international segment enjoyed a 16% year-over-year uplift in fourth-quarter gaming operations revenue, supported by stable macroeconomic conditions and strong performances in established markets like Mexico. With a growing RPD and a commitment to optimization and stable trends, the company is poised for modest constant currency growth in the international segment in 2024.

Table Products Revenues Hit All-Time High

Table Products revenues saw a jump of over 20% year-over-year to a record $4.8 million, propelled by increased adoption of the PAX S card shuffler and innovative technologies like Bonus Xtreme. AGS expects to sustain this segment's revenue through consistent growth and new product launches in 2024, fostering a steady lease revenue stream.

Interactive Division Skyrockets, Signaling Strong Future Growth

AGS's Interactive division saw a 30%+ year-over-year revenue increase to a record $3.4 million, with segment EBITDA doubling to $1.3 million. This growth trajectory is expected to continue into 2024, supported by a diverse content roadmap, new customer and jurisdictional launches, and effective business development, promising the most significant year-over-year revenue growth of all segments.

Financial Outlook Paves the Way for Elevated Margins

Achieving an adjusted EBITDA margin surpassing 45%, AGS exceeded its own expectations for Q4. For 2024, the company anticipates an adjusted EBITDA margin between 44.5% to 45.5%, representing an improvement over 2023. This confident outlook is backed by targeted full-year revenue growth and sustained investment in growth-enabling R&D, which is projected to remain at 12% of revenue.

Investing in Capital to Fuel Future Innovations

AGS is projecting a full-year capital expenditure of $65 million to $70 million for 2024, which includes the anticipated capitalized R&D. They are priming themselves to continue innovating and maintaining their growth momentum, despite a planned sale of used Orion cabinets in Q1, which may slightly impact margins early on before rebounding later in the year.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Operator]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for attending today's PlayAGS Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Sara, and I'll be your moderator for today. [Operator Instructions]I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Brad Boyer, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.

[Brad Boyer, executive]

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the PlayAGS Incorporated Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. With me today are David Lopez, CEO; and Kimo Akiona, CFO. A slide presentation reviewing our key operational and financial highlights for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, can be found on our Investor Relations website, investors.playags.com.On today's call, we will provide an overview of our Q4 and full year 2023 financial performance and offer perspective on our current financial outlook for the business. This conference call will include the use of forward-looking statements. Any statement that refers to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events, including financial projections or future market conditions, is a forward-looking statement based on assumptions today. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, and we make no obligation to update our disclosures. For more information about factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, please refer to the earnings press release we issued today as well as risks described in our annual report on Form 10-K, particularly in the section of these documents titled Risk Factors.Our commentary today will also include non-GAAP financial measures. We believe the use of these non-GAAP financial measures provides an additional tool for investors to use in evaluating ongoing operating results and trends in our business. These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP metrics for our reported results can be found in our earnings release issued today. Please refer to our filings with the SEC for more information.With that, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, David Lopez.

[David Lopez, executive]

Thanks, Brad, and good afternoon, everyone. The fourth quarter capped off an exceptional year for AGS, with revenues and adjusted EBITDA increasing 15% year-over-year. Q4 represented our 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth and our fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth. The strength in the quarter was broad-based with all 3 operating segments, setting new quarterly records for revenue and adjusted EBITDA. The quality and consistency of our financial performance is a true reflection of our incredibly talented and focused team, increasingly deep and diverse product offerings across all 3 segments and improving efficiency and effectiveness of our execution.Before providing some perspective on the current year, I would like to highlight a few notable achievements for the fourth quarter. First, Global EGM sales increased 36% year-over-year to a record 1,519 units, surpassing the 30% growth level for the third consecutive quarter. Just like Q3, our record performance was not driven by a concentration of sales to any 1 customer or within a jurisdiction as we sold units to nearly 180 unique customers in the quarter, a new record for the company.Second, our Interactive revenue grew by over 30% versus the prior year to $3.4 million, with strong flow-through of increasing Interactive adjusted EBITDA by nearly 160% year-over-year to a record $1.3 million. Our refreshed and energized Interactive team continues to further cement our position as a leading B2B content provider within the global real-money gaming market.Third, Table Products sales and recurring revenue reached new records in the quarter, producing an approximately 20% increase in adjusted EBITDA to a record $2.8 million and pushing full year adjusted EBITDA to approximately $10 million. I think it is important to remind everyone our table segment was doing less than $1 million of annual EBITDA in 2018 with a 60% growth CAGR over the past 5 years, reflecting the incredible work from our entire tables team.Fourth, free cash flow increased more than 45% year-over-year to $11 million, topping the $10 million for the third consecutive quarter. We are encouraged by the progress made improving the consistency and magnitude of our free cash flow generation over the past several quarters, and I believe our organizational focus on this key metric will continue to drive consistent growth in our free cash flow conversion in 2024 and beyond. Kimo will provide some context around our free cash flow outlook for 2024 in his prepared remarks.Finally, we ended the year with net leverage at 3.2x, down from 3.8x at the start of the year and slightly below the low end of our targeted 3.25x to 3.5x range. We have considerably improved our leverage profile over the past several years, and we'll continue to prioritize further deleveraging as our preferred use of excess capital for the foreseeable future with a path to below 3.0x well within our site.With all of that said, I would like to turn my attention to 2024 and the exciting path forward for our company. As you have heard me say on prior calls, I continue to believe we have the strongest, most diverse product offerings in our company's history. Additionally, the quality of our team across all 3 operating segments and at the corporate level has never been better. Lastly, the consistency and quality of our execution continues to steadily improve as evidenced by our recent string of record operating performance. Collectively, I believe the 3 Ps of people, product and process position us to not only improve upon our record 2023 results in the current year, but also set us up for compelling multiyear growth trajectory.Within our EGM segment, the expanded scale and scope of our game content and cabinets portfolio, focused go-to-market strategy and driven sales team have us well positioned on both sides of the business. For the first time in the company's history, we've had 2 high-performing cabinets, Spectra 43 and Spectra 49 with deep game libraries targeting the most in-demand product segments. Additionally, as we progress into the back half of 2024, we remain on schedule to make our initial push into the mechanical reel and jumbo segments with our mech reel cabinet recently receiving GLI approval. Collectively, these 2 segments account for over 15% of the total units sold into the North American market, dramatically expanding our addressable market.Ultimately, our growth algorithm in slot sales is simple. First, further leverage our focus and targeted sales strategy and the recent strength of our product performance to broaden our customer base; and second, utilize the added diversity and quality of our product offerings to increase the average order size within our activated customers. I am confident successful execution of our strategy will not only lead to ship share gains in 2024, but it will also set us on a path to becoming a top 5 supplier of choice for many years to come.On the recurring revenue side of our domestic spot business, the outlook is as equally as compelling. We have demonstrated over the past several quarters our unique mix-driven growth catalysts, including an increasingly powerful premium game offering and more diverse array of core content have armed us with the necessary tools to deliver consistent, modest growth in both domestic RPD and within our domestic EGM installed base. Looking to 2024, I believe the unprecedented depth and diversity of our cabinet and content road maps across both the core and premium market segments should allow us to utilize a similar growth algorithm to deliver relative outperformance and domestic gaming operations revenue as compared to the rate of change observed in the market level GGR.Moving on to tables. Although we have come a long way over the past 5 years, I believe our recent momentum will continue throughout 2024 as we further solidify our position as a partner and innovator of choice within the market. The enhanced features and functionality of our Bonus Spin Xtreme progressive continue to be well received as evidenced by the 5% sequential growth in our BSX installed base achieved in the fourth quarter. Additionally, customer adoption of our efficient and effective PAX S shuffler continues to surge with our footprint surpassing 330 units at year-end and a healthy pipeline building for Q1. Finally, we continue to drive greater adoption of our AGS Arsenal site license offerings with several notable launches lined up for the first quarter. All told, I believe the unwavering strength of our 3 growth pillars, BSX, PAX and Arsenal, coupled with our strategic focus on broadening our geographic and customer account reach and our continued progress on the development of a new multi-deck shuffler keep our table game business on a compelling multiyear growth trajectory.Finally, I'm greatly encouraged by the increasingly consistent and efficient execution with our Interactive segment, where our run rate of annualized revenue and adjusted EBITDA is now topping $13 million and $5 million, respectively. Although Interactive is in the early innings of an outsized multiyear growth cycle, I think it is important to highlight the February 2024 Eilers industry survey ranked us as the sixth largest provider of slot content to North America online market with a reported market share of approximately 5%. Additionally, we produced the fourth best overall spot performance in the report with a reported index of 1.6x site average with our capital gains theme performing as the second best slot overall.Looking ahead, I believe the quality of our Interactive team and the great number of strategic growth objectives in our line of sight positions AGS to emerge as a leading share gainer within the high-growth RMG channel in both 2024 and beyond.In closing, I would like to thank our team members around the globe for their commitment, focus and dedication throughout 2023. The record-setting performance we have been able to achieve is a true reflection of the quality products you have developed, the successful strategies you have orchestrated and the efficient execution of your plans. With the most exciting lineup of new products and the highest quality team in my tenure as CEO, I remain extremely excited about what lies ahead for AGS, and I look forward to sharing our progress with you on future calls.With that, I will turn the call over to Kimo.

[Kimo Akiona, executive]

Thank you, David, and good afternoon to all of you on the call. As in prior quarters, I will review a couple of highlights from our reported results and provide perspective on how we see each of our business segment is trending as we look ahead to the current year. I will also share some thoughts on our free cash flow outlook for 2024 and close by addressing a few items related to our balance sheet.Turning first to EGM equipment sales. Fourth quarter global unit shipments increased 36% year-over-year to a record 1,519 units, representing our third consecutive quarter of growth in excess of 30%. Sustained Spectra 43 momentum, supported by the continued strong performance of the cabinets, expanded suite of game content, initial sales of our successfully launched Spectra 49 cabinet, a more than 70% increase in our total customer count to nearly 180 unique customers and stable market level demand trends once again contributed to our outsized unit sales growth in the quarter. Fourth quarter global ASP was approximately $20,700, up 7% versus the prior year. A greater mix of higher-priced Spectra family cabinet sales, which accounted for over 80% of total unit sales in the quarter, and further implementation of our price integrity initiatives contributed to our improved ASP performance in the quarter. Looking ahead to 2024, current consensus estimates project we should be able to grow Global EGM unit sales by approximately 3% over our just reported full year 2023 total of 5,244 units.That said, we believe our ability to increase average order size through concurrently delivering a variety of high-performing titles on both Spectra 43 and Spectra 49, further activation of new customers, continued outsized share capture within the growing HHR market, our scheduled back-half launch into the mechanical reel and jumbo product verticals, a slightly more robust set of international sales opportunities and the relatively consistent market level customer purchasing behavior observed 2024 to date should allow us to surpass the level of growth currently reflected in consensus. From a cadence perspective, we expect 2024 to follow a similar seasonal pattern to 2023 with Q1 serving as our lowest volume quarter of the year and volumes building as we progress throughout the year. With respect to ASP, the $20,000 level should serve as a good proxy for 2024, supported by the premium pricing we continue to command on our Spectra family cabinets and further execution of our price integrity strategies.Shifting to game ops. The positive underlying trends within our domestic EGM gaming operations business continued in the fourth quarter, with RPD comping $30 for the 11th consecutive quarter, while our domestic EGM installed base increased sequentially for the seventh consecutive quarter. Continued growth in our high-yielding premium game footprint, further optimization of our core unit installed base supported by deployment of our Spectra cabinet and increasingly diverse game content library and relatively stable market level GGR trends push domestic RPD to a fourth quarter record of $31.68.Looking out over 2024, current Wall Street estimates project full year market level gross gaming revenue to be flat to up 1% year-over-year, with Q1 GGR expected to be down 1% to 2% versus the prior year as a result of the heavily discussed weather disturbances in January. As we reflect on the outlook for our gaming, our domestic EGM gaming operations business in 2024, our high-level growth algorithm remains relatively consistent with the prior years. Notably, we expect to leverage our growing suite of premium EGM products with multiple new premium form factors and titles scheduled to launch throughout the year to thoughtfully and consistently expand the mix of higher-yielding premium games within our domestic installed base, building on our 16th consecutive quarter of premium unit growth. Additionally, we plan to utilize the enhanced scale and scope of our core EGM cabinet and content portfolio to execute upon the continuous installed base optimization strategies. Combined, we believe these mix-driven initiatives should allow us to once again deliver domestic RPD that outperforms relative to the market level GGR forecast I provided, while also keeping our domestic EGM installed base on a moderate long-term growth trajectory.Turning to our international EGM business. The continued strong performance of our established AGS franchise game themes throughout the Mexico casino market, further execution of our global installed base optimization initiatives, a stable macroeconomic backdrop and favorable foreign exchange fluctuations contributed to a 16% year-over-year increase in fourth quarter gaming operations revenue. International RPD increased over 15% versus the prior year or approximately 4% on a constant currency basis to a fourth quarter record of $8.86.Looking ahead to 2024, we expect our international installed base to remain relatively consistent with year-end 2023 levels, while our ongoing optimization efforts and stable market level trends should contribute a modest growth in constant currency international EGM RPD for the full year.Looking beyond AGMs, Table Products revenues increased more than 20% year-over-year to a record $4.8 million. Greater customer adoption of our reliable and efficient PAX S card shuffler, innovative Bonus Xtreme progressive technology and an all-inclusive AGS Arsenal site license offering pushed recurring revenue to a record of nearly $4 million. Equipment sales revenue also established a new high watermark in the quarter, supported by the sale of more than 20 PAX S units in conjunction with a recent high-profile Las Vegas Strip casino opening.Turning to 2024, unwavering PAX interest and demand, a favorable customer response to the enhanced features and functionality recently added to our Bonus Spin Xtreme progressive, targeted jurisdictional expansion opportunities and a compelling pipeline of Arsenal activations should keep our Table Products lease revenue stream on a trajectory of consistent and predictable growth similar to the one demonstrated in 2023. That said, I would encourage everyone to keep the timing and magnitude of sales revenue related to 2023 new casino opening activity in mind when putting together segment-level projections for the current year.Shifting to Interactive. Revenues grew by over 30% versus the prior year and 8% sequentially to a record $3.4 million. An accelerating cadence of new game launches, including the introduction of the company's first online, first game theme, Double Shamrock, improving efficacy of our more tactical and targeted business development activities within our B2C operating partners, the continued strong performance of franchise brands, including capital gains in the online channel and the activation of more than 10 new B2C operator partners globally paced our record-setting performance in the quarter. The outsized revenue growth once again flowed through to segment level EBITDA, which more than doubled year-over-year to a record $1.3 million.Looking ahead to 2024, we believe the added depth and diversity of our content road map, planned new customer and jurisdictional launches and increasingly effective business development efforts, put our Interactive business on a path to delivering the highest level of year-over-year revenue growth amongst our 3 operating segments with consistent sequential growth anticipated as we progress throughout the year. Additionally, as demonstrated over the past several quarters, we expect to flow through a significant portion of the incremental revenues generated throughout the year, contributing to a considerable adjusted EBITDA margin expansion and adjusted EBITDA growth within the segment.Turning to margins. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA margin surpassed 45%, exceeding the expectations articulated on our Q3 call. An improving margin profile within our Interactive business, supported by the segment's continued outsized revenue growth, superior gross margins on the highly modular and efficiently designed Spectra family of EGM cabinets and operating leverage resulting from the over 15% year-over-year increase in total revenues all contributed to our solid margin performance in the quarter. As it pertains to 2024, we expect to achieve an adjusted EBITDA margin in the range of 44.5% to 45.5%, representing a modest lift over 2023 at the midpoint. Our margin outlook incorporates the revenue growth expectations articulated in my segment-level remarks, which should allow us to realize operating leverage on our corporate SG&A expenditures.With respect to R&D, we expect to reinvest behind growth to ensure we are arming the business with the products and resources necessary to remain on an upward sloping multiyear growth trajectory. As a result, we anticipate 2024 expensed R&D remaining relatively consistent on a percentage of revenue basis at approximately 12%. Finally, we expect to execute upon the sale of approximately $1 million of used Orion family cabinets to a distributor in Q1. These sales, which will not be reflected in our reported KPIs for the quarter, are likely to push first quarter margin in line with to slightly below the low end of our targeted full year range. That said, we expect margins to steadily expand as we progress throughout the year, pulling us comfortably into the targeted range by year-end.Fourth quarter capital expenditures totaled $15 million, bringing the full year capital spend to just under $62 million. Turning to 2024, we expect full year capital expenditures, inclusive of anticipated capitalized R&D, to land in the range of $65 million to $70 million. Cash interest in the quarter was approximately $14 million, increasing the full year cash interest expense to just under $54 million. On February 5, 2024, we successfully completed a repricing of our term loan credit facility, which effectively reduced the interest rate spread applied to our term loan borrowings by 35 basis points. Additionally, in conjunction with the repricing transaction, we elected to voluntarily repay $15 million of our total debt outstanding. Combined, the repricing and repayment are expected to reduce our annualized cash interest expense by approximately $3 million at current market level rates.Fourth quarter free cash flow, defined as net operating cash flow plus proceeds from payments on customer notes receivable less CapEx reached $11 million, surpassing the $10 million level for the third consecutive quarter and pushing the full year 2023 free cash flow to approximately $27 million. Looking ahead to 2024, we believe our consistent operating momentum and execution, heightened focus on efficient and effective working capital management, continued CapEx deployment discipline and anticipated cash interest savings from our recent debt repricing and repayment should allow us to grow full year free cash flow by 25% or more with material levels of positive free cash flow generation projected in all 4 quarters.Finally, net leverage fell to 3.2x at year-end compared to 3.8x at the start of the year and below the low end of our targeted 3.25x to 3.5x range. Supported by the relative resiliency observed across the broader North American gaming complex 2024 to date, both with respect to gross gaming revenue trends and customer purchasing demand, the growing appeal and strong performance of AGS' deeper and more diverse suite of EGM cabinets and game content, the anticipated continued outsized growth in Interactive revenues and unwavering commitment to cost containment and operational efficiency and steadily improving free cash flow conversion, we expect to exit 2024 with net leverage in the range of 2.7x to 3x.Finally, I would like to reiterate our approach to deleveraging remains unchanged as we continue to target a combination of adjusted EBITDA growth and consistent free cash flow generation.Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks. We would now like to open up the line for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Barry Jonas with Truist.

[Barry Jonas, analyst]

Great. Guys, what do you see as the implications for AGS from the IGT, Everi deal, I guess, both in the short term and the long term?

[David Lopez, executive]

Barry, thanks. I think history has instructed us here a little bit on this. And if we look back to that sort of 2012, the 2014 period, where there's a lot of consolidation, it was also a time where we had acquired Cadillac Jack, and neither one of us were very big in Class III. Following that consolidation period, the non-big 4 suppliers nearly tripled or actually about tripled their ship share from that period going up to about 2017, 2018. So we think that this will create a little bit of an air pocket here for some smooth sailing and give us an opportunity to sort of step up, in this case, from a ship share perspective and get more eyeballs from the customers. So we feel pretty good about that.But I think the key is for us is to run our playbook and do what we do best, which is invest in R&D, invest in our sales and product management teams and, obviously, great people across the organization, not just in those 3 areas and sort of stick to the plan, which is putting out great content, leveraging it not just in the casinos in the online space, but also, eventually, we have a very big opportunity to go abroad with it, and we haven't really gone past [indiscernible] bit of Latin America to do so. So we like it for us.I think it's probably good for the industry consolidation long term, good for the industry because it does sort of refresh the lower base of the non-big 4 where you'll start to see some smaller companies pop up and really come up with some good gains and some innovation. So that's how I feel about it.

[Barry Jonas, analyst]

That's great. Really appreciate your thoughts there. And then just a follow-up. I think there's probably some AGS specific tailwinds set for this year. But maybe, David, maybe talk a little bit about how you see the health of the overall market right now.

[David Lopez, executive]

So I think the health of the market, Q1 is stable. And I think Barry, everything we see looks pretty good there, and we don't see a whole lot of change. I think others have commented the same on their earnings calls. But I think what we're focused on is our growth drivers and a little bit of what we said in the prepared remarks, which is this is sort of the first time where we've had 2 cabinets that are right in the hot spot of what's going on with Spectra 43 and Spectra 49. We have some great opportunities there. So that just gets back to if you look at us on the Eilers report, if you look at our performance on these cabinets, very early days with Spectra 49. But Spectra 43 has really been crushing it for lack of a better term. The content has been fantastic.I don't think -- or I'm sure that we have never had a situation where we had this many core games. And on top of that, now we have another premium game that has come hot out of the gates and the performance is, from a premium perspective, the best performance we've ever had in our organization. So yes, market stable and AGS, I think, better than stable. We're looking pretty good with our product line and the pipeline.

[Operator]

The next question is from David Katz with Jefferies.

[David Katz, analyst]

Thanks for including me. Look, I wanted to talk about how you think about market share, right? Like we all probably -- I mean, we spent a great deal of time thinking about gaining share, losing share, et cetera. Is it as important as we think it is? Or are you just making games, selling games, driving profits, driving cash flow and the share does what it does?

[David Lopez, executive]

Yes. That's a great question. I probably -- we haven't really gotten this one before, [ but it's a good ] question. I like it because we sort of should be running our playbook, right? And we should do what's best for us. And at the end of the day, sort of creating value, generating free cash flow, improving margins and all the things that you mentioned, right, we've been demonstrating EBITDA growth, revenue growth, free cash flow improvement which has been a huge focus of ours. I think that we don't obsess with ship share, right? Because if ship share wobbles one quarter versus another quarter and it's not like maybe something that you guys would deem fantastic, we're still looking on our financials, right? And we're looking at the Eilers report, and we're looking at what's going on because the proof is in our performance of our games. And right now, we probably track performance of games a lot closer than we do ship share.Long term, yes, ship share could come -- should just follow that nicely. Should sort of tuck in and draft that very closely over time.

[Brad Boyer, executive]

Yes, David, I would just add, this is Brad. Another thing about the ship share metrics that I encourage everyone to keep in perspective is that there are big segments of the market in North America that we currently do not sell into that our competitors are selling a significant number of games into, including the route markets here in the United States and in Canada. Additionally, from a swim lane perspective, we're not fully penetrated at this point. We're making some strides here in the back half of this year, getting into mech reel and jumbo, but there still are some other categories that we're not in.So I think when you view our ship share, I definitely encourage folks to look at it on an adjusted basis relative to the markets that we actually play in.

[David Katz, analyst]

Right. And so naturally the -- I mean, the ship share gives us a reason to call you guys. Naturally, the follow-up is with respect to valuation. And I know management teams shouldn't necessarily be overly focused on it. But yours could be better and has some headroom. How do you think about the possibilities of trying to get a bit more recognition to that end? And how do you and the Board sort of focus on it and think about taking some action?

[David Lopez, executive]

I'll tell you. Speaking of recognition, I think one of the things that we took very seriously was this latest $15 million, [ debt ] payment. I know it might -- maybe on the surface, it doesn't seem like a move where we're trying to say, hey, we want to see some multiple expansion. But the feedback that we got from investors was fantastic. There's always this question of share buybacks, just keep your powder dry or pay down some debt. And this one is a move that got some serious applause from our investors. And if you sort of just line that up, maybe with our repricing we did do a bit of a pre-release on Q4. And then that debt pay down, we saw some considerable movement in stock. So as far as like doing it the old fashion way, I think sticking to the plan here and continue to delever is a huge move, right? And I think that as we cross that next leverage barrier of 3.0x, we'll get some of that recognition there, David.But there's also -- I think that from an IR strategy and some things, I won't bore everybody on the call, but I think we obviously can get more active, in particular, once we get to that 2.9, right? When we get to that 2.9, we know there's a whole shareholder base that we can speak to again. So that's what I'm excited about talking to more investors and I'm excited to get out there post this payment and really flagging to our investor base and potential investors that we're confident about our free cash flow generation going forward.

[David Katz, analyst]

I'll agree with that.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Jeff Stantial with Stifel.

[Jeffrey Stantial, analyst]

Maybe starting off here on the EGM business. David, back at G2E, I seem to recall you noted that the testing data -- the initial testing data for the 49C was actually tracking better than the initial data for the UR43. Now that you have some immediately preliminary units on the floor, is that still the case? And I guess, just broadly speaking, how would you characterize performance of the new cabinet maybe versus your expectations [indiscernible].

[David Lopez, executive]

Yes. I think broadly -- yes, sorry, I apologize. We have a little bit of delay here and I jumped the gun on there. Yes, I think broadly 49C is doing fantastic. Upright Spectra 43 has been out a while now and maybe a comparison there might be a tad unfair. But both -- the truth is both cabinets are really [ kicking the ball ]. And we've got -- again, I refer to core content. We've got some great core content out there. And we keep expanding upon our strongest brands like Rakin' Bacon. And I think that's been a huge help to us.Really goes back to our strategy and development and how we carve up our time and what we work on. And we're in a very nice position right now that we've established a couple of brands. We continue to play off those brands. And every brand extension of Rakin' Bacon has been pretty much more successful than previous version of it. We've been all knocked the cover off the ball with that. So we're seeing a lot of success with 49C. And I think that we'll continue to see that. But don't count out Spectra 43. It's still trucking along.

[Jeffrey Stantial, analyst]

Great. And Kimo, in the prepared remarks, you cited some greater international opportunities in the EGM segment for the for-sale business. And I think, David, you kind of hit on this as well in your answer to Barry's first question. Could you just expand on this a bit more? Are you entering new markets, selling more into existing markets? And if it's the former, can you just shed some light on which markets you're planning to expand into?

[Kimo Akiona, executive]

Yes. I mean if you think about the way our business has been historically and even up to current, right, I mean international, like Brad just commented on, has predominantly been Mexico, right? We've done sales here and there in different parts of, call it, Latin America or the Caribbean. But going into 2024 and with the launch of our newer cabinets like the Spectra family, we've really put a plan in place to kind of be able to address the broader Latin America market, Central and South and address the Caribbean. So there's a lot of white space there for us to go after these markets in a lot more targeted way than we ever could before, which includes gains that obviously are made for that market or nuance to be able to work in those markets. So we're excited. I mean it's a big white space for us just in that area without even talking longer term about Australia or let's call it Australasia or some of those markets. I don't know if David wants to add, but...

[David Lopez, executive]

Yes. I think Kimo nailed it, and I was actually going to tack on that very bit at the end, which is he's just referring to our current markets and what we've got there. But something we sort of make sure that we mention in almost every earnings call for the past [ 5-year-plus ] is that, that figure of how many customers we sell to in sort of the North American market, and that's where we've done quite well. I think the number was 183 -- 183. If I'm off, I'm off by a few. But that's a number that's way up from what we used to sell. We used to be sub 100 in our number of customers that we sold to. So we're going deeper with more products domestically. We're going wider to more customers. And then we're aiming a little bit more at Latin America. And then we know that our next step, hasn't been talked about yet, but our next step into the international market just opens up that much more white space. I think there's a lot of room to grow here in the future.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie.

[Aaron Lee, analyst]

This is Aaron on for Chad. So I wanted to touch on Interactive for a bit. Obviously, a great Interactive result this quarter. The business seems to be on a nice trajectory. With regard to the year ahead, how should we think about the major drivers of growth? And any color you can share just on any reinvestments into the business necessary to support your growth there?

[David Lopez, executive]

Yes, thanks. So obviously, we'll get -- over time, we'll get into more customers. I think that there's probably some pretty straightforward drivers of growth. One is more games and it's just that simple. If we look back a couple of years ago, we definitely had customers that said, your stuff is awesome. Can we just get more games. And we've talked about in the past that we've made the investment there in order to open up the pipeline so we can move more of our brick-and-mortar content online much quicker, and we've accomplished that.And then from there, growth will also come from unique online-only content that we develop, and we're developing that with our very sharp team that we have in place now. We've really expanded that team. But I think forgetting about expansion of the team, the development team, it's about quality. It's just not about quantity of people, but it's about quality. And those folks not only can get our porting done quickly, but they also can -- they can develop games for online only. So I think that's -- and we're exploring partnerships and omnichannel and sort of just -- you got to look at online much like you look at the brick-and-mortar business to figure out where else you can go, whether it's geographies or types of online gaming. We are obviously in social and we're in real money gaming right now. But there's a lot of opportunity out there to drive this, and we don't just have to depend on new states opening up. I think that we have a lot of meat on the bone.And in particular, if you look at our performance, again, we mentioned Eilers so many times, [ Chad ], ringing the bell here. But Eilers, once again -- our performance from a multiple perspective, it's in the prepared remarks, is phenomenal. So I think that we've got -- we've got ourselves in a good position, again to run our playbook on Interactive and to grow the business.

[Aaron Lee, analyst]

Great. And then just turning to margins. You talked about 2024 R&D being consistent at around 12% of revenues. Can you just talk about how you got there, what gives you the confidence that that's the right level? And just any color on what could cause you to move outside of that range?

[Kimo Akiona, executive]

Yes. I mean if you look at -- our message has been pretty consistent, right? Like we've always felt that at the heart of our success is our creative team and our R&D team. So over the last couple of years, we've embarked on expanding our studios, kind of expanding the depth of our talent in these different areas. And as we analyze and look at the returns that we've been getting, we look at the opportunities in the front of us next year. And we feel that the 12% level is right based on our experience. I think that still allows -- obviously, right, that allows for continued investment in that being that revenue is obviously going to be growing as well. So 12% level is right, and we feel comfortable about that that there won't be, let's call it, like a stair step required, call it, in the short term, right?

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Jordan Bender with JMP Securities.

[Jordan Bender, analyst]

Great. EBITDA margin for '24 kind of implied about up 40 basis points. I assume there's a positive impact still coming from Spectra. But can you maybe talk about how mechanical reel and jumbo will impact that sequential margin growth, I guess, compared to more of the organic margin expansion?

[David Lopez, executive]

Yes. So we haven't really talked much about what we're projecting here, in particular for 2024 because this is a bit of back-half activity. We know that mech reel opens us up in a couple of markets where we're very strong. We can have an opportunity not just to place new units but really improve our real estate when the situation is right for us. So we know that we can optimize with this product down the road. We know that we'll see growth with the product. And like I said, in [ jurisdictions ] where we're very strong. Obviously, we have expectations of getting the market in Class III and sort of the strong mech reel markets.But jumbo and mech reel, as far as 2024 goes, I'll sort of turn it over to Brad if he has any additional commentary, but we're not really leading ourselves very far on this one just for this year. But we have -- obviously, long term, we got in these -- in this space for a reason. A, we've made the investments in people and B, because of the people we have, we're very well positioned for success in mech reel and, of course, jumbo. And Brad has nothing to add to that. So I think we're good to go.

[Jordan Bender, analyst]

All righty. And then, Kimo, you've given several of the inputs just on free cash flow for the year. But in this post, if you want to call an investment period for the company, 17% free cash flow conversion last year. How should we think about that rate kind of moving forward into '24 and beyond?

[Kimo Akiona, executive]

Yes. I mean, so not ready to put out a target or anything right. But I think what we can say is that we're obviously [indiscernible] set on improving free cash flow conversion, right? I think in the prepared remarks, we talked -- [ like ] I said, we're going to -- we expect to get free cash flow growth of about 25%, right? And I think that would obviously imply that there is sequential improvement year-over-year and free cash flow conversion. So we've done a really good job, I think, managing how we invest in the business, right? And obviously, I think if our products have continued to perform every time we place a product in the field, whether it's on lease or sale, we've been able to increase the returns on that investment, right? So going forward, we're very confident that our free cash flow conversion rate will continue to improve year-on-year.

[Operator]

There are no additional questions in queue. [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions. With that, we will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.