Skillz Inc

NYSE:SKLZ

Earnings Call Analysis

Skillz Returns to Stability with Path to Profitability

In Q3 2024, Skillz maintained $25 million in revenue, flat sequentially but down 33% year-over-year. Despite challenges, the company reports a positive trend in adjusted EBITDA, with losses improving from $18.5 million to $13.9 million year-over-year. Skillz is focusing on enhancing user engagement, cutting operational costs, and streamlining marketing expenses. Cash reserves stand at $311 million, providing a solid runway for growth. The company aims to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA by 2025, while the user acquisition strategy is projected to yield a six-month payback period, allowing for cautious investments in growth initiatives.

A Cautious Turnaround

In the latest earnings call for Skillz Inc., executives emphasized their cautious optimism regarding the company's turnaround strategy. The leadership discussed their initiatives aimed at restoring the company to sustainable, profitable growth. Much focus was placed on maintaining a cautious approach to capital deployment, which aligns with the overarching goal of achieving positive adjusted EBITDA. This plan is pivotal, as improved financial clarity may enhance investor confidence and stabilize the company's stock valuation.

Key Financial Metrics

For Q3 2024, Skillz reported revenue of $25 million, which was flat from the previous quarter but down 33% year-over-year. The net loss for the quarter was $21 million, an improvement from a $34 million loss in Q3 2023. Adjusted EBITDA loss stood at $13.9 million, representing a 25% year-over-year improvement. The adjusted EBITDA margin was negative 57%, slightly worsening from negative 51% in Q3 2023. The company ended the quarter with $311 million in cash, providing a buffer to navigate the ongoing challenges.

User Metrics and Marketing Spend

The company reported a stabilizing trend in paying Monthly Active Users (MAUs), with 121,000 paying users in Q3 2024, consistent with Q2 2024 figures. Achieving this stability was due to reduced user acquisition (UA) spending, which remained at its lowest level since 2018. The current user acquisition strategy is aimed at controlling marketing costs while focusing on improving customer retention. The company aims to sustain a six-month system-wide payback period on marketing investments, a strategy that aligns with industry standards.

Operational Efficiency Initiatives

Skillz is actively managing its operational expenditures to enhance efficiency. Total operating expenses (OpEx) for Q3 included $5 million on research and development (down 40% year-over-year), $18 million in sales and marketing (also down 40%), and another $18 million in general and administrative costs (down 26% year-over-year). These reductions contribute to the overall improvement in financial performance, allowing the company to direct resources towards key growth initiatives.

Four Strategic Pillars

Skillz is anchored in a strategy built around four key pillars aimed at long-term viability: enhancing their platform, up-leveling the organization, optimizing their go-to-market strategies, and demonstrating a clear path to profitability. Executing on these areas involves not only improving product offerings but also scaling operational efficiencies and reducing costs associated with external labor while building deeper internal capabilities.

Looking Ahead: Guidance on Profitability

Management expressed strong confidence in achieving positive adjusted EBITDA in 2025 through their ongoing turnaround initiatives. The leadership team believes that the continuation and refinement of their current strategies, including an increased emphasis on user retention and capital deployment, will yield favorable outcomes. While no specific revenue guidance was provided, the markers of operational stability and commitment to reform signal a constructive outlook for investors.

Challenges and Legal Initiatives

Skillz remains embroiled in legal challenges concerning fair play within the gaming industry, as they pursue lawsuits against competitors suspected of using deceptive practices. While these measures highlight the company's commitment to integrity, they also represent ongoing operational challenges. Management is advocating for fair competition in an environment increasingly susceptible to automated fraud, indicating that successful legal outcomes could materially improve consumer trust and market conditions.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Good afternoon all. I would like to welcome you all to the Skillz Inc. 2024 Third Quarter Results Call. My name is Nadia, and I'll be moderating your call today. I would now like to pass the conference call over to your host, Richard Land from JCIR to begin. Sir Richard, please go ahead.

[Richard Land]

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Skillz 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. On the call today are Andrew Paradise, Skillz' Co-Founder and CEO; and Gaetano Franceschi, CFO. This afternoon, Skillz issued its 2024 third quarter results release, which is available on the company's Investor Relations website.

Before I turn the call over to Andrew, please note that some of management's comments today will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements, which are usually identified by the use of words such as will, expect, should or other similar phrases are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Therefore, you should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on them. We refer you to the company's SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact future operating results and financial condition.

During the call, management will discuss non-GAAP measures, which it believes can be useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in the company's third quarter 2024 earnings release.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Andrew for some opening remarks, followed by Gaetano for a discussion of our financial performance before we open the call for questions. Andrew?

[Andrew Paradise, executive]

Thank you, Richard, and good afternoon. Before turning to an update on the progress made against our 4 pillars, I want to share the ongoing strides we're making in our fair play initiative and key litigation matters. We continue to be very active with sounding the alarm to have all gaming companies in this space provide consumers with certainty that they're being matched with real players of similar skill to ensure fair competition. Our efforts, both public and behind the scenes in this regard, are necessary to make sure this industry can survive and thrive as consumers have their real hard-earned money on the line.

While our proprietary platform delivers on this promise of fairness to players, for more than a year, we've highlighted our strong conviction that companies such as AviaGames, Papaya Gaming and Voodoo Games are using bots to deceive players into believing they're competing against real human opponents. In fact, we believe these players on these platforms are facing robots or gameplay with predetermined outcomes. This manipulation alters match results to their advantage, defrauding American players of billions of hard-earned dollars.

As part of our fight for fairness, we filed lawsuits against Papaya Games and Voodoo Games in the Southern District of New York. We filed these suits to protect our interest as well as the interest of our stakeholders. While these lawsuits are ongoing and will take some time to come to trial, I want to highlight the irony of Papaya's recent court filings. These companies want to exploit American consumers and American companies like ours but try to hide behind foreign law by refusing to turn over relevant discovery materials regarding their use of bots. As evidenced by the judge's rulings in our case against Papaya, they will have to answer to U.S. laws to protect the U.S. consumers they've defrauded. We stand ready to continue to pursue additional actions to safeguard fairness within this industry that we pioneered while keeping the interest of our shareholders in mind.

In addition to our lawsuits, consumers have filed class action lawsuits against both AviaGames and Papaya Gaming. We're continuing to do everything we can to bring this matter to the attention of the legal and regulatory authorities. Both the TODAY Show and Bloomberg covered these class action lawsuits in August, but we're far from having reached an end to bots in our industry.

Bloomberg did a great job in bringing attention to the devastating monetary impact the use of bots has on ordinary Americans. The incredible amount of money being defrauded from individuals is staggering, and we need to continue to do our part to bring this fraud to light, including on these public calls. We hope that the regulatory authorities are listening and take quick and necessary actions to stop the billions of dollars of fraud being perpetrated against American consumers.

As a U.S.-based company, it's our belief we should do this for the safety of all players in this industry, which will ultimately set a level playing field and benefit Skillz and our shareholders. We're ready, willing and capable of competing against any other skill-based gaming provider that wants to compete fairly and without the deceptive use of bots. I strongly believe that since we're the leading company that does not engage in consumer bot fraud, the elimination of this practice should dramatically change LTV to CAC to our benefit.

Turning now to the business performance in Q3. We continue to have a strong balance sheet and financial position. In the quarter, we continue to work on our 4 pillars for returning Skillz to consistent top line growth and positive adjusted EBITDA. Paying users for the quarter continued to stabilize with paying MAU of 121,000 in Q3 2024 compared to 122,000 in Q2 2024, even as the summer months are typically our slowest period of the year.

Our execution in Q3 continues to build our cautious optimism that we're on the right track to get to our goal of generating positive adjusted EBITDA. We're consistently applying our expense management initiatives with Q3 '24 OpEx, excluding cost of sales and onetime benefits, in line with Q2 '24, and our adjusted EBITDA loss improved again on a year-over-year basis.

Turning now to an update on the first of our 4 key pillars, enhancing our platform to improve customer and developer engagement and retention. The third quarter reflected some ongoing progress. We've discussed on recent calls the focus we've placed on our new product pipeline and have several products in development.

Our second pillar, up-leveling the organization. In Q3, we continued to scale our Las Vegas and Bangalore-based teams to optimize our product development, marketing, and data and analytics resources. We also continue to reduce our reliance on expensive U.S.-based third-party contractors and our remote workforce with the work absorbed by our Las Vegas and Bangalore-based teams.

Moving on to our third pillar, our go to market. UA spend in Q3 was consistent with Q2 and Q1 levels and remains at our lowest level since 2018 while being fairly stable at approaching 6-month system-wide payback. We need to now scale to facilitate growth as we continue to focus on optimizing UA spend. As part of these efforts, we plan to increase our spend through Aarki, which provides us with better pricing, pricing transparency and keeps the margin within the Skillz family.

Finally, I'll talk a little bit about our fourth pillar, demonstrating a clear path to profitability. We're making the steady strides needed to achieve our goal of generating positive adjusted EBITDA. And by continuing to execute on our turnaround strategies, we remain optimistic we'll reach this inflection point in 2025. Our adjusted EBITDA loss continued to improve year-over-year with a loss of $13.9 million in Q3 2024 compared to $18.5 million in Q3 2023. Excluding legal expenses related to lawsuits against bot companies, our adjusted EBITDA would have improved to a loss of $12.3 million.

Cash flow from operating activities was negative $11 million in Q3 2024, in line with adjusted EBITDA for the quarter. We ended Q3 with cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash of $311 million or $182 million net of outstanding debt. We continue to gradually improve our monthly operating cash burn, which, combined with our strong balance sheet, provides us with the runway to return our business to the sustainable and profitable growth we need for our shareholders.

I'll conclude my comments by reiterating our view that our current valuation gives no weight to the value of the operating platform and the progress we've made towards achieving our goals. We're confident that we're executing the right strategies to position the company to return to profitable growth. As we execute on our turnaround initiatives, we continue to believe our unique platform can generate significant returns for our shareholders.

With that, I'll turn it over to Gaetano.

[Gaetano Franceschi, executive]

Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start by noting that in our 2023 10-K and our 2024 first and second quarter 10-Qs, each of which were filed in late August, there were several nonmaterial changes in our financial presentations to highlight. The 2 updates compared to our prior financial presentation are that we are now breaking out our financials by segment and geography.

Turning to the third quarter financial results. Revenue was $25 million, flat sequentially and down 33% year-over-year. Our paid user conversion rate, which is paying MAU divided by MAU, was 14% in Q3, down from 15% in Q2, with PMAU flat, while MAU improved quarter-over-quarter. As Andrew indicated, we are confident that we can maintain our current system-wide payback period as we turn to investing in growth.

Turning to OpEx. Research and development expense was $5 million, down 40% year-over-year and excluding the impact of stock-based compensation was 13% of Q3 revenue. Sales and marketing expense was $18 million, down 40% year-over-year and excluding the impact of stock-based compensation was 51% of Q3 revenue. Q3 UA marketing was $4 million, while Q3 engagement marketing was $10 million. General and administrative expense was $18 million, down 26% year-over-year and excluding the impact of stock-based compensation was 25% of Q3 revenue.

Net loss of $21 million compares to a net loss of $34 million in Q3 2023. Adjusted EBITDA loss in the quarter was $13.9 million, a 25% improvement year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was negative 57% in Q3 2024 compared to negative 51% in Q3 2023. We ended the third quarter with $311 million of cash comprised of $301 million in cash and cash equivalents and $10 million in restricted cash. At the end of Q3, we had $130 million of total principal due on outstanding debt. With our improving cash burn, we have the flexibility to deploy capital to enhance shareholder value.

At this time, we'll turn the call back to the operator for the Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question goes to Ed Alter of Jefferies.

[Edward Alter, analyst]

Just wanted to maybe dig in on the paying MAUs that's now been nicely stable for 3 quarters in a row. Can you speak to the churn within that? And is that a core group of -- a core cohort? Or is there kind of a little more churn within that? Just would love to hear like the core -- hear more on the core players you guys have on the platform.

[Gaetano Franceschi, executive]

Ed, yes, thanks...

[Andrew Paradise, executive]

Sure. Thanks for the question, Ed. Sorry, go ahead, Gaetano.

[Gaetano Franceschi, executive]

No, no, go ahead, Andrew. Sorry. We're not in the same room. Apologies.

[Andrew Paradise, executive]

Sorry, we do that for -- so the audio is a little clearer. We've really slowed down acquisition. So when you look at the amount of marketing spend, we've been pretty flat and stable now for multiple quarters. So most of the work of what we're doing is on both retention of paying users and then around reactivation of paying users. So really just owned marketing channels as well as on system channels. And Gaetano, do you have anything you want to add about cohorts?

[Gaetano Franceschi, executive]

No, I think that's correct. Basically, what Andrew said is the way I would answer.

[Edward Alter, analyst]

Yes. Great. And then as you talked about at the end there, deploying capital, can you kind of walk through kind of the top 3 capital deployment priorities for you guys?

[Gaetano Franceschi, executive]

Yes, I can take that and Andrew, if you want to add. I think there's a couple of areas that we definitely want to focus on. First is we want to continue to invest and improve our platform, so in people and product and development. I'd say the second area that we want to continue to invest in is creating tools and better processes for our developers. And I'd say the third area of investment will be in scaling up our UA and our marketing efforts, so product development, new content and then UA and of course, people.

[Edward Alter, analyst]

Great. And then as you scale that UA, what are the success factors that you guys are going to measure yourselves against? Obviously, the 6-month payback, it's great to hear that you're approaching that. But as you layer on scale, what are the targets you guys are looking to hit on that spend?

[Andrew Paradise, executive]

Yes. No, that's a good question. The -- so we've been running some of the budget this year at 6 months and actually hitting that level of payback. I think it's pretty hard given many in the industry are targeting 12 to 18 months. But I think the strategy here has been to really cut back our marketing until we can be sure that we're seeing attractive return profiles, especially with all the issues we had, call it, end of '21 and in 2022.

In turning around the business, we said that one of the first things we want to do, obviously, is we -- if there's a lot of breakage in the product, retention is down in the product itself, does not make sense to have advertising anywhere near the scale. So we've cut it way, way, way down to what I would say is kind of a life support level of user acquisition so that we can continue to optimize and fix retention.

As we improve d30, d180 retention and then our early indicators of cohorts falling in line with those retention curves, we'll look to scale back out user acquisition. But I think it's probably -- the right way to think about it is cautious scale in categories that we're already in. It's well known that Blackout Bingo and Solitaire Cube are the top titles on the platform. We have a number of other titles that are smaller that potentially benefit from investment in marketing as well as new content.

The new content engine is actually now functional again, and we are seeing more and more content launches. So -- the next piece of that, of course, is identifying which of these games could potentially scale into being a hit. And then it's approaching developers who are on the platform about doing publishing deals with the company so that we can actually capture that larger portion of rev share and put a user acquisition budget against the game where the developer may not have the funds to do so.

[Edward Alter, analyst]

Yes. Great. And then I guess on that last point, have you seen any notable call-outs to make on that new game and new publisher pipeline?

[Andrew Paradise, executive]

We have, but I don't think we're yet kind of diving into that. So we definitely are seeing signs of green shoots, but nothing to point out specifically for this moment.

[Operator]

Thank you. We have no further questions. This now concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.