Gaming Innovation Group Inc

OSE:GIG

Earnings Call Analysis

GiG Achieves Record Revenues and EBITDA Growth

GiG has delivered consecutive all-time high revenues and EBITDA, propelled by strategic acquisitions like AskGamblers and KaFe Rocks, and organic growth. Revenues soared from EUR 43 million to nearly EUR 127 million, while EBITDA jumped from above EUR 10 million to over EUR 50 million. Q4 '23 saw revenues at EUR 26.5 million, a 49% increase YoY, with an EBITDA of EUR 11.5 million. The year ended with a 12% revenue growth from the Nordics and significant expansion in Europe and North America. The Platform & Sportsbook segment enjoyed an 11% organic jump to EUR 9.1 million in revenue with a 28% EBITDA margin. Guided future revenues are expected to be EUR 125 to EUR 135 million in '24, and GiG plans to focus on cementing its position in casino affiliation and scaling in the Americas.

Financial Performance and Guidance

The company reported a solid financial performance with the EBITDA margin ending at 45%, down slightly from 48% the previous year. This is within their targeted range of 45% to 50%. First Time Deposits (FTDs) shot up by 34% year-on-year, indicating healthy growth in their player base. Looking ahead, the company has set an ambitious revenue target between EUR 125 million to EUR 135 million for 2024.

Mergers and Acquisitions Impact

Acquisitions played a pivotal role in the company's growth narrative. The AskGamblers acquisition has been integrated successfully, showing substantial increases in performance indicators like revenue up by 93%, FTDs by 62%, and EBITDA more than doubling. KaFe Rocks, another strategic acquisition, promises to strengthen the company's casino affiliate sector presence and expand its reach in North and Latin America. KaFe Rocks has demonstrated rapid growth, with revenue tripling over the last 3 months and more growth anticipated in 2024.

Strategic Focus and Growth Pillars

The company's strategy revolves around diversification and organic growth, with significant customer and website growth driving material revenue. There's confidence in continuing a compound annual growth rate of 21% in old business segments. Additionally, media partnerships, like the one with News UK, are contributing substantially to growth. The introduction of sports betting to AskGamblers is also expected to double the market size, leveraging events like the Euro Cup.

Platform & Sportsbook Segment Highlights

The Platform & Sportsbook segment increased revenue by 11% to EUR 9.1 million organically and witnessed a full-year revenue spike of 33% to EUR 37.8 million. Despite a decrease in adjusted EBITDA due to investment decisions, the segment has signed 16 new agreements and has launched new product lines like CoreX and SportX, which are expected to accelerate growth further. The company has also seen growth drivers in upselling services and entering new markets with a focus on profitability.

Operational Upgrades and Market Expansion

Operational efficiency upgrades and market expansion have been a focus with a restructured sales team and significant investments in marketing and commercial functions. The strategic initiatives are anticipated to expedite market entry, client launches, and access to larger revenue-generating customers, setting the stage for future growth and increasing the addressable market.

Robust Start to 2024

The group began 2024 on an excellent note, with January revenues up 53% compared to the same period the previous year, 20% of which was organic growth. Such results reflect the positive reception of their new suite of product innovations and renewals of key contracts, thus enhancing the Platform & Sportsbook's offering and fortifying the company's market position for the current financial year.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

Right, and welcome to Redeye. Today, we are joined by Gaming Innovation Group, who will present their Q4 results with us, we have Head of Media and CEO, Jonas Warrer who will present the Media business and Richard Carter will present the Platform & Sportbook business. But first, we will hear from Petter Nylander, who will give a general presentation.

[Petter Nylander, executive]

Thank you, Hjalmar, and thank you, everyone for joining us today for the Q4 presentation and the roundup of 2023. To start up with some highlights. We deliver -- GiG delivers another successive all-time high revenue and EBITDA. The Platform & Sportsbook continued positive delivery with 2 additional new brands live, and we're also very proud of the fact that we now have an experienced management team and a new and enhanced product offering launched during the fourth quarter and the recent weeks. GiG Media achieved a record high revenue and high employer intake and EBITDA growth. AskGamblers as we acquired earlier in 2023, sees 93% revenue boost from the takeover run rate and the strategic acquisition of KaFe Rocks that we did end of the last year, is now completed.

Also proud of the fact that the bond refinancing is completed in the quarter, creating stability for the company going forward. And we're making notable strides in a strategic review, anticipating the execution of the platform and media split by the end of the second quarter of 2024. Looking at some numbers. So looking at what kept us busy in the last 5 years, you can see 2019 onwards to the last year, you can see that we took the business revenue-wise from EUR 43 million to a little bit south of EUR 127 million for the last year. And you can see that EBITDA moved from 10 -- a little bit north of EUR 10 million to north of EUR 50 million last year. And you can see the EBIT went from negative to a plus of almost EUR 23 million for 2023.

Looking at the run rate in the quarter, the sequential growth, you can see that we are -- have a good momentum in the business, moving from EUR 26 million in 2022 to the reported now EUR 35.6 million in terms of revenue. And also in order to explain and display the underlying strength of the business, you can see the movement for Q4 versus Q4 last year, and we've made an adjustment for the one-offs and the split-related costs, you can see the true picture of the underlying business. And also, you can see the EBITDA movement here from last quarter to on through the year to Q4 2023. So with that, I will hand over to Jonas, our CEO for the Media business and for the group interim. Thank you.

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining in. Very happy to be here today. I've been looking forward to presenting numbers because we are presenting a hat trick today which means all-time high revenue, all-time high player intake and all-time high EBITDA. Q4 '23 revenues ended at EUR 26.5 million, up 49% year-over-year of which 24% are organic. Publishing grew 8% year-on-year. This is if I exclude AskGamblers. And as you will see later, our publishing business is in very good shape, especially if we look at player intake. AskGamblers, all-time high revenue of 32% Q-on-Q. And as I will show later, very strong performance if we compare it to the run rate of takeover. Paid had all-time high revenue also up 11% year-on-year. EBITDA ended at EUR 11.5 million, up 29% year-over-year. That means an EBITDA margin at 44%.

And I think to give a little flavor here, because maybe the EBITDA margin is a little bit lower than at least what we -- ourselves normally would expect. I think it's -- any company has unexpected costs, one-off costs and whatnot. But I think Q4 has been very unusual with several sort of one-off and split-related costs. For instance, we have to split offices. There's been quite a lot of legal and auditing fees and so on. It's quite of a transformative quarter for us. So if we adjust for these one-offs and split-related costs, the underlying EBITDA margin was 47% in the quarter and broadly speaking, we wanted to be in the range of 45% to 50%. We have also completed the strategic acquisition of KaFe Rocks. And just to reiterate why we did that acquisition, we want to maintain our [ core ] position in casino affiliation, and we want to grow our presence in North America and Latin America and KaFe Rocks was the perfect sort of candidate for satisfying both of these criteria.

Our business has especially expanded in Q4 and which means also that we are generating more and more net cash flow. Net cash flow is up by 29% year-on-year and 13% quarter-on-quarter. I think the business is maintaining an attractive cash conversion rate. And I say that because, of course, it's an intention point for us to keep it like that going forward. If we look at revenue split, 60% of revenue comes from recurring revenue share agreements, very much in line with the previous quarters and actually, I would say the previous years. If we look into sort of more of a market split, steady growth in revenue from the Nordics, up 12% year-on-year. The Nordics is what you would call our legacy markets. So actually very happy to see that we can continue to grow here. Then revenue from Rest of Europe is up 64% year-over-year. And I think why I also want to highlight that is to say that if I look at our presence in Europe, we are still actually very small in many of the markets we are in. And I think going forward, there's still a lot of growth potential in Europe.

North America revenue rose 64% year-over-year, very nice to see. And then LATAM was slightly down year-over-year. I would say with LATAM, Q4 last year was a very good quarter in that predominantly driven by the high activity during the FIFA World Cup that happened in Q4 last year. Combined revenues from the Americas increased 5% year-over-year and also actually quarter-over-quarter. We have a sustained belief in both Europe and in Americas as growth markets for GiG Media going forward. If you look at player intake, first-time deposits has ended at 138,000, all-time high, growing 19% year-over-year and 21% quarter-on-quarter. Similar to all the many previous quarters, the main bulk of players that we generate are on a deal with a revenue share component to secure future recurring revenues. Excluding AskGambers, player intake in Publishing grew by 100% year-over-year and 80% quarter-on-quarter, reaching a record level. If we look at AskGamblers, player intake grew 12% quarter-over-quarter and Q4 run rate is up 62% from taking business over.

Player intake in Paid increased 24% Q-on-Q but declined 28% year-over-year. And I think giving some sort of why did that happen? As I said also on last slide with the FIFA World Cup. Latin America, especially last year was a very attractive market to make players in, which means that you could make players in Paid at an attractive cost. When we have now a Q4 where we don't have a World Cup or Euro Cup for that matter. We have a lower player intake because we are careful of course, about what we should pay for a player. So I would say no surprises in the player intake in Paid. I think what is interesting here, if you look and now it gets a bit nerdy and a bit detailed, so forgive me. But if you look at Q4 '22 and Q4 '23, you can see that we have increased, as I said, player intake. But at the same time, you can see this change in the channel mix, the broad channel mix, where more of the players are coming from Publishing and less of the players are coming from Paid.

And that will normally be perceived as very attractive because you would say by default, that Publishing players are -- have a higher value than Paid players. That will all be determined, of course, in the future going forward since so many of the players are on a revenue share component. But what I can see and what I can say what my experience is that the change that we see in the channel mix is very attractive and is, of course, positive for the quarters going ahead. If we look at full year of '23, we ended at revenue at EUR 89.1 million, up 44% year-over-year, of which 19% organic. And if we look back from 2019 to 2023 now, and I think that is maybe a question a few of the people in [indiscernible] is sitting with how much is actually acquired and how much is just growing the business organically.

If we look for '19 to '23 and look at old GiG Media, that would mean excluding AskGamblers, we have had a compound annual growth rate at 21% from '19 to '23. So that is the sort of what we can say. If we take the hard co-isolated organic growth for the old GiG Media business. EBITDA margin ended at EUR 40 million or 35% year-over-year -- or EBITDA sorry, and EBITDA margin ended at 45%, down from 48% last year. As I said, we wanted to be in the range of 45% to 50% broadly speaking and going forward. 472,000 FTDs in '23 up 35% -- 34% year-on-year. The buildup of the player base is, I would say, positive here. And of course, we expect to see further increases in the recurring revenue share earnings, given that the player base is growing so much in size. If we look a bit into the AskGamblers acquisition, the post-merger integration plan has been successfully implemented in '23. Steady improvements of the assets throughout '23. I think I can say without saying too many positive -- without sounding too positive [indiscernible] to reframe AskGamblers have been doing a fantastic -- has performed fantastic over the last 12 months.

And personally, I'm a bit surprised about how strong the asset has performed. If we look at Q4 average numbers, if we take monthly average for [ control ] and compared to run rate takeover, revenue is up 93%, FTDs are up 62% and EBITDA more than doubled. The team has done a fantastic job there and it has been really pleasant to see how fast we have been at realizing both synergies and just improving things. So well done to the team there. Actually, the site has been doing so good that we have delayed our migration to our central GiG Media platform that we normally are very proud about. And normally, we want to move everything there is simply because this site is doing so well right now. So we are afraid to charge it. At one point, we will migrate it because one thing that's very interesting for AskGamblers is that we want to add sports to AskGamblers to double the size of the addressable market. And I guess, it's very good, right, that we have a Euro Cup in the summer. That's a perfect window and a prime opportunity for launching sports on AskGamblers.

So yes, more to be said about that, I guess, on the next Q-update. If we look at the KaFe Rocks acquisition, as explained earlier, it enhances our lead position in the casino affiliate sector, and it supports our expansion in North America and Latin America. The post-merger integration plan has started in early January. It's still very early days with KaFe Rocks. We know that the acquisition will bring additional markets, websites and customers aligning with our, you can say, core diversity strategy in GiG Media. Time2Play asset has shown significant growth with the tripling of revenue over the last 3 months. The growth is expected to continue in '24. Website migrations to GiG Media platform begins late February. And of course, we are also deploying our Business Intelligence solution to sort of enable KaFe Rocks to start optimizing. The business from having better data and being able to take more accurate decisions.

Very positive about KaFe Rocks and what we can do with the team there going forward. A lot of talented people in the organization and strong assets or websites there. So yes, it's going to be interesting '24 there. Just to touch a little bit on some of our thoughts in Media ahead of the split. I think it would be prudent to give people a little bit of a look under the hood. We have one core strategy that we -- that is basically diversification. And with diversification, we ensure sustainable long-term growth by reducing risk tied to singular markets, sites or end customers. And if we look at the numbers on what has happened, as we have transitioned from a domestic champion being very focused on the Nordics to global leaders now -- to a global leader. GiG media is increasingly well positioned for long-term growth. And to just do it in -- explain in a more simple way, you can say that more markets, websites and customers should drive material revenue.

And I wanted to just show 2 graphs here. So if we look at the upper right graph, you can see that our bigger websites, but also all of our other websites are growing and are generating more revenue. And if you look at the lower right, you can see that the count of significant customers in the GiG Media portfolio is rising. And these metrics are very important for us. They have been and will also be going forward as we believe that diversification is a key theme and a key objective in order to create sustainable long-term growth. Also just want to talk about our 6 growth pillars. One, we have ample opportunity to continue the organic growth of the business. As I explained earlier, a 21% compound annual growth rate in the old GiG Media business from 2019 to 2023. I'm quite sure we can continue that growth. And luckily, if I look at a lot of the markets we are in, we are still small. There's still a lot of opportunity to take market share.

We have a recipe for successful M&A and can fast track growth further by acquisitions if we want to, if we see the right opportunity. The AskGamblers onboarding has been very successful with numbers and with the team there. And of course, it gives us comfort in our ability to do other acquisitions that will succeed. Media partnerships can be levered to create material growth from launching media partnerships in, you can say, the start of '23. And then to now, we've seen tremendous growth and especially our partnership with News UK is doing really amazing. We are expanding with News UK, and we are also looking into a few other partnerships in other parts of the world since we can see that it is a very fast way to create material revenue.

As I said, diversification will drive sustainable long-term growth for the business, and that is a key focus point for us also going forward. Then we know that technology and the data will give us an edge in a competitive marketplace that both goes from running a Publishing business where you need high-quality websites and you need many quality website. It also goes to Paid where you need to be able to do a lot of different campaigns in a global market, but at a tailored to each of the local markets that you're in with scale, with quality and with accurate data. Then given the size that we have now, one thing we have discussed in the management team very much is that it's also now the time to start thinking more about just core value chain improvements to unlock business value. And that's simply from the fact that we are getting to the amount of people that we are now. We should also sharpen the saw instead of only sewing faster, if I can use that analogy.

Give you a little insight into technology and BI. Throughout the quarter, Q4, many single market websites was transitioned to GiG Media's proprietary media platform, enhancing the quality of the offerings across the portfolio. And I think actually, if we look at our sites now, we have very few candidates left to actually migrate on to the GiG Media platform if we look at the old business. That's very lucky now right when we have acquired KaFe Rocks. We are ready to start onboarding the sites there to our GiG Media platform. We have also added several new features and improvement to GiG Media's admin soon to further streamline workflow and process quality. As I said, the value chain improvements. For instance, we have launched a tool in sales that make the work and the process and the creation of links and tagging and everything much more simpler and reduces errors, human errors and it makes it -- the quality and the workflow is just better.

There's a lot of things we can do like that, and that will also be a focus point forward for '24. Then we launched our proprietary business intelligence tool after the quarter ended, the tool offers comprehensive insights for decision-making on scaling up, sustaining or reducing specific activities in each business area. And you can say basically that should give us a much stronger understanding of how each of our sites are performing, how each of our pages are performing and how our partners are performing. And we are very excited about the opportunity to have the data to start working with numbers so specifically. If you look at summary and outlook, all-time high revenue plans take an EBITDA in the quarter, operational excellence, strong organic growth of business and successful integration of AskGamblers, ample opportunity to grow in existing markets, adding sports betting to AskGamblers going forward to double the size of the market.

The buildup of the player base that we have seen throughout '23 is sort of very positive, and we have high expectations to further increase recurring revenue share earnings. Strategic acquisition of KaFe Rock is completed and business is ready to take KaFe Rocks to new heights. The GiG Media business has never been stronger, and we are excited to continue our journey towards becoming the leading gaming affiliate. That sounds maybe a little bit male aggressive. If I can reformulate that a little bit with maybe more soft words. I would say we are very humble about the position we have but we're also very hungry about improving and going forward and taking the business to the next level now. So a lot of hard work has been done. A lot of hard work is ahead of us. We have our eyes on the target, and we are confident that a lot of good things can happen if we keep doing what we have done and keep staying hungry.

So yes, then just to reiterate the previous guidance that was given when we announced acquisition of KaFe Rocks. We guided revenue between EUR 125 million to EUR 135 million in '24. Thank you very much. And I'll hand over to Richard.

[Richard Carter, executive]

Good morning, and thank you, Jonas, and congratulations on an excellent quarter. So let me start. Throughout Q4 and so far during this year, we've made meaningful progress against many of our strategic growth and operational initiatives. As we've implemented a flatter organization on decision-making structure, we've strengthened the management team in technology, in operations and sales. We've increased the level of automation, we've instilled a data-driven and analytical culture. As well, we've streamlined the development and delivery process. We've launched an advanced new product suite, and we significantly invested in our commercial and marketing function. These together with other recently introduced initiatives are transforming the Platform & Sportsbook and giving us a much more competitive, much more agile and much more product-focused B2B organization and is laying the foundations for us to capture an increasing share of the online gaming value chain, and we're already seeing results.

We've seen a step-up in new partner onboarding cadence with 3 clients launched year-to-date. We've also seen a material increase in the value and depth of our sales pipeline. We're also seeing accelerating group-wide innovation across all key product verticals, and we now have the ability to target more complex partners which offer significantly higher medium-term revenue and profitability, and we're lowering the cost to serve both existing customers and delivering new customers. Now before looking at some of our growth drivers, I'm going to take you through Q4 and full year '23 results and some business highlights. So starting with Q4 performance. Revenue for the Platform & Sportsbook increased 11% to EUR 9.1 million, and that was all organically driven. Adjusted EBITDA was down 42% to EUR 1.1 million, but that was partly driven by spin-off-related costs and also a tactical decision to increase investment in our Sportsbook marketing, senior hires and business development.

Adjusting for the Q4 one-offs so underlying EBITDA at EUR 1.7 million and EBITDA margin at 19%. We signed 4 new agreements together with the Head of Terms during the quarter. And we just -- and we also renewed 2 key contracts, which accounted for 11% of our 2023 revenue and only yesterday, we also announced the renewal of another key partner on a multiyear agreement and 2 additional brands went live in quarter 4. Now let's look at the full year 2023. So full year revenue for the Platform & Sportsbook increased 33% to EUR 37.8 million and adjusted EBITDA, which excludes the reversal of the earn-out provision increased 139% to EUR 10.6 million, and the EBITDA margin increased to 28%. During '23, we completed material product enhancements across our iGaming platform and Sportsbook, which recently culminated in the launch of our vastly improved new X branded suite of products, which gives us much faster market entry ability and also the ability to target Tier 1 opportunities and 16 new agreements were signed in 2023.

Now turning to the integration and sales pipeline. So as I've already mentioned, 2 brands went live in Q4 '23, and we've already launched 3 additional brands so far this year and we have very strong visibility that we'll be able to launch at least another 3 brands by the end of this quarter, which signifies a material increase in the cadence of new client launches. We also have another 19 brands in the integration pipeline, which continues to underpin future revenue growth and margin expansion. The sales pipeline has doubled in aggregate value since the start of Q4 and over half of those are in contract stage. And interest in our elevated next-generation platform, CoreX and our Sportsbook SportX has been very encouraging. And only last week at ICE, we demoed this product to over 150 new and existing customers. And more than 70% of our pipeline will have both Sportsbook and Platform products. And why is this so important? Well, our Sportsbook converts at 3x versus our Platform and obviously, therefore, offers us real accretion to both the top line and bottom line.

So now let's look at some of the key growth pillars that will drive revenue growth, improve our recurring margins and generate sustainable return on investment. The first one focuses on enhancing our technology and product offering, and that's key to not only retaining our customers, but also allowing us to target much bigger, revenue-generating customers as we go forward. And so far, we've made very strong progress here. As I said, we recently launched our new X suite of vastly enhanced products, and we also continue to invest and optimize our core key verticals as well as continue to fill product gaps with best-in-class third parties. Secondly, we continue to increase the share of our partner wallets by cross-sell and upsell. And this is very important, and I think there's a lot of low-hanging fruit here because, number one, only 31% of our platform customers take Sports and only 24% take GiG Data and Logic and only 8% take Managed Services.

And yesterday, when we announced the Casumo renewal, we also upsold the Managed Services. So it shows that we're able to execute here. In addition, we're also focused on taking existing clients into new markets, and we're in multiple discussions there to do that over the next 6 to 12 months. Now the third strategic growth pillar is focused on targeting new market expansion with a focus on profit. And what we mean by this is, we're only going to launch into new markets with the right customer that will generate significant return on investment. And the fourth is focused on increasing and accelerating new business growth. We've restructured the sales team. We brought in new products, we've made recent hires and now we believe that we can target 100% of our addressable market, where previously, we were probably only targeting around 50%. And lead generation has started very strongly in 2024, and we've got very strong active discussions both in Europe and LATAM.

So in summary, we enter 2024 with renewed focus and belief that our recent changes to our operational structure, the addition of experienced and proven senior management team, the recent launch of our vastly, enhanced next-generation, CoreX and SportX, new products and the significant step-up in marketing and commercial investment will not only materially expand our near-term total addressable market, but will also provide the foundations for faster market entry, faster new client launches, it will also hopefully lead to our ability to target larger revenue-generating customers and also give us access to greater upsell and cross-sell. And ultimately, we'll position the Platform & Sportsbook for faster future revenue and EBITDA growth. With that, I'll pass over back to Petter for his closing remarks.

[Petter Nylander, executive]

Thank you, Richard. So we're coming closer to the end. So before we're wrapping up, maybe just going to give an update on what has happened after the fourth quarter. So looking at January 2024 then, it has developed positively and group revenues are up 53% compared to the same period last year, whereof 20% organic. We have completed the Sportsbook launch of the Betway brand in Portugal and the sixth and seventh launch with partner BPlay in Latin America. Number of live brands now is 62 on the Platform. We have also launched a whole new suite of product innovations. We called Platform CoreX, Sportsbook SportX and AI-led features, DataX and LogicX that have been well received recently in ICE in London, where we shared and the team presented those products. We have signed contract renewal accounting for 11% of the 2023 Platform & Sportsbook revenue. We have also, as seen in GiG Media player intake up 39% in January compared to the same period in 2022. So a good start of the year. So wrapping up then before the Q&A session.

So as you have seen, GiG delivers an all-time high revenue and EBITDA in 2023. GiG Media has gone from strength and strength throughout the quarters last year with strong organic growth combined with successful integration of the AskGamblers acquisition into the business. And we see now that we -- the basic business in GiG Media really shows the organic -- the operational excellence and also being able to combine acquisitions with the -- driving the underlying business, which we are very proud of what the team has achieved. The Platform business substantially strengthened during last year with a more experienced management team and a well-received new product suite and offering into the market. Both businesses are now well positioned to provide shareholder value from 2024 as stand-alone businesses. We have the last missing pieces in platform now implemented during the fourth quarter as products and senior management team.

So we're also proud of the fact that we have successfully made the bond refinancing at the end of last year. And as I said before, we, as a Board and team aim to be ready for a split of the platform media business by the first half of the year, 2024, subject, of course, to approval by shareholders, auditors and relevant authorities. So to wrap up on the journey we've been on for quite a few years now. We think that in 2024 will be a transformational year for the Gaming Innovation Group, setting the scene for continued value creation for shareholders for both our businesses. Thank you. And now I hand over again to Hjalmar for Q&A.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

Okay. Thanks for a great presentation. I think I'm going to start with the trading update because January looks to have been pretty strong, 53% growth. Can you say anything more about -- I mean, was there something particularly impacted, I guess, strong Sportsbook margin any market that grew for many of -- you can give some more flavor on that maybe?

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

I would say, yes, in general, for Media, it's just a general improvement we have seen throughout '23, right, that we also see continuing in '24 if we compare with January '23 then. So I wouldn't say there's been anything specific beyond actually that the growth is sort of well based across the different units that we have to make of GiG Media.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And on the book...

[Richard Carter, executive]

I mean, we're seeing solid underlying partner growth, and then we started to see obviously the recent launches in '23 starting to build into '24.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And look at the Media business, you mentioned that -- I mean you see a good growth in North America. Was the U.S. driving this and the new state launch, you went into new products or if you could give input...

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Yes, of course, North America. It's very interesting. I would just basically call it basic improvements across the few sites that we have there. And honestly speaking, also, it's nice to see the improvement, the team has done an amazing job. But we are still, of course, not satisfied with the results we are making in the U.S. And I think we have potential to do a lot more and which is also one of the reasons why we acquired KaFe Rocks but both KaFe Rocks and also the assets we have now in the U.S., we hope to be able to keep improving them, to take them to a far higher levels going forward.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And have you -- I mean, KaFe Rocks just recently consolidated but have you started to look at the synergies from U.S. and North America on that asset?

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Yes. And generally speaking, there's a lot of synergies. There are quite a few strong products in KaFe Rocks and very strong people around the organization and they're doing some things very different from us, but also very clever. So there's actually also this that the old GiG Media business is going to learn from KaFe Rocks and vice versa. I think one of the things that will benefit KaFe Rocks tremendously is our BI [indiscernible]. And then, of course, also over time, our media platform where we will free up developers, product owners and whatnot. So to work on that many different sites on like an independent level. Instead, 1 team can work on 1 media platform that feeds all of the different sites.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And the LATAM was a bit softer this quarter, as mean trough from the FIFA World Cup last year. But I mean Brazil is now ongoing regulation. Do you think that is upside looking into the rest of '24 or late in '24?

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Yes, Brazil is part of our sort of one of our core growth markets going forward. It has to be -- it's a big thing in the industry, and it will also be a big thing for us. It has to be like that. And we have seen a good growth in [indiscernible] speaking over the last, let's say, actually 3 years when I look at numbers, really a [indiscernible] coming. So yes, going forward, Brazil should also be. But as I said, luckily, for instance, if we look at Europe, what you can call like the old markets, we are actually still growing a lot in Europe. So yes, I think it's nice to have many markets that we believe we can grow in. So we are not that sort of singular exposed.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And a question from the audience here was on the revenue mix in Media. You see listing fees taking a higher share. Is that something that will continue?

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

I think I would say, broadly speaking, revenue share earning should be around, what, 60% listing fees should be around 25% and then CPAs should be the remaining. What's that 15%, around that level. It would be nice to see if we can get revenue share earning up to maybe 65% and then get the CPA earnings down to 10% maybe. But in that level, maybe the listing fees in Q4 was a little bit higher relatively than normal. But it's also a very attractive quarter in iGaming, you know Christmas and...

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

I'm going to continue with the Media for a time and then move to, I guess, after that. KaFe Rocks, I mean, just consolidate for roughly 1.5 months. What -- I mean, how does it look now compared to what you thought before you acquired it?

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Oh, tough question. Yes. But I think it looks as good as we imagine it would. I think I'm actually very positive surprised about some of the things that the KaFe Rocks team have been doing that are clever. They are doing things, some things better than us. And I'm very happy to see that actually. And then I think that we had management meeting in Copenhagen with KaFe Rocks. And I think I saw the hunger in a few people's eyes, for instance, you see the [indiscernible] that we have because they know that they can improve the business for that, right. So yes, of course, we only want a few months into sort of the honeymoon period. But so far, it's been good, and it looks good.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

Yes. And low-hanging synergies that looks even easier to achieve than you said.

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

I think for some of the websites in the KaFe Rocks portfolio, they will instill the game by being sort of integrated and merged into the GiG Media team, similar to what we actually did with a few of the small assets that was in the AskGamblers portfolio. So yes.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And there was some question also on the competitive landscape, and you also mentioned that you're taking market share in some markets. Can you say, I mean, how is the market changing for affiliates and where are you taking market share or from who?

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Yes. Good question. No, I think the market is changing in the sense that you see consolidation, the big players are becoming bigger and bigger. And I think in that sense, also sort of competition is becoming maybe a little bit tougher, but you need to know your details. You need to know your game. And I think we believe very much that you need to have technology and BI to be able to win on the battlefield, if I may use that expression. I think that's the key going forward as well. So a humble approach and then use Tech and BI, work with details. And then I think, actually, there's not a lot of other secrets than that. So yes, I think for any company our size now, the trick is to remain efficient in all of the different small units that we have now. And that's something we are very focused on and something that we want to see happening in '24 as well.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And in terms of the mix of Publishing versus Paid, you mentioned that Publishing is an attractive -- it's attractive grow that mix. Can you say how that impacts your numbers? Or how do you see that attractiveness?

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Broadly speaking, we should achieve future growth in revenue share earnings, of course. Of course, I would love to see both Publishing growing tremendously and Paid growing tremendously. But given now that we look at a situation where publishing has taken over more and more of the channel mix, that's where we are attractive. I think if we look at Paid there's a lot of untapped potential there for us. And I think, again, this is about technology. It's about data. And we know, for instance, that we have say, the PPC channel, [indiscernible] the omni-channel, social media, where there's still a lot of things we can do. And that's one of the key areas for '24 to establish Paid media again as, if I may call it sort of the leading force in Paid advertising and iGaming.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And moving over to Platform & Sportsbook a bit there. I mean you've done quite a lot of changes to operations. I mean do you expect and you say you're starting to see impact from this. Do you think it will materialize in growth and profitability already in 2024? Or is it more a couple of years out when you see the benefits?

[Richard Carter, executive]

Well, I think the market will start to see in terms of when we start to announce the sort of quality of the new clients coming through the bigger size, the implied improving revenue and profitability. In terms of -- you're not going to see a big transformation in our profitability this year. But I think as we move through this year, the market will start to get a very strong visibility on where this business is going and the sort of opportunities that exist that we can onboard and also the sort of size of the operators that we're looking to bring on board. And I think once you get that, I think then the market will clearly get good visibility on that sort of mark, on that sort of revenue and EBITDA growth.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And one interesting detail you mentioned was that you've doubled the sales pipeline compared to just in Q3. And do you think that will materialize in new client signing in the short term? Or is it?

[Richard Carter, executive]

Yes, 100%. Yes, I mean that's obviously the key harbinger of our business. That's the future of our business. And to be perfectly honest, the sales pipeline when I joined wasn't good enough, both in terms of quality and in terms of debt. So we've completely restructured that. I brought on board a new team. We changed the strategy. We've obviously launched our new products and over that period, we've started to engage with obviously much bigger clients. The other key differentiator here is we've spent a lot of money and focused on our Sportsbook, and that effectively gives us an opportunity to attack a new, very big growth market for us.

So as part of the growth we've seen in the pipeline, a lot of that is also coming from Sports customers. And we just very quickly, we think there's probably a [ EUR 75 million ] opportunity there over the next 3 years. Now we're not going to win all of them, but that sort of quantifies just the sort of near-term opportunity. And as I said before, every euro of Sports revenue that goes through our system converts at 3x what it does on the platform. So that obviously gives us good access to accelerating revenue growth and the bottom line.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And you kind of already answered that maybe, but the kind of customers that you have in the sales [indiscernible], it sounds like the larger customers, but can you say, are they -- do they already have a Sportsbook? Or is it new clients that don't have Sportsbook. What type of customers?

[Richard Carter, executive]

Well, so, one of the issues that we have is that we obviously now have a completely refocused Tier 1 Sportsbook and only 30% of our platform take sports. And obviously, that presents just a very significant opportunity there. Then in terms of the pipeline, I would say there are sort of 20% to 30% are already large sports operating part of our customers that would be migration. And then there's obviously another big chunk that don't have sports. But we'll be -- the real big wins are going to be the ones that are currently on other third-party Sportsbooks that we need to convince and migrate over to our Sportsbook.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And the new product suite you launched here. How big chances are there? Are you -- I mean, close with competition or better than competition? Can you give us some flavor on the big...

[Richard Carter, executive]

I think in terms of where we're targeting and our competition, I think it really takes us significantly ahead of that competition. I think just last week at ICE, just seeing the reaction, I think more importantly, from our existing customers that came and a lot of our big Tier 1 customers are getting extremely excited about this new product. So I think that's really important and sort of really reiterates all the hard work that we put in place. But I think on our Sportsbook and especially our new platform and bringing it all together with the data and logic, I think, really does differentiate us and take us ahead of the market and gives us a fantastic opportunity to grow this business.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

And you put out the 4 kind of growth pillars here. Is it one of those that you think is will -- drill rather the most growth or with your combination?

[Richard Carter, executive]

Well, the most growth is going to be driven by bringing in the fourth one, which is bringing on new customers. Obviously, that's -- if we can bring a customer tomorrow that has significant revenue, then that just converts down to the bottom line for us. So that's obviously got the biggest opportunity. But that's partly driven by launching our new products. So that sort of goes hand in hand. And then as I said, we've obviously got a very big opportunity with cross-sell. And that's -- we're already talking to many of our big Tier 1 customers about taking them into new markets with the new product we launched. So that obviously, again, goes back to technology and what we did. And then obviously, we've got the cross-sell opportunity or upsell opportunity where a lot of our customers don't take our full product suite.

So yesterday, we announced a big extension with a key partner, Casumo, and they're now taking managed services. And a lot of the deals in our pipeline are not taking one product, they're taking multiple products. And so -- and that all comes just with a complete renewed focus and giving the sales team a much stronger mandate to go out and make sure that you take these services. And actually, by taking our Managed Services, and taking our GiG Data and Logic and our rules engine, it also gives the operator a lot more efficiency and reduces their costs as well. So it's a win-win for both parties. So I think it's a very compelling product, and I'd expect to see more of our new customer launches going forward, taking much more of our combined products.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

I'm just going to get it for some final questions. I mean the split up is going as expected since and you gave us a date that -- or not a date, but the time line that you expect to have exceeded by end of Q2. What could make this not happen? What are the risks that are still there?

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Yes. So internally, that's what we're aiming for, and then the risks are more so the -- everything that comes around sort of a Stock Exchange monitors, approvals from authorities. Of course, we need the shareholder, EGM, sign-off, et cetera. So it's sort of external factors. Internally, making good pace and that's why we communicate today. We're going to be ready by Q2, subject to those external sort of sign-offs.

[Hjalmar Ahlberg, analyst]

All right. Thank you very much for joining.

[Jonas Warrer, executive]

Thank you.