La Francaise des Jeux SA
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Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2021-Q1

from 0
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the FDJ Conference Call. I now hand over to Stephane Pallez, Chairwoman and CEO. Madam, please go ahead.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello. Good evening, good morning -- good evening to most of the people. Welcome to this FDJ Conference Call. So we -- I'm Stephane Pallez, Chairman and CEO. I'm with Pascal Chaffard, Executive Vice President, Finance, Performance and Strategy. You may have read the press release that was actually released a few minutes ago, I think, after market close. And of course, the slide show that we will comment is available on our website. So I'm going to start this call by commenting in our activity for Q1 2021 in the context of the sanitary crisis. And Pascal will -- will go into more details about our revenue figures. So to start with, I want to -- of course, I want to underline that the health crisis, as we all know, is not yet over in France. Its consequence, both direct and indirect, remain difficult to assess and, of course, difficult to forecast since, again, things are not completely clear in terms of the next weeks and months. I think it's maybe useful to remind you what are the main measures that do have -- that do have an impact, significant impact on us or at least which are clearly negative for us. It's mainly the fact that due to the close of bars and restaurants and to most shopping centers that have been closed. First, the one in excess of 20,000 meters -- square meters since the end of January and more recently, also the one in excess of 10,000 square meters. So it means that right now, we have 10% of our outlets that are closed in Q1 2020 on average. In terms of impact on us, these closures have clearly a notable impact on our Amigo game stakes, which are down 50% in Q1. As a reminder, this game was stopped on -- by our own initiative last year. So it's -- today, it's -- theoretically, I would say, opened and offered. But since it's -- but it's a game that is most practiced in bars and where people have to stay to play it, it's definitely suffering a lot from this situation. The other measures that have an impact, although it's maybe more difficult to quantify precisely, are the curfew that we enjoyed since mid-January, at 6:00 p.m. and now it is 7:00 p.m., which is a little better. But at the same time, it is now nationwide measure with some, of course, some partial lockdown and restriction of circulation. So that's -- I think, again, each country has its own rhythm and it's own measures, so I thought it was useful to remind you where we are. And again, what are the main things that might have an impact on us, again, even though some are less significant than others. On the contrary, compared to what we had 1 year ago, we have a normal schedule of sporting events, even though they are without public. And I remember you that actually, last March, they were beginning to disappear. And they almost completely disappeared during this last month of March 2020. So in this context -- and I'm turning now to activity. In this context, we can, however, say that our top line momentum remains well-oriented in this beginning of the year. We have taken the liberty to compare it not only with Q1 2020, but also with Q1 2019. Because as you might understand, it's not easy to compare Q1 2021 to Q1 2020 since we had, of course, in Q1 2020, a very -- 2 different period. One, a good and -- I would say, normal period and a month of March that began to be completely different. So we gave the same, the -- both comparisons. So when we talk about Q1 2020, you will see that stakes are up 12% and revenue is up 5%. However, when you -- I think it's, in fact, more significant in a way to compare it with Q1 2019, which was, of course, completely -- completely out of the COVID crisis. We are up 6% in terms of stakes and 4% in terms of revenue. We could even -- we could also say, again, with some treatments on both sides, that when we compare it on a -- on a most comparable base, we are probably broadly stable year-on-year, when we -- again, we exclude the elements that are not comparable, but I would not dwell on this one. So I think it's worth highlighting. It's worth highlighting that we have there, of course, a very positive trend. The first one and remarkable is, of course, the continuation of the strong growth in online stakes that are actually this Q1 up nearly 90%, which are supported both by lottery and sports betting. It means that right now, our online stake represents roughly 20% -- sorry, not 20%, 12% of the total stakes of FDJ compared with 7% in Q1 2020. It's also, I think, quite remarkable that despite this strong growth in online stakes, our point-of-sale activity has actually been quite positive despite against the health measures impact that I mentioned, up 6%. And in terms of our different segments of games, of course, the sports betting momentum has been confirmed with stakes up 20% at mid-March. And they are, of course, we take into account the fact that we have, again, a very different period between beginning of March and mid-March. So I think this is, again, more -- more interesting to talk about this 20% than the level at the end of Q1. We have, on the luxury side, very positive trends also on our draw games, Loto and EuroMillions. Those 2 games recorded close to 25% increase in stakes. They, of course -- this performance has been fueled by the relaunch of those games that we did in the past, but also by several long cycles, notably for EuroMillions with an all-time high prize of EUR 210 million. And we also have seen our instant games coming back to rather normalized trends, up 5% for the quarter, with good success of some of our games, and particularly the annuity game that we launched, Objectif Maison in January, but also followed by others, such as Mega Goal and relaunch of Banco, so something that is sort of going back to normal growth strength for those types of games. I might also spend a little -- spend some minutes on the online luxury growth. And there on this slide, you see that there is really, I think, a change, a structural change in terms of level of growth of online lottery and in terms of level of activity, therefore. So of course, in 2020, we had a very strong growth of this online lottery, but I think it's remarkable that it is continuing in 2021, with this increase of nearly 90% in Q1 2021. Over the past quarters, it means that the reason of growth of this online lottery is roughly 3x higher than the one recorded over the 4 preceding quarters. And of course, this acceleration reflects the investments that we did over the last years in this business, and that is clearly now giving fruits. We are now -- so in terms of online lottery, we're now going to a level which was 5% of our total stakes in 2019 to almost 9% in 2020. And we are now, again, close to 12% in -- at the end of this Q1 2021. So definitely, a near doubling of the share of total lottery stakes compared to Q1 2020. I -- well, I think some of the reasons that are interesting in terms of growth factors is the fact that, of course, Loto and EuroMillions are long cycles where, of course, positive to this online lottery growth. But we also used some targeted advertisement to drive our customers to this channel. I think it's also interesting that it's not only draw games, but actually our instant lottery games have been growing faster than the draw games coming from higher -- coming from a lower share of those online stakes. And we, again, worked on this. For example, we launched our first online exclusive games at EUR 5. And this was, again, a way to stimulate this growth. It's also important to note that we have -- we have now also an average annual online spend, which is growing, but which we're still 40% below our point of sale. We have definitely an increase in the player -- in the player base online, up 70%. So we think that it's a sound trend. It's a very positive for this quarter but also for the future. And it is, of course, well in line with our plans to grow this part of our business during this year and forward. So with those comments, I will hand over to Pascal to come back to our stakes and revenues. Thank you.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Thank you, Stephane, and hello, everyone. I'm going to detail now our Q1 top line performance and the bridge from stakes to revenue, and we are now at Slide #6. Stephane has explained the changes within our operating environment that impacted our activity with the complexity of not having a clean comparable basis, given the 12% increase in stakes to EUR 4.6 billion, Q1 revenue was up 5% at EUR 538 million. The difference in growth rates is due to the 120 basis point increase in the player payout from 67.5% in Q1 2020 to 68.7% in Q1 2021. This is entirely attributable to sports betting, and I will come back to this on Slide 8. But before that, let's take a look at Slide 7. Beyond the structural factors mentioned also by Stephane, notably with regards to our online business, this slide back to the year-on-year variations, not only versus 2020 but also versus 2021 -- in '19 for a cleaner comparable basis, as mentioned before by Stephane. Compared with Q1 2019, despite Amigo stakes down more than 50% on the quarter, the growth in stakes reached 6%. Versus Q1 2020, Q1 2021 stakes reached EUR 4.6 billion, as I've previously mentioned, up 12%, of which lottery stakes of EUR 3.5 billion, up 4% year-on-year. And within lottery stakes, stakes from draw games are amounted to EUR 1.3 billion, up 3% and more than 20% if we exclude Amigo. Stakes from instant games amounted EUR 2.1 billion, up 5%. The stakes from sports betting increased by 46% to EUR 1.1 billion, benefiting from: first, a dynamic market; second, higher player payout ratio enticing players to keep coming back to play; and also, a favorable comparison basis as most of sporting events were canceled in the second half of March 2020, as Stephane mentioned it before. The growth versus 2019 on a more comparable basis is still a 20% increase. Now we are on Slide #8. In Q1 2021, winnings totaled EUR 3.1 billion, up more than 14%; and supplier payout ratio of 68.7%, near a 120 basis point increase year-on-year. This -- the player payout PPO, if we say it in short, increase is related to sport betting for 2 reasons: first, a mix effect, that sports betting accounted for more than 24% in total stakes in Q1 2021 versus less than 19% in Q1 2020; and second, the sports betting PPO itself increased by 600 basis points to reach 80%. In parallel, the lottery PPO was down slightly because of the mix effect related to Loto and EuroMillions share in the total lottery stakes. Other PPO is low, and Amigo declined as its PPO is above lottery average. The increase in the sports betting PPO is not exceptional at this stage of the year and is the result of many betting outcomes favorable to the players, with the most expected winners coming through, particularly in football. And we think it applies to the entire sports betting market in France. We've already had the chance to detail the quarterly variations in PPO, notably for sport betting. And the Q1 2021 PPO remains below the 69.3% recorded in Q3 2020 or the 69% in Q2 2019. Largely expected winners came through in Q1, but it won't necessarily be the case over the whole year. It's on a yearly basis that we manage the metrics of yearly average PPO, and you can see that annual ratios on this slide are quite similar, regardless of the quarterly fluctuations. To conclude on Slide 9, the gross gaming revenue stakes minus winnings stood at EUR 1.4 billion, up 7.7%. The net gaming revenue, which is the GGR, gross gaming revenue, minus public levies was up 5.1%, and the revenue, total revenue, up 5.2% year-on-year. On lottery, increases in stakes and revenue was broadly similar, while the rise in sports betting PPOs translated into a lower growth in revenue versus stakes plus 11% versus plus 46% in stakes. Thank you very much, and Stephane and I are now ready to answer your questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We have a first question from [ Jane Galois ] from Bank of America.

U
Unknown Analyst

I just wanted to talk about your sports betting results. Is there any update on where you see your market share? Was this an outperformance versus market? And I can also see that your online stakes rose again this quarter to 12% of total stakes. What do you think -- where do you think they'll head once the markets reopen?

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

I think your first question was about our market share on the online sports betting market. As you might know, or as I will state again, we don't communicate on the exact level of our market share per se. We, however, can say that our market share has been probably globally stable regarding where we were at the end of the year. So no, I would say, no major change in terms of our market share. Your second question, I'm not sure I got it completely. Can you repeat your second question, please? Sorry, the phone was not very -- was not helpful.

U
Unknown Analyst

No problem, no problem at all. Just your overall stakes, I can see about 12% of your total stakes now for the group came from online. That's an increase versus 11% in Q4 and 9% in Q3. We'll hopefully be coming out of lockdown in a few months' time. Where do you think that share will go, that share of online? What do you think the new base is?

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Okay. Well, we have not given a target for the year in terms of share of our online at this point because precisely, we were cautious about what was linked to the specific period that we've been going through and what was a more structural trend. We will probably come back to that at the end of this semester. However, I think what we've definitely seen during this first quarter is that we have changed our rhythm of development of this online part of our business, particularly in the lottery -- in our lottery business. So we definitely expect to keep some of this higher trend over the year. I think that we've been -- at the end of last year, we were -- we are saying that probably, our trend for online -- for online stakes should be between 20% and 30%. And we believe that we will be actually more on a 30% increase this year of our online lottery stakes and probably overall in our online business than 20%. So we will -- again, it will be, I think, easier to see how we land on that at the end of the semester since we hope, as everyone, that we will probably be coming out of this very specific period.

U
Unknown Analyst

Perfect. And just one last question. Did you comment -- I think you commented on the sports growth win improvement. I missed that earlier.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

The PPO -- on the PPO?

U
Unknown Analyst

Yes, yes.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Pascal, do you want to...

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Yes, yes. We commented -- yes, on the growth of the sports betting PPO. This quarter, sport betting PPO was quite high, 600 basis points higher than the one in Q1 2020. So it explains the gap between the growth in stakes, up 46% and the growth in revenue, which is 11% on the quarter. We think it is the case of all the French market as we think that, so it's not especially FDJ. And it's not exceptional as we had this type of PPO, for example, on Q3 2020.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Next question from Alexandre Gérard from ECIS (sic) [ CIC MS ].

A
Alexandre Gérard

Yes, 3 questions on my side regarding sports betting. Can you please give us a vague idea of the difference in performance in terms of stake for sports betting between point-of-sale and online? This is my first question. The second question is related to that also. I mean, in Europe, you are highlighting the fact that, that performance is also driven by a higher number of clients over the quarter. Can we have also an idea of that increase in number of clients on the sport betting side? And third question is related to the Olympic Games. Some -- there are still rumors on the market about the likely cancellation of that event. Is it possible to have an idea of what is the weight of such a major event on your year-on-year revenues forecasted for 2021, if it were to be canceled?

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Okay. On this last point, I think to my knowledge, well, it's not going to be canceled. But of course, I have no clues more than you. The Olympics is not as significant in terms of event as our other -- a lot of other events in our schedule and particularly, of course, the football Euro competitions. So I'm not sure -- I don't know whether Pascal is able to give you a figure, but it's not -- I don't think it's very probable, and I don't think it would be very significant.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Yes. I confirm, it would not be significant as there will be other offers instead of Olympic Games. Some football championship will reopen in August. And we have seen, for example, in last June, June 2020, that the players plays on what is available on the site. If the Olympics are available, they will play on Olympics. But it's not as important as football, obviously. And if there's no Olympic Games, they will play on other events. So it's not a big issue for us.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

On the other question...

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

On the other question, you asked about the difference of performance between point-of-sale and online. I will not give you a precise number, but it's obvious that we are not the same level of growth in the point of sales and online on the sports betting side. First, we have a difference gap between the 2 growth in each side, which is an important fact, a very important factor. But we have a gap on the growth of each channel since several years now, and it is quite normal, quite very understandable. The fact is that in Q1 2021, as Stephane mentioned it, the curfew were a little bit a problem for sport betting off-line. Because when you have a shop retailer closed as of 6:00 p.m., it's a problem when most of the events are in football, for example, over 8:00 p.m. So we had a little -- a little bit impact about that. But still, we are -- we have a growth on point of sales and a growth higher online. And the number of -- if we talk about number of clients, it's the same. We don't tell precise numbers about that. We have really an impact on the client base of the first quarter. It's more important on the lottery side than on the sport betting side. On the lottery side, we have more than 600,000 new players coming to our lottery offer online on the first quarter of 2021. It's in line with the 1 million new players that we had last year. And this is the first explanation of why we had this important growth online on lottery.

A
Alexandre Gérard

All right. Maybe just one last question on my side, if I may. Can you remind us what is the weight of -- in a normal year of Amigo? Let's say, in 2019, what was the weight in your stakes of that game?

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Something a little bit less than 10%.

Operator

Next question from James Ainley from Citi.

J
James Robert Garforth Ainley
Director & European Hotels and Leisure Analyst

Three questions, please. The first, could you give a little bit more flavor about how the variations in lockdowns in France have impacted activity through the quarter? And should we think that the Q1 sort of run rate in activity is a good guide for, sort of, activity levels as we go into Q2? And second, marketing spend over the last couple of years has been picking up. It was 15.7% of NGR last year, I think. My understanding was that we might expect to see some more efficiencies coming through in marketing in the year ahead. Should we expect that ratio to fall by 10 or 20 basis points? And then the third question is can you just remind us what the D&A guidance, depreciation and amortization guidance is for the year, please?

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Okay. On the -- on your first question, which is what are the main impact -- the main impact of the restrictions that we have now. It is -- I think, where we see -- where we're able to see some impact is definitely the fact that we have this 10% of our shops that are closed. However, it seemed that the impact on our activity has not been proportionate to that level because, in fact, our clients have been going either to other shops or online. So it's -- the impact of this 10% of shops that are closed does not seem to be, again, as we measure it, that significant compared to this 10%. There might be, as we said, and there is probably some impact of the curfew on sports betting in the point of sales, because as Pascal was explaining, sports betting is something that is more practiced at the end of afternoon and/or in the evenings. And therefore, the fact that we have curfew -- we're at curfew at 6:00, at 6:00 p.m. and now at 7:00 p.m., is definitely not favorable for our point of sale, although they have been again -- they have been positive in terms of growth of activity on sports betting, but probably at a lower level than they could have -- they could have been if we didn't have this curfew. Of course, players -- probably some of the players have been going online. But of course, we don't have 100% of the online sports betting market. So it means that certainly, we have some impact on our sports betting activity as a whole. But again, which is definitely more easy to measure on our point-of-sale sport betting activity. So I think under the control of Pascal, this is really the main elements that we can mention that are kind of -- in terms of impact of the lockdown on our activity. On marketing spend, I'm not sure I completely got the exact figure that you mentioned. I think that we are -- again, what we see in the figures that we commented, that we've been going back to some, I would say, normative trends in terms of activity, again, when we compare it to normal "periods."So I think the same is for market expense. And as you -- as you might expect, we have relaunched or launched a number of new games, which have been very efficient in driving this back to growth in our stakes. So I think our market expense level has been quite, I would say, going back to normal level. So this is not where we might have some efficiency gains that we have used last year to protect our profitability and that we expect to have still this year. It's not in marketing spend as such. It's more in other types of expense, particularly related to the way we interact with our point of sales, where the situation has probably given us opportunities to continue to make some savings since, for instance, the number of visits that we do -- that our commercial people do to the point of sales is, of course, lower. And also, the rhythm of and the volume of tickets that we have been sending to our point-of-sale has been also a little bit lower due to the closing of 10%. So yes, we do have some savings, but not so much on marketing expense as I can comment it at this point.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Maybe I can add one or 2 things about marketing spend. We have the Euro football. It will not be controlled...

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

As we expect.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

As we expect. And this is quite an important impact on our marketing expense because it will be a real battlefield between all the sport betting operators on June. And maybe the last point about our marketing spend, as we become more and more online, the level of marketing spend and percentage of the revenue will be higher because we spend more of marketing expenses when we are online than when we are off-line. So it will be gradually higher as we come more and more online. On your third question, if I well understood, you asked about the level of depreciation in 2021, we did not give a guidance for 2021. But I can help you a little bit. We had EUR 100 million, EUR 102 million of depreciation in 2020, and it will be a little bit higher than that, but not a lot higher than that, some millions higher than EUR 100 million.

Operator

Next question from Sabrina Blanc from Societe General.

S
Sabrina Blanc
Equity Analyst

Yes. I have 3 quick questions. The first one is regarding the -- for Q1, the trends between the beginning of the quarter when we had no lockdown. At the end of the quarter, have you noticed any big differences? The second question. Sorry, perhaps I missed this figure, but could you repeat the part of the lottery, which is currently online? And I just would like to come back on one of the sentence at your press release saying that the sports betting calendar is now normal calendar? And can you confirm that there is no more catch-up in terms of sports events?

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Okay. So first question is difference of trend between the beginning of the quarter and end of the quarter. I think there is unknown that we -- no known -- nothing significant. So that's quite easy. Second question is share of online lottery space.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Online lottery space.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

So it is 12%.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Yes.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Right now.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Just before 12%.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Yes, it's a bit below 12% -- or 12% in [ RMB ]. And third question was...

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Any catch-up on sport betting events, the answer is no.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

No.

Operator

Next question from Jaafar Mestari from Exane BNP Paribas.

J
Jaafar Mestari
Analyst

2 questions for me, if that's okay. Firstly, I wanted to come back on the different points you mentioned about the cost items this year and tie it all together. So it sounds like marketing costs are going to be like a normal year or maybe a little bit above because of the euro. It sounded like costs of visitations to the network, et cetera, could still be below. If we take this altogether, the EUR 80 million of cost savings you had last year, do you still think they'll be mostly reinvested this year? Or will you still be operating with some cost savings in what is still a disrupted year? And second question on capital allocation and the potential for you to deploy some of that balance sheet headroom. I think recently, you've been saying, well: one, the environment is still uncertain; and two, M&A is a bit blurry right now, no obvious pipeline. Now you have had 12 months of track record of operating in a very disrupted environment and managing through complete lockdowns, partial lockdowns, et cetera. Now the private competitors will also have had 12 months of clarity in a way. At which stage, what's the time line for you to actually say, well, we know the current environment? And if there's no pipeline, there's no pipeline? And at which stage do you actually start thinking about shareholder returns even in that environment?

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Pascal, on the cost savings, maybe...

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

On the cost savings, yes, we said EUR 80 million last year. We said that EUR 30 million versus 2019, and we will keep out of them, so EUR 15 million in 2021, and we are still on these type of figures. Yes, we are still on this type of figures. We have not changed our mind about that.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Okay. So on capital allocation, I don't think I have much to add to what we said in the past month. So the environment is what it is for all of us. Yes, we have done to manage through it. However, it is obviously, again, in France, but not only in France, still uncertain. So you can see it both ways, but yes, we are more confident in our capacity to manage it. But we don't think that uncertainty is out of the way. I think the -- we have still the same, I would say, objective in terms of continue to grow in our online business like in our sports betting online business. And we know that, yes, it does -- that go through organic growth, but it could also go through some M&A or partnership if we were to find good opportunities. So we definitely continue to look at potential opportunities. And I think it's really too early to talk about shareholder return. However, I want to stress that we -- this year, we have announced that we'll, of course, fulfill the promise of a dividend that we issued before the crisis after this year 2020. And this is going to be put to vote to our general assembly in June 4. I would say, extra or other type of shareholder return, I think it's too early.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Maybe I can just add one thing about one of the question of Sabrina Blanc just before that. When she asked about the trends beginning and end of the quarter, the trends on our activity are the same. But when we compare it to 2020, it's quite different. Maybe it's quite interesting to have in mind that the growth at mid-March when you take only your -- not the quarter in total, but from January to mid-March, is 5% except Amigo and 0% when we include Amigo. Because as we explained, the comparison basis was very favorable on the end of the second half of March.

Operator

Next question from Johanna Jourdain from ODDO BHF.

J
Johanna Jourdain
Analyst

Yes, could you hear me?

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Yes.

J
Johanna Jourdain
Analyst

Okay. 2 questions from me, please. So the first one is, could you give us a view on the player payout evolution that we could expect around Q2, Q3 of this year? Does the assumption of going back to Q3 '20 level, that 69.3%, could be a fair assumption?And my second question, I calculate an increase in online stakes of plus 3 points compared to the end of 2020. Could you give us a sense of how does it translate into the [ B2C ]?

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

Okay. On the first one, I think your question was what is our assumption in terms of PPO -- for the year? For the whole year?

J
Johanna Jourdain
Analyst

For the whole year and especially for Q2, Q3, yes, please.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

So Q2 or Q3. I think that what Pascal explained is that we have in front of us, particularly in Q2, but actually it is also partly in Q3, some very big sports events. Particularly, of course, the EURO, which is at the end of Q2 and beginning of Q3. And it is clearly a period in which you might have, of course, with a lot of dependency on the results of the competition. But you might have some very high level of PPO. That's part of the scheme of this type of competition. So I'm not sure we're able to give you a figure.

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

No, I think it's very difficult to give a figure on quarter-by-quarter. We don't pilot it, manage it quarter-by-quarter. But on a yearly basis, it happens that this quarter is quite high. We can expect that the second quarter, as Stephane said, could be higher depending on what the French team of football will do on the Euro football. But globally, on the whole year, we don't expect figures very higher than it was in the next -- in last year. And regarding sport betting and regarding lottery, we had a particularly low PPO this quarter. Because as I explained, Amigo was down. And when Amigo will be there again, the Amigo PPO is higher than -- is above the average PPO of lottery. Technically, the PPO of lottery will get a little bit higher. But on the sports betting, we manage it on a yearly basis, not on a quarterly basis.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

And your second question was about the level of online -- online stake or online lottery stakes? I'm not sure. Sorry. And the impact on our margin? Is that right?

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

Johanna, can you repeat the second question?

J
Johanna Jourdain
Analyst

Yes. That was my question actually.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

So your question was what type of impact in terms of margin and EBITDA should we expect from the higher percentage of online lottery stake. I think, again, we're not -- we are not giving -- we have not given any guidance for EBITDA this year. We have not -- and we're not actually commenting EBITDA at the end of Q1. However, I think we have explained several times that, of course, the online lottery stake has a relative impact on our EBITDA. Pascal, I don't know whether you want to repeat what we said, which is 1 point...

P
Pascal Chaffard
Executive Vice

We said that it's between 1.5 and 2x the margin on the online stakes than on the off-line stakes. So it's quite a good news for us that we have this solid trend of online stakes.

S
Stephane Pallez
Chairman, President & CEO

So it's definitely positive on our profitability. And it's actually even a little more positive since it is driven at this point, again, a lot by draw games, which have even a better margin as such. I think we'll come back to that at the end of the semester in terms of what it means in terms of EBITDA guidance for the year. Because, again, this is a little bit changing in this quarter in terms of trends. So we're going to see where this can [Audio Gap]

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