Acroud AB

STO:ACROUD

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Robert Andersson, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Acroud's Q1 presentation. My name is Robert Anderson, and I am the CEO. We will go through some highlights, then we will go through key figures, summary and then Tricia will continue with the financial details. And after that, we will have a Q&A session.

So starting with the highlights: 20% adjusted EBITDA growth, 33% revenue growth and 176% NDC growth. This all compared to Q1 in 2022. So if we look at some key figures, revenue amounted to EUR 9.3 million. That's compared to EUR 7 million in the year before. Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 2.14 million compared to EUR 1.78 million the year before.

Profit after tax has been slightly negative, while the really good news in the quarter is our new depositing customers. reaching almost 93,000 compared to 33,000 in the year before.

So if we look at other things in the quarter, Tricia started as CFO in March. Tricia has been part of the company for a very long time, and she has been second in hand to the CFOs before and it was really time for her to step up to the plate. And I'm happy to say that she's doing a marvelous job at it.

April revenue was EUR 3.6 million. This is a 51% year-on-year increase. And this is attributed to our NDC number. As I said, it's a record in the quarter. And NDCs, of course, is KPI showing pretty much future revenue. So the more NDCs we have, the more certain we will be of future revenues since most of our revenue is on rev share.

We did, however, have a 7% dip compared to Q4. This is really due to the sports results in February where we took a massive hit. All the likely results happened, which is actually very unlikely, and this is usually quite bad for sportsbook. And this affects everyone that has a big sports book, which we nowadays have.

Sales revenue did decrease 11% but EBITDA was up 10%. And this is us focusing on higher-margin business. So we are focusing on less volume but higher profitability here. We have constantly ongoing restructuring measures to support our subsidiaries and increased growth and profitability in the organization.

If we look at the group revenue development then, as you can see, in Q4, we did hit the EUR 10 million mark. Now we landed at EUR 9.3 billion. But again, this is attributed to pretty much wiping out all of sportsbook in February due to some really, really like results that -- well, it's really unlikely that it's all these likely wins. And this happens every now and then. But over time, it really delivers nice numbers.

If we look at Acroud as a group company. We're a house of brands and a house of companies, if you will. Matching Visions is, for example, our network model where we have a lot of sub affiliates, smaller affiliates. In Voonix is our software that is purely on a SaaS model, which a lot of our peers are using to track revenue and other sources of information.

TheGamblingCabin is our content production and streaming site and department, if you will. PokerListings. Poker-focused site with information as well as normal affiliation and a lot of other things. And all this is based on our diverse offer.

We work a lot with SEO, although that's becoming a smaller part and this is part of our risk diversification that we've been working on over the last few years. So now we have paid the pay-per-click advertisement in-house.

They have the advertisement networks that I mentioned, which is -- when you have sub affiliates and you aggregate a lot of others affiliates through our software. And then we have the media partnerships, which is a trend in the industry and moving towards. And this is something that's also working really well for us.

And I hope to see some really fruitful results over this year. And now I will hand this over to Tricia to go over the financial details. And maybe Tricia, a little bit of an introduction of yourself first would be great. Thank you so much. And off you go, Tricia.

[Tricia Vella, executive]

Thank you, Robert. And welcome to this presentation from my end as well. As an introduction, my name is Tricia, and I've been the CFO for Acroud since March this year, and I will be presenting the financial details for quarter 1 of 2023.

So starting off with group revenue. So group revenue stands at EUR 9.3 million for Q1 compared to EUR 7 million in quarter 1 2022. This represents an increase of 33% over last year. And revenues -- our revenues are coming from mainly 2 business areas, which is the SaaS business, which has contributed to EUR 3.3 million revenue out of total group revenues; and also our iGaming business, which has contributed to just over EUR 6 million of our total quarter 1 revenues.

The NDCs, as Robert has stated, has reached an all-time high in quarter 1 of 2023, reaching over 92,000 and this shows an increase of 176% compared to prior year.

Moving on to our revenue bridge, which this slide is comparing Q1 2023 as compared to the last quarter. And you can see that the main movement in revenue is represented by a decrease in the SaaS network model and the decrease in the casino revenue, which our traditional SEO business. This has been partly set up by an increase in the Sports Betting revenue and we can see minor decrease in Poker and other revenues.

Moving on to our costs, where we are also comparing quarter 1 with quarter 4, and you can see that the main movement in the cost are represented by, again, a decrease in the net rate model, which moves in line with the decrease in revenue. And we can see some minor increases in costs such as other external costs and personnel cost and the amount of material.

Okay. Next slide. So our group adjusted EBITDA has amounted to EUR 2.1 billion for quarter 1. This shows an increase of 35% over the same quarter last year. And so our group -- our group EBITDA margin blended when we -- has resulted in a group EBITDA of 23%, which is split into our SaaS business, which operated an EBITDA margin of 14%; and our iGaming business, which has operated a EBITDA margin of 33%.

Okay. Moving on. So now we are focusing on the iGaming business. And revenue has -- for quarter 1 has amounted to just over EUR 6 million. As we can see, highlighted in the graph in white, our majority of revenue is coming from Sports Betting, and we can see an increase from prior year, which is mainly relating to our new paid media business.

Poker has remained pretty much stable, and there has been a slight decrease in the casino, as Robert highlighted. Okay. Moving on. So our revenue margins -- so at this point, in Q1, 78% of our iGaming revenue is coming from our revshare and this is mainly the paid media business, which mainly runs on revshare deals.

Also 10% CPA revenue and 12% other revenue, which are mainly the fixed fees in the iGaming affiliation. So if we look at the revenue by affiliation type: 63% of our iGaming revenue is coming from the paid media business; 27% has resulted in -- has been delivered by the SEO business, which is our traditional websites; and 9% have been contributed by our social media business, which is mainly our TheGamblingCabin brand.

Okay. NDCs and iGaming keep delivering high numbers, reaching almost 77,000 in Q1. As we can see, we see a massive increase as from Q2 when the acquisition of a Acroud Media was done.

Okay. EBITDA development in this segment has reached almost EUR 2 million. As already stated, there has been a slight drop from Q4, but an increase of 33% since last year.

Gain on the adjusted cost base. So in the iGaming segment, here, we are purchasing the old other extended costs and the personnel. The personnel costs have remained pretty much in line, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. And you can see an increase from last year when it comes to other external costs. This is mainly coming from the paid media introduction and also the other extended was remain pretty much in line with last quarter.

Moving on to our second business, which is the SaaS segment. So starting off with revenue, has closed off at EUR 3.3 million in quarter 1. This shows a slight decrease year-on-year of 0.19%. Our revenue subscription model from the segment has a healthy increase of 23% when compared to last year, and that has remained pretty much stable since last quarter.

The adjusted EBITDA, so even though we had a decrease in revenue, as Robert stated, EBITDA reported from this segment has increased by 10% over the last quarter and has amounted to 464,000.

RGUs, or the revenue-generating units, which represent the number of clients serviced by our subscription model business has remained very stable when compared to Q4 and has had an increase of 4% when compared to the same quarter last year.

Okay. Moving on to our financing and cash flow. So our gross debt at Q1 closed at EUR 20.9 million, and this represents our external bond. So we can see some movements quarter-on-quarter, and this is mainly coming from 3 different things. So first of all, we are accruing for the amortization of the bond as the bond was issued in 2022 with a discount.

We also accrue for the redemption fee, which is due at the end of the term of the bond. And we can also -- the some movements are also in relation to the FX exposure that this bond has given. It is issued in SEC and our reporting currency is in euro, and that explains some movements between the quarters.

The net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio has closed off at 2.3%, which is the lowest you can see here. And here, we can see the fruitful results of the new acquisition, which has improved our EBITDA and thus, lower the net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio. And then going to the finance slide. Cash flow development or operating cash flow for Q1 has closed off at just over EUR 1 million with a cash conversion of 48%, which is quite low, but is coming mainly from the negative networking capital, which we already seeing improvement in quarter 2.

Cash flow from financing activities for quarter 1 amounted to EUR 1.1 million, and this mainly represents the bond interest which are interest paid quarter-on-quarter; finance liabilities, which are also paid quarter-on-quarter; and also some dividends to the minority. And with that, I close this part and hand over to Robert for his concluding comments.

[Robert Andersson, executive]

Okay. So with that, as you can see, we have delivered a quite stable business as usual quarter. And I really do look forward to the coming quarters now. And with that, I open for Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

[Robert Andersson, executive]

Okay. Well, then if there was no questions, then we thank you very much, and we will see you in about 3 months. Thank you very much.