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Embracer Group AB
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Hello. Welcome to this Q1 presentation with Embracer Group. We have CEO and Founder, Lars Wingefors, with us here today, back in Stockholm. We also have CFO, Johan, here with us. And I do expect some people to join us also from video links around the world and Europe. So very strong Q2 -- Q1 results here today and 8 acquisitions. So we look forward to hearing more about that. Please go ahead, Lars.
Thank you very much, Oscar. And hello, and welcome, everyone. I'm really glad to be on this stage again, as usual, and to have our first meetings after a summer, and I'm really glad to report another stable quarter. The net sales growth during the quarter was 81% to a bit over SEK 2 billion. I'm even more glad to see that the net sales in the Games business areas increased 153% to more than SEK 1.6 billion. And the profitability also increased even more, 249% to more than SEK 700 million in the quarter. So it's actually -- and I don't like to use strong words, the best quarter ever so far, in terms of net sales, operating EBIT and the performance in the Games business area. And these numbers has been driven by a number of things: one being the successful initial integration of Saber Interactive that contributed into the quarter. We also had a multiple of successful releases during the quarter as well as continued strong back-catalog sales driven by most likely -- not only it's great games, but obviously, the lockdown that has been on a global basis due to the COVID-19 situation. During the summer, we've been working very hard to make some acquisitions, and I'm happy to announce a few after this presentation. During the quarter, we raised capital to make further acquisition of SEK 1.6 billion. And I'm happy to see that we had a positive cash flow in the quarter. Johan will come back to that in a minute, and we have more than SEK 5 billion available in the end of June. Looking into the future. It looks very exciting. We have more than 125 game development projects in the pipeline. That is not including the 8 acquisition from this morning. We are, by end of June, engaging more than 3,200 game developers. And we invested a record SEK 457 million into the future in the quarter in game development projects. And you can compare that to the 2 -- about SEK 250 million we completed in the quarter with new releases. So we are continuing to investing more to drive the business further in the coming years. Also, we are stating in the report that we still are expecting to release products, complete products in the financial year ending March in the range of SEK 1.2 billion to SEK 1.4 billion. Looking at the release list or the successful releases, I will come back to them in a minute, but we had a number of releases that had a very favorable reviews from both critics as well as consumers. For example, the full version of Deep Rock Galactic, the Huntdown, the SnowRunner, MotoGP from Milestone, the Saints Row - The Third - Remastered, the Desperados 3 from THQ Nordic and Mimimi. We had the Steam release of Satisfactory early access. We had the Spongebob: the Battle for Bikini Bottom Re-hydrated and a number of other titles I will talk more about soon. So by this, I will leave over to Johan to report more on the financials.
Thank you, Lars. Yes, so we start by looking at our P&L. And as said, we show a healthy top line growth in the quarter. Net sales reached just about SEK 2 billion in the quarter, growing with 81% versus last year. The growth in net sales is mainly driven by business area Games, where we're growing with 153%. Partner Publishing/Film, there is a slight decrease in the quarter with 11%. Main growth drivers in business area Games is, of course, the inclusion of a Saber during the quarter, but also growth in all other business segments. Within Partner Publishing/Film, the decrease is mainly related to a lack of larger releases in this quarter compared to previous year. Looking at our operational EBIT, we are at SEK 712 million in the quarter, which is 249% above same period last year. The growth in operational EBIT is mainly driven by the growth in top line, but also gross margin expansion due to the favorable product mix of business area Games growing with 153%. Gross margin improvement from 54% last year to 63% this year. This yields an operational EBIT margin of 34% for the quarter versus 18% last year. Adjusted earnings per share in the quarter is SEK 1.51, which is almost 200% better than the same period last year. On a trailing 12-month basis, we are having net sales of almost SEK 6.2 billion with an operational EBIT of SEK 1.5 billion, yielding a 25% operational EBIT margin. If we take a closer look at our depreciations and amortizations in the quarter. We divide them in operational amortizations and acquisition-related amortizations. The operational amortizations reached SEK 253 million in the quarter, where the main contributor is amortizations related to finalized game development projects. Another SEK 55 million stems from other intangible assets, which is to a vast majority related to the Film business segment. The acquisition-related amortization was SEK 492 million in the quarter. And the majority is related to goodwill, SEK 375 million and another SEK 102 million related to IP rights. If you take a look at our cash flow in the quarter, we have a positive free cash flow in the quarter. And it's driven by the improved operational profit. We also see that we invest SEK 138 million into working capital in the quarter. This is mainly driven by the strong growth in top line. It's also worth noting that digital sales require investments into working capital. If you look at the days sales outstanding for the digital sales business, it's about 60 days in average. Further, we have closed the Saber transaction in the quarter, 1st of April, which resulted in net investment in acquired companies of negative SEK 1.1 billion. We continue to invest into our growing games portfolio with net investments into intangible assets of SEK 495 million in the quarter. We have a positive cash flow from financing activities, which is mainly driven by the share issue that was done in April of SEK 1.6 billion. Zeroing in on investments made in the period. We see that the total investments into intangible assets is SEK 498 million. The majority of this is related to investments into our games portfolio. It's SEK 457 million. And the remaining amount is related to our Film business. Also worth noting is that we completed games at a total value of SEK 253 million during the quarter, which is the highest completion value to date. We continue to invest and increase our investment into our games portfolio, which you can see on the right-hand side, where we are growing investments with 28% in the quarter, versus the same period last year. Also, the majority of the SEK 457 million is invested internally, development or internal studios. Looking at the balance sheet. As per end of June, total assets amount to SEK 17.2 billion. The single largest asset is intangible assets, which is close to SEK 11 billion. Looking at intangible assets, we divide them into operational intangible assets. That's approximately SEK 3 billion and acquisition-related intangible assets, which is SEK 8 million (sic) [ billion ]. Of the acquisition-related assets, goodwill is the largest portion followed by copyrights. And of course, operationally, it's the ongoing game development projects carrying the largest value, SEK 2.3 billion. Finalized completed games at SEK 512 million. Net cash at the end of June amounted to SEK 814 million. Our cash and bank balance was SEK 3.5 billion. If we include unutilized credit facilities, total available funds is SEK 5.1 billion.
Thank you very much, Johan. I was a bit late working this morning. So almost fell asleep here. So the Games business area, I'm happy to report the numbers again. I can do it every day. But looking at the KPIs. On the trailing 12-month basis, we are hitting the all-time high of SEK 4.2 billion in revenues. And looking at the quarter, it's 153% growth to SEK 1.6 billion. Also, it's a very steady rate. Looking at the trailing on the share of own titles we are selling, including licensed titles, such as Metro and others of 75%. Looking at the digital share or the nonphysical share it's at 74%. But worth noting that actual physical sales in the quarter for business area Games were at a record high of SEK 419 million in the quarter. And looking at the share of new releases, we are at 45% of the revenues in the quarter were driven -- generated from new releases in the quarter. So, as stated, I'm really glad to have Saber Interactive on board. They had a first quarter exceeding my expectations in many aspects. The revenues came to SEK 349 million, with a very healthy profit margin. Of the SEK 349 million, SEK 100 million is relating to work for hire like objects or products with some kind of royalties in a smaller portion. And SEK 249 million is relating for royalties received from their publishers or from direct sales. As stated last quarter, SnowRunner did perform very well in the quarter. It continued to perform today at, however, at a much lower rate, but we are very confident and continue to work on the product. It now sold way over 1 million copies. We had also a solid performance from the World War Z franchise as well as stable revenues from external business partners. Looking at the current quarter, we are expecting, in the end of September, the release of WWE 2K Battlegrounds, published by 2K but developed by Saber Interactive to be released in the end of the quarter. I think, in general, Saber Interactive came in with a very fresh eyes into our business and really has been able to connect with a lot of other group companies. And we talked about a lot of potential business synergies, but also as a platform for acquisitions, as you will see after this presentation. Deep Silver business area. The net sales in the quarter was also exceeding all expectation at SEK 613 million, drives the trailing 12 months revenues to just over SEK 2 billion. That's a 64% increase in revenues year-over-year. As all our own Games business, we had COVID-19-driven lockdown boost in the sales but I think also, they had a number of -- or a number of good releases worth pointing out here, especially is the Saints Row: The Third – Remastered did perform very well, especially on console. Also, Milestone had a solid performance of the MotoGP 20 releasing in April. All in all, they had 3 releases in the quarter. Now looking a bit ahead. In the current quarter, we are executing Deep Silver to be releasing Wasteland 3, Windbound, Iron Harvest on PC and Pathfinder: Kingmaker for console. Ride 4 here is coming very early in the next quarter in October. THQ Nordic business area had a record revenues of SEK 488 million in the quarter driving the trailing 12-month revenues to close to SEK 1.5 billion. That's 164% year-over-year increase in the quarter. They had 2 releases in the end of the quarter, both that had raving reviews from consumers. Spongebob did particularly well during the end of the quarter, releasing on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. And the title have by today sold in sell-through more than 1 million copies. Also happy to see that Desperados 3 got really good critics, and I'm sure it will be good catalog title on a very long-term basis. It's a fantastic product. However, Desperados 3 is more narrow niche. So you can't really compare the sales numbers to mass-market products. Looking ahead, in end of July, in the current quarter, they released Destroy All Humans!, an iconic old THQ Inc. IP that we did a remake for. And I'm very pleased to say that both commercially in terms of sell-through, it has performed well or even very well and it continues to perform, both digitally and physically. And it also got 95% positive critics on Steam. I'd say this was a major investment. To make a remake is almost like making a full sequel. And I was a bit -- I wouldn't say nervous, but it's a big investment. But they've proven it's a business model that works to make great remakes and to really put the quality first strategy into the products, to polish and to really make it good for all gamers. And this was made at our own studio at Black Forest Games in Germany. Also in the current quarter, we are expecting to be releasing Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, PCPs for Xbox One. It's iconic RPG IP that we acquired a while ago. And this is the Re-Reckoning. Also, we will have the MX vs. ATV brand coming out on Switch in the quarter. Biomutant is still on the list, and we're working very hard. And I don't -- no further news, but it's expected -- how should I put this wording without having a Twitter storm, not a far distance. But as always, it's important to put the quality first. I want to restate this. It's a small team. It's a very big game. And they have very big ambitions, and I'm supporting that ambitions all the way. So it's ready when it's ready. Coffee Stain, super pleased to announce the record SEK 172 million in the quarter driven by outstanding performance of the Satisfactory early access release in Steam as well as the full release of Deep Rock Galactic on PC and Xbox. It's 108% year-over-year increase. And on a trading 12 months basis, they are at SEK 335 million. They also made a fantastic game called Huntdown. I know the team, and including myself, we are proud of it. It got raving reviews. I'm sure we make some money on the long term. But for most, we have proven it's possible to make almost iconic retro classic. The old goat contributed on all its 7 published formats in the quarter as well. And I'm glad to see that Satisfactory are continuing to perform very well on Steam also after the quarter end. And our friends at Amplifier Game Invest continued their strategy. This is an investment for the very long-term and for the organic growth. And they are setting up new studios, together with veterans or we are acquiring smaller studios for the future as you'll more hear about after this presentation. They having a fantastic team, and I know they expanded the team also in the quarter, some senior people. And they have a number of minority investments that we -- they had when we acquired them. And we are supporting those companies. And I'm happy to see that we have been supporting Kavalri here in Stockholm with more fundings, and we firmly believe in their business and increasing our stake to 41%. And then Coffee Stain also owns a few percent, but Amplifier legally owns 41%. In Koch Media. The Partner Publishing business, the Film business. I have to say the negative sales in the quarter is more or less only due to the absence of larger releases. The actual physical business in the quarter has been up globally and in Europe. Even though digital is up more, also physical has been up. But this business are driven by major releases and major releases are more into the current quarter, especially 2 releases pointing out here from our friends at Codemasters, the F1 2020. I know it's been performing well for our business at Koch and for Codemasters. And we're expecting to ship another long-awaited action game called Marvel Avengers from Square Enix in the end of the quarter on physical formats across a number of territories in Europe. Going back to the first quarter, the Film business were holding up very well driven by very good digital performance, continued performance, especially on the Parasite, but also the acquisition of KSM last year performed very well. And that business are -- do have a much higher-margin profile than the physical Games business. Also here, I'd like to restate our commitment to the physical business. It's an important part of our business as being a games producer, it's important that we're able to ship and to maximize our return of investments and having our own Partner Publishing business is a part of that. And as an old gamer myself, we -- I hope to be the last man standing in this business whenever it dies, I'm sure it will survive forever, I hope so. Even though the digital share in the business is obviously increasing every quarter. But there is a sustainable business, both for new releases as well as collection editions. And because of that, we are making a further investment into the Asian territories during the end of this year, and Koch Media will be announcing more in details what that means. But that will take them more into new territories. As well as they've been rebranding their office in America from Deep Silver being a publisher to Koch Media being more a service-like business and distribution business. Johan, you have 3 minutes.
I'll be quick. Okay. So we have some additional information that we would like to present. First of all, as I said previously, we closed the transaction with Saber Interactive in the quarter. We present a preliminary purchase price analysis in the quarterly report. We can see that the value of net assets acquired in the transaction, excluding goodwill, was SEK 226 million; surplus value is SEK 5.8 billion. This will be amortized over 5 years so we can expect to have amortizations of SEK 293 million quarterly for this -- related to this transaction. Being a part of Embracer Group means that you need to follow the Embracer GAAP. So during the quarter, we have implemented K3 for Saber. And differences is mainly related to revenue recognition and project accounting. Looking at Q1 and the effects of the changed accounting principles for Saber, we can see that it's not material. It's about SEK 5 million at operational EBIT level in the quarter. As said, we have a positive contribution of SEK 349 million in net sales for Saber, SEK 100 million related to work for hire projects and SEK 249 million related to direct sales and royalties for released products. Also, SEK 18 million in operational amortizations from the inclusion of Saber in the quarter. We also would like to say that work for hire, the reporting of this in our KPIs in the quarterly report is that it's reported as or within publishing titles within digital and back-catalog sales for the business area, Saber Interactive. For work-for-hire agreements where there is royalty to be received post-release, this royalty revenue is recognized post-release and in line with the sales of the underlying game. And this will be reported similarly within publishing as digital and then within new release, the first quarter and after that back at [ low ] sales, all within business area Games, Saber.
Super clear. There can't be any questions on this because I've got millions before your -- operations before.
Good. Last fall, we looked at the gross profit return on investments in our -- for our released games. And looking at the same graphs now, where we compare the gross margin generated by business area Games with amortizations relating to those games. We can see that we -- over the last year, we have been at between 3.5 and 3.7x. In this quarter, there is a steep increase even on the trailing 12 months basis. So now we are at 4.6x amortizations. Important to note, when you talk about project ROIs, of course, that gross profit does not include cost for marketing or other operating expenses. Also worth pointing out is that, as you know, we amortized our released games over 2 years. So if you have game sales generated by products or projects that are older than 2 years, that will have a positive effect on the ratio. We can also mention that in general terms, the relative ROI on larger projects is lower versus smaller projects.
It should be lower. So don't expect too much because this is very dangerous, especially for analysts to multiply too high numbers here, but we are showing the numbers here, but likely go. So don't be too bullish on this. But I'm happy to see we're making more money on our investments as of June.
Yes. Next one, we introduced a new -- we introduced a new KPI in the quarterly report, that's organic growth for the business area Games. And if we look at the definition, the organic growth is the growth between periods where net sales from companies acquired in the last 5 quarters have been excluded. We also present organic growth CCY, or constant currency, in the report, which is organic growth but it has been adjusted for differences in exchange rates between the periods. And the organic growth will be a part of the quarterly KPIs as from now. On the slide here, we also present pro forma growth, which is a bit different. This is where you look at it's the growth between 2 time periods, but what we do is that we adjust the historical numbers to include data from acquisitions made during the time period. So you compare apples and apples. This is also both in nominal terms and in constant currency to eliminate effects from changed currency rates. Organic growth in the quarter was 71%. As a reference, if you look at the last fiscal year, organic growth was 9%. But here, you should bear in mind that the year before that, we had the release of Metro Exodus, which was a large title. Pro forma growth has been between 16% and 25%, 26%. Yes. We also have an earn-out overview in the report. And there are 2 different kinds. So it's earn-out provisions and then it's earn-out shares outstanding. Earn-out provisions, that's the provision you have for earn-outs that you are to settle in cash. And in total, there was SEK 385 million in earn-out provision in our balance sheet as per the end of June. And if you look at when we expect these to be settled, you can see that it's SEK 5 million this current financial year. Looking ahead, it's SEK 232 million that is supposed to be paid after the end of this fiscal year '23, '24, since several of the earn-out agreements are on a long-term basis. Looking at earn-out shares. As you have seen in the report, we have 372 million shares outstanding at the end of June. Out of this, there are approximately 49.5 million shares with clawback rights. These shares have already been issued and to cover for future earn-out obligations. So there will be no additional dilution if earn-out targets are met in the future.Also, commenting a bit on financial reporting improvements and IFRS pre-study. Looking back during the year or during last year, we have concluded several initiatives. We have increased capabilities at the parent company, also in the operative groups. We have implemented consolidation software with relevant IFRS capabilities such as the possibility to handle IFRS 16 with the leasing agreements. Improvement of closing processes, more resources allocated into the area, and we have increased the disclosures in the external communication, for example, on intangible assets, cash flow or this report with organic growth. Our Board decided in November '19 to conduct and present -- that we should conduct and present an IFRS pre-study to the Board. So progress is also being made in that area. Worth noting here is that, of course, we have allocated resources to the acquisition and integration of Saber Interactive mainly during the last 3 to 4 months. An update on the sustainability or ESG work that we are doing. We are very much looking forward to present our first sustainability report in the upcoming annual report, which will be published no later than 26th of August. I think worth noting is that it's the first sustainability report that we do. We do it ahead of schedule. And we are really proud of what we have accomplished in that area during the year. Also, in the quarter, we launched the short version or popular version of our Compliance Code, which is available on the web. And there, you can -- the whole idea is to really get everyone interested and to understand our Compliance Code, and we think this is a great way of doing so. We have scheduled trainings also in September to follow-up on this. And we continue the work with our ambassador program to roll out ESG awareness in the organization under the Smarter Business umbrella.
Thank you very much, Johan. We have a few presentations to go, and I'm really excited to now presenting a number of acquisitions, and we've been working very hard, not only me, but a whole army of people or machinery to make these acquisitions happening this morning. And I was a bit worried not too far off 6:00 this morning when we didn't have all signatures in place. And the first man out here signed 6:07, 3 minutes before press release. So welcome on stage Matthew and Dean from 4A Games.
Hey, there. Can you see us? Do you see our faces there?
We see you very well.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Dean.
For the record, Lars, I was available for signature.
Okay. I didn't chase you. I chased the -- all others.
I felt that you were referring to me specifically. So I had to point that out.
Okay.
Everyone just likes to make Lars very nervous. That's kind of our goal in life here is to make him sweat. You're stuck with Americans now. You're in trouble.
So yes. Really excited to have you on board. I've been super impressed with your -- with 4A Games' team and the products you're making, obviously. And no. Why don't you start, Matt, just presenting the whole thing? I think you are much better presenter today than I am in this case.
Come on, I can't present like you can present it. Why don't we start with this? Why don't we start with the financial stuff because that's where you live? Just go over the terms, and then I'll come back in, and I'll -- it's very hard to make people laugh when I can't see them. I'm just looking at you. So that's all I can see. I apologize, by the way, for being in my basement here. But my kids are sleeping, it's 4 in the morning here in New York. So if anyone plays a guitar, I'm happy to go over my collection after the meeting, which is quite extensive. Thanks to Lars in the last investment, I'm buying more and more.
I do the financials then on the deal. So I think 4A is not -- obviously, in the end of day, it's the financials, but I'll take you through the financials. The actual deal are made on a enterprise value of $36 million. Whereof $20 million are paid by shares as of this morning. Meaning they had $45 million -- the equity purchase price was $45 million, and then you take minus the cash position of $9 million as of this morning. Also, as most of or all deals we're making, I hope to have a team excited in a long-term commitment, and we have a SEK 35 million earn-out over 5 years with a strong alignment of various operational goals and financial goals -- financial incentives here, sorry. And looking at the 4A business, they are a developer. They've been published by Deep Silver, which is a company we own. So this is a bit complex material. But if they were to continue their business on a stand-alone basis, they were expecting, and I've seen the numbers, obviously, been looking very good, about EUR 20 million in expected revenues this calendar year with EUR 12 million EBIT in the current year. The absolute majority of that being development work they've been doing for Koch Media or Deep Silver and the balance of that is royalties. Obviously, now having them on board, we will have, on an intercompany basis or on a reported basis, we will have a lower development cost. It's a very hugely complex material in our group this, but I think that is the outcome of the development on our group accounting numbers. And then we will have -- if the Metro games continues to perform some savings in royalties. But obviously, on a long-term basis, financially, it's all about making new amazing games to sell well. And by this, I hand it over to you guys.
Okay. Well, we'll take it. I think you do a good job with that. So I just wanted to say a few things before I'll let Dean speak. Dean and I have become very fast friends over Zoom over the last 4 months. We've known of each other for many years, but this is our -- we've actually never met in person, which is the oddest thing of the world because I feel in some respects that Dean and I have been engaged and are about to get married after 4 months of this. But it's been fantastic. I will tell you that 4A, in my estimation, as a developer based in -- well, now we're based all over the world. But initially, we were based in Eastern Europe and in Russia, we were always a little bit jealous of 4A and Saber. And the reason for that, I mean, it's not just because Dean has much better hair than me. There's a motivation there. But we were jealous of the fact that they are really an amazing -- well, I guess they're a 4A developer, a AAA developer that made games, which have always reviewed incredibly well based on super sound technology and that have just been absolutely well received by fans everywhere. And when we saw that there was an opportunity to have them join the family and for Dean and I to work closely together, not only on future titles that within the current franchises that they have expertise in, but also to expand that to additional games, it was an opportunity that we really couldn't pass on. But once again, I'm watching Lars' eyes, making sure I don't say anything that I'm not supposed to say, which I'm really not very good at. But I'm trying. So I -- this is one of the best teams in the world. This is one of the last remaining independent AAA developers in the world. And I am so proud that we were able to get these guys to join us. And I cannot wait to see what happens, not only with their collaboration, continued collaboration with Deep Silver, but more importantly, when we can marry Saber's technology, multiplayer know-how with Dean's incredible ability, their team's incredible ability to tell stories and to work with not only licensed material, but with some new and exciting material, which we won't speak about now, I think it's going to be an absolutely tremendous, tremendous collaboration and I'm super psyched for it. And so Dean, why don't you just run through like a little bit about your company when you were founded and how long you've been with the company and...
I have a slide here, Matt, to Page 4 here. So let's leave it over to Dean, perhaps.
Dean, you're up. It's on you.
Well, I mean, where do we begin? My story starts back in 2005, when I first moved out to Ukraine to work with 4A. And then again, when we moved out to Malta in 2014. And much like you said, Matt, we've always had an admiration for Saber as well, obviously, and the fact that we were stealing each other's people for many years. So hopefully, now we can put that at rest. I mean the reality of it is there's just not that many people that can do the type of things that we do, with the kind of Eastern European flare, I think that's why it's always been somewhat incestuous between our 2 companies. And for us, I mean, making games is tough, especially making big AAA games, it just gets tougher and tougher every year. And the opportunity to be brought into and work with Embracer and with Saber. I don't know if it would have happened if it wouldn't have been for this type of opportunity, working with Matt, working with them. So it just -- the timing was right. So we pulled the trigger.
So why don't you just go over some of the metrics here because we're not -- we actually can't follow the slides, Lars, but basically, if we want to go over some of the basics of the team, your team is now about -- it's about 150 people. I mean, I don't know, Lars, you tell me, I see you shaking your head like, Matt, shut up.
Well, it's hard to say, I mean, yes, if you say, okay, we have 150 people in the office, yes, but we have people working all over the world now. We're working with 100 outsourcers at any given time. So it's much bigger than just the number of seats that are being filled.
The one team -- theoretically, we have 1 in Malta and 1 team in Kiev, is right?
That's correct.
And I'm turning page here. If you can't see the page, it's a bit hard for you to actually talk about it. That's something we need to improve for next reporting.
In the next reporting, we're not going to have a pandemic, I hope. So I think we'll be in the same room.
Well, I think one other thing I'd like to interject real quick is that one of the other things that makes this relationship so enticing for us is that we, for a long time have wanted to do a really immersive and ambitious multiplayer component to Metro, which has been elusive to us up to this point. I think that now that we have the backing and the -- and basically the resources of somebody like Saber that has the technology and also the know-how. I think we'll be able to do something really, really amazing.
That is not an announcement of a multiplayer, is it? It's a potential. Sorry, Dean.
My bad.
It's okay. It's okay.
I think it was in the press release anyway. I'm sure of it.
Okay. But in front of me, if we have a slide here saying history of 4A games. I think most of you, they know the history of the Metro games. But here, it stated initiating a brand-new AAA IP project. I don't know, Matt, if you want to just, or Dean, if you want to say something about this?
I'll say something.
I'm staying out of it now.
Yes, Dean, officially is having a muzzle put on him. So he's not allowed to speak anymore. In that case, is there a mute button for Dean, so we don't get him on. But, look, I've said it before, I'll just reiterate that these guys at 4A, these guys and gals are the absolute -- one of the best single-player story-driven developers in the world. And they have some of the best technology in the world to support those types of games. And when Dean and I started these conversations, we said, Dean, we've got to expand what you guys are doing. We got a come up with something else, and it turns out they already had come up with something else that was early in development, and we're not going to announce it, obviously. But you can imagine that we're going to be looking at creating another AAA product, which builds upon everything that they've invested in over the past few years -- past few years, past 15 years, and that also adds a little bit of Saber fairy dust to the mix. So to make it something really cool and special. So that's absolutely in the work.
Then moving on here to a bit of the technology. I know Saber, you have some amazing technology we just talked about, but the 4A engine, could you tell us a bit more about it, Dean?
Well, I mean, we'll be looking to -- I'm sure both sides will be looking to see which parts of each other's tech will be interesting to bring into whatever fold that we're working on. Already, our team is -- we've talked many times about some of the things that Saber does and said, well, we could probably use that in our games. And I'm sure the same thing will be happening on their side.
100%. The vendoring guys are super excited. We actually have 1 guy who worked for Saber named [ Andre Bochmanov ], who then went to Malta to work for 4A and then came back to Saber. I think he liked me better than you, Dean.
Yes. I know you were going to go in there with that.
But he -- all he does is rave about your engine. All he does is rave about your engine, and I always thought we had the best engine, but apparently, you do. But now we do. So it doesn't really matter.
Better hair, better engine, I'll take it.
If we can't beat them, join them, right?
I love it. Yes. I think we need to conclude here. I'm super excited for this. And thank you, Matt, for spending endless of hours during the summer here and getting out to a flying start, getting another amazing team onboard.
Really, Matt gets all the credit for this. I get it.
Well, this was something between me and Matt. Sorry for that, Dean. But I think it's -- I think it's been -- as you stated, this deal wouldn't happen without Matt.
Absolutely.
I'm blushing.
Okay. So thank you very much, Dean. All right. I think we have Matt still here online. You are on the way here. Perfect. So you will be here in Stockholm next time, Matt, yes?
You know what, as long as they let me in, I'll be there. I told you I'd take a rowboat if I can get past the border. You know that I want to come. I love -- I'm actually -- I told you I was going to wear my Gant sweatshirt, that is definitely not Keith Warner. So I would -- I'm very much looking forward to coming to Sweden, and I wish I could be there right now, obviously. Actually, I wish I could be out of my house. So are we set up here? Can you hear me?
Yes, we are set up? Do you have Keith here?
No, not yet. Keith is coming. Here he comes. I see his -- there he is.
Howdy, howdy.
With his New Hampshire lake house Internet connection. Hopefully, it holds up.
It should hold up. Not very many people on at this hour. I think we're in good shape.
Okay. We just got to switch back to the Lars feed on the left. We don't see him there.
Yes. Okay. So welcome on stage, Keith. Welcome to Stockholm. I'm super excited to have you here and to announce this transaction this morning. And I will let you and Matt speak the most, but I will start actually with a bit of the transaction and then leave it over to you. So the actual deal was not disclosed in terms of investments as of this morning. However, we do expect Keith and his team to make some amazing products. So we -- hopefully, through our publishing network and all other synergies be able to recoup in a reasonable time period, estimated to 3 years. However, the purchase price was not insignificant. So this is a really good team. And we have some things in the actual contracts, obviously, for the team and for Keith here, especially to be engaged on a very long-term basis.
Absolutely. You want me to jump in with just a little bit of an intro and I can't see you, Lars, now. So...
You can't see me? Okay.
I know. So I can't get your body language, which is so essential to me -- because -- there we go. There you are.
Perfect. Yes. But actually, I was done with the actual transaction and the financials of it, and I would be happy to leave it over to you. Do you see the presentation or you don't?
We don't see it, but that's okay. I have it in front of me. So we can just run through it.
I do as well.
So look, let me just start, and again, like I did with 4A. This is another one of the acquisitions that I've been working on over the summertime from the comfort of my living room, which I haven't left. But Keith and I have gotten very close. Keith and I actually have a working relationship because we are -- Saber is assisting Keith and his team with the console ports for their hit game, Insurgency. And as a result of that, our relationship developed and acquisition talks came forth from that. And we decided, and Keith decided, that this would be a great move for both sides. But just really briefly about New World Interactive, NWI, like I like to call them. They're one of -- they remind me in some respects of Coffee Stain in the sense that they just have this innate ability to relate to the gamer. They make games for gamers in a way that very few teams can. They connect with gamers. And that's why they've had such success in the past in making products such as Insurgency, such as Day of Infamy, that have been like -- that have just resonated with the game community. And we think that in collaboration with Saber, we could bring a lot of their products, which have been extraordinarily successful to other platforms. And we also look at the company as a great platform for growth in Canada and in the U.S. and in Canada, where they're primarily based in Calgary right now, but there is plans in very near future to open up an office as well in Montreal. And so I'm going to -- why don't you real quick, Keith, just run through who you guys are and what you've done and where we're going together.
So Lars, it's a pleasure to meet you. I hope to do that in person one day. Obviously, now is not the best time to be traveling and doing that. Thank you for the introduction. So we've been around since approximately 2010, founded originally by Jeremy Blum, who I joined about 3 months after he founded the company. During that time, we've built 3 IPs: Insurgency, Day of Infamy and Insurgency: Sandstorm. They've all been on PC. The first 2 were built with Source Engine, the last game Sandstorm, which is our currently active title, built on Unreal Engine. We've had multiple locations over the years. But historically, we've been more of a distributed team. So we've prospered or done extraordinarily well inside of this new environment that we're all facing. We went back to a distributed team working from home, and it's been really quite interesting for us. As we look to growing our company, we started to look for the resources that we felt we were going to need to grow. And, of course, went out into the market and had lots of conversations with a lot of different players. But for us, what worked, Matt, in addition to the relationship you and I built, I just think the cultural fit is ideal. I actually shared this with our team today. And I said to them, this is the #1 reason that we're partnering with Embracer and with Saber because I think there is tremendous synergy between us. We already had a relationship with you as a provider of, if you will, co-dev services. And at this point, I feel like it made a ton of sense for us to partner up with you and become part of your family. So I can answer or respond to anything additionally, but that was for us the motivation that brought us to this point.
I think that is a very good rationale and description of the whole thing. And I think Matt gave a very good rundown of why we're doing this. Could you tell us a bit more about what you're kind of working on without disclosing too much. There's kind of a secret box here with ambitious game coming out in the future.
We do have an ambitious project. It's -- we're really excited about it. I can, without divulging too much, say that we are remaining true to our roots in the FPS genre. There will be some twists, if you will, or some shifts in sort of how we approach the player base, and we're experimenting with a lot of new things. We're also growing our team quite substantially and have already grown the team quite a bit already. And of course, we'll be on console as well, with both Sandstorm and the next project. So the next project, gosh, Matt, I don't know how much I can or should say.
I think we can leave it. We have plenty of quarterly reportings to come back to this matter. I know you're excited. And I'm super excited. What you actually bring to the gamers or to the market.
You bet.
So I think we could -- I'm really looking forward to meet you, Keith, you're welcome here to Sweden or if I'm coming over to the states together with you, Matt, to make a road trip.
Do it. I can't wait. I'm living for that trip. You keep promising it to me, but...
Well, I'm not letting out from Sweden here, so not really to America, at least.Okay. So thank you very much, guys. We need to move on here. So again, thank you very much.
Thank you.
See you. We see some eyes wants me to push time-wise. Yes. So we have Ken here onboard. Okay. So we will have Ken Go, the Founder and CEO and entrepreneur behind Deca Games. And Deca Games is a new business area for us. And for me, building this group is for most the people and to find on the Embracer level, the right entrepreneurs to build platforms to -- that we're able, and they are able to, expand their businesses as you see now with Matt. And now you will meet Ken that has a completely different kind of gaming business. And he will tell you more about that business very soon. Do we have Ken online here?
Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me?
Yes, I hear you. Welcome on stage here in Stockholm, Ken.
I wish I could be there with you guys.
You couldn't enter Sweden. That's the way it is. But I think this works fine, and I'm really looking forward to meet you soon. But I told the audience here a bit about you as a founder and entrepreneur. And I think I'll start out telling the audience here about the actual transaction. And then perhaps you could continue telling everyone about the business and yourself. So looking at the actual transaction, and that was done a few minutes before 4A this morning. We're having a purchase price for 100% of the equity of Deca Games at the day 1 consideration, all-in shares at EUR 25 million. And then we have a very long term alignment, and that's something that is super important for us when building this group that we have a very long-term alignment with entrepreneurs. And I'm very pleased to see that you actually taking it all in shares. So -- and it's up to 60 million in shares. We arranged the shares this morning, and they have clawback rights and in order to earn these shares without the clawbacks, then there is a number of milestones during the 7 years. And I think you have a very solid business plan to build a very profitable -- it's already very profitable, but a growing profitable business that substantially will be larger in the 7-year time period. And just looking at the financials of the business, we are expecting in the similar period as our financial year about EUR 20 million revenues in the current business with about [ 45% ] operational EBIT margin. But we have some ambitious plans for the future. So Ken, why don't you tell a bit about yourself and the business. I'm turning page -- to Page 3 here in the presentation.
Got it. Yes. Well, thanks a lot. I'm really excited to be a part of the Embracer Group. So thanks very much for inviting me here and letting me join the group. It's been great since our first meeting. And I'm really happy now to tell everybody a little bit about what we've been talking about. So first of all, I want to just go into a little bit about myself and a little about Deca. So first of all about me. I've been in the games industry for over 13 years. And I was lucky enough to enter the industry just as games-as-a-service and free-to-play was just starting to spawn within the western markets. And I was lucky enough to be part of a couple of different companies that were really kind of pioneering the model in the West. In my most recent experience, I was working for a company called Kabam, which was one of the leading mobile publishers and developers. That company was sold a couple of years ago for over $800 million. And there, I really learned a lot about live operations, games-as-a-service and really led me to found Deca. There was a couple of key things that I learned at Kabam that really helped start Deca into what it is today. And what the #1 thing is that -- what I learned is that games is a long-term business, and especially games-as-a-service. So when I see games, I think people really drastically underestimate how long games can last, especially mobile games. So the reason that we called the company Deca is because every game that we take over and operate, we want to see last another decade. It's another 10 years. So we have a really long-term mindset when we think about the business and we think about the games that we take over. The other thing that I learned at Kabam was there's a lot of unique economics and a lot of motivational factors that go into the business in general. Kabam was a really successful company. They had a big portfolio of a dozen games. They had 1 game making $400 million plus a year, and they had a dozen games that were making $10 million to $20 million a year. Those dozen games were highly profitable, but they just weren't strategic for them. And so what happened over time at Kabam was they decided to divest those games, even though they were really good businesses for anybody else. They wanted to grow rapidly. So they started investing into their games that were new projects that were getting ready to build and their biggest one. So they found partners and I was part of that process to help them find partners and transition those games to new owners. And that's really where I got the idea for Deca, where basically, I knew that my team and my experience were kind of one of the best of live operations in the industry. And so taking over games from other people, I saw this kind of nice opportunity within the industry. And these weren't really strategic for the other parties. We could take them over and we can revitalize them, help them to really last longer and potentially grow with the right management. So in 2016, about more than 4 years ago, I started the company, we are headquartered in Berlin, Germany. But we grew rapidly, and we decided to make the company fully remote. So we have over 100 people now across the globe, 14 different countries, and we have 8 games in our portfolio. And to just briefly describe at a high level, what we do is we take over games from other developers. Usually, they don't come with teams. We put our own team behind them, a team of experts in live operations that are, again, all over the world. And we intend to run these games for another decade. Right now, we have over 1.5 million daily active users across our portfolio. Again, all of our games are free-to-play, mostly in mobile right now, but we also have PC games as well. And together with embracer, we're really looking to grow this opportunity, chase a bigger opportunity together. And we see that -- we're really just scratching the surface of what's possible right now. You can go to the next slide.
Yes. I'm kind of turning page here. So I'm not sure where I am, but the operating model, and then we have page...
You can go to 4 if you're still able. I'll go quick. And so in 4, this is just a description of the time line over which we've acquired our last 8 games. So these 8 games in our portfolio. We've acquired them from a various number of partners all over the world, from U.S., Japan, Finland and Spain. And again, I think this is just scratching the surface of what we can do together with Embracer.You can go now to number five?
Yes.
So this just describes what we do in more detail. So again, we take over games. Usually, they're games that are older. The average age of the games that we've taken over so far is around 6 years old. And again, we believe that there's this long life span in the games. Together with our experience, we hope to elongate that. So usually, these games -- well, actually, all of the games are highly profitable and cash generative. And the #1 thing that we look for in our acquisitions is longevity. And usually, that means having a strong community or a really strong brand. Our expertise then is in live ops and development. So we take over these games. We continue the development and really engage the community and try to revitalize it. And together with all of that going on, the game lasts longer, the active user base increases and retention monetization usually improves. And because we're operating globally, our cost base is more efficient than most. So we end up decreasing the operating costs over time as well. Next slide. Okay. So on Slide 6, this is just a case study of 1 of our most best recent examples of what we can do to our games. So Realm of the Mad God was the first game that we took over in 2016 and at the time, it was a little bit over 6 years old. And now, it's over 10 years old. When we took it over, it had been operated by a very small team and not getting much support. We integrated ourselves with the community, we used social media to reactivate the lapsed player base and we started really trying to improve the quality of service. So we introduced new game content. We rebalanced some of the design and we started fixing a lot of the bugs that were there. And because of that, the player base and the loyal community came back to the game, they really trusted us that we were going to be a good caregivers for the game that they really loved. And they really trusted us and basically came back and started reinvesting into the game. So you can see then at the bottom that it after Deca coming over -- after taking over the game, the active user base doubled and revenue more than doubled. And that continued on for years. And so now 4-plus years after running that game, it's continuing to grow. So we've just recently released a remastered version of this game, completely built from scratch. And now we're seeing record revenue and record activity again. On the next slide. And then lastly, the second case study that I want to talk about is called DragonVale, which is the game that we just recently acquired this year. And similarly, this game is quite old. So 9 years old, released in 2011, 45 million lifetime players, so that's a really strong player base. And through the activities that we have -- by basically increasing the velocity of content into the game and the number of events going on in the game, we were able to stabilize the active user base and at the same time, increase the activity. So you can see in the graph below that the amount of sessions per user per month is drastically going up after our takeover, and we were able to stabilize the monthly actives. And so this is just a couple of examples of what we try to do when we take over games. So we come back. We find great brands, great communities that we think have a lot of longevity. We bring our kind of magic touch to the service and the operations of the game. We try to improve it in any way we can. And we've tried to do that for as long as possible. And again, this is a long-term business. And super excited to now share this philosophy and approach with Lars and everybody at Embracer. And I'm really looking forward to being now a shareholder of the company and being with the group for a long, long time.
Super excited to have you joining. For me, this -- when we met the first time and you described this business, it had a lot of similarities to the original THQ Nordic business when we made the IPO. I was talking a lot about asset care, more from an IP and premium games perspective, but there is a lot of similarities, well, at least in my mind, even though I know it's completely different business models.
Yes. I mean, that's exactly why I chose Embracer over other options. I really saw there's so many similarities between how we got started, the philosophy, the approach. It was just so easy to talk with everybody at Embracer because we thought the same way.
Ken, and you will become the sixth operating unit directly under Embracer Group, and I'm very excited to support your growth going forward, and you have a sizable list of business opportunities. And I know you're eager to execute on them. So free to give me a ring tomorrow. Today, I need to meet investors. Ken, we're running out of time here. Thank you very much for joining on stage. I hope to have you here meeting Investors one day in Stockholm when this pandemic is over, hopefully.
Sounds good. Thanks.
Please welcome Per-Arne on stage.
We have also some kind of acquisitions to announce this day. Super proud to start off with Palindrome Interactive. They've been working with us for the last 4 years. I'm trying to find Johan. Johan is the CEO and Co-founder of Palindrome Interactive. It's a studio started out in Skövde, around 2015 at a time when I was working in Skövde, so I know Johan from the start. It's a very, very proud moment for us because we hold them for 50% for the last 4 years. And now inviting them to be a fully-owned company at Amplifier. So it's really nice. They are working currently or right this second or a couple of days from now releasing the game Immortal Realms together with Kalypso. Also important to mention is that we've been able to sign a deal with Coffee Stain for Palindrome's next title, which we are super excited about. The deal in itself is pretty straightforward. It's kind of a hybrid model, which we have applied a couple of times before. It's something that we call the start-up subsidiary model. But no, it's not. Sorry, that's [ the slide ]. So we acquired shares for roughly SEK 21.5 million, and there's a huge earn-out period, which we are also very happy to announce that we incentivize the team over a long period of time, enabling them to start with the company, stay with the company and grow with the company. High ambition in the team and focusing on strategy games. I think that sums it up pretty good. Again, Immortal Realms up for release August 28. Superfast run through on that one. Can you change to the next one, perhaps?
You can start talking.
I'm just curious to see which one it is. It's Vermila Studios. This is a company founded by 2 senior developers from Madrid, [ Suzo ] and David, they are here. Very happy to welcome you to the group. It's a fairly new started company, started this year actually in January, but they've been working in stealth mode for the last 2 years on a very exciting game that we are also very happy and looking forward to, Crisol, which is a horror game, looking forward to building a great IP on that model, obviously. The deal here is structured. This is the start-up subsidiary model, which I was talking about, where we acquired the entire company, but this is more like a newly started company rather than the traditional acquisition. Also here, you can see the similar earn-out periods for David and [ Suzo ] in following both the 5- and 10-year period, which we think, again, is important both as a message and also enabling them to be part of the long journey for being part in the group. The consideration is paid in shares and in cash, and the earn-outs will be in shares, 100%. It's a team of 10 persons at the moment, and David and [ Suzo ] have been working together in Madrid over, like I told you for the last 2 years and have been able to -- when we first met them, it was actually really impressive stuff that we saw in fidelity and in innovative game play and also about the entire folklore around the game, evolving around the Spanish culture. David and [ Suzo ] are very senior developers, obviously, both -- [ Suzo ] is the CEO, have been working in the game development scene for the last 20 years. And his co-partner David is also a long experience and is the lead writer and the creator of Crisol. Yes.
Very welcome to the group. Happy to have you here from Madrid. We'd love to, we love Madrid.
Yes, we're looking forward to that to be able actually to meet the entire team, which we normally do. And it's been very much very long meetings over Zoom and Skype and Hangout. But at the same time, I mean it was yesterday that we first met physically, but it was a very great connection, and we have a good faith in you and your team. It's also worth mentioning that you have a almost general quality team, 50-50 headcounts. Coming up next, I'm running through the slides here. Rare Earth also actually right off the bat, founded in July. This is also the typical model that we apply, start-up subsidiary. It's where you also follows the same kind of deal structure with a long earn-out in this particular case as well. And this is something also that we want to stress and note that this is something that we see that we will roll out even more in the future, securing and having the team committed to the company and to Embracer. Similar deal structure straight through, I would say. Founders, we'll come back to the founder slide. They are working on a co-op game right now, very early stage, of course, with live services elements, which we are also looking forward really much to. Rare Earth is located in Vienna, and the team behind is super seasoned having working together with the pedigree of joint 20 years. Also well-known to the group has been working with Deep Silver and in Rockstar Games. So Peter, Helmet and Michael will be starting as [Foreign Language] for Rare Earth in Vienna. Yes. And I think that, that was it. We have, of course, like I told you earlier, or Lars mentioned earlier, we've also done the follow-on investment in Kavalri and increased the organization as well.
Yes. Thank you very much, Per-Arne, and thank you for all hard work and your team. You've been working all summer to get this done. I'm sorry, Johan, for stamping on your feet here. I will run through the 2 last acquisitions here this morning. I'm happy to see we're having another team from Vienna joining called Pow Wow Entertainment. They also recently founded last year, head count of 20 people with a AAA experience and game-as-a-service experience, focusing original IPs, and they are working on 2 products and 1 that actually gets me very excited because it has some heritage, you will understand -- well, in the future. That is very interesting, but more as a game as a service. And they will become part of THQ Nordic, and they are, as you know, also headquartered in Vienna. And here, you can see a bit of this various projects. They have 1 project that are under early access as well on Steam. Thank you, and then we're changing slide, a very welcome Pow Wow Entertainment. And finally, happy to see that we're having some people from a neighboring country of Norway joining the group in a company called Sola Media. I have to be honest, I haven't met the team myself, but I heard many good things from the Koch -- film director, [ Stefan Capela ], that he's talking very well of this company for, I think, well over a year. Sola Media is sales agent -- international sales agent for focusing on children and family content with a very experienced team. They are at EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million net sales level with about EUR 1 million profit. We're paying about EUR 2.3 million of -- sum shares. And the team are committed to the future, especially -- obviously, the founder, Solveig. Now turning page, you can see a bit of catalog here. Coming from a family with children myself, there is a number of movies here who have been recognizing soon and others. That obviously perhaps is bigger here in Sweden, but there is the international market. And I know they have a lot of signed projects. They have a movie called Latte now on Netflix that are performing very well apparently. And looking at the team, they will be kept as an independent entity, obviously, with a lot of synergies with Koch Films. But I think the portfolio of content, family and children content suits the profile of Koch Films very well. So thank you. I'm now trying to remember the next presentation. It's a summary of the M&A. And I will try to run through this very quickly, and let's see if we have time for some questions. So I normally do like an update on the M&A status. And I was really delighted, as you've seen this morning to announce 8 acquisitions. We raised capital for acquisitions in April. But I'm also glad to see that a lot of entrepreneurs actually are choosing to take a lot in shares, if not all shares, on very long-term earn-outs. So I'm sorry to say for some investors that we haven't really used a lot of the capital we raised yet, but we're working hard, and I want to send that message. I'm working hard in [indiscernible], and the machinery on a global scale, working very hard to find some new -- more amazing entrepreneurs joining. And the acquisition this morning, here's some KPIs increased our own number of studios from 33 to 43. And a number of game projects under development from 125 to 143. And increased the number of developers in group of 254 people. And as you've seen this morning, Deca becomes a new operational unit in the group. And that is a very important step. And I will continue supporting that, obviously, with capital allocation and trust allocation to build growth. And that's the way we operate. And just going back for a minute. When doing this slide, I thought we had a bit more time, but I think it's quite important just to understand the acquisition journey and the decades of embracing entrepreneurs. I started the business Nordic Games in 1993; Clement started '94; Luisa, '96; a number of companies in the '90s; Saber, 2001; Coffee Stain in 2010. And actually Embracer Group, then named THQ Nordic started 2011. And then this morning announcing a few of these acquisitions, for example, 4A Games started 2006; New World, 2010; and Deca, 2016. But you also heard Ken this morning saying he has a long, deep experience from the industry. And when doing acquisitions, we are doing platform and bolt-on acquisitions and platform acquisitions, Saber, Coffee Stain, Deca, Amplifier, but bolt-on acquisitions. It's a very financial terms saying bolt-on. I don't like it too much, but it's the phrase you're using in the financial market. But basically you're expanding your network of developers in general. And THQ Nordic had done a number of acquisitions. If not mistaken, it's 24 acquisitions here. And we operate under a very decentralized, highly scalable governance model. And I think that model is proven to work better and better. And I think that is why we have been able to see companies like many of the companies this morning joining. And I'm a firm believer of people, to let people making their own decisions on a daily basis. And just looking through the acquisitions we have made over the past years. It's one thing being that we more or less only have acquired businesses from founders that has been entirely self-funded. Rather than acquiring businesses from venture capitalists, and others and directly reaching out to founders. And we provide capital to advise and the support -- whatever support you need to accelerate the growth in their businesses. So we call this empowerment through decentralization. And the last slide here is the M&A outlook. And I don't want to sound too much. We made a lot this morning, but I think we have further ambitions that we hope to show in the future here. And we've been raising the capital we did this spring to allocate it for acquisitions. And I think we have seen a good number of increased interest from various companies to join the group driven not only from Embracer level but for most through the operating units. And as you see in Matt here from Saber, he's heavily engaging in a good number of really good developers, for example. It's just an example. Sorry for sounding a bit tired, but quite a few hours has slipped. So that's for me for this slide. So I think that was the presentations from today, Oscar?
Yes. Thank you. So record a strong quarter and the record-long presentation, I would say, but I'll try to keep the Q&A quite short. Start off with a few questions on the Q1 results. I think the very strong sales mix here for the game segment growing very strongly, is encouraging, of course. Can you speak a little bit about the unique market conditions in Q1 and sort of what you expect for Q2 and the second half of the year?
Obviously, we saw increased engagement as all gaming businesses during the lockdown period. But I noticed discussion whether the period is over or how it's changing the industry. And actually, I asked these questions over the past days to my businesses and CEOs, and I think everyone is confirming we are still at a most likely a higher level than before. However, it might be a bit less than April, May period. For us running a premium business is a bit hard to track because our business is foremost driven by new releases, and that is obviously generating a lot of sales, how much would that be in various time periods, it's sort of -- but in general, that's the feeling we're having. Obviously, having titles as well performing in July, it helps as well.
Yes. And I think, I mean, except for the unique market conditions, I would say that, I mean, the ratings are exceptional for the Q1 releases and also at the start of Q2. How confident are you that they will deliver strong back catalog sales for the coming quarters as well?
Well, I don't want to sound -- don't be too bullish, Oscar. I know you're an analyst. So keep your estimates. I think we need to be sensible and there is tomorrow going back to normal. So it's very hard to estimate how the back-catalog sales. But obviously, it helps if you make a great game because a great game will be a great game tomorrow, basically.
And do you want to highlight any particular games or studios. I mean, we have Anton here today. I think Coffee Stain is posting a quite remarkable Q1 with very successful full releases of Satisfactory on Steam and also Deep Rock Galactic. Anything else you want to sort of highlight?
Well, Coffee Stain are doing remarkable games, and then you get remarkable results from it in a way. So no. I don't think it's fair. I think to highlight each and every -- we don't have that time, Oscar, really. I'm just happy to see that it's more greens in our metacritic sharks than there is oriental red.
Very good. And I also have to touch upon your guidance for completed development quickly, where you mentioned that you retained the guidance for SEK 1.2 billion to SEK 1.4 billion in completed games. So no delays, I presume, but how our projects sort of proceeding?
Well, that's one way to put it. And I think that's still the guidance. Obviously, we had a few -- a number of titles moving out from the year but also actually we had a number of titles moving into the year. So we're still within that range. I think you'll see a similar number of value potentially getting released in the current quarter and third quarter. And then you will have a higher level in the fourth quarter, that is how is the Excel sheets are looking at the moment.
Very useful and have to touch upon quickly Biomutant as well. Actually, because it seems to be getting closer with a new Discord server and a gameplay trailer. Just a very quick comment Biomutant.
Well, we have a number of sizable projects this year without mentioning Biomutant. That is coming kind of potentially in the end of the financial year. Again, for me, it's not about release quarter. For me, it's about making a great game because a great game will be a great game for every year, and you get 1 shot, so yes.
Excellent. And 2 final questions for me. Saber Interactive and Matthew seems to have been of great use and benefit to the group so far. I mean how -- what do you think about the collaboration and what it can become in the long term?
They have huge ambitions, these Americans. So I'm super excited to watch them and to support them in their ambition to really build something substantial. I have a big growth ambition -- or to build something substantial myself. And I made a 25-year promise when I made the IPO when I am 21 years ago but I need some great entrepreneurs from the same -- aside me, and they are really, really into it. But honestly, we have amazing group of entrepreneurs within the group. So I don't want to -- is just a bit of initial reactions from a Saber Interactive. And they being American, they've been heavily engaged in development, obviously, and they connect very well, obviously, with some people, or most people.
Yes. And as you probably understand, I have a ton of questions on the acquisitions, but I'll just leave with 1 final question. Can we confirm that Metro multiplayer is in development after the call earlier?
No, we cannot -- absolutely not confirm that. I think that wording was a bit taking out of context. Saber Interactive, they have a fantastic end in doing multiplayer. And then you're having [ end in ] doing single player. I think it's more of a various potential opportunities. So don't expect too much, Oscar, too soon.
Well said. And I think we'll wrap up the Q&A there for now if you don't want to take further questions from the audience.
I think we'll wrap this up now because we've been doing this for 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Great. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.