G5 Entertainment AB (publ)

STO:G5EN

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Stefan Wikstrand, CFO & Deputy CEO]

Good morning, everyone. I think everyone -- it looks like everyone has been able to connect to the meeting. I think we'll get this going. And as you can see on the slide that you have on the screen, you will be in an listen and view mode. And we'll have a Q&A after, You can either post the questions in the Q&A box along the way or raise your hand when the meeting is over, but you will have a new info slide when we wrap it up. With that, I will hand it over to Vlad.

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Stefan, I think [ Martin ] is saying that there is no sound. Does everyone have sound? All right. Good. Then we're good to go. So good morning. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Vlad Suglobov. I am the CEO of G5 Entertainment. And obviously, Stefan, the CFO, is with us. So we'll take about 15 minutes to go through the presentation for the third quarter results, and then we'll open the line for questions. So I'd like to summarize by saying that we continued to deliver on our strategy, and this is clearly paying off. Our main growth driver is our new generation of games, and they have really set the stage for a record 2021 in terms of earnings. Revenue for our new generation of games was up 36% year-over-year in USD terms and 1% quarter-to-quarter. And overall revenue in the quarter grew 1% year-over-year in USD terms.So behind this growth, there is a strong rise in the monthly average gross revenue per paying user, which was up 13% year-over-year to a record $68. The record monthly average gross revenue per paying user reflects the constantly improving production values and depth of our new generation of games because of which we see the increasing engagement of the players and the willingness of the players to spend more money. And that will be money which also seems to lose value faster than before in our most important markets. We saw a sharp development in the quarter in the continued increase in the gross margin as Microsoft Store commission was lowered to 12% from 30%, effective August 1. So 2 months of this quarter. So together with G5 store and the development and advertising revenue, which was gradual but positive, this took effective store commissions from 29.1% in the second quarter to 24.7% of our revenue in the third quarter. So all in all, our gross margin improved to 64%, just jumped in 1 quarter, and the increase was about 5 percentage points sequentially as well as year-over-year. That was very gradual development and gross margin over the last year.So this strongly improved gross margin, of course, impacted the EBIT positively. And as our user acquisition spend was 20% of revenue, higher than in the first quarter and in the middle of our communicated range of 17% to 22%. EBIT was still SEK 56.5 million, which was up 5% year-over-year. And the EBIT margin adjusted for FX was a strong 18%, closed to record for G5. EPS reached SEK 5.82. And for the 9 months, we are already at SEK 16.2, so close to the result of the full year 2020. And last but not least, we repurchased shares for the amount of almost SEK 89 million in the quarter.Now let's take a look at Q3 revenue a little closer where our new generation of games continues to drive growth. Revenue of SEK 327 million. That is 1% increase in USD terms year-over-year, which was a bit of a lockdown quarter still. And then growth of our new generation of games drove the expansion of own games revenues [ share ] to over 66% of total revenue, up from 62% of total revenue in Q3 last year. Among our games, Sherlock really stood out and continued to be a steady growth driver. And now the game is representing over 10% of our revenue in this quarter. Our new generation of games now stands for 50% of our net revenue. That is up from 37% in Q3 last year. So good development there.And let's talk about earnings. So the strong gross margin of 64% was boosted by the fee reduction in Microsoft Store, but it is also a continuation of a long-term trend of expanding margins as a larger share of revenue is coming from owned games, and as G5 store is bringing in more and more revenue. The strong margin listed EBIT to SEK 56.5 million and the EBIT margin adjusted for FX was a strong 18%, as I have said. Again, user acquisition costs were 20% of revenue in the middle of our indicated range. As you might recall, this was on the higher side of the range in Q2 to get some extra momentum as we go through the comparisons with log-down quarters this year. All in all, EBIT for the first 9 months was SEK 160 million, closing in on full year 2020 levels.Now let's turn to the cash flow and our cash position, which despite share buybacks remains very strong. We had a strong operating cash flow and a strong cash conversion during the quarter. Tax payments and of course, SEK 89 million in share buybacks held us down a bit in terms of the cash position. But despite these big items, total cash flow in the quarter was minus SEK 39 million only, and total cash at the end of the period was still SEK 131 million. Considering that we continue to generate positive cash flow every month, it's all good. We remain at 0 debt. We continue and intend to continue to be cash flow positive every month and we can either choose to build up the reserves or deploy cash in the best way possible in accordance with the opportunities that we see.Turning to a brief outlook for the rest of the year. We expect our new generation of games to continue to be the catalyst of growth. Our new generation of games is now over 50% of our revenue. And as the new generation of games continues to grow, it will help further improve our gross margin and in turn, our operating margin. Going forward, we expect to see sequential growth driven by CSL gaming content, and we expect to remain in the established user acquisition range of 17% to 22% of revenue. So we also expect to see an increased gross margin driven by the full effect of reduced Microsoft Store fee that should happen already in Q4. Also a factor is a continued growth of G5 store revenue and a higher share of our revenue coming from our own games. So there are 3 drivers of the expanding gross margins, and this will continue from here. As over 50% of our net revenue is now derived outside of Apple and Google stores, we are well diversified across distribution channels, and we are well positioned to benefit from gradual reduction of effective store fees. This really puts us in a very good position.All in all, we are primed for growth through expanding margins on the portfolio of existing games and also new releases. It is our goal to maintain a portfolio of games with a regular inflow of new, high-quality games. At the moment, we have 9 games in the development -- in the development pipeline, of which 3 are going to be soft launched before the end of the year and one slipped to the beginning of the next year. And then we have 5 more games that will be released sometime in 2022, and we will be launching more development projects in 2022 as well. That is why we continue to build out our development capacity. So it's a good situation to be in when we can invest in all the new games that we want to build, when we can invest predictably in user acquisition and yet we remain strongly profitable while also enjoying expanding profit margins.So our portfolio is well balanced and more diversified than it has ever been before. As I mentioned also, there's good diversification across the distribution channels. In the quarter, 66% of our revenue was delivered by our own titles. To me, this is clear proof of a successful strategy. Makes me very proud of our team.To summarize, we expect the strong trends that we have seen during the last couple of quarters to continue, and we are on track to deliver a record year in 2021. Again, all in all, I'm very proud of the strong accomplishments by the whole G5 team, development and marketing together. This -- and this concludes my presentation for today. And I'd like to open the call for questions.

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Well, let's -- Stefan, should we go with a chat? Or do you have...

[Stefan Wikstrand, CFO & Deputy CEO]

Yes, can start with the chat. As you can see on the screen, you can either raise your hand or pose the question in the Q&A box. I think we have some questions in the chat as well. But yes let's start with those.

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Let's start with that. So I see the development costs have increased. They did. These are not the development costs. These are -- well, there are actually 2 parts to it, right? One part is investing in the development of games. Those expenses are capitalized. And we always said that we intend to maintain a portfolio. I've just pretty much answered that. But to stress that again, we never intend to stop making games. If anything, we'd like to develop better games, probably enough games to have enough shots on goal. You might remember that in 2020, we released about 8 games and what kind of difference it made on the company's revenue and the revenue composition. So clearly, we want to have many games in the pipeline. We want to be working on many games at the same time, and we want to make sure we have the teams working on our existing games, especially on those that are growing. So that's why you can see that we capitalize more. When it comes to expenses that we write-off and those would be any expenses that go towards the development of the marks through to tools or the platform or G5 store, we don't really capitalize those. They are written off immediately. And that is also very important because to be able to diversify the revenue, to be able to lower the store fees, to be able to stay competitive in the market in terms of your marketing strategy, you have to be making these investments. They're not reflected on the balance sheet as investments, but these investments are happening and these assets -- our platform assets are being created, including the game engine, which I did mention.With that, let's move to the next question. So we've seen Sherlock reach really high numbers and it's starting to [ be hidden ] in some countries. What are your comments on that? Sherlock is very persistently growing game, very steady, but always advancing. I'm very positive about Sherlock. We'll see how it develops. But I have a very good feeling about this game, and it's doing really well. It will probably go to the next level already before the end of this year. That's my feeling.So next question is, for 2021, your goal has been to improve your margins, which you have succeeded with. Can we say that the goal for 2022 is to increase the revenue with the 3 games you will release at the end of the year? Look, I cannot say specifically with which games we aim to do that, right? It's a little bit of a numbers game. Some of these games are rather conservative bets that will certainly produce incremental revenue. Some of these games are a little bit venturing, little bit trying things that we didn't try before. And so there is more risk that we will end up not driving a lot of success from these games. On the other hand, a good thing may happen and we may stumble upon a success there. We put a lot of thinking in some -- into what kind of games we want to develop and the games we will be bringing to the market. It's a mix of safe bets and more interesting bets that have better upside. But certainly, we'd like to see more top line growth. And even without it, I think our situation is really good with regard to the margin development, but it would be even more -- even better with the top line growth, and we certainly want to drive more users into the ecosystem. We're paying users to be honest.So next question is, these games that are being developed are they totally new or are they just copies of previous games? No, we don't make copies of for use games. Anyway, we -- I think I answered that question. So it's a combination of safer bets and a -- with more interesting bets with higher upside, but perhaps a slightly higher chance of failure as well. It's just the reality of games industry, right?So next question is about how the new -- the time line for launches is going to look like. Are we going to cluster them towards the end of the year? Or is it going to be through the year? How is Hidden Epee performing? So we have 3 now. We have the fourth game soft launched early in the next year. The rest -- I think there are some releases in the middle of the year and some releases that are likely going to happen towards the end of the year. And when it comes to Hidden Epee, it's doing well. It's gradually advancing through the soft launch process and now it's in the final stages of the soft launch process. It's a good prognosis. We'll see. It's work in progress in that regard.Next question is, how are you thinking about buybacks going forward?Well, for us, it's -- we understand our company really well. We understand really well what we are doing. We've been doing it for some time. And so we have really good visibility in terms of where we can be within the next year or 2, 3 years. So buybacks for us is the opportunity to invest in a business that we really understand. And when we see a good opportunity, we will act upon it because we are, as I've mentioned, cash flow positive every month. And we choose between dividends, taking up cash on the account or doing M&A or doing buybacks. And M&A is not a topic, but there's less visibility when you do M&A, right? There's some guess work happening. But when you see a really good opportunity in the company that you understand really well, it makes a lot of sense. So that is our thinking, and we have a mandate from the Board to continue buybacks.So next question is, the royalty to external developers did increase relatively over the year compared to last year. Could you elaborate how this will develop in the future? Yes. This is a reflection of the later cycles in the games' life where marketing expenses are lower. So there is more revenue to steer basically. I would say, without the growth in -- without growth in company's revenue, there's limited space for these expenses to go up. But this will perform -- this will -- sorry, this will really depend on the company's -- on the game's performance. And I think that with the growth that we have in own games, the revenue that licensed games are still making and the profits that they're still making for the company it's a very valuable asset to have. It's -- this is the long tail of revenue where expenses are relatively low, and the profit margin is maximized. And if we can have longer period of time when the revenue of license -- older licensed games is stable, maybe even developing positively in some quarters, this is a good thing to have. So I don't -- it's difficult to guide. It depends on this -- on the interplay between the percentage of own revenue and licensed revenue, obviously.All right. Next question. Have you seen any changes in price expectations lately in the M&A market? Can you elaborate on the strategy, hasn't happened much historically? It hasn't, yes. And again, we are -- we have a lot going on inside the company. We've been adding a lot of employees. We're getting close to 900 employees at this point. We have many development teams that are working on very interesting projects that we will be bringing to the market very soon. This strategy has paid off, right? All the good things that happened to G5 since 2018, these are -- these were the results of exactly this strategy of investing in internal teams, investing in games that we develop internally and that we own fully. And so, we continue with that strategy. And this is our main focus. M&A can be an interesting tool. But again, knowing everything we know about the company and having to deal with the certain limited visibility into other businesses, quite often you may conclude that it's good to continue to invest in the business that we understand really well. So as I've said before, we are looking at potential partners in the M&A. We are reaching out. We are kind of looking at what can be an interesting synergy to find with other companies. So that process is ongoing. But when we have news for you, we will certainly share. Now there's nothing to share as of right now. And this is the end of our list of questions.

[Stefan Wikstrand, CFO & Deputy CEO]

We actually have 2 in the Q&A box as well. One from [ Bruno ]. Following up with Microsoft's move, can we expect that in the course of 2022, Google and/or Apple start lowering their store fees as well?

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Well, I'd like to see that, right? If you ask me, I would like for Apple and Google to come out and say, look, we love your developers. We're going to do this beautiful thing and lower the store fees. I think everyone understands where the next line is, right? It's been drawn very clearly. I think it would be good for the ecosystem. I think it would be good for them. I think that developing games is a time-consuming and a challenging -- technically challenging process, which involves a lot of intellectual labor. And so you have to give the resources to the developers to continue producing great games for the devices that you want to sell to your customers. It only makes sense. And 30% is 30%, but there are other numbers in between low percentage fees and 30%, which can be a great boost to the ecosystem. And this extra money that will be passed through to the developers, it's going to -- realistically, it's going to get spent on better games that will generate more money, grow the stores as well, and it will be spent on advertising these games, which will also generate more money to the same platforms, right? Given the latest moves, everything is set up for the platforms -- both platforms to capitalize on user acquisition on their platforms. So from my point of view, it only makes sense. When it's going to happen, we don't know. You are aware about the legal developments and the pressure that's there. And I think we'll see. I think it's just -- it's clear that fees are going down from here. They're not going up, but the time line is obviously a bit unclear.

[Stefan Wikstrand, CFO & Deputy CEO]

We have another one from the Q&A box. What is the main driver behind the higher monthly average gross revenue per paying user?

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Right. Well, it's actually a result of a number of things. It's not like we are intentionally doing that. It's more of a result of how we do things. Our games tend to be rather deep and quite sophisticated. So they are built for quite a bit of depth, and we see that people who really get into these games, they tend to spend money on some sort of regular schedule. And so -- and then if you -- and then as I mentioned before, there's more revenue generated now than a year ago with the help of Match-3 games in our portfolio. And so Match-3 games tend to be higher monetizing than other types of games. This is a contributing factor as well. And then if you look at user acquisition, we are optimizing for the return on investment. And that sort of sorts out the users who pay less who don't recoup the investment in acquiring them, or users who would maybe engage really well, but they would not actually pay, right? So there's this selection biased towards better paying users on the most paying territories of the world, which are our main markets: United States, Western Europe and Asia, which is mostly Japan for us. So -- and then you see this -- the result of that, the result of the flat audience base, but this selection and the more revenue coming from Match-3 games and deeper mechanics, you just see the result as improving monetization. And I think might be that inflation is also adding a little bit. After all, money is getting cheaper quickly. So our games become more and more affordable every month now. So I think that's the situation. And it might be that it changes. Suppose, for example, we have a game that's really driving the audience rather than monetization, right? But on average, it's a good return on investment. And if then we have this part of portfolio where there is a slightly different strategy at play, then this might kind of change the situation with the KPIs, where you would see audience expansion, but mainly monetization is not going to be growing in such a pronounced way as it is doing now. So it's just a reflection of the current trends in the portfolio allocation and the strategy behind user acquisition.

[Stefan Wikstrand, CFO & Deputy CEO]

Okay, let's see, we have Oscar Erixon from Carnegie that raised his hand. Let's see if I can manage to let him in here as well. Oscar, I think we should be able to hear you.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

So I wanted to ask you a question here, on the platform side and the current trading side. You're clearly well diversified between platforms now as seen by your gross margin. But can you talk a little bit about the impact here on iOS and Android channels in Q3? How big of a challenge has it been? What have you seen? And also now into Q4, are you seeing signs of lower CPMs and less competition into Q4, just as a result of the ecosystem adapting and companies less willing to spend with low ROI? Would be interesting to hear your thoughts there.

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Yes. Thank you for the question. So yes, you're probably referring to the IDFA situation, right? I still believe this was a very targeted change. I mean, with good intentions, but also very much targeted towards the biggest social media companies. And as a result of that, for us and other developers, obviously, a lot of -- there was a decline in spending with those particular social networks. And I know that this affected some developers really in a really hard way because they did not have other channels. Now we had other channels. And so there was some redistribution of marketing spend towards other channels, but also towards other platforms. I don't know if you're aware, but basically IDFA situation does not affect Google ecosystem. So there was redistribution basically from iOS to all other platforms in our case as well. I know that for some developers, there was quite a pronounced negative development of their iOS revenue, it didn't happen for us. It didn't help, but there was nothing dramatic either. So -- and I think this change was done in a very -- a little bit of a rushed way. And I think that they were trying to do it in a bit more rushed way, but then it got delayed, but still I think that the change has affected the ecosystem negatively. So I think that Apple in the long run, they are probably, I would assume they are interested in their ecosystem. After all, App Store is a big business and they probably wanted to develop in a positive way. And so that is consistent with what we are seeing with the fact that they are improving their tools and SDKs. And I think the industry is going to adapt. It's going to take a few quarters. And as you've mentioned, it balances itself, right? There's less demand, prices are going down. And if some developers are unable to spend, well, some others can still spend money and acquire users more effectively than others. So I think we are -- we were quite prepared for the situation. We had no big disruptions. We were just adapting and changing the spend to where the return on investment is. So we would leave it to the people who broke what was working, to fix it because it's also in their interest. And we are ready to use whatever advertising channels they would suggest as long as the return on investment will be there. And if someone is willing to kind of destroy their platform, that's fine with us, we have other platforms as well. But again, this is probably not happening, right? We see that they're working towards fixing the situation with the developers. Yes, that's the situation.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Perfect. And then just a follow-up, Vlad. Would be interested to hear your thoughts on what is happening in the market currently. What are people talking about in terms of contextual advertising, in using fingerprinting versus Apple's own and add that work? There's some sort of flavor there of what people are talking about and actually doing now on iOS specifically. But I presume also, we're seeing sort of crowding out of user acquisition spending to Google Play, which may adversely impact CPMs higher marketing prices.

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Yes. Well, I think everyone is trying to do what they can. Some companies are changing names and going in different directions. Some companies are, as you've said, doing some fingerprinting or whatever and some companies -- it's -- to be honest, this is not really our concern. We are happy to use whatever user acquisition channel, which can reliably demonstrate the recoupment of the investment, right? So for us, what's important is that we see the result. And we have a way of looking at our campaigns and judging whether or not it is working. And that said, also, I think there's a little bit of market forces at work here. Like, why would we prioritize a platform with higher store fees? What does it accomplish? If we have the fastest-growing platform for us and also another large platform where fees are much smaller, we might want to really shift the spend to there. After all, even if you have a mobile phone, you'll probably still own a personal computer, and it's actually more convenient to play our games on your personal computer. And we see a lot of our players -- even now, even on mobile devices, they play at home, they basically play sitting on a couch, so you might as well sit with your laptop or -- there are these laptops that fold and then they become like a large iPad. So I think we are going to reach our customers one way or another, and we would prioritize channels where we have lower store fees. And if -- when if the ecosystem develops -- and I think there are obviously a lot of people interested in the development of the iOS ecosystem, and they're working on making sure that advertising and user acquisition is possible in this ecosystem, we'll be there to shift spending back, especially if the fees are improved or there's an opportunity for direct payment processing. This will be good news. But even that said, we have a very loyal audience. We have -- I mean, we have our -- we have customer touch points, millions of them actually, through social media through the newsletter through just the audience that play our games every day, and we can cross sell. We can tell them that we have new game releases and so on. So it's not -- again, it's not as dramatic because we really were very prepared in terms of diversification, in terms of customer touch points and in terms of the tools.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Great. And just one final question for me, Vlad. If you could elaborate a bit on your comments on Q4. You mentioned Q4 and Q1 being seasonally stronger. And you are, as you also noted, almost halfway into Q4. So what do you see on a sequential basis? Are you confident of sequential growth? Could we see a step up? You had some positive comments on Sherlock as well. Little bit more flavor there would be interesting.

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Yes. Well, there's -- it's more than a half of the quarter still ahead of us, right? But so far, the pattern is similar. We had quite strong October. November is kind of -- usually kind of in between and then usually, there is strong development in December. So far, it's the same pattern. So we see this happening. That's why we are saying that we're going to have a strong fourth quarter.

[Stefan Wikstrand, CFO & Deputy CEO]

We have Rasmus Engberg from Handelsbanken. I'll just do my thing here. Let's see. Welcome Rasmus.

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

I don't seem to hear anything. Can you hear the question, Stefan?

[Stefan Wikstrand, CFO & Deputy CEO]

No. Let me take another one, meanwhile. So there is a question from [ Olle ]. On personal computers, are there other significant platforms other than Microsoft Store and G5 store?

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Yes, there are, but they are even more -- there's less casual players on these platforms. And again, we see such a great development for the G5 store, all things considered, that we really want to make sure we take it to as far as we can. So I would say we are really focused for now on Microsoft Store and G5 store to serve personal computers, but we may be going to other stores as well. But again, we have to understand what's the situation with the fees there? And what's -- are we going to bring users to them? Or are we going to reach new users going through these stores, right? This would be the analysis. So far, with G5 store, we just open the store and people come to us. So we need to make sure that the first thing that people see when searching for our games is our store. I hope it makes sense.Rasmus is asking in the chat now. Yes, there is a technical glitch. Can you talk about how Q3 developed? Specifically, were you pleased with September? I think September was fine. I think that Q3 overall felt like a solid quarter. And usually, Q3 is not the strongest, right, of the quarters in the year. The pre-COVID pattern was always there. Q4 and Q1 are the strong quarters. Q2 and Q3 are weaker quarters. And so it was thrown off a little bit last year. We had really strong Q2. And I think that Q3 was kind of stronger than it was supposed to be. So this year, we're kind of still going through that compared -- tough comparison with previous year. I think that obviously, the jewel family of games slowed down in its performance. I think there is a number of really interesting features and there's a lot of thinking in terms of how do we go back to better dynamic there. It happens. It's not always a straight line, but still Jewels of Rome and the other jewels games are now a big moneymaker for the company and will be for years and we have Sherlock still advancing. And different games sometimes grow in different quarters, depending on the situation in the market. So I'd say I feel really good about this quarter, considering the margin development and everything that's going on. I am more happy about the long-term prospects of the developments that we've seen in the third quarter than maybe with the -- this particular comparisons and particular outcome of this particular quarter. I think strategically, we're on the very right track.

[Stefan Wikstrand, CFO & Deputy CEO]

I think we have one final question in the Q&A from [ Bruno ], which was about -- in the cash flow statement in Q3 2020, you had a cash inflow of SEK 40 million for taxes versus cash outflow this Q3. And can you explain what caused this inflow? And I will just -- well, to give a kind of a quick response on that. So the tax regimen in Malta works so that we pay taxes in full, which is 35%. And then we get 6/7 of that back from the tax authority is after paying a dividend. So we have a time lag between the 2. So we had a big tax payment in Q2 last year, and then we got a refund in Q3. This year, we've changed the tax regimen in Malta. So now we're going to pay net taxes going forward, which is a new -- well, fairly new element that they've introduced there. So this kind of timing effect of the first paying and then getting the money back is not going to occur going forward. But that's the explanation for the year-over-year number. And I think that was all of them.

[Vladislav Suglobov, Co]

Yes, I think we got them all -- all right. Thank you very much for joining us today, for following G5. This concludes our call. Have a very good day.