Modern Times Group MTG AB

STO:MTG B

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Lars Torstensson]

Good afternoon and welcome to MTG's interim report presentation for the second quarter 2021. My name is Lars Torstensson. And joining me I have our Group President and CEO, Maria Redin. As usual, we will begin by presenting the quarter and then take your questions in the Q&A session for dial-in participants only. With that said, I'm now handing over to you, Maria, to take us through the quarter.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Thank you, Lars, and good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q2 earnings call today. The second quarter is yet another intensive quarter for us, both from an operational and M&A perspective. We delivered solid progress on our strategy in both the gaming and esport verticals. This quarter also marks the full year of operations under the ongoing corona pandemic. Stay-at-home and lockdown orders have contributed to the growth of our gaming vertical with our companies gaining new users and experiencing high user engagement. However, as expected, we are now also starting to face tougher year-over-year comparisons against this elevated baseline. Our resource vertical on the other hand was initially hit hard, but it's now starting to improve and recover, thanks to our agile shift to online events as well as the gradual reopening of society. Unlike gaming, esports will face easier comps going forward. I will now walk you through our presentation and afterwards, I look forward taking to your questions. Our results in the second quarter shows that we're executing well on our strategy with solid development in terms of net sales and EBITDA. Our gaming vertical delivered a solid quarter, mainly driven by good monetization, solid player base engagement and clearly supported by the inclusion of both Ninja Kiwi and Hutch driving overall sales. The esports vertical returned to positive revenue growth, driven in particular by stronger ESS sales as well as renewed growth within our own and operated operations. ESL Gaming hosted 6 digital-only Master properties and successfully produced another season of Gamers Without Borders and hosted a successful Rainbow Six live event in Paris. On the gaming vertical, we continue to deliver on our buy-and-build strategy, announcing the acquisition of PlaySimple, a rapidly growing, highly profitable Indian gaming studio and a global leader in the mobile world game genre. Last but not least, we maintain a high level of strategic investments in our esports product portfolio and B2C platform, strengthening our position and diversifying our current offering ahead of return to live audience events, which we expect by the end of 2021. If we then move to the next slide. And let's start off by reviewing the performance of our gaming verticals in the second quarter. Net sales increased 9% to SEK 810 million. Foreign exchange rates had a negative impact of 5%, resulting in a growth at constant currency of 14%, fueled by the inclusion of Hutch and Ninja Kiwi. Organic growth was minus 14% due to the tough comparison against an elevated 2020 numbers. However, when comparing to the first quarter this year, our sequential growth was 3%. I'm pleased with the results in the quarter, but admittedly, we did end the quarter slightly soft. We saw a lower-than-expected results from InnoGames June event for its largest game, Forge of Empires, in conjunction with the European Football Championship. It's quite rare that we do not see the anticipated uplift from an InnoGames event, but it happens from time to time. And as we're now progressing into the third quarter, the next InnoGames we had in the schedule, which was played out early July, performed steady in line with our expectations. On a general note, InnoGames core title and portfolio of classic games delivered a solid performance. Kongregate operational developments in the quarter showed stable progress but the issues with a newly launched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles title has not yet been fully resolved, which is hampering the company's development to some degree. On the other hand, Hutch hosted Formula One Clash title for a strong customer intake and revenue development supported by increased marketing on back of the Formula One championship season start. We also consolidated Ninja Kiwi star in the first of June, which had a strong performance in the quarter. Its key title, Bloons TD 6, maintained high engagement with lower seasonality than normal. It is worth pointing out that Ninja Kiwi TD 6 is a premium game, having its main product update annually in December. The team has, therefore, been working on in-game improvements and releasing more frequent updates to reduce the cyclical characteristics of the game. And I would say that the Q2 performance is a good sign that it's paying off. I also would like to make a short comment on Apple's change to their identifier for advertisers features, commonly referred to IDFA, which has been thoroughly discussed by the industry since it was first announced last year and rolled out this quarter. The changes to IDFA, which means that the apps need to be obtaining sharing permission from iOS users to share data with app developers, opt-in rather than an opt-out basis, have so far had limited financial impact on our gaming vertical. That said, we continue to monitor the situation, and we encourage all the collaboration of topics. We do believe that solid processes, along with agile working rates will be the success factor in this changing environment. It is also important to underline that the IDFA changes will likely have different impacts on different gaming companies. If you look at our portfolio, Ninja Kiwi, for example, having 100% organic traffic will not have any impact as it is all community-centric approach to marketing. Meanwhile, InnoGames, which has both mobile and browser-oriented business, will experience a different impact. But in both instances, as I said, the financial impact has been limited so far. I'm also pleased to see that our gaming vertical maintained its margin despite the push behind our growth gains, as I already mentioned, F1 Clash. The solid development was supported by the recent acquisitions as well as underlying adjusted EBITDA growth. We're very excited about the gaming vertical that we're building with a balanced portfolio across both casual and mid-core. Our work to further diversify our game vertical through strategic M&A has continued. And on June 1, we added a strong Bloons IP to our portfolio of casual games throughout the closing of Ninja Kiwi transaction. On July 2, we announced the acquisition of PlaySimple, a rapidly growing, highly profitable Indian gaming studio and global leader in the mobile world game genre. Through the acquisitions carried out over the last 8 months, Hutch, Ninja Kiwi and PlaySimple, MTG has become a scaled player in the industry. As of the second quarter, we now reached 31 million monthly active users across more than 50 live games. We have also shifted our mobile revenue representation to be above 70% of total net sales for the gaming vertical. And as mentioned, we have now a much more diversified games portfolio stretching across different genres and life cycles along with solid [indiscernible]. Additionally, we have now a first group common project between our gaming studies underway to ensure that we realize synergies between the different companies and showing the key benefits of operating as a group of gaming company. We're still in the early days, but I'm very happy to see the high level of engagement between the different management teams and the excitement about working together. I am certain that this over time will result in stronger vertical performance and better, more engaging games, which ultimately will accelerate the value of the GamingCo as a whole. Let us move to the next slide, please. Our new games pipeline continued to develop well over the quarter with some delays due to identified areas of improvement in the soft-launched titles, ahead of the commercial launch. InnoGames made good progress on the development of the new games, and I currently have 2 games in soft launch, Rise of Cultures and Lost Survivors. Ninja Kiwi's soft launching, Bloons Pop, at the end of the quarter with promising early results. While it's exciting itself with the title, it also serves to generate excitement ahead of highly anticipated release of Bloons Battles 2, which will come now in the second half of 2021. Hutch title Puzzle Heist has so far not performed as anticipated, and the team is focusing on improving both the user acquisition campaigns and the early experience of the game metrics. In total, there are currently 4 games in soft launch for which we are planning commercial launches in the second half of the year. In addition, there are several new games that remain to be soft-launched in 2021, including PlaySimple's new word and card games titles. And speaking of PlaySimple, let's move to the next slide, please. With the acquisition of PlaySimple, we are the category leader within the word games genre to the group, along with the highly relevant capabilities around cross-promotion and uptake. Since being founded in 2014, PlaySimple has developed word games for the English-speaking audience with strong analytics and a data-driven approach that has enabled them to master both retention and monetization. They have a balanced portfolio of nonlive games across anagram, crossword and PvP word game franchises. And 3 of these games quite equally drives the majority of the sales, all within the growth mode space. Within the pipeline of new games, they are further moving into the solitaire space. For Q2 and H1, PlaySimple delivered revenues of SEK 285 million and SEK 535 million, respectively, which is at the higher end of our guidance and is equal to growth of 100% for Q2 and 87% for H1. Margins continued to expand in the quarter, and adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 94 million in Q2 and SEK 151 million in H1, also better than our initial guidance. We do expect PlaySimple to continue to perform growth rates at above-market averages and accelerated growth profile for the gaming group in totality. So we do not expect the current levels to be sustained. The upfront consideration amounts to $360 million and with a performance-based earn-out of $150 million. We expect to close the transaction at the end of July following our AGM that is scheduled to July 28. So the successful execution of our buy-build strategy has produced revenues, and adjusted EBITDA profile has changed significantly with faster underlying growth and the margin expansion. On a pro forma basis, 2020 net sales amounted to more than SEK 4.4 billion. That should be compared to the SEK 2.7 billion reported net sales with a solid 29% adjusted EBITDA margin. If we now look at 2021. For H1 '21 and Q2, respectively, we report sales of SEK 2.3 billion and SEK 1.2 billion, respectively, driving a 30% and 8% year-over-year growth in constant FX and a margin expansion to 31% in the second quarter. Looking at the breakdown of revenues. Mobile revenues are now close to 70% for the group and we have diversified our revenue stream to also include paid apps and increased advertising contribution. All in all, we're very proud of the company we have built and we look forward to continue to develop and grow our business. If we then move to the next slide, moving to esports. Our esports vertical continued to be affected by the ongoing pandemic in the second quarter, so we maintained a successful online schedule for our esports tournaments with a strong fan reception and continued commitment from partners. Net sales for the esports vertical increased by 18% to SEK 388 million, negatively impacted by foreign exchange rate of 8%, which meant an organic growth of 10%. ESL Gaming successfully delivered and produced 6 Master properties, scheduled as digital-only events, including DreamHack Masters Spring, IEM Summer and ESL One Summer. Furthermore, our ESS operations made a strong contribution to these game verticals and ESL Gaming produced another season of Gamers Without Borders as well as Rainbow Six live event at Paris. At the Paris event, we successfully invited the teams to physically participate, provide us with good learnings as of our recently conducted ESL One Cologne event that was also done in the same format. Additionally, DreamHack SportGames started the production of their Olympic virtual series, which will lead up to the Tokyo Olympics and produce a playoff of [ e-NHL ]. On a general note, we continue to believe that we will see a few live audience events return by the end of 2021, and we are optimistic about 2022 being a year of normality. As a result, we are still experiencing some soft reception from brand sponsors in 2021, but we are seeing more activity regarding 2022. Hence, our sales team at ESL Gaming is already having discussion with both new and existing partners on commitments for 2022. We are pleased to see ESL Gaming announce a strategic extension on its cooperation with Intel starting in 2022, which is a strong signal of confidence from our largest partner. Additionally, DHL also prolonged its contract starting now in Q2 and wants to make commitment to the ESL Gaming in the quarter. Furthermore, our discussions with publishers remained active in the quarter, and we feel that our proposition is resonating well with them. As an example, DreamHack as a part of ESL Gaming announced a new partnership with Epic Games through the DreamHack Open featuring Fortnite. If we then move to the next slide. We continue to make strategic investments to fully capitalize on the trends that have emerged in the pandemic, leveraging the learnings from digital-only events and a more platform-based operating model. Our focus has been on building the esports platform, including B2C and mobile esports products, supporting traditional esports, traditional sports into esports products and prepare the organization for potential geographic expansion. These investments have already started to yield early results. For example, in the second quarter, our mobile esports product ESL Mobile Open ramped competitions across North America, Europe and Asia for titles such as PUBG Mobile, Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars, Asphalt 9 and many others, attracting over 850,000 unique players. I strongly believe in this product as it enables the broader fan engagement through a larger addressable market. Additionally, as gained for converting towards mobile platform together with the 5G mobile networks being rolled out, the mobile esports market is set up for strong growth going forward. Another clear example of early results from the strategic investments is within DreamHack SportGames and its ambition to digitalize traditional sports into esports products in Q2, where we produced events for NHL and the International Olympic Committee as a part of the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Additionally, ESL Gaming invested into the interactive experience, DreamHack Beyond, that is an all-digital festival concept developed for the gaming community, created to both complement and showcase the best of DreamHack in a fresh new way, and we will start to test this on the market now in Q3. We also continue to invest through our VC fund into the casual competitive gaming platform, Joyride, which enables tournaments and competition from mobile casual gamers. This is a new innovative casual competitive gaming platform and an absent trend to the mobile esports that we see. Through these investments, we are preparing our esports vertical for a mixed model of live events and an enhanced online product proposition in a normalized business environment as we expect in 2022. We do expect this emerging hybrid model to lead to both faster growth and increased revenues, but also to a richer, more resilient commercial operations. At the same time, we will carry on to pursue the operational efficiencies in the core esports business and seeking new commercial and sponsorship agreements. With that said, I hand over to you, Lars, to walk us through the financials.

[Lars Torstensson]

Thanks, Maria. As Maria has already stated, it has been a very active quarter both operationally and from an M&A perspective. As in Q1, the second quarter was impacted by significant currency headwinds. The gaming vertical experienced negative 5%, while esports on 8% in translational headwinds, resulting in a total negative 6% for the group. Net sales amounted to SEK 1.198 billion, growing by 9% or 15% excluding FX. Organic growth amounted to a negative 3% due to, and as flagged in the first quarter, difficult comparisons in the same period last year as the gaming vertical operated from elevated levels due to the pandemic. With that said, we are pleased to see that most verticals have grown double digits in constant currencies. The gaming vertical grew by 9%, with the inclusion of Ninja Kiwi from the month of June. The underlying net sales was a negative 14%, excluding FX, due to last year's quarter being positively impacted by the pandemic with elevated activity. As mentioned, our esport vertical had 6 Master events in the first quarter both online and without live audience. Compared to the same period last year, net sales were up by 10%, positively impacted by a better performing ESS business, but also due to easier comparisons versus Q2 2020. Excluding exchange rate impact, sales was up 18%. Organic net sales growth was also up 18% with O&O at plus 6% and ESS at plus 36%. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 155 million, SEK 228 million from gaming, including Hutch, and 1 month of Ninja Kiwi and maintained solid performance from InnoGames. And minus SEK 48 million from esport supported by improved cost structure related to online events and the higher proportion of ESS work but affected negatively by the ongoing pandemic and accelerated operational investments into new strategic initiatives. The gaming vertical had an adjusted EBITDA margin of 28%, driven by continued robust performance at InnoGames despite difficult comparisons. New game launches for InnoGames and Hutch, together with a strong marketing push behind F1 Clash impacted profitability in the quarter to some extent. Let's take a closer look at esports. We continue to experience an impact from the pandemic in the form of less activity from brand sponsors, that's because of the lack of live audience events. We are optimistic about 2022 when we believe we will see a year that has returned to normalcy. We have seen several of our most important sponsors prolong the contract with ESL Gaming, showing commitment not only to esport, but to us, in particular. We maintained our accelerated investments into several strategic initiatives in the esport vertical, followers starting to look more positively to return to live audience events again. Hence, we would like to make sure that we are at the forefront when it comes to services offered to fans and partners. As we flagged already in Q1, this will continue throughout the year. With that said, the EBITDA adjustments in the quarter amounted to SEK 41 million to be compared to SEK 63 million last year. Management incentive programs amounted to SEK 25 million. Also, M&A costs amounted to SEK 60 million as a result of activity in both the gaming and esport vertical. It should be noted that the M&A costs associated with the acquisition of PlaySimple would be booked in Q3. Depreciation and amortization in the first quarter -- or sorry, second quarter amounted to SEK 102 million and included amortization of PPA of SEK 54 million. Amortization of PPA was higher compared to last year, mainly related to the Hutch and Ninja Kiwi acquisition. Excluding PPA, depreciation and amortization was nearly flat year-over-year at SEK 48 million. Net financial items amounted to SEK 26 million, predominantly driven by exchange rate changes. Last but not least, the group tax was negative SEK 49 million, predominantly reflected the increased result in the gaming vertical and InnoGames, but also a result of timing effects. Let's move on to the cash flow statement. Cash flow from operations before changes in working capital amounted to negative SEK 3 million. The management incentive program amounted to SEK 85 million was paid out by the gaming vertical during the quarter. The cost of the 4-year program has been provisioned on a quarterly basis, and the first part of the program was paid out in the quarter. Operationally, the cash flow was positively impacted by continued strong performance by the gaming vertical and negatively affected by maintained investments in the esport vertical. When looking at the cash flow profile of the company on a half year basis, the swing versus the same period last year can more or less be fully explained by the management incentive program being paid by the gaming vertical. Cash flow in investing activities contained a net cash payment of the acquisition of Ninja Kiwi of SEK 507 million, closed at 31st of May, and a final payment of Hutch of SEK 30 million. Furthermore, we invested SEK 26 million in the VC fund in a company called Joyride, an up-and-coming cash flow competitive gaming platform for mobile players. CapEx amounted to SEK 59 million in the quarter, mainly consisting of capitalized development cost of games and esport platforms that have not yet been released. Cash flow from financing activities mainly consists of capital injection from minority owners in the GamingCo of SEK 154 million as they partly participated pro rata in the Ninja Kiwi transaction. As a result, the net change in cash and cash equivalents for continuing operations amount to a negative SEK 624 million. That gives us a group net cash position of $1.2 million as of end of Q2. Cash, which is, to some extent, being used for the PlaySimple acquisition. Gaming continues to be cash flow -- remains a capital-contributing entity. Looking into the third quarter, I would like to remind everyone that the upcoming costs will continue to be high for gaming and easy for esports because of the way the pandemic affected the third quarter 2020. Gaming will face more normal comps as of the fourth quarter. That concludes the financial presentation of the quarter. And now back to you, Maria.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Thank you, Lars. So to summarize the second quarter now in '21. Our financial results for the quarter were solid, and we continue to grow our gaming vertical with new companies, strong risk and strong IP as well as more talented people. The latest addition is a great team of PlaySimple. Through the acquisitions carried out over the last 8 months, we've become a scaled player in the industry, and our gaming vertical generated Q2 pro forma revenues and adjusted EBITDA of approximately SEK 1.2 billion and SEK 367 million, respectively, corresponding to an organic net sales growth of 8%. We now have an even stronger group capabilities and skills when it comes to user acquisition, live ops and BI. Along with our growing play base, this is creating operation synergies that will help us remain competitive in this gaming industry. Additionally, a very strong new games pipeline is setting our gaming vertical up for continued organic growth. With the softer comps, we are back to growth on the esports vertical. Although short-term visibility remains limited for esports, we are confident in our strategy and ability to adapt. The pandemic will impact our operations for the remainder of 2021, but we are feeling increasingly optimistic about the return to normal business in 2022. We will continue to make strategic investments to fully capitalize on the trends that have emerged in the pandemic, leveraging the learnings from online-only events and a more platform-based operating model. Looking ahead, we will continue to execute on our buy-and-build strategy. Both our verticals have strong growth projections, and we expect to create shareholder value through both organic and inorganic investments in gaming as well as esports. And with that, that concludes my part. So thank you.

[Lars Torstensson]

Thank you, Maria. That concludes the formal presentation of our Q2 interim financial results report. We are now ready to take any questions that you might have on the report or the conference call presentation. So operator, can we please have the first question?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from the line of Oscar Erixon.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

A couple of questions from me, starting with gaming. Relatively soft development on the organic growth side and for InnoGames. Just regarding your comments here, should we interpret your comments about July as a recovery for InnoGames and solid momentum in Q3? If you could also comment on the momentum here sequentially for Ninja Kiwi, Hutch and PlaySimple.

[Lars Torstensson]

Thank you, Oscar. So 2 questions, both for you, Maria. The first one is InnoGames and the current trading in July, and then also if there is any additional clarity or flavor we can provide when it comes to Ninja Kiwi, Hutch and PlaySimple as well.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Thank you, Oscar, for your questions. I think that we were equally disappointed to be fair in the last month in Q2 on back of the softness of the campaign, I mean, usually, InnoGames has an extremely high predictability on the event side. This was a miss on their end. But that's again -- I mean, sometimes it does happen. That's also what you learned. I think on a positive note, and I think that's why it's also important to highlight, and you said it in your question, the July event performed in line with expectations, and we are back on the expected underlying momentum, both in InnoGames, but also across the remaining portfolio. So that gives us comfort on the way forward and also, as Lars said, in Q4 when we see again a more normalized comps.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Excellent. And then regarding your soft launches. It seems quite promising with Rise of Cultures as of Q1. What's the latest there? Should we expect a meaningful contribution from new releases for InnoGames and Kongregate here in 2021?

[Lars Torstensson]

Thanks. So Maria, a question for you when it comes to how the soft launches have developed both in the quarter but also looking forward. I guess it's the bigger question now. There's a lot of companies and a lot of games that are going to be soft-launched, so maybe you can also address it a little bit broader as well.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Yes. Thank you. I think if you look at it in the bigger scheme of things, I think that we have a very exciting games pipeline. I don't think we have ever stood that strong, also including the PlaySimple games that you have 4 in the pipeline. So that's extremely exciting. And of course, that is an important factor on organic growth going forward. I think if you look at the quarter where we then put 2 games, in particular on InnoGames, into soft launch, I think that the retention metrics that we are seeing on back of the games, which is the foundation for strong games, it's continued to perform extremely strong. What we saw in order to actually properly monetize and scale the games, we need to add more features and enhance those. And I think that is the work that we are currently doing, which means that we're opportunistic about making sure that we can gradually transform these games into soft launch, into commercial launch sort of towards the end of Q3 and then Q4, which means that they will be in Q4, they are the few you're going to see any meaningful impact and then in 2022.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Great. And then on the margin side, I noticed that your pro forma margin in gaming was around 31% in Q2. Could you please break that down a little bit between different studios and also perhaps some flavor on what is reasonable to expect here in Q3 and Q4 and also beyond?

[Lars Torstensson]

Thanks, Oscar. So pro forma margin for our gaming business, 31%. We are -- as you know, Oscar, we're not the keenest on breaking down details on our games, but let's see if we can provide a little bit of flavor there when it comes to how it is being distributed. Maria, if you could just add some color.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Yes. No, I think, I mean one company that you saw, also by the numbers that we announced, is Ninja Kiwi, which has extremely high EBITDA margins. As you can also see in our sort of announcement disclosure on back of that. So of course, that is improving the underlying margins. But also, I think what is extremely exciting and I think that embeds for a strong future going forward is when you consolidate both Hutch, Ninja Kiwi and PlaySimple, we are actually creating a gaming group that has faster underlying growth rates, I mean you have 8% in Q2 and you have 13% for the first half of the year with the margin expansion. I think that is something that we're excited about, and I think that is something that we also believe going forward is that we're going to see faster growth for the new gaming vertical going forward than what you have done, so in accelerated growth with these new acquisitions and the margin expansion.

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

Great. And a final question for me before handing over. You said that esports -- the strategic investments in esports is at similar levels, I think Q1, if I interpret correctly. Could you discuss the delta here sequentially with lower losses? Is it primarily due to more events? Or are there also sort of phasing effects that you recovered some of your investments in Q1? And also just what to expect in Q3 here in terms of margins for the esports side.

[Lars Torstensson]

Thanks, Oscar. So as you said, we are doing a similar level of strategic investments in the quarter, but we still see a sequential improvement when it comes to EBITDA losses. And what is the driver behind that predominantly, Maria? And then any view on the esport business going forward, even though we don't provide guidance?

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

No. But I think if you look at the quarter, it's a busier quarter in Q2 versus Q1. So you have 6 Master events, which is driving revenue growth. So we have a quite high sequential increase in revenues in Q2 versus Q1 as well. And on top of that, I mean, we did have a very strong ESS operations in the quarter. I mean we had -- I mean the 2 main events was Gamers Without Borders, which we also produced last year, and then also the Ubisoft Rainbow Six: Siege international. So those 2 is also positively impacting our revenues and also the bottom line. And then, of course, that underlying improvement is being offset by the investments we're doing to make sure that we are better positioned in 2022 and have a much broader product proposition and also becoming, through that, a better partner to the publishers, which is our name of the game and the purpose to become a really strong esports enabler for the publishers. I think as you look forward to Q3 and Q4, I think nothing has changed if you compare to the historical sort of development. The Q3 is on a slightly softer side of it versus Q4 is a busier one. I think if you look last year, I think that we had maybe a little bit unproportionately soft Q3 because what we did last year, if you remember, is that we put actually all the events more or less into Q4 because we had a hope that maybe COVID and the second wave would not come, which meant that we scheduled only 1 event in Q3 and the remainder in Q4, which meant that you had a proportionately high density of events in Q4, which meant that you also had a proportionately high revenue composition in Q4, which means that if you -- even though, as we said, we're going to have softer comps for the full second half of the year versus last year, but it's going to be, of course, on the ever softer side in Q3 versus Q4. So I think that's how you should think about the revenue mix. And as to the investment, they will continue also in the second half. And the way that we see it is that we should then start to be able to monetize and to see revenues on back of these in any sort of material substance starting in 2022.

[Lars Torstensson]

We're looking at the more balanced schedule than for 2021 second half versus 2020. That was a little bit more skewed towards Q4 2020, though.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Yes. So you should. But still Q4 will be the strongest quarter as it normally is.

[Lars Torstensson]

Yes. Would you like to follow up there, Oscar?

[Oscar Erixon, Financial Analyst]

No, that's enough for me.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of [ Eric Linton ].

[Unknown Analyst]

A couple of questions from me here. So just following up on Oscar's question here. Is it possible to sort of say anything on how we think the sales were in June for gaming compared to April and May? And are you kind of back at the April and May levels now in July?

[Lars Torstensson]

Eric, thanks for the question. So looking at the monthly performance and how we'd do what. Unfortunately, we do not break down monthly performance, but if we could try to characterize it in any way that could be helpful to Eric, Maria.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Yes. Obviously, we've -- if it wouldn't be at least a material deviation, we would have mentioned it. So I think that normally, you do see a pretty strong uplift when we run the events and that uplift was not notable during these events, unfortunately, which, of course, made a dent in the total revenues for June and then also for Q2. If you compare June to April and May, I mean, it's a little bit difficult comparison to begin with because June and July, you always have a seasonality effect. So there is a different revenue mix to begin with. And also, I mean, we always see this time of the year as well, different marketing efficiency as well. So there are many combinations. And that's why it doesn't make sense to break out monthly-by-monthly sales rather year-over-year trend and also versus outward costs. And I think that's what we saw in June, that we were having a deviation versus our expectations on that event. That is a learning we will bring with us. On a positive note, when we look at July, we're in line with expectations.

[Unknown Analyst]

Perfect. And a follow-up on that. So I mean you highlight that you see tough comps in gaming in Q3 as well. So I mean, is it fair to assume that we should interpret this as negative organic growth in Q2 -- sorry, Q3? And is it possible to say anything about the magnitude of this -- the tough comps and the negative organic growth?

[Lars Torstensson]

So we commented in our material on Q3 for gaming being also with the tough comps. And if we could then help the market to understand what that means when it crossed platforms and when it comes to the level of the effect that would happen. I don't know, Maria, if there's anything you can share there.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Yes. No, we will continue to see tough comps and you should not -- in the old portfolio, if I may say that way, you should not expect us to be in a positive organic growth territory. But I think when you look at the pro forma basis, we're going to continue strong underlying growth. And I think that is what we're focusing on. We're building a new gaming group that's going to continue to have strong growth file and also, as I said before, with the margin expansion. And that's what we're building, and I think that's what we're very excited about. And then also making sure that we're within -- InnoGames in particular, are successful with our games that are in soft launch, so we can get them into full commercial launch. That will then be the driver for 2022 growth as well.

[Unknown Analyst]

All right. And switching over to the esports here. You talked about this mobile esports product having 800,000 unique players in Q2. Can you say something about sort of how much revenue this is generating right now? And how do you aim to monetize this going forward?

[Lars Torstensson]

So mobile esports, which is one of our emerging products and something that we are currently investing in when we refer back to strategic investments. I -- we -- as you know, Eric, we don't necessarily go into details on the product by product within our sub product in this case. But Maria, at least we could maybe add a little bit of color on our excitement when it comes to mobile esports.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Yes. No. To me, I think it's one of the exciting new products that we're having. If you look at the growth of mobile gaming in general and you look at the 5G rollout and so forth and the growth of customer base, I think that is having sort of quite a few interesting value propositions to it. So right now, it doesn't drive material revenues for us. It's in the early infancy in building up that product. But I do see a very big potential over time on sponsorship value in that product if we get it right. And I think that is still early trends and KPIs, but I think the engagement that we see on back of that product is extremely encouraging, and also the early discussions we're having with potential brand sponsors on back of this.

[Unknown Analyst]

Perfect. And just a final question for me then perhaps looking at esport services, which was very strong. Should we expect revenues to sort of continue at this level going forward? Or was this sort of a one-off in this quarter?

[Lars Torstensson]

So ESS revenues, up 38% in the quarter, of course, quite strong. How do we believe that would develop Maria?

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

No. I think esport service will always be seasonal, but it's difficult to predict the seasonality because it depends on when publishers drive activation. Some activations are very long partnership like our partnership with Ubisoft on back of Rainbow Six. If you take gamers without season (sic) [ Gamers Without Borders ] that's a one-off event done on an annual basis. So that's why it's a little bit difficult to forecast on a quarterly-by-quarterly basis. But I see ESS has very strategic importance. It doesn't have the same scalability as own and operated. So I mean that is, of course, where we are seeing the big picture potential. But I do believe that the ESS work is an extremely important value add to our owned and operated, and that is something we focus on building up and making sure, as I said before, we want to be the best partner for publishers and help them enable esports for them. And that's what we do within our ESS operations as well. And in some of those partnerships, you can then, over time, also sell and upsell into own and operated. So we want to grow that going forward. I think that's my long answer in a short summary.

[Operator]

Your next question today comes from the line of Erik Moberg.

[Erik Moberg, Research Analyst]

Just going back here to the gaming division, if we look at it organically, I mean, you're down 14%. But could you perhaps elaborate a bit on how much of this decline that stems from the lower-than-expected activity for InnoGames in June?

[Lars Torstensson]

Thanks, Erik. So when it comes to the negative organic growth that we experienced in Q2 in gaming, Maria, if we could, as we say, elaborate on how much was then associated to InnoGames campaigns. I mean the reason why we mentioned it because it did have an impact. So -- but please, Maria.

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

Yes. No, I mean, it wouldn't change between the positive growth and a negative growth, but it would have improved the underlying revenue performance. So you would have seen a few percentage point less decline. So I think that's the best way to look at it.

[Erik Moberg, Research Analyst]

So like 2, 3 percentage point in ballpark number, is that fair?

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

I don't want to be specific, but it would add a couple of percentage points better year-over-year growth.

[Erik Moberg, Research Analyst]

Understood. And then just a follow-up here on the margin within gaming. If you perhaps could give some flavor on Hutch Games and sort of how that -- sort of what margins Hutch had in the quarter. And also whether or not you expect these Hutch margins to come back to normalized levels in Q3 and Q4.

[Lars Torstensson]

Thanks, Erik. So Hutch, as you know, we have had a great success with F1 Clash, 1 of our big 3 titles within Hutch. We don't point to specifics as you know, Eric, but once again, Maria, I'm asking you to provide flavor on the titles. I'm doing it again, you just have to. How Hutch has been developing in the quarter and what sort of expectations we'll have when it comes?

[Maria Redin, Group President & CEO]

But I think if we take a step back and think about that we are now building actually a gaming group. I think that the beauty about it is that our job is to make sure that we deploy marketing where we see the best return and then look at what is the absolute EBITDA that we feel we want to deliver and how can we actually reinvest some money into our different games. And I think what we see within Hutch is that they have great games, I mean, especially top 5 and Formula One Clash that are in the early growth phase, we can really be able to push marketing. And I think as we saw, and I think you noted that in Q1, we had a higher negative seasonality effect in Formula One before the season started. I think on the opposite, we saw equally positive effect now as the season actually started. And on back of that, we wanted to make sure that we can actually benefit on marketing, and we saw really strong rural levels, which meant that we accelerated marketing because that is in our long-term interest to drive top line revenues that over time convert into profitability. So that's in the quarter. We increased marketing, which means, of course, isolate for Hutch, the margins went down. So what we look at is the group performance and making sure that we allocate marketing where we see the best return.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

[Lars Torstensson]

Thank you, operator. That concludes the conference call for MTG's second quarter interim report. We appreciate you taking the time to join the call today despite summer vacations for some of you. And we look forward to staying in touch until we release the next quarterly report, that would be in October or more specifically, the 28th of October. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the summer. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating.