Good morning and welcome to Everplay Interim Result Presentation. I am Frank Sagnier, Executive Chair. I am here with my colleagues, Rashid Varachia, CFO and COO, and James Targett, our IR. Let's start straight away. We're waiting for a strong full year. The key headline for today: H1 revenue was solid, with good performance from new releases and back catalog. We expect H2 to be stronger than H1, thanks to more new releases, a stronger back catalog during the Christmas period, as you would expect, and a number of licensed deals, some of them already signed. In terms of EBITDA, we delivered £19.2 million thanks to improved margins. This is due to a product mix with packaged goods in a much lower proportion. We are delighted to pay our shareholder the 1p per share dividend for H1.
We continue to generate cash, helping our M&A ambitions and allowing those dividends. Most importantly, we are well positioned for future organic growth thanks to our doubling down on first-party IP, strong back catalog, new revenue streams including more back catalog republishing, and we will continue to actively look for a creative M&A to accelerate that growth. Operational highlights: we've had quite a few new games this year, and we're happy to say that we've had good success, in particular with Date Everything, which achieved over 500,000 units to date. We continue to control our cost, improve mix and strong performance of new releases, contributing to strong margin improvement. New IP announced for 2026/2027. At this point, we've announced Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, which was announced last week at Gamescom, Ranger's Path: National Park Simulator, Golf With Your Friends 2, and Bus Simulator 27.
We've got more IP in the making, but these are the ones we've announced. Good progress against key strategic priority of M&A: three acquisitions of IP and back catalog publishing rights completed during the period, and I'm pleased to say that we've got a few more that have been signed since, which I'll talk to you about in a minute. The group rebranded to Everplay Group, reflecting the evolution of the business following the acquisition of both StoryToys and astragon. In terms of Team17, we had a strong release performance. We've released four games: Sworn, A Nice Day for Fishing, Dredge, Jumping Jazz Cats, and Date Everything, all with strong review scores. As you can see on the left side, the growth year- on- year for new releases is seven-fold, so we're excited about that.
Excellent performance from Date Everything with a user score (it's hidden by the camera, so I can't see it) but it's a very high user score and a high CCU, concurrent user of 14k on Steam alone. Back Catalog continued to deliver strong performance in the context of a very strong period last year. CCU increased by an average of 28% across the five titles. Hell Let Loose had an outstanding start of the year following its launch on the Epic Store, with record concurrent user of 140k, which is up 200% versus the peak of 2004 level. The next installment of the franchise, Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, has been announced. Happy to say that we already passed 130,000 wishlists within 10 days. Awards during the period for Conscript and multiple wins for Amber Isle. Strong momentum going into H2, driving expected revenue growth for FY25.
Ritual of Raven launched in August, early access of Goblin Cleanup in September, and Rogue Point end of November, early December. Full launch of Sworn on PC and console and first dedicated product for Switch 2. I can't name at this point, but it should be soon before I can announce something. In terms of astragon, very much H2 weighted. Revenue decline in H1 due to a reduction of physical sales and the phasing of new release, and license deal with are coming in Q2. Despite no new releases during the period, the player numbers have increased significantly. We've launched two add-ons, not new games, but existing titles with new platform, with Railroads Online and Police Simulator. Police Simulator: Patrol Officers debuted on Xbox Game Pass, along with Firefighting Simulator: The Squad, and was renewed on PlayStation Plus.
Independent Arts Software was renamed astragon Development, as it continues to support astragon's focus on developing first-party games. You will note that first-party games represent 87% of astragon revenue. Two major first-party IP's scheduled for release driving strong H2 revenue performance, the first one being Firefighting Simulator: Ignite, the next installment of this very popular franchise, and Seafarer: The Ship Sim, a brand new IP at the end of the year. In terms of StoryToys, very strong performance, H2, and even stronger outlook. We've had a large number of apps, 335 app updates. That's significant, but it's the name of the game with StoryToys. Sesame Street Mecha Builders and LEGO Friends: Heartlake Rush Plus launched on Apple Arcade, bringing the number of StoryToys titles onto the platform to now five. Subscriber numbers grew, low single digit year on year, to now reach over 330,000.
We got awards in Bologna for Sesame Street Mecha Builders. For the second year running, StoryToys were included in Sunday Times Best Place to Work in Ireland. Most importantly, again, strong outlook for H2 with improved revenue growth expected for FY25. LEGO Bluey launched in August with pre-orders of over 800,000, reaching number one on the iPad app overall in six countries, including U.S. and U.K., and number one kids app in 117 countries. In addition, LEGO DUPLO World by StoryToys will be launching on Netflix Games. Expect more deals to be announced for this year in due course, and pass on to Rashid for the financials.
Brilliant. Thank you, Frank. Okay, so just moving on to the group revenues, so group revenues for the period fell by 10% to GBP 72.4 million versus GBP 80.6 million for the same period in 2024. This was mainly due to timing of licensing revenue and new title launches at astragon. Declines in physical distributed sales and a very strong prior back catalog performance was also a key factor. We were unable to repeat last year's stellar back catalog performance growth of 30% versus H1 2023. However, we still managed to achieve a respectable double-digit growth when comparing H1 2025 versus H1 2023, and despite the decline in H1, we are forecasting a return to growth for full year FY25. In terms of the divisions, Team17 revenues, despite the excellent new release performance from our four new titles in the period, H1 revenues declined 4%, mainly due to the back catalog.
On astragon, this is where we saw the most significant decline of 35%, some of which is phasing between H1 and H2 for new releases and licensed deals, and a reduction in lower margin physical sales revenue, and finally, on StoryToys, revenue increased by 2% despite no new releases in the period. In H1 2024, we had three. However, they released 335 app updates versus 242 for H2 of last year, and subscriber numbers increased marginally from 320,000 in 2024 to 330,000 in H1 2025. In terms of our revenue split, new release revenue increased 40% to GBP 8.9 million in H1 2024, which was 6.3 million due to an excellent performance at Team17. StoryToys and astragon new release pipelines are weighted to H2 2025, and back catalog revenue contributions were from over 140 titles.
However, as previously mentioned, we saw a decline of 15% as last year was exceptionally strong. The strong performance on first-party revenues from Team17 offset by no new releases from astragon, which resulted in a decline of 26% for the period versus H1 2024. And despite the decline, community engagement remained strong, and we saw double-digit growth in concurrent users. Finally, on this slide, third-party revenue grew modestly to GBP 47.2 million, with strong contributions from Dredge, Blasphemous, together with the StoryToys portfolio. On gross profit, our gross profit increased by 2% to GBP 33.7 million versus GBP 32.9 million in H1 2024. The gross margin increased to 46.5%, mainly due to no title impairments in H1 2025. And just as a reminder, in H1 2024, we booked GBP 4.6 million of title impairments.
Timing of new releases also led to lower expense development costs, lower physical revenues, and finally, royalties were flat versus H1 of last year. Just moving on to adjusted EBITDA and EPS. The adjusted EBITDA remained broadly in line for the same period versus last year, though margins increased from 24.1%- 26.5%, reflecting higher gross margin. Admin expenses declined 2% to GBP 20.4 million, driven by lower staff costs, marketing and depreciation, and amortization, partially offset by higher FX costs. Acquisition-related expense adjustments declined from GBP 7.2 million to GBP 5.7 million due to an end of acquisition-related incentive payments. Finance income increased to over GBP 1 million as we actively implemented a new treasury policy. The effective tax rate remains at circa 24%, and the Adjusted EPS increased to 10.5 pence. Capitalized development costs on balance sheet cash.
There was an increase of GBP 2.7 million, predominantly driven by Team17 new titles. Titles which we've already announced, which are sequels, for example, with Golf With Your Friends 2 and Hell Let Loose: Vietnam. That was the main driver behind the increase in capex. Then much smaller increases on astragon and Team17. From a cash position, our closing cash was GBP 59.4 million. And I'm pleased to say there's been no significant change since post-year end. And finally, as mentioned earlier in the presentation, we are pleased to announce a GBP 0.01 per share interim dividend. And with that, I'm going to pass back to Frank.
Thank you, Rashid. Before getting into the strategic progress, I thought I'd give you a few words on the market itself. The 2025-2028 growth is expected to be at a 3% CAGR according to Newzoo overall. PC is actually growing 3.3%, a lot of that driven by China. And the console business is expected to grow by 4.7% CAGR over the next three years due to the recent successful launch of Switch 2, the upcoming launch of Roguelite from Microsoft, and of course, the game everybody's expecting next year, which is GTA 6. The indie market continues to perform well, and we see more indie games in the top 50 sales, which means that there are some unbelievable return on investment for the winners. I was at Gamescom a couple of weeks ago, and you could feel an air of hope.
Fresh of hope. I've been around the industry for a few years. I've seen many ups and downs, and it genuinely felt like the industry went cautiously on the up again. So excited about the prospect of the industry overall because we're part of this and we want everybody to win, to be able to win ourselves. Now, in terms of where we're heading in terms of our progress . We have, as we mentioned earlier, a number of first-party products that we've already announced. We've got two from astragon with Firefighting Ignite and Seafarer this year. In 2026, we've got Hell Let Loose: Vietnam. We've got Ranger's Path, Golf With Your Friends 2. Bus Simulator 27 is the year after, as the name indicates. And we're going to have more surprises for you coming soon.
You know, we're building a three-year strategic plan, and all our first-party franchises are being scrutinized in order to increase visibility. It's really important for us, and as you're well aware, first-party games generate better margin and the biggest long-term value for the company. I would like to show you, if you haven't seen it yet, the announced trailer for Hell Let Loose: Vietnam.
Very excited about Hell Let Loose: Vietnam. As you know, Hell Let Loose was a very big successful game for us. We will make sure that we do not release at the time of GTA and before the craziness of the winter, so you can expect a release probably around the summer. In terms of new revenue stream providing levers for growth, in addition to our existing portfolio, back catalog, and republishing acquisition, we've got a number of opportunities. We've got a new label from StoryToys for kids slightly older. We haven't announced any games yet, but it should be pretty soon, and we're very excited about the potential. We have new platforms that we have recently announced, whether it's mobile streaming or next-gen console. We recently discussed a Netflix deal that we did for StoryToys.
I think you will see quite a bit more of those in the next few months and years. In terms of M&A, we are actively looking for acquisition, whether it's quality IP or bigger, more scaled companies. We obviously are extremely cautious. There's a lot happening at the moment on the market. Activities are starting to, you know, show up, heat up again, but we are very disciplined and we'll make sure that those acquisitions, if they take place, are lucrative and they add value to the overall company.
In terms of back catalog publishing rights, we continue to double down on this. It's a very secure way to build predictability with strong ROI and a very strong lever for growth with a number of developers knocking at doors. In fact, you're going to see in a few seconds a video from Harley Homewood, who is our head of product, who will discuss briefly with you what back catalog strategy is.
Hi, I'm Harley Homewood. I joined Everplay back in 2024 as Group Director of Product Acquisition. My role is to evaluate interesting opportunities, not only for full acquisition, but also for publishing and any other opportunity to collaborate with great teams and exciting content. Everplay's acquisition strategy is focused on great content and talented teams. We look for products and games that have not only been successful in their own right, but also that we believe have the potential to become long-running, beloved evergreen franchises. We have a strong track record with acquisitions from The Escapists, Golf With Your Friends, and Hell Let Loose in the IP space to acquiring StoryToys and astragon, who are key businesses within the Everplay group.
Things kicked off in half one this year with an IP acquisition of a franchise named Hammerwatch from a small indie studio called Crackshell, who are based in Sweden. We bought Hammerwatch because not only had it been successful in the past, but we thought it was the kind of title that aligned very much with our values of small indie studios that have worked hard to create something sustainable. We saw the hard work that Crackshell had and the team had put into a fantastic game and a really strong community that they'd built, and they created that over a number of years, and we believe that we can build on that success going forward. This year, we've also acquired distribution rights for three new titles: Settlement Survival, Operation: Tango, and Heavenly Bodies. These are not only great games, but we believe they're a fantastic opportunity to bring in new revenue streams and build on our already substantial back catalog of high-quality titles, and this just helps to maintain sustainable long-term revenues and growth.
So, the acquisition of Hammerwatch. Harley touched on it, a very strong product with positive reviews generated already quite good revenue. We have a very disciplined capital deployment. We know that the strongest suit of Everplay is its ability to manage lifetime cycle, cycle management, and we believe that we are going to be able to have a strong return on this IP. We also want to port this IP to console at some point, hopefully next year. And we would obviously, if it's a success as we expect, look into developing Hammerwatch 3 for the future. So you could see how by acquiring an IP that is strong to start with at a very reasonable price, we can get a very strong return on investment.
In terms of back catalog publishing rights, I'm not going to go into the details, but again, it's additional revenue with a very predictable ROI and margin accretion. Since Harley's video, we've acquired another five titles last week that you could see on the following slides: Storage Hunter, Underground Garage, Biker Garage, Let's Go Nuts, and the other one is Shipwreck. So we are continuing to acquire a back catalog. We obviously have to make a choice at some point between acquiring IP and acquiring back catalog because our cash is only what it is. But we feel confident there's a lot of opportunity which are a very strong, very strong way to secure our future. So the outlook, a few key messages here. Midterm, we're already excited, you know, delivering against our strategy.
We continue to build our portfolio strategy by maximizing new gains, opportunity, and minimizing risk with existing and newly acquired back catalog and cost control. We have doubled down on our first IP strategy with 10 of them in development. We look for further growth both organically and through M&A, which started with the Hammerwatch IP acquisition in H1. We continue to generate cash to support both our acquisition strategy and our progressive dividend policy. As for the full year, we are confident we will deliver based on the continued good performance to date. We expect new release revenue to be significantly higher in H2, and the same is true for license deals and the contribution from recent acquisitions.
Our margin expansion from a more favorable sales mix should further boost the EBITDA growth, hence our slight upgrade for the year. Just thank you very much. As you could see, we are, I think we're in a really good shape. More importantly, we are very much aware and we've got quite a strong visibility for the years to come. So I feel very positive and I hope I've shared the excitement with you guys. So speak to you soon. Thank you.