Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call. We're gonna go through our interim financial results. We are res-recording this call, and we intend to, once we finish, tidy up that video and then put it on the website at some point in the next few days, for people to watch back. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Alex Bevis. I'm the CFO, and Jonny Watts, our Chief Exec, CEO, is joining us today as well for the call. Without further ado, we'll jump in. If you can remain muted, please, during the presentation. We'll have plenty of time for Q&A at the end. Interim results, so this is for our half year from the first of June, 2022 to the end of November 2022.
As you've seen in the RNS, you know, very solid performance in that half year. Revenue grew 16% over the comparative first half of last year, last financial year. Within that revenue, going up to GBP 57 million, we'll talk a little bit about more about that in a minute on the income statement. Operating profit, you know, pretty solid performance there at almost GBP 7 million, 12% margin, versus an operating loss in the first half of the last financial year. Adjusted EBITDA, so that's a measure of cash profit, that was a slight outflow. As usual, we're continuing to invest in not just the games that you know about, but some in the future, and we've got some big releases coming up over the next few years.
Cash remains strong, up to GBP 43. That's after the acquisition of Complex, we're in a good position on the cash balance. Just a couple of comments regarding those first half results. As we talked about in the trading update that we issued at the beginning of last week, in the first half, our existing portfolio, that's games that released before the financial year, you know, very much all on track. You know, that launch and nurture model that we have really does work very well in generating long revenues over a period of time, and we'll cover that on the chart coming up. The star performers there were Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution two, as we've called out.
We did see that slight weakness in December around price sensitivity, probably due to macroeconomic conditions. Again, we can pick that up during the presentation. F1 Manager 2022, as we called out in the statement last week, that's a good game. Hasn't quite reached the levels that we wanted in terms of that audience, but we've done over 600,000 units, so it's a pretty strong foundation to build upon. Jonny will pick that up as we go through the slides. Then on Foundry, again, we'll talk about it a bit later, but we're reassessing that strategy basically in light of not delivering sufficient ROI on many of those titles. There's more competition. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute.
Moving on, this is a new slide. I know that all of you have seen the cash slide, the cash flow slide, plenty of times. We've now added a revenue slide, this shows cumulative revenue for each of the titles. We've also added Elite Dangerous. I don't think we've shown Elite Dangerous cash curve before. We've got a cash curve coming up in a second. We've also got the revenue curve for Elite Dangerous. Maybe just zipping through these in chronological order, you know, the orange line here is Elite Dangerous, as I said. You know, pretty consistent performance over time. What we were looking for with the Odyssey release, 'cause that was a big investment, you know, was a big acceleration in that line.
Clearly, that didn't come through, that story's been obviously told over the last couple of years. We didn't quite get there, it's still generating pretty decent revenues as you can see from the shape of that curve. Planet Coaster, that came to PC, then came to console, so that's the bump up you see there. That's supported by a PDLC model, which is working very well. Next one was Jurassic World Evolution one. You know, that's been our biggest performing game in terms of sales to date, and you can see a couple of the bumps there with the big Jurassic Park PDLC coming almost 18 months after the first launch. We also brought it to Switch in year three there, so that's been very strong for us. Still doing pretty well.
Obviously, it's been superseded somewhat by the sequel game with Jurassic World Evolution two. Planet Zoo's the next title, and that's, I guess, got one of the most consistent slopes in terms of revenue generation. That's PC only. We went PDLC pretty early with that one, and that continues to generate really nice returns, as you see the revenue in the calendar year 22 versus calendar year 2021 was 82%, so it's sustaining really very well. Jurassic World Evolution two, and you might remember that we had a good start with that game, but it wasn't quite the level we wanted versus the first title, Jurassic World Evolution one.
We had a double-beat strategy there, effectively a double launch strategy. That's actually worked really well with the film, giving bigger awareness of the IP, but also PDLC alongside. You can see here we've almost caught up with the first game after the first 14 months, so a really good performance. Our most recent one, F1 Manager 2022, so had a good launch in August, as Jonny will pick up. You know, it's a really solid foundation. It is tracking at the moment closer to the Planet Coaster line, which obviously, you know, still a good performance. We were really looking for it to be closer to the green line, which is the Planet Zoo line, so it's something that we're gonna be building on in the future.
Moving on to the next slide, this is the cash flow that I think many of you have seen over the last few years. We've added Elite Dangerous here, you know the time horizon has lengthened. We're out to just into year nine now for Elite Dangerous. That's where we were looking for, you know, that strong return on investment during this phase here, during the sort of year five onwards. The reason the cash flow sort of flattened was because we were investing a lot of those profits generated from sales back into the game in terms of the Odyssey development, it really didn't quite deliver the sort of return on investment we were looking for. Elite Dangerous is still delivering cash profit, clearly that investment fell short of our expectations.
You can see then the other lines, over time, I think we have seen inflation in terms of the cost for making video games. If you look at Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution one, Jurassic World Evolution two, the wage inflation has had an effect on those development budgets. We tend to spend a bit more on marketing as well these days. Then on Jurassic World Evolution two, you saw earlier that it's very close in terms of revenue performance, you know, within 4%. On a cash performance, there's a slightly bigger gap because of that wage, that sort of wage inflation, that development inflation that we saw around that launch. Turning to F-
Yeah, I think from.
Sorry, Jonny.
Sorry to interrupt there again, probably gonna give too much detail here. It was wage inflation, but it was also actors' have wages as well. I think, because it was the sequel, I think the Hollywood talent understood their value, and again, that contributed to that extra investment at the beginning. We needed Jeff Goldblum because he's pretty damn good.
Yeah, that was certainly a feature of that double beat strategy. We had to make more of it in terms of marketing.
Yeah
... didn't we, around our own launch because we went alongside a movie, that was definitely a factor. Turning on to F1 Manager. We always knew that this was gonna be a big investment in the franchise with the first game. You know, to get that first game out, there's an awful lot you need to do in terms of creating the technology around the gameplay, and producing all the tracks. Jonny, maybe you can talk about that slightly more.
Talking about the franchise asset, it's very easy. We hone in on tracks because it's very easy to understand, but this franchise asset is more complicated than that. It's the whole technology, it's the simulation, the massive investment on how we get the telemetry into the game, and that's, you know, again, something that we'll leverage on future games. The other thing is pipeline. Pipeline, we solved a lot of difficult pipeline issues. You know, how do you get all the pit radio in? There's something like 30,000 lines of pit radio which needs to be automatically cut up and put into the game. You know, how do you scan the heads and the logistics of getting the scanning equipment to the Grands Prix? You know, how do you get the telemetry in from the tracks?
All these things are things which, you know, take a lot of, you know, investment to do, but means that when we move on to the future versions of the game, we can concentrate, you know, all our development on adding new stuff rather than rehashing the old stuff. You know, again, I think it's a really good platform, and this franchise asset is something which we're going to leverage a lot.
Yeah. In terms of the cash line here, we've put on all of those cash flows, all of those development flows in terms of getting to the launch point, which is why we see such a big investment versus some of the other titles. We're gonna get that good leverage in the future in terms of that asset that we've created. We were really looking for F1. We weren't expecting it to get, for the first title to sort of cover all of that cost and to get back into profit. We were looking for it to get closer. You know, the fact that we've still got a bigger gap there, clearly we have sold fewer units than we were expecting. We, you know, we've got a great platform there.
We've now created that franchise asset. We've got a good first game, and that's what we're gonna be building on into the future. Okay. Maybe skipping through some of the income statement, and financial bits. As l called out, 2/3 of the revenue in the first half was generated from games which released before. You know, the 1/3 coming from F1 Manager 2022 and Stranded: Alien Dawn, which entered early access. That's a Foundry title and entered early access on Steam. PDLC, as usual, you know, that's really strong for us, actually picked up a bit versus the first half of the preceding financial year. About 30% of all revenues was from PDLC. Just shows that nurturing model works really, really well.
Gross margin maintained at 63%, probably would have been a bit lower if F1 had generated bigger sales because of course that's a licensed IP, so carries royalties. You know, pretty pleased with the 63%. In a way, we would have preferred a lower margin because it would have meant that F1 would have done bigger revenues in the first half. Gross R&D, you know, that's where we see a step up. You might remember that we had a very significant step up in FY 2022 versus FY 2021. We're still seeing the growth in headcount costs, so that's recruiting people, growing the team, but also sort of wage inflation.
We do have a factor moving the other way, so outsource costs were broadly half of the costs that we incurred in the preceding period in the first half of last financial year, and that's as Jonny explained earlier, that's because of all the art creation for those tracks. You know, now that we've created a lot of those, that cost will come off, and I think that will continue to reduce as we look into the second half of this financial year. Net R&D expenses really impacted by the full amortization of Elite Dangerous Odyssey during last year. As a comparative, actually, we've seen a reduction in amortization, half one to half one.
In the second half, we'll have the full six months of amortization for F1 Manager 2022, plus the PDLCs that we've released during the year. We'll also start to amortize those Foundry titles that we have coming up as well. We will see an increase in amortization charges into the second half. Sales general, sales, marketing, general and admin costs generally, pretty close, maintained at pretty similar levels to the comparative period. When you work all those numbers through, operating profit, you know, rebounded pretty strongly from the loss that we made in the comparative period to almost GBP 7 million in the first half of the year. Next slide just shows the reconciliation from the IFRS operating profit through to adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA is like a cash profit measure.
It really adjusts out all that capitalization, amortization, accounting adjustments, also adds back in things like share charges. You can see there that, you know, the amortization and the capitalization costs come through and get adjusted out. We had a small outflow on adjusted EBITDA on a cash profit measure. That's really a factor of continuing to invest significantly in F1 up to its launch, but also the titles that we have in the future as well, particularly Warhammer Age of Sigmar, RTS. On a cash flow, things to call out here are the tax coming in, that's Video Games Tax Relief. We had GBP 4 million inflow in the first half. We had the acquisition of Complex Games, the initial cost there are almost GBP 9 million.
We also had quite a big working capital unwind, so at the end of the last financial year at 31st of May, we had receivables for the Chaos Gate launch. We also had the Xbox Game Pass deal for Jurassic World Evolution two, so they've unwound in the first half of the financial year and helped us with the cash flow. At the end of November, we're sitting with almost GBP 43 million of cash. Okay, Jonny, I'll pass over to you to talk about some of the games.
Yeah, I'll start trying to give a bit more detail. I know everybody's interested in F1 Manager 2022. A little bit of a recap. We launched the game in August. It's our first annual sports title. It's moving into an adjacent genre, which we'll talk about later on as part of our portfolio mix, and the game reviewed well. We were disappointed that it was significantly under the expectations we set ourselves and expectations that we set the market. We, you know, we need to really acknowledge that. It is 600,000 units. What we've been doing is analyzing, you know, who's been buying the game and how do we increase, you know, more people to buy the game in future versions.
The way I look at it, and it's quite a simple way of looking at it, but I think it really, really, really helps is imagine a Venn diagram where you have two sets. One set is the gamers, and the other set is F1 fans, and the intersection is where we sold. We believe that the intersection is predominantly core gamers, and the trick, which we need to do, well, it's more than a trick, it's absolutely imperative, is we need to expand that intersection into the broader audience. A lot of our focus on F1 Manager 2023 is how are we going to do that.
As in, there's lots of things that we're going to do to do that. I think the biggest thing really to sort of, you know, mention here is that we want to add a new game mode. This game mode is going to allow players to immediately access a Grands Prix. Again, if you play the game, to get into a Grands Prix takes you know, almost two hours to do. This is a way that would be able to better play into the Grands Prix with all the things set up. Again, you know, I don't want to give too many more design features because I can already feel that our publishing department looking at me, but it is a way that we get this instant accessibility. I think that's really, really important.
That's the main, the main thing. You know, we also need to be very careful that the people that we've already appealed to, we still appeal to them as well. Again, the game's gonna have a nice delta between F1 Manager 2022 and F1 Manager 2023. You know, we've already said, you know, reiterating things we said in previous meetings, that the great thing about an annual sports franchise is people are conditioned to buy it on an annual basis. F1 in particular is brilliant because we have new tracks, new rules, new drivers, and then together with some additional features that we're gonna be doing, you know, again, we think we can still retain this core audience, but, as I said, expand into this more broader audience.
I think one other bit of information I could give is, you know, when we looked at doing a management game, we wanted to use some of the principles that we've used in Jurassic World Evolution one and in Planet Coaster, which is to bring the game to console. When I look at the split of players, it's roughly 50/50 between PC and console, I see that as another success. It's another foundation, we need, as I say, we need to build on that foundation so that we can hit the numbers that we, you know, expected for future titles. Alex, I don't know if you want to add anything more on F1. I'll talk a little bit more later on about it as well.
No, I think that that's all good points. The other thing to say is we haven't given up on F1 Manager 2022. Obviously, there's really strong promotion opportunities around the start of the season. As an IP, it tends to go pretty quiet when the season's finished and then really gets a lot of coverage once the season picks up. Looking ahead to March, that's the opportunity to get some more promotion for the existing game. You know, as Jonny's explained, you know, we're very much focused on looking ahead, particularly with the next title coming up in the summer.
Yeah, we have to apply all our learnings as well. You know, again, with Drive to Survive coming up as well, that's another marketing opportunity. You know, we've built a really good relationship with Liberty Media, and as I said, we need to leverage that. Every opportunity that we have, we need to use it as a marketing opportunity. If you move to the next slide.
Move on to the next slide. Yep.
Yeah. Again, talking about Jurassic World Evolution two, I think this is really important. Alex has already talked about our double launch strategy. You know, I am very pleased because, you know, we released the game in really uncertain times, the film had moved, and so, you know, the team had to really pivot to not release plot spoilers, to work out how are we going to market the game when there's no film. It's really nice to see that it's starting to deliver on that. You know, 96% sales compared to revenue, sorry, compared to Jurassic World Evolution one. I think the game is a success. Again, this is an opportunity for people just to reevaluate how well Jurassic World Evolution two did.
You know, it's 1.8 million base units, which again, is, you know, exceedingly solid. It doesn't stop there. You know, we have a very robust PDLC strategy moving forward. You know, we're going to continue to nurture this game. You know, the great thing about the Jurassic franchise is there are many more dinosaurs that we can release. I think the community is gonna be very excited, and I think that's gonna really help, you know, the long tail continue to wag. Alex, you can move to the next slide. And again, you know, Planet Zoo is I like to think it's exemplar of our develop, launch, and nurture strategy. You know, we're now, you know, 3.4 million base units.
You know, sales continue to be very strong. You know, again, when you just look at the stat there, comparing the two calendar years of 2022 and 2021, you know, 82% revenue for 2022, I think it just really shows how strong it is. Again, you know, the great thing about natural history is there are plenty more animals for us to create. You know, one of the things that we do, we're always looking at what are the top 10 animals that our community want. We do them, another top 10 appears. This game has definitely got, I was gonna say legs, and tails, and things like that, but we're very confident that this has continued to be very material revenue-generating in the forthcoming years as well.
Move to next slide, please. This is a game which is, we haven't said when it's coming out. It's coming out in financial year 2024. Again, very cryptic, it's the 12th to the 31st of May 2024. This is our first time real-time strategy. This is an adjacent genre. Again, I want to talk a little bit more about that when we talk about diversity of income streams and portfolio mix. You know, Warhammer IP has been proven to be an excellent enabler for RTS games. If I go back to that Venn diagram, and we look at players, and we look at Warhammer fans, the intersection of those two sets is a lot larger and proven as well.
You look at games like Warhammer, Total War and Dawn of War, you know, these are games which have been highly successful. What's very interesting about our game, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, is that we have exclusive rights for the Warhammer Age of Sigmar, which is the fantasy brand of Games Workshop. This is where it used to be fantasy battles. This is the sequel. The gameplay is more similar to 40K, it's something that Games Workshop are really pushing. I'll say we have exclusive rights for this brand, but for RTSs. Again, when we look at what we have been doing with our previous games, we really want to, you know, maximize the audience. Again, you know, as I said before, we're doing a lot of work to make sure that this is equally playable on console and PC.
It's tracking very well. Very excited to start releasing more information about this, but again, this needs to really fit into the cadence of PR and marketing that our publishing team needs to do. Alex, any other points I missed on that?
No, don't think so. That's all good.
Taking a step back and looking at our strategy. The first thing I really want to mention is when you look at those cumulative cash charts, and you look at Jurassic World Evolution, you look at Planet Zoo, you look at Planet Coaster, they have been amazingly successful. The stat we've just pulled out here is cumulative revenue of GBP 400 million. You know, this is a very proven model, this develop, launch, and nurture strategy. Again, I think externally, but maybe just as importantly internally, we really need to acknowledge this pillar of being very successful. As we move forward, I think we need to do games in this area, because it is just exceedingly solid and more predictable.
We've already said when you look at games like F1 Manager, our forthcoming Warhammer game, Age of Sigmar, we want to expand into adjacent genres. This is really important. We're a growth company. We want to grow. We can't just do creative management simulation games. Although they're super successful, they're self-compete. Again, it's all about this balanced portfolio. Very interestingly, when you, when you start taking a step back and looking at it and look at the games that we have which have been successful, you can say that Elite Dangerous is a good example of this of adjacent genre, and again, you can see how we managed to deliver that. Even on that revenue curve, it's still generating revenue.
If I want to look a little bit more in the industry, how this works, you know, I think everybody here knows I'm a big fan of Paradox. When you look at Cities: Skylines, which is a game that they do with Colossal Order, which is very successful and happens to be one of my favorite games, that's an adjacent genre to the games that Paradox do. You know, Europa Universalis, Stellaris, Hearts of Iron IV, they are a very different game to Cities: Skylines. Some commonalities were very interesting. This is something that we that we need to do. We haven't, as Alex said, given up on F1 Manager. It's 600,000 units.
It's a really good foundation. You know, we have this franchise asset which has solved lots and lots of development and execution problems on a development side. What we really need to do now is grow that audience. We really need to understand where it needs to expand into. As I said, with F1 Manager 2023 and beyond, that's going to be a big focus of ours. Warhammer Age of Sigmar, again, moving into adjacent genre. Again, you know, what I like about this is I think there's a bit more proof on this, as I said, this Venn diagram, this intersection of sets with games which have already been done by very successful companies such as Creative Assembly with Warhammer, Total War.
We're gonna continue to review opportunities, you know, again, when we move to the next slide, and I'll talk about balance and mix and increasing diversity of income streams. This is our play. You know, we want to grow, we don't want to self-compete, and we want to find, you know, genres that we can outcompete the competition and displace them. Alex, next slide, please. Excuse me. This is all going on about portfolio mix. It's really important. You know, as you can see, this portfolio mix is multidimensional. You know, we've had success with both our own IP and our licensed IP. I think having a balance of that is really important. You know, owning IP is extremely important. It gives us more flexibility because we're not beholden to approvals.
We're not beholden to various marketing dates such as, you know, launch of a Grand Prix or launch of a film, which again, is extremely important because that's the upside to doing a licensed IP game. Having a mix I think is really, really important. I think it will help with the diversity of our pipeline. As I've already said, having a mix between our creative management simulations, which are, you know, a very strong, solid core pillar, and games in adjacent genres is how we grow the business. You know, we need to find more areas where we can produce games which are successful. I think that's, that's what we're doing and that's what our plans are.
The real sort of big news I want to just put on there, which I, you know, is very exciting. For FY 2025, obviously we're going to release F1 Manager 2024. Again, making sure that appeals to this broader audience. We're gonna be doing our own IP creative management simulation game. Again, we're not saying what type of game that is, but it gives you an idea that, you know, if that starts to perform similar to our games that you see on the cumulative cash flow, again, you can see that our portfolio is very strong and it has this diversity. Next slide. I think that's moving to you, Alex. Is that correct?
Yeah. Just gonna add there, you know, to support that. It is a combination of both consolidation and diversification. You know, we want to diversify and carefully spread into adjacent spaces, but we also really wanna own that creative management simulation genre, and that's what we're doing. At the moment, as we highlight with the third bullet, there's a lot of licensed IP and there's a lot of adjacent genres. That's why I think announcing and sort of confirming that the game for FY 2025 alongside the next F1 Manager game will be this own IP creative management simulation game. As Jonny says, hopefully that provides a bit of reassurance about the portfolio mix that we have.
I think the other reassurance I'd like to do, and this just hasn't happened because of the trading update, I'd say we've always done it, but you know, in terms of refocus is our selection process. We always talk about develop, launch, and nurture. That is all well and good. That's why our games have a very long tail. The most important is there's a silent S, which is selection. We need to be more rigorous in what we select. Again, you know, when we select something which is our own IP in creative management, we need to understand that we understand the audience and it's gonna sell. If we're going to be doing someone else's IP or an adjacent genre, same thing.
We need to be a lot more rigorous and, you know, a lot more modeling, a lot more understanding. Again, it's the most important thing, I think, in the whole thing is choosing the right game. You know, we do execute very well in terms of development. The games review well. The point I'm making, it relates to Foundry when Alex talks about it, which again, is a set of, you know, very good games from a creative point of view. Just being a great game doesn't mean it's gonna be a great commercial success. Our refocus is all about return on investment. You know, again, I, you know, I want to be presenting in the future those graphs where the line on cumulative cash flow is a lot steeper. It's as simple as that.
This selection process is exceedingly important.
Okay. I'll chat through on Foundry. As Jonny explained there, many of these games have been very good games. In fact, I'd argue that all of them have been executed well by both the developer and us as the publisher supporting. Rewinding a little bit on the Foundry story, we began this in 2019 when we signed with Haemimont Games, the idea was to use our financial resources, our publishing expertise, in order to generate financial returns by bringing other people's games to market, by supporting other games. We have had, I'd say, mixed financial success. Chaos Gate is probably the standout performer. Some of those smaller games ended up being slightly bigger in terms of budgets.
You know, I think over time we probably underestimated the amount of time that it would call on the internal resource, so that's QA, production and localization and various other functions within the studio. We also have seen more competition in this space. I think a lot of companies have been doing this third-party publishing model, that doesn't particularly help in terms of the negotiations with developers on terms. I think over time, that's pushed up budgets and also, of course, we've seen wage inflation.
All of those things create a bigger challenge for that return on investment, calculation. You know, we're pleased with all the titles in terms of how they've launched and how they've been developed and how we've published them, but they just haven't really quite delivered that return on investment that we're looking for. We are looking at Foundry closely at the moment. We're having a look at that strategy. We've got some titles coming up, which, you know, we're very excited about. Deliver Us Mars comes up next month, and The Great War: Western Front is in the next few months. You know, don't wanna draw any conclusions particularly about the review. All we've said here is that by the end of this financial year, then we'll conclude and make a decision.
It won't necessarily be a carry on or stop decision. It's not so binary. There could be a bunch of different outcomes within the middle of there. That's where we are with Foundry, and obviously looking forward to the next title with Deliver Us Mars coming up in, what, about three weeks, I think. Turning to our people, clearly, you know, Jonny's articulated that both consolidate and diversify strategy, always to support any of our strategies is having a, you know, a very established and experienced and talented team. We continue to grow our team. We're up to 843 people, as you can see on the slide here. Predominantly, it's development, but there are obviously almost just over 100 people in publishing as well.
It's about growing the number of people. It's also about developing those people in terms of supporting them with development training, particularly as people progress through their careers and get promoted from individual contributor- type of technical positions into management. You know, that's really important to build the culture and to make sure that we've got the right level of leadership and management. We're also growing the number of our development teams. With the acquisition of Complex, we now have six development teams. All quite different sizes, all quite different shapes in terms of the projects they're supporting. Over time, we wanna have seven, eight and so on, you know, to grow the number of development teams, 'cause that means that we've got more firepower in terms of releases.
Over time, we want to increase the cadence of releases, and move to having, you know, a greater number coming out each year. Acquisitions, clearly that's on our mind, given that we've just completed on Complex fairly recently. That's actually our first ever acquisition. We're very interested to look at opportunities, to help grow the team, particularly if it comes with a revenue stream. You know, the great thing about that acquisition of Complex, it comes with a portfolio. Obviously, we buy the, you know, full rights to Chaos Gate, and we get a very experienced and capable team, and that's the kind of deal I think we're generally looking for. We'll, we'll continue to review, but, you know, this is not essential for us.
Acquisitions are not an essential part of the strategy, but it can be very helpful and supportive in the strategy that we have. Back to you, Jonny.
Oh, yeah. Thank you. Really this is our focus for calendar year 2023. Again, start off with, you know, very disappointing news that on the 9th of January, we had to reset our guidance in response to lower sales of, you know, F1, the more challenging economic condition and the variability and the contribution from Foundry. We set expectations to be revenue of no less than GBP 100, with potential to surpass GBP 114 million, which was our financial year 2022's performance. For financial year 2023, operating profit in a range of GBP 2 million-GBP 10 million.
For FY 2024, we set expectations that we would grow a growth of 5%, that's in light of the current portfolio uncertainties and the absence of new titles for Foundry. You know, quite a brutal real reset. Yeah, it was definitely very disappointing news.
Yeah, just to jump in there, clearly, if we only just delivered the GBP 100 million of revenue and only grew by 5%, you know, that would be a big disappointment, given that we needed to reset. You know, it makes sense to make sure that those numbers are very much achievable and prudent. You know, hopefully we're looking forward to beating those numbers in the future. For now, it's very much on delivering on this year and getting ready for the next year. Jonny, back to you to talk about the focusing.
Absolutely. You know, that's where we are, Alex Bevis is absolutely right. We want to start delivering good news. It is a refocus. You know, we want to make sure that we deliver against those that FY 2023 guidance. You know, we want to surpass it, of course we do. You know, as we move forward and looking for like sort of FY 2024, we want to make sure that, you know, we get this broaden the audience for F1 Manager 2023. You know, we want to make it more accessible. You know, we've got a great foundation, but we're not happy with sales. We want to improve upon that. We really want to deliver, we are going to deliver on Warhammer Age of Sigmar RTS. Again, it's an adjacent audience.
The game in development is looking good. As I said, I can't wait to show you some good news about how it's looking, and we really need to, as I say, focus on that. We're gonna review Frontier Foundry, as Alex has said in the previous one. As I say, it's not black and white, it's gonna be a continuum. You know, again, a lot of it is we want to analyze new data coming in from these games which are about to be released. Interestingly, some of those are maybe bigger bets, we'll get some more data from that which will feed into the whole review process. We wanna continue to develop and grow our people. You know, we are a growth company. We want to release more games.
You know, the way that we're going to grow is through our diverse portfolio and all these different income streams, increase the cadence as well and also support the games which are already out there, this nurture. All these things will like sort of contribute to growth. This is a big one we really want to focus on return on investment. You know, again, it's not just about revenue. Everyone knows how it's about profit, we're really looking at that, and we're looking across that against across the whole portfolio. You know, again, we're gonna do this while we're growing, I wanna make, you know, much better decisions, I wanna see what is it gonna generate.
Interestingly, as an aside, the games industry is an industry of passion, and I just wanna make sure that we're using even more head than heart on this. We just really need to look about what is. You know, we've got some amazingly talented people, you know, as Alex said, well over 800, we wanna deliver more profit with them. Again, as always, we wanna continue, and plan, and develop our games for future financial years. We're a games company, the way we're going to improve and get better is make better games which resonate more with audiences and sell more units. Sounds simple when you say it like that, but we need to really focus on it, refocus on it, deliver it. Think that's me done until the questions.
Okay. Well, let's move to questions then. I'll stop sharing, and please raise your hand, and then we'll kinda do it in order. I think we have William Larwood first.
Yeah. Morning, both. Thanks for the presentation. Three questions from me. I understand you can't share too many details on the FY 2025 new release, but just given your comments around focused ROI, what are you expecting in terms of de-dev costs for that own IP title? Maybe contextualize that with Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster. The second question relates to the Warhammer Age of Sigmar, are you getting in sort of people that have experience with real-time strategy games? Maybe that people have worked at Creative Assembly and Sega, given their successes with those types of games. The third question really relates to F1 Manager 2022 and if you've been looking to take that or sub to subscription services, that'd be helpful. Thanks.
Okay. why don't I start off? I'll answer the.
Yep.
Question. As Jonny alluded to on F1 in particular, but also for Warhammer, wherever you're doing something quite new, particularly moving into a new sort of game genre, there's a certain amount of additional technology investment that goes up front. Certainly, we've seen that for F1 Manager 2022. We're also seeing it for Warhammer RTS, so the real-time strategy game for sure. That's, you know, a big budget because we needing to invest to get the RTS technology in place.
Looking ahead to the FY 2025 game, which is own IP and creative management simulation, clearly we've got an awful lot of foundational technology there from both the Planet games and both the Jurassic games, it does mean that the budget will not be as big as you've been seeing on some of the charts there for F1 and you'll see in the future on Warhammer. It's probably more in the Jurassic World Evolution two sort of space, you know, but we're probably talking, you know, GBP 10 million-GBP 12 million, something like that for development budget for that kind of game. Jonny, do you wanna talk about the staff experience that we have for the RTS?
I do. I just wanted to add one more point to that first question as well, which is when you're doing IP, there are other costs as well, such as audio. Music for Jurassic World Evolution is not insignificant. John Williams is a very wealthy person for a reason, and all the actors and various things like that. Again, with our own IP, you know, you just gotta pay me to do voiceover, and I'm a lot cheaper. Warhammer experience, of course, yes. We, again, you know, the great thing about the U.K. industry is there are lots of great companies around. Yes, we have attracted people from Creative Assembly, absolutely, to look on that. You know, likewise, we did the same with F1.
You know, we had people moving from, you know, the team at Playsport who did the Motorsport Manager. You know, it was also very interesting when you look at we had people. Again, it sounds like this is a poaching exercise. It's not. We have people move both ways, and they move because they're very interesting games. From Football Manager because there's a lot of similarities between F1 and Football Manager. Yes, we apply the same strategy. The other things that we have going for us on Age of Sigmar is the team are really into Warhammer, so in terms of understanding the rules, how the miniatures look. You know, you could walk around desks here, and you can see the people working on it.
They are really into the lore. Other things that we've done as well is to make sure that we get the narrative right, we've hired a Black Library writer. That's someone who worked at Games Workshop and really works on the lore and publishes books. Yeah, it is all about bringing expertise in. You have to be authentic. You have to be authentic, and also, you know, again, bringing people with experience. The reason why you've asked that question as well is that we learn from the mistakes that they've made on previous projects.
I think this is necessary when you're moving into an adjacent genre is, you know, you can't be complacent, and that's why, yeah, bringing in experience but also using the enthusiasm of people that you have here who don't know what they can't do, if you see what I mean, and this blend. It's a blend, but yes, we bring people in.
The last bit of the question was for F1 Manager 2022, are we looking at subscription deals? Of course, subscription deals are an important part of the sort of commercial armory. Jurassic World Evolution two, we did a nice deal for the last financial year with Microsoft for Game Pass. You know, we're always interested in discussing subscription deals. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don't, frankly. Nothing to announce there, but clearly, you know, it's interesting to look at those as we move forward. James Lockyer.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you, guys, for taking my questions. I guess just a follow-up from Will's question just on the dev costs. Obviously, RTS, new game mechanic for you. Presumably, you know, once that's in place, you might be able to use that potentially for other RTSs going forward if you were to do those ones. I guess firstly, can we expect more RTSs, say, in the future? Then, just in terms of the amortization policy, can you talk about that versus, say, the core part or the main part of Age of Sigmar specifically? Second question on the guidance, just on the 5%, I guess, for 2024. Is this based on Age of Sigmar being released on the last day of 2024?
Hence, if we release it on the first day, we might assume some up-upgrade. Can you give us an idea of what 'cause obviously you've given us a big range, which is fine, but you've obviously come to 5% in some way? Finally, on the F1 Venn diagram, I guess, that you discussed between, you know, F1 fans and core gamer fans. Can you just give us an idea of what you think that current total market is in comparison to the over 600,000 units? If you were to expand to casual gamers, where could the total addressable market go to? Obviously, there's a lot of F1 fans out there. Thanks.
Can I do the last one first, Alex Bevis.
Yeah
on that?
Okay. Go for it.
I like the Venn diagram. It's almost, James, as if you understand the Venn diagram very, very well. I would say that when we looked at the and doing our research, you look at the most successful Motorsport Manager game prior to this was Motorsport Manager. If you look, and you've got to translate it a little bit because data's quite hard to come by, around about the 600,000 mark is what Motorsport Manager did over a period of a couple of years. Again, data's a little bit sketchy, so please don't do a full quote on me. I think that's your core audience. I think we're surpassing that.
I think that a good proportion of that 600,000 sales is the core audience. Not all of it, because definitely we've broadened it. In terms of total market, as we move forward, it's we're still doing more measuring, to be honest. I think it's gonna be significantly more than that. You know, again, I think F1 is growing. It's growing in the States as well. I think it's a growing market. You know, we did research to look at the trajectory of Football Manager, which is again, some research people could do. You know, 10 years ago, it wasn't that slam dunk million seller that it is now or multimillion seller that it is now. We've got to work on it.
We got it wrong to start off with how the game actually engaged those players. You know, again, I don't want to put any numbers in because you'll automatically assume that's what we're gonna hit. I think I'm very disappointed with I'm disappointed to think that 600,000 is the maximum that we can do. It's a really roundabout answer. You know, there's a lot of measuring. There's no definitive answer. I will say of those 600,000, a large proportion of those are core. Alex, I don't know if you want to add more to that because I thought I had a tighter answer than that.
All good. I think we were really looking to be sitting here with over 1 million units sold by now. Clearly, 600,000 is a good number, but it has fallen short of where we expected. What we'll be looking to do is try, and get towards that 1 million units for the next game, and eventually surpassing it. I think you called out Football Manager, which I know did take a few iterations to get close to that 1 million. You know, it's not an instant slam dunk on day one. That probably doesn't answer your question fully, James, but you know, we remain very excited and pleased with having this franchise. You know, we are off to a good start.
I know it's fallen a bit short of the sales expectations. We've got a solid game to build upon. It's reviewed well, we have lots of people playing it for many hours. You know, we fully expect to build on this platform and to continue to expand the franchise. Just conscious of time, I'll stop waffling. Going back to the other questions, I think there was a question about dev cost and RTS. That one is gonna be probably similar to the investment that we've made for F1, to get to the Warhammer RTS. You know, it's another big chunky budget, probably sort of maybe as much as GBP 15 million or maybe even a bit more than that.
As we've covered a couple of times, you know, expanding into a adjacent genre does mean a decent amount of technology investment. In terms of how the accounting works, where we have F1, and there's clearly a very clear, you know, ongoing revenue stream from additional games than the amortization, it's much more, you know, logical to sort of spread that, and the auditors will look at that and kind of give that the green tick. I think we would need to have a clear another RTS game that, you know, that we're developing and providing to do the amortization. It could mean for that first title that the amortization charge is pretty chunky.
Certainly being successful with that first RTS will give us, I think, a lot of confidence to continue to expand into the RTS market. Clearly the priority is to get that first one landed strongly, first of all. I think the middle question there was about guidance for FY 2024 and what we're assuming for Warhammer Age of Sigmar RTS. You know, don't wanna give you any more hints or tips on the timing. Clearly launching on the last day of the financial year, probably not the best strategy. I think most people are assuming, depending on what they've got, you know, maybe sort of 20-ish for revenue from that game. Hopefully that's pretty prudent, particularly given where we've been at on previous titles.
It probably doesn't really answer the question, but, you know, I think baked into that 5% is a decent amount of prudence across everything, so hopefully that's gonna help in terms of getting to those numbers.
Great. Thank you.
Ross was next.
Morning, guys. Yeah, thanks very much for the update. Three for me. First one, on the Warhammer title, how much visibility do you have on the slate around your likely release window, and how much optionality do you have to actually flex that date if necessary? The second, you've obviously given a little more color on the FY 2025 own IP release, so I'm asking this question more in hope than anticipation, but should we consider this game to be more like a Planet Zoo, Planet Coaster type game? Are you able to share whether this will feature on both PC and console? Finally, you've part answered this one already, but would you mind commenting on the environment at the moment in terms of the upfronts paid by the platforms and the subscription services?
It's obviously been something that Devolver has flagged as being quite soft. Thank you.
Okay. Sorry, just scribbling down my notes there. I think the first one was on the date for the RTS. As Jonny, I think mentioned earlier, if we don't have a specific IP event like a movie or start of an F1 season in the case of F1, it does give us more freedom. There are optimal times to launch video games, some times are better than others. We also need to be mindful of release windows for other games sometimes, you know, in terms of competitive spaces. That's a roundabout way of saying, yes, we do have a bit of flexibility, but clearly we have a particular target in mind, and that's what we're working to.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna tell you what that date is.
Yeah. Even my Alex, so don't worry, you know, stand down. I just want to add one thing. This congestion is quite interesting. I know a lot of companies mention it, and it is something that we are very mindful of, and it's always been the case. You know, I've been making games for a long time, congested markets. This is, again, having this little bit of flexibility helps just so that we can steer it if our intel comes in, and there's gonna be a direct competitor releasing at the same time. Having that bit of flex is very helpful, but it's more, I'd say, a publishing flex rather than a development flex. You know, development is going well.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
By the time we've sort of done more reveals and announces, you know, we need to be working to that timescale. You know, we've seen it a bit with Deliver Us Mars, for example. You know, that one was set up for launch in August, publishing did a great job setting it up, we've had to sort of pivot and get around a February date, that's not ideal. I think by the time we've sort of really kicked into gear with the publishing strategy, we need to be very certain about delivering on the date. Yeah, no more clues on the date. Your second question was also a little fishing one on the FY 2025 title.
We've said creative management simulation, which gives you a pretty decent amount of clues that it's something similar to Planet Zoo, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution one or two. Obviously, it's our own IP, so you might conclude it's more like one of the Planet games. We don't really wanna give any more details. In terms of PC versus console, clearly on Planet Coaster, we went PC, came to console later. Planet Zoo is PC only, whereas the Jurassic games are both simultaneous launches on PC and console, and Jurassic World Evolution came to Switch. Again, a wide variation of outcomes, I would say. Let's move on to the third question, subscription deals. Have they softened?
I think there was, I mean, there was Lunar, which sort of felt like it blew up a little bit in December. We, you know, we were having some chats with them, and then, I think Amazon are sort of repositioning that. Microsoft sort of goes in waves, I think, and sometimes, you know, it's, you know, they're very interested and then it goes a bit quiet. I'm not sure I'd say it's any softer than usual. It just depends on getting your timing right and whether they have a particular gap. I think generally Microsoft are wanting to plan ahead a lot more.
You know, probably two years ago, they were a bit more reactive and, you know, they'd sort of get in contact and say that they had a gap, and have we got a game? And if we did, it all sort of worked nicely. I think they're a bit more sort of structured in their approach, which probably means that opportunities are, you know, much better planned, a bit less opportunistic. I think, you know, that there will be deals in the future, I'm sure.
Great. Thanks very much.
Hopefully that doesn't answer any of your questions.
Just about. Just about.
Yes.
Nothing to get excited about.
Okay. Callum?
Yeah, thanks. Just two from me. The first one, on your guidance for FY 2023, you've talked about GBP 100 million, but still possible to beat the GBP 114 million from last year. Is there any evidence you're seeing from the two Frontier Foundry titles that you can point to that's guiding you towards maybe being able to beat the GBP 114 million? Second one, just on Age of Sigmar, it's with similarities to F1, where you've got the sort of core audience, you're probably trying to attract a broader audience as well.
How are you planning to attract a wider market? Is there anything you're putting in place for the game for that?
Sure. Why don't I start with the question on this year. You know, still quite a big range between GBP 100 and GBP 114, with only, where are we? Sort of four and a half months left. You know, quite a big range of outcomes. The GBP 100 really assumes that, you know, maybe we see a bit of increased weakness with the existing portfolio. F1 we're not at all successful at the start of the season, sort of getting more traction with that. The Foundry releases come out, but they're, you know, a bit sort of disappointing overall. We don't get any subscription deals. You know, that's where we'd end up more towards the bottom of the range.
I think probably to get to that 114, I think we probably would need a subscription deal. It depends on the performance as you point out, of the two titles that we have coming up. We also have Stranded: Alien Dawn, which is in early access on Steam at the moment. There's potential for some kind of launch events there on that game as well. We're feeling good about Deliver Us Mars. You know, it's looking nice. It's been popular in sort of pre-reviews where we've engaged with potential reviewers. The response from the market seems to be good. I think we are feeling good. It is just very difficult to tell until it's out and it's sort of live.
The Great War: Western Front, again, you know, that's from a very experienced team who have done RTSs before, so we feel good about that one. That's PC only. You know, not much else we can say until it's out really. It's always very difficult to predict. You can't always go on, for example, Wishlists and even pre-orders are not super reliable. I think we just have to get it out there and see how it does.
If I take the second question, really it's a question of audience sizing on Age of Sigmar. I think there are two answers to this. The first one, you know, I'll try and reiterate, is I think this intersection between gamers and Warhammer fans is more proven. Again, you look at Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer, and you look at Dawn of War, which I think is by Relic, they have a proven history of being quite, you know, a large audience. That gives a lot of confidence and comfort and a lot more data to corroborate where we think it's going to go.
In terms of how are we going to appeal to the broader audience, again, the strategy that we're using, bringing it to console and the way that we're doing things like nested complexity, where it's very simple to get into. Again, this is something which is in that game. It's the same strategy we did with Jurassic World Evolution. Yes, we did that strategy with F1. I think F1 is just such a technical sport and a technical game that we need to do more on that. I think it is for Age of Sigmar, following the principles of how we brought Jurassic World Evolution to console, designed from the ground up to do so. Works really well on controller.
The inputs are simplified, so you can do a lot of things very quickly. Again, the nested complexity is if you want to really do more the micromanagement of your, of your forces, yeah, yes, you can. I think it's got some very solid principles which have been proven, and as I say, the audience size for this is more proven because there are games which have been very successful in that area.
Yeah. Thanks very much.
Bob.
Yeah. Hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple of straightforward questions I think, I guess on Foundry and just on financials. On Foundry, just wanted to get a bit more insight into your approach to the assessment in terms of, you know, things like, are you looking at a certain time horizon? You know, would you know, tolerate sort of another 12, 24 months of sort of, you know, not fantastic performance, that sort of idea? Just whether you're looking, what sort of ambitions you have for it, and maybe an assessment of maybe the assets that you have so far?
Just on financials with FY 2024, just wanna know, if you can just maybe give us a bit more insight into how you believe the operating leverage will work out if you're moving from something like, let's say the midpoint of guidance for 2023 and looking at 5% revenue growth. What, what sort of operating leverage should we expect?
Okay. I'm sorry. Thanks, Bob. I was just scribbling down the questions there. On Foundry, how are we gonna do the assessment was kind of the first question. As you would've seen in the statement, we haven't got any titles planned for release beyond this financial year. If you look at the games we have coming up, Deliver Us Mars, The Great War: Western Front, and Stranded: Alien Dawn, which is in early access. We haven't got any future titles. That's a bit of a function of us looking about 12 months ago at the titles that we had already got out and the ones that we have coming up, and feeling like perhaps we hadn't got that portfolio mix quite right, we hadn't made the right decisions.
We've been in a period for the last 12 months of being very selective to the point of effectively not selecting any projects to take forwards.
Yeah. Alex, on that point, I think it goes back to the point I made is selection is really important. It's something that we do need to apply more rigor on both internally and externally. I think that is a function of that.
Yeah. Generally what we're looking to do is make sure that each project, we feel very good that it's gonna deliver. Having a portfolio of, let's say, five titles and hoping that, you know, maybe two of them do well and make up for underperformance of the others is probably not gonna be the strategy. As I said earlier, I don't really wanna make any conclusions on this call about what we're gonna do going forward. Generally, we're feeling more positive about games which are a bit closer to Frontier's experience, particularly where there's nurturing capabilities, and Chaos Gate's obviously a great example of that.
It's a turn-based strategy game, so we'd say that's an adjacent genre to the management simulation space, and it's got nurturing capabilities you've just seen with the PDLC that released for Chaos Gate in December. I think generally we're much more favorable towards those sorts of games that are either in Frontier's management simulation space or in adjacent genres, particularly if there's nurturing capabilities. The games that we have so far, as you will have seen on the earlier slide, you know, they're all good games. You know, even Struggling, which was quite a small one, you know, it's kind of a, if anyone's played it's kind of a weird game. You know, developed very effectively by some very smart people, and I think we published it well.
It just didn't really capture the imagination and do sufficient units. Lemnis Gate is another great example where lots of innovation, really interesting gameplay, but it just didn't capture that big enough audience to really make it and turn into a strong return on investment. FAR: Changing Tides, which launched, when was that? It was 2021, I think, wasn't it? I mean, that's done... Or was that 2022? That one's done nicely, again, it hasn't quite got back into profit yet, and that's after, what? About 18 months, I think that one's been out. We just are minded to look carefully at the strategy here, make sure we're making the right selections. As I mentioned, this is not about stop or carry on.
It's about potentially just changing our focus, changing the strategy a bit. Yeah, let's not try and conclude any more than that, but certainly we're gonna be reaching those conclusions in the next few months, by the end of May. Second question was about financial year 2024 and financial year 2023 and what do we think about operating leverage. There's a great example this year, isn't there, with operating leverage. If you look at the first half, second half split. In the first half, we've delivered GBP 57 million of revenue, 12% operating profit margin, almost GBP 7 million of operating profit.
If you take the low point of guidance, we've got GBP 43 million of revenue in the second half, potentially delivering a loss of, let's say, GBP 5 million if you take the operating profit for the full- year of GBP 2 million. Our costs are relatively fixed. Of course, amortization tends to move in steps. A lot of the gross R&D tends to get capitalized, there is a big operating leverage function there. I think if people are tending to go with the bottom end of guidance, you know, GBP 100 million for this year and growing by 5%, we'll probably remain at that pretty low single-digit operating profit number, which also translates into a low single-digit operating margin percentage.
As we mentioned several times, you know, what we wanna do is make sure that we can kick on from here, set ourselves up for success and growth into FY 2024 and beyond, essentially beat those numbers.
Great. Thank you.
I'm just looking down the list here. I can't see anyone else with their hand up, so any remaining questions from anyone? Don't think so. Well, thanks ever so much for your time. I appreciate we've run over slightly, so thanks for your engagement. Thanks for your questions. I'm sure we'll see some of you on the roadshow. As ever, if you have anything specific, feel free to reach out directly. Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone.