Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the PlaySide Studios Limited Annual General Meeting 2025. I would now like to hand the conference over to Chairman Chris Nicolle. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the FY 2025 Annual General Meeting of PlaySide Studios Limited. My name is Chris Nicolle, and I'm the Non-Executive Chairman of the company. It's now 2:30 P.M., the appointed time for holding of the meeting, and I am advised that the necessary quorum is present. I therefore declare the Annual General Meeting open. Notwithstanding that this is a virtual meeting again this year, I assure you that you will have the same opportunity to participate today as you would at a physical or hybrid meeting. This includes being able to ask questions through the online platform. You will also vote using an electronic voting card. We'll discuss this process a little later. If we experience technical issues that impact the meeting, I'll assess the circumstances and communicate further with you. If this is impossible, you'll be informed of how and when to rejoin the meeting.
The agenda for today's meeting is as follows. Firstly, I'll present a short address. Following that, Benn Skender , our CEO, will present his review of PlaySide's activities, and then we will proceed with the formal business of the meeting. I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce you to my fellow directors, Mark Goulopoulos, Aaron Pascoe, Sophie Karzis, and Guy Costantini. I would also like to introduce some of the members of the leadership team who are with us on the call: Benn Skender, our Chief Executive Officer, and Darren Briggs, our Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary. I advise the meeting that Sam Vickery , who represents our auditors' BDO Audit Pty Ltd, is present on the call and is available for any questions you may have relevant to the audit of PlaySide Ltd, or the auditors' report.
PlaySide Studios remains strongly committed to innovation as well as running a cost-efficient operation. We are pleased to facilitate a virtual meeting through the Link Online Technology platform. This enables shareholders to participate in the meeting irrespective of where they are in the world, and I warmly welcome all of you participating online. Before we turn to the formal business of the meeting, both Benn and I would like to take the opportunity of addressing you. So, it's humbling to report on a year that did not deliver to our expectations and with outcomes that negatively affected and impacted our employees, management, and our shareholders. Last year, in my Chair report, I acknowledged the significant challenge of delivering year-on-year growth while also developing our original IP portfolio.
This last 12 months has been a learning curve in that, without some of the elements of the business performing well, our structure and scale exposed us to financial and people risks that necessitated a rethink and restructure our business. One of the key elements was the lack of what we call new work-for-hire contracts, which we now call, from now on, external projects, that exposed our lack of flexibility in workforce planning, IP investment, and cost structure. The restructure of the business was conducted swiftly once the deferral of new external projects was identified, and while painful for all our stakeholders, especially those of our staff, the outcome has positioned PlaySide as a leaner and more focused business, and one that has maintained a strong portfolio of our original IP that positions us well for FY 2026 and beyond.
The continuation of investments, but with increased focus in that key original IP titles such as Dumb Ways to Die, Game of Thrones, and Mouse during the year, provides an important pathway for our future. With some more positive views on our external projects, we can be more confident that our structure provides the flexibility to take advantage of our IP success. I'd like to congratulate and thank Benn and the executive team for the speed and professional manner in which the restructure was planned and delivered. These are complex and personal challenges, and the swift, professional, and care-based process that was delivered provided respect for those that left while at the same time placing the trust and confidence for the future of the company in the hands of the team.
The quality and challenging work across the executive team in this process and in the past six months, as we navigate the new challenges, positions us well for FY 2026. The board is very appreciative of these efforts. To briefly recap, FY 2025 financial performance was disappointing, with revenue down 25% to AUD 48.7 million and an EBITDA loss of AUD 7.4 million compared to the AUD 17.5 profit for FY 2024. The positive we can take from a difficult year is that we have a strong slate of IP titles to launch in FY 2026 and FY 2027 year and a team focused on building and marketing titles that will hopefully provide strong brand and revenue for PlaySide going forward. Additionally, I believe our partnership, standing with our customers who provide external projects, continues to be one of high respect and openness for repeat and new business.
As part of the restructure, our process for competing for new and external projects has been enhanced, and the quality of our responses continues to be stronger. As the cycle towards more content being required by major partners improves, we can be confident that we will win our share of these new opportunities. Going forward as a business, we need to be focused on balancing the investments and the capital demands in a manner that provides short-term return while ensuring the longer-term major strategic objectives are able to be advanced. The path we have chosen does have challenges, with game development investment and time frames remaining complex, and the need to continue to win external projects to drive cash flow to continue for our future. The board and executive team believe this is the right strategy.
We will maintain increased financial discipline, ensure that our investments are focused, our costs are appropriately managed, and that we align our aspirations to our balance sheet strengths. We have a strong slate of our own IP-based games in our portfolio, and together with external project opportunities, these will underpin the FY 2026 year. Moving on to FY 2026, given we have had a busy few months of activity to gauge progress, we'll maintain a cautious but optimistic view on delivering our key original IP projects, winning external projects, and continuing the strategic process in building the capability and standing of the company. The excitement of Mouse is growing, the release of which would be transformative to PlaySide, but I'll let Benn talk about the potential of this title later.
I want to recognize the efforts of the executive team and Benn in particular, who have delivered a difficult and complex set of events during FY 2025, and for the hard work in repositioning the company for the future. This was and is complex work, and to execute so well on this while further enhancing the team and the processes to maintain current and future momentum is noteworthy. I want to thank our loyal shareholders for their investment and ongoing support, and to those who follow and support PlaySide in the market. Thank you for the support in our recent capital raising, and I trust that we will all benefit from the future of PlaySide as we continue to execute our plan to become a global leader in the market.
Lastly, my thanks to my fellow board members, Sophie, Mark, Aaron, and Guy, for your continued energy, professionalism, approach, and focus and support regarding the company. I'll now pass to Benn for his inaugural CEO presentation, knowing that we share his and the team's confidence in an exciting future. And Benn, I'll hand over to you.
Thank you, Chris, and good afternoon, fellow shareholders. My name is Benn Skender , and after holding the role of Chief Strategy Officer at PlaySide Studios since 2022, I was appointed to the position of CEO in March earlier this calendar year. It's been a challenging year from a financial and operating perspective. We started the calendar year with layoffs to nearly 20% of our workforce. We streamlined our project slate to lower our costs and direct our talent to the most commercial original IP opportunities. These were hard but necessary decisions. We spent a lot of time afterwards refining the way we do things when it comes to empowering our senior leadership team under a decentralized structure and the processes we use to monitor and communicate progress on our projects.
These improvements will not only help bring our existing slate of titles home strongly but also put us on a strong footing early in the pre-production phase of new games that we develop. We're also making significant changes to the way we approach business development. It's a privilege to be of the size and scale that we are in the Australian market, and we're proud of the fact that we've got a 15-year track record of working with AAA studios, entertainment, and technology companies to create games for them and add value to their IP. However, we realize we can do much more when it comes to how we pitch for work and represent our studio externally to clients. The refinements we've put in place are already serving to widen our contract funnel and put us on shortlists with large clients that we previously haven't worked with.
Our external projects division, which you previously would have known as work-for-hire, has been a profitable, cash-generative part of our business that has covered our overheads in most years as we've embarked on larger original IP aspirations. But we have the opportunity and responsibility to shareholders and staff to build it to a size that not only creates financial stability in our operations but becomes a meaningful profit center of the business. Once we achieve that, the volatility in our revenue and earnings is significantly reduced, and our shareholders have a business they can value, which should also reduce the swings in our share price. Importantly, there are meaningful tailwinds for external developers like PlaySide. Most of the AAA studios have laid off significant amounts of staff in the last three years, particularly in North America, where their cost bases proved unsustainable following an aggressive hiring drive through COVID.
Improvements in game development technologies like Unreal Engine have served to democratize game development and really challenged the appropriateness of nine-figure development budgets, and this is why we've had a year like 2025, where many of the best new games have come out of smaller studios. Our external projects division really felt the impact of this disruption in the last three years, as a domino of internal restructures at the large studios meant that new initiatives and strategies were put on hold and sales cycles were persistently pushed out, but it's not like demand has gone away. I've spent much of the last three months overseas attending conferences, meeting with AAA studios, and participating in executive roundtables, and I returned from those trips with confidence that outsourced work will continue to pick up from here. I can give you some anecdotes to support that.
I've sat in meetings where the heads of outsourcing of these studios have acknowledged that they've laid off thousands of people, still have dozens of games in development, and won't be hiring new people internally to complete that work. The work will be outsourced. The CFOs of these companies clearly have a cyclical hand on the wheel, so to speak, and internally, we're making it a priority to build as wide a funnel as we can of potential external development work. The number of RFPs we've received from studios we've never worked with before has increased, and while I won't put a timing on it at this stage, I'm very confident we will not only win new work, but the potential for our external projects division to generate record revenues in the years to come is achievable.
With this trend to outsourcing mimicking what has been the mainstay approach for longer-standing entertainment industries like film and TV, I do believe it will continue to grow in the years ahead. I'm currently hiring for senior business development executives across North America and Europe and intend to continue to build outputs on the ground in these regions over the next year to ensure that we can interface with potential clients more frequently and cost-effectively. While I can't exactly predict when we will get back to announcing new contract wins, as the calendar year ends and we enter a new financial year for many of our counterparties with their strategies and budgets reset, I'm confident that we're better positioned than ever to do that.
As I look out across the next few years, one of my main priorities is to grow our external projects revenue to greater heights than the AUD 34 million we achieved in FY 2024. That will strengthen our balance sheet, give us a sustainable earnings profile, give you as shareholders a concrete approach to ascribing real value to our business, and provide us with sufficient surplus capital to embark on an original IP strategy that is both sensible and aspirational. Prudently, we raised around AUD 8 million from a capital raise and share purchase plan in the September quarter, and we are expecting at least another AUD 6 million from the Digital Games Tax Offset program this year. Further, the extension of our Meta Horizon contract through to December 2026 provides us with a nice base of work to build from. We've been a strategic partner of Meta's for some years now.
As the Horizon Worlds ecosystem expands beyond virtual and mixed reality to mobile, I believe we will remain a valuable partner to them, given our 15-year pedigree in launching quality mobile titles and optimizing them with an experienced data team. We are also currently running well ahead of our targeted AUD 4 to AUD 5 million in annualized cost savings post-restructure and continue to maintain a tight focus on costs while using the fact we are tracking well ahead to selectively reinvest in experienced talent that will help us grow our revenue line. The 2026 calendar year will also see some significant milestones in the major original IP projects that we commenced back in 2024 in Mouse: P.I. for Hire, the console title we've been developing using our wholly owned Dumb Ways to Die IP, and Game of Thrones: War for Westeros.
This Friday morning, we will announce a release date for Mouse at the Galaxy Showcase, an online event that features a variety of game updates and announcements from studios around the world. The game will launch early in the 2026 calendar year, which is slightly later than our original expectations for it to drop within calendar 2025. But it's a window that our marketing and publishing teams have agreed is the appropriate time to launch the game. Importantly, given the front-end weighting to game revenues at launch, there is no change to our financial guidance for the year, which is for revenue to exceed FY 2025's revenue of AUD 49 million with a reduction in operating costs. So on Friday, you'll learn of the release date, and on Tuesday, October 28th, there will be a deep dive documentary revealed at Microsoft's ID@Xbox Showcase in partnership with IGN.
Xbox have filmed a very cool piece that really leans into how a small indie team from Poland is bringing the game to life. We've got several other initiatives between now and the launch date, and these are primarily aimed at continuing to build wishlists and anticipation for the title ahead of its launch. We're really excited about the potential for Mouse. It is new territory for us where we have a portfolio title that is one of the most anticipated games of the year in terms of Steam wishlists, and regardless of its level of success, it will certainly be the best-selling title PlaySide has released on PC console to date and a significant cash generator for the studio, which is really important in the context of strengthening our balance sheet.
We are also currently starting work on ideating and prototyping for the next projects in our original IP slate. The strategy here has been refined a lot as well. I spoke at our full-year result about the importance of matching game development timelines with the level of cash flow visibility that we have in our external projects contract book. And once we have that balance right and the contract book is generating steady profits, the correct way to approach original IP is to take the right kind of risks, spending a lot of time in pre-production to strive to create innovative content. This won't guarantee that any individual title is a hit, but it will make it more likely that we create a portfolio of quality, well-reviewed games, and that is the correct path if we ever hope to have a breakout hit title over time.
Hopefully, overall, you get the idea that our company strategy is starting to shift slightly when it comes to building a more sustainable, cash-generative business over time, but I want to reiterate that we still have a very ambitious but sensible strategy around our original IP. Before I close today, I'd like to mention an important transition within our leadership team. Our Chief Financial Officer, Darren Briggs, has advised the board of his intention to retire during the March quarter of 2026. As much as I was aware, this would likely be Briggs' last role, and having served at ASX-listed companies for more than 25 years, he has certainly paid his dues. It's still a bit sad for me to have to formally acknowledge that he won't be working alongside me in FY 2027.
Darren played a critical role in helping the PlaySide founders bring the business to IPO five years ago and establishing a strong finance team around him. Since that time, he's earned the respect of me, our GMs, and our board for his experience, honesty, and good humor. While Darren's retirement is still some time away, we wanted to communicate his plans early to ensure a smooth transition and give us the freedom to explore opportunities to identify the right person to work with me on the next chapter of our journey. That process will now commence, and Darren will remain fully engaged through the handover period to maintain continuity across our finance operations. On a personal note, I want to thank Darren for being a great partner to me and an experienced, trusted pair of hands, particularly through my CEO transition.
In conclusion, I want to thank the board for their trust in me and their counsel through what has been a challenging restructure process and acknowledge the resilience of more than 5,000 shareholders who have had a rough year watching the share price go down for most of it. I look forward to continuing to engage with you as we embark on a refined strategy that still has a very ambitious but sensible strategy around our original IP and seeks to build a more sustainable, cash-generative business over time. Thank you.
Thank you, Benn, and let me also just add a closing note of thank you to all our staff who have been very resilient and who we rely on to continue the growth of PlaySide, so thank you to all our staff. Now we come to the formal part of the business of the meeting today. The notice of meeting dated 9th of September 2025 was circulated to the shareholders, and I take the notice as being read. Excuse me. Before moving to the various resolutions to be considered today, I'll now briefly outline procedures for today's meeting. In terms of voting, shareholders who are not able to attend today's meeting have the option of appointing a proxy. The results of these votes will be displayed on the screen following the discussion of each proposed resolution.
The chairman will call a poll in accordance with Clause 13.6 of the company's constitution on all resolutions to be put at this meeting. The results of the poll will be released to the Australian Securities Exchange and will be displayed on the company's website as soon as they're available after the close of the meeting. Jim from MUFG will act as a returning officer for the purpose of conducting and determining the results of the poll. Shareholders may cast their vote using electronic voting cards received after validating their online registration. If you have not already done so, to validate your registration, you'll be asked to enter your securityholder reference number, commonly referred to as an SRN, or holder identification number, commonly referred to as a HIN, plus your postcode if you're in Australia or your country if you're outside Australia.
To then cast your vote, click the Get Voting Card button. If you are intending to vote, you'll be able to finalize and submit votes up until five minutes after the meeting ends. I'll remind you about this at the end of the meeting. If you have any trouble using the platform, please check the online portal on PlaySide's website at www.playside.com. Any questions or comments are most welcome. I'll take general questions and comments when we consider the first item of the form of business, the annual report. After the resolution for each item of business has been put to shareholders, I'll take any questions or comments that may be submitted through the online platform. Only shareholders are eligible to ask questions or make comments.
If you wish to ask a question or make a comment today, please click on the Ask a Question button on your screen, which will then present you with a pop-up box. Questions or comments that relate to a particular resolution at hand will be addressed at the time of considering the resolution. Before closing the meeting, I will offer an opportunity for any further questions to be asked and addressed. The company secretary will act as a moderator for questions and put them initially to myself, and I may answer them or redirect them to another director, a company representative, or the auditor. If anyone needs to register for a voting card, I suggest that you attend to this now.
Out of fairness to everybody online, I ask that you limit your questions to one at a time and also restrict your questions and comments to the resolutions being considered. I reserve the right as chair to rule questions as not pertaining to the AGM or out of order. I'll now turn to the first item of business, which is slides item one, to receive and consider financial statements and reports. The first item of business is to consider the year-ended 30th of June 2025 annual report containing the financial report, director's report, and the independent auditor's report. A copy of the annual report is available on the PlaySide Studios' website and was sent to those shareholders who requested it. Financial statements have been approved by the directors and audited. I will take the reports as received and read.
At this stage, I would like to invite shareholders to ask questions or make comments about the management of the company and ask the auditor questions relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation of the content of the auditor's report. Please keep the questions about specific resolutions until the time we consider those resolutions. Darren, do we have any questions online?
No questions, Chris.
Okay, so if no further questions, then we'll move to the resolution of the meeting. There are five resolutions in total. We'll discuss and vote on each resolution in turn. Item two, which is resolution one, the adoption of the remuneration report. The item of business, resolution one, is a non-binding resolution to adopt the company's remuneration report, which is set out in the company's 2025 annual report. The vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors. However, the board will take into account any discussion on this resolution and the outcome of the vote when considering the future remuneration policies and practices of the company. The resolution appears on the screen, and I'll take this as being read. Are there any questions on this resolution?
No questions, Chris.
Okay. We have received not only questions for this resolution, and the details of the votes for this item are now on screen. The 162,780 undirected proxies, excluding those from shareholders who are not entitled to vote on this resolution, that have been given to me as chair will be directed by me in favor of the resolution. I'll now put the resolution and ask that you complete your poll voting by now selecting for, against, or abstain next to resolution one on your electronic voting card.
Thank you.
Resolution 2 is the election of director, Mr. Guy Costantini. This item relates to resolution two relating to the election of Guy as a director. Mr. Costantini has served as a director since February the 26th, 2025.
Details of Guy's experience and expertise can be found within the director's report that forms part of the year's annual financial statements for the year-ended 30th of June 2025. If re-elected, the board considers that Mr. Costantini will be an independent director. The resolution appears on the screen, and I'll take it as being read. Are there any questions?
No questions received, Chris.
All right. Thank you. Details of votes of this item are now on screen, and the 167,280 undirected proxies given to the chairman will be directed by me in favor of this resolution. As there are no further questions, I'll now put the resolution and ask that you complete your poll voting by now selecting for, against, or abstain next to resolution two on your electronic voting card. The next item of business, resolution three, relates to the re-election of myself, Mr. Chris Nicolle, as director. I can advise I've served as both director and chairman since the 31st of October 2020. Details of my experience and expertise can be found within the director's report that forms part of this year's annual financial statements for the period ended June 30, 2025. If re-elected, the board considers that I'll continue to remain an independent director.
The resolution appears on the screen, and I'll take it as being read. Are there any questions?
No questions, Chris.
Okay. The 167,280 undirected proxies given to the chairman will be directed by me in favor of this resolution. As there are no further questions, I put the resolution and ask that you complete your poll voting by now selecting for, against, or abstain next to resolution three on your electronic voting cards. Thank you. The next item of business is an ordinary resolution relating to the issue of shares under placement. The resolution appears on the screen, and I'll take it as being read. Are there any questions on this resolution?
No questions, Chris.
As with other resolutions, the 165,834 undirected proxies given to the chairman will be directed by me in favor of this resolution. As there are no further questions, I'll now put the resolution and ask that you complete your poll voting by now selecting for, against, or abstain next to resolution four on your electronic voting card. Thank you. The next item of business is an ordinary resolution which relates to the participation of entities associated with Mark Goulopoulos and share placement. The resolution appears on the screen, and I'll take it as being read. Are there any questions?
No questions, Chris.
Thank you, Darren. The 148,780 undirected proxies given to the chairman will be directed by me in favor of this resolution. As there are no further questions, I'll now put the resolution and ask that you complete your poll voting by now selecting for, against, or abstain next to resolution five on your electronic voting card. The last item of business is an ordinary resolution which relates to entities associated with myself participating in share placement. The resolution appears on the screen, and I'll take it as being read. Are there any questions?
No questions received, Chris.
Thank you. The 158,780 undirected proxies given to the chairman will be directed by me in favor of this resolution. As there are no further questions, I'll now put the resolution and ask that you complete your poll voting by now selecting for, against, or abstain next to resolution six on your electronic voting card. Thank you. I now want to open the opportunity for any further questions and issues that have not already been addressed. So, Darren, are there any questions online?
No questions received, Chris.
Okay. Thank you, Darren. As there are no further questions, I remind all persons who intend to vote to do so now. It appears as though the voting process has been completed, and therefore I will declare the poll closed. As previously mentioned, the results of the poll will be notified to the ASX and published on the company website following the meeting. That concludes the business of the meeting. Thank you for your participation today. To the shareholders and visitors participating online, we're pleased that our technology enabled your attendance, and we thank you for joining us, and now declare the meeting closed.