Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gianlia, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for Allwyn investor Conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the capital markets update. All participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Robert Chvátal, CEO. Mr. Chvátal, you may now proceed.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Jan Karas, of Allwyn, and I'm very pleased to welcome the Allwyn capital Markets Update. Today, we want to provide additional details on the recently announced transaction with OPAP and give you into Allwyn's proven strategy and growth levers. Over the last several weeks, we have met with many existing OPAP investors and investors in the gaming sector more broadly, and we see a lot of interest to about Allwyn, who we are, what our plans are, and what they will deliver, and what will allow us to continue to succeed. This presentation will focus on some of those questions, and we hope it will be helpful for everybody online now.
I'm joined today by my colleagues, Ken Morton, CFO of Allwyn, Kathleen Colemire, Board member of both Allwyn and OPAP, and a representative of our controlling shareholder, KKCG, Jan Karas, our CEO in Greece and OPAP, CEO of OPAP, and Pavel Mucha, CFO of OPAP. Before we move with our presentation, we have a few words from our founder, Karel Komárek. Karel has been the driving force behind Allwyn since its inception, and he brings deep experience and entrepreneurial insights and will continue to guide the business as controlling shareholder and chair of the Board. Rather than me telling you more, let's hear directly from him in a short video, and I would like to ask the operator, hopefully, the video will work.
I'm the proud founder of Allwyn, which I started more than 13 years ago by acquiring Sazka, a Czech company, which was the basic pillar of our businesses, which we took over and successfully transformed into one of the best companies in the Czech Republic. I had a clear vision back then in 2012, and we just realized throughout the years the vision into reality. Now we are sitting here as Allwyn, one of the biggest lottery-related entertainment companies in the world and the biggest lottery company in Europe. My role as Chairman of Allwyn is creating the vision alongside my team and very much involved in all M&A activities, as well as in the government relationship. I also try to find the best people. It is a culture, it is a governance, and empowering the people.
I know all the businesses back and forth. I am not involved in operations because it's impossible for the size of the company which we have built. Therefore, everything is all about the people. It's all about finding the right people, giving them the vision, empowering them to execute, as well as building a one-stop shop entertainment house led by lotteries. Actually, the acquisition of PrizePicks is one of the greatest examples of how the company and us are thinking about the strategy. We are constantly searching and looking for what is out there, new on the market, which could fit with our strategy.
That's one of the DNAs which OPAP has created to see whether out there are some opportunities which cannot be built from scratch, but we can acquire them and integrate them, as well as let them do their own business and perform at their best. OPAP is one of the main assets within OPAP, and OPAP has invested in OPAP more than 10 years ago. We did the same as we did in other countries. We brought the best people, the best management in class. We started investing in innovation, efficiency, digital content, and so forth. Innovative OPAP is one of the biggest and most successful stories in Greece.
It's a natural fit for both parties to carry on this journey, and this transformational transaction will allow us to, A, become public, B, to have better access to capital, C, to be more open for other investors to invest alongside with us in these exciting businesses. I think for the investors, as well as the partners, this is a tremendous opportunity, the first time in the history of OPAP, to become co-investors and partners in our great journey to the future. What is great for OPAP is we are very well positioned right now as a company because we have a very predictable and stable cash flow, great businesses in each country. We are champions in each country where we do the businesses. We are one of the most important companies when it comes to paying taxes.
We are one of the best and the biggest contributors when it comes to the good causes. We invest in innovations and so forth. We have a lot of great things together in one company, and the company is well positioned for the future. I think we are well positioned to expand and to deliver. That is what I'm 100% sure. I'm saying it after 30 years in the business when I had a chance to be a partner, an investor, and manage many other businesses. I have to tell you, this one is the most exciting and the most promising for the future.
Okay. Hopefully, the video has conveyed our excitement for the transaction and the outlook for Allwyn directly personally from Karel, the founder. He spoke about people, and he is a lot in the business of putting the best people together. This includes us as the top management of Allwyn and top management of OPAP to articulate, hopefully, today what we intend to do. Firstly, we will provide a short recap on the long-term value creation that the announced transaction will provide to OPAP shareholders. We will be going into more detail on Allwyn, its strategy and key strengths and its growth levers. We will conclude with some additional information on some financial topics.
To kick that off, I would like to invite Jan Karas, our CEO of OPAP, to highlight some of the key factors that make actually the planned transaction highly compelling for OPAP shareholders. Jan, over to you.
Thank you, Robert. Thank you. When we announced the proposed transaction, we explored how the lottery and gaming industry is undergoing a profound transformation and what that means for companies that are positioned to lead. What I would like to do is briefly recap the key themes. First, customer expectations are evolving fast, shaped by the best-in-class entertainment offerings from outside of the gaming. Personalization, social features, seamless experiences are now expected, and what's best-in-class today won't be necessarily enough tomorrow. Meeting these expectations requires differentiated content and cutting-edge technology, including AI, so that we can accelerate innovation and reduce time to market. With that, scale is no longer optional. It's essential for funding the investments needed to stay competitive and for attracting the best talent. In short, the industry is being redefined by digital content, innovation, and scale.
Companies with scale and breadth, proprietary content, and strong technology capabilities are positioned to lead, and the long-term prospects for companies that do not have them are at best unclear. We previously shared what makes this transaction so compelling for OPAP shareholders, and I think it's worth revisiting some of the key reasons. It is a fundamental step change. It positions OPAP shareholders to share the growth and success of a global leader in gaming while maintaining a continued base dividend of EUR 1 minimum per share. Shareholders will therefore continue to hold one of the highest-income stocks in the global gaming sector and will further benefit from greater earnings and dividend growth potential over time, supported by a more resilient cash flow. The combined business strengthens every critical strategic lever: scale, growth, digital leadership, proprietary technology and content, and the right platform to deliver value-aggressive M&A.
This means competing more effectively, innovating faster, and accessing opportunities that were previously out of reach, while improving diversification and cash flow resilience. The financial rationale is also compelling, with double-digit accretion to earnings and cash flow post-completion. Overall, this gives shareholders the opportunity to participate in a more diversified and future-ready global gaming leader.
Thank you, Jan. In the same way, let me reiterate the transaction rationale for Allwyn and KKCG. Allwyn has reached a stage in its development where becoming a public company is the next natural step, providing access to equity markets and elevating the profile of the combined platform. Additionally, Allwyn's investment into OPAP has delivered exceptional value, including to OPAP shareholders over a long period. The combination will safeguard the further creation of value going forward for the reasons Jan mentioned and allow the combined entity to benefit from OPAP's investor base and analyst coverage. Lastly, the transaction simplifies the group structure, aligns interests with OPAP shareholders, and streamlines governance. This combination is about continuing a trusted partnership and OPAP shareholders participating in the growth of a global leader.
On the next slide, we actually touched on what scale means in the context of this transaction and to us. The combination will create the second-largest listed lottery and gaming operator globally by EBITDA. As Jan mentioned, size is a key enabler for success in the rapidly evolving Allwyn's scale will allow OPAP shareholders to benefit as we are building a future-proof platform able to, first of all, invest in technology and product innovation. Secondly, deliver a broader, more diversified offering with accelerated innovation. Last but not least, create a best-in-class customer experience that adapts to evolving consumer expectations. As I mentioned before, the transaction offers a significantly enhanced growth profile to OPAP's investors. Looking at the chart, the key clear. Allwyn's platform will deliver sustainably high growth with multiple levers contributing to future performance, both organic and inorganic.
First, strong organic growth across continental Europe and the U.K. National Lottery, supported by digital expansion and product innovation. Second, exposure to high-growth segments such as U.S. daily fantasy sports with PrizePicks and global online gaming, sports betting/iGaming with Betano. Third, additional uplift from further future inorganic growth, including tenders and bolt-ons. The chart highlights how these elements come together: a larger, more diversified base with significant exposure to digital and high-growth categories. Now, a quick look at the combined company's profile by revenue. The transaction moves OPAP from being 100% recent Cyprus only to having a truly global footprint. Shareholders will gain exposure to high-growth markets such as the U.S., Brazil, and the rest of Latin America. From a product perspective, the combined group offers much more than just lottery and sports betting.
Investors will gain access to innovative offerings like daily fantasy sports through PrizePicks, as well as enhanced iGaming capabilities. This twofold diversification creates strategic optionality. It will allow us to leverage the combined capabilities to differentiate and deliver best-in-class customer experiences across all markets. Finally, the combined entity is nicely balanced between exclusive, i.e., exclusive license positions and non-exclusive businesses, with a demonstrated ability to compete in highly competitive markets and a highly diversified portfolio of exclusive businesses. Let's now move to Allwyn's business and history so far. We covered this last time, but it's worth quickly summarizing the key points as context discussion. Allwyn is a leading lottery-led multinational lottery and gaming operator with a strong presence across Europe and North America. We operate lotteries in nearly every European country where they are privately run and operated.
In the U.S., we manage the Illinois State Lottery and supply e-instants to multiple other lotteries across North America. We are a market leader in that space, e-instants. This is complemented with scaled iGaming and sports betting operations in certain lottery markets. Through Betano, we hold further market-leading positions across Europe and Latin America. Our North American presence will be expanded significantly when we close the planned acquisition of PrizePicks, the category leader in daily fantasy sports. That transaction is still on track to close in Q1 2026, but we are very confident this will definitely happen. We own core technology and best-in-class content, giving us control over our fate and allowing us to innovate faster. Financially, we are a substantial business.
Pro forma for announced acquisitions, we generated EUR 1.9 billion of EBITDA in the 12 months to June 2025, with high margins and strong cash flow generation. On the next slide, we try to depict that over the last decade, we have built and have a strong track record in entering new markets, transforming from a single market operator in the Czech Republic into a diversified multinational leader. This expansion has been achieved through competitive tenders and disciplined self-funded M&A, all without raising any external equity. In the middle of the page, you see that in the last few years, we have strengthened our platforms through targeted bolt-on acquisitions in key areas of the tech stack and content. These investments are critical for sustaining innovation and product differentiation, which are strategically important in the gaming sector today and going forward.
Subject to obtaining the required approvals, the pending acquisitions of PrizePicks and Novibet are particularly exciting for us. Beyond very strong positions in their respective markets, both companies also operate differentiated proprietary technology that expands our capabilities. Finally, I'll move to Betano, one of the largest and fastest-growing online sports betting and iGaming businesses globally. Betano's rapid expansion has been enabled by its fantastic operating model, which is almost unique in the gaming sector. Betano owns a best-in-class tech stack and operates as a single brand globally. The next slide is a high-level summary of the unique platform that we have built, which delivers compelling growth and high cash generation. On the left-hand side, we highlight our unrivaled multinational lottery operations and the complementary sports betting and iGaming that we operate in many of our lottery markets. This is where we are the national gaming champions.
On the right-hand side, our market-leading high-growth assets, which include some of the most exciting assets in gaming globally, such as PrizePicks in the U.S. in 45 jurisdictions and our interest in Betano. Both sides of the picture benefit from low capital intensity, high cash generation, and compounding growth. This further strengthens the overall platform, which you can see at the bottom. This is a very important enabler in today's global gaming business and sector. This is technology and brand. This is what Allwyn will be based on, and these will be key enablers: technology and brand. I now pass to Ken for a couple of slides on our financial track record. Ken, over to you.
Thank you very much, Robert, and thank you also to everybody who has joined our call. I'm going to start with some of my favorite charts, which show our key P&L and cash flow metrics over the last six years. That is going back to 2019, pre-COVID. You can see that the dynamic on each chart is very positive. Our revenue, our EBITDA and EBITDA minus CapEx as a proxy for underlying free cash flow generation have all grown at a compound rate of about 20% a year over six years. Obviously, when you compound at a high rate over a long period, you get some pretty impressive absolute growth, and the business is now a multiple of the size that it was just a few years ago, pretty much any metric that you look at. Our growth has really been best-in-class.
We'll come back to that on a subsequent slide. Finally, just to note that the slightly higher, sorry, the slightly lower growth in EBITDA minus CapEx last year reflects a relative peak in CapEx in the U.K., as we've been investing in the transformation of the U.K. National Lottery after being awarded the license to operate the new concession that runs from the beginning of February last year. On the next slide, a few words on cash flow and capital allocation, which is obviously a very important topic for us. Business is very cash flow generative, so we've got a lot of capital to allocate. As we know, obviously, this is a very important topic for the equity market.
The chart shows how robust cash generation has allowed us to, at the same time, invest very significantly in growing the business inorganically to pay substantial dividends and, at the same time, to deleverage. That is all without raising any external equity, so all funded with cash flow generation and on the balance sheet. Since 2019, we have invested over EUR 2.5 billion in inorganic growth, and that is excluding PrizePicks and Novibet, while paying EUR 1.7 billion in dividends to KKCG and also reducing our leverage. For avoidance of doubt, that EUR 1.7 billion of dividends does not include dividends to OPAP's public shareholders. If we were to include that, the number would be almost twice as high, over EUR 3 billion. I would also like to mention that our cash flow is very highly diversified, which, of course, makes it nicely resilient.
All our material businesses are substantially cash flow positive, even the very fast-growing businesses like Betano and PrizePicks. There are really few businesses in any sector which have got the combination that we have of scale, of rapid growth, of diversification, high margins, and optionality to continue to grow, combined with that level of cash flow generation. That really gives us a lot of opportunities to leverage the strengths of our platform, which Robert will talk about on the next slide. Robert, back to you.
Thank you, Ken. In the next section, I'm going to expand a on Allwyn's unique platform as well as our proven strategy. First, to elaborate on our platform, we are a leader in the highly attractive lottery sector with an unrivaled multinational platform, as well as having complementary gaming and sports betting businesses within our lottery footprint, and at the same time, driving synergies with respect to both revenues and costs. This is what we do day in, day out. We operate a B2C business, which provides the best opportunity to create value. We own the P&L of the lottery, and we drive it across all four P's: products, brand, promotion, technology, everything. This platform is highly diversified across geographies, across products, and across channels, which gives us strategic flexibility and an optimal risk profile. Scale, we have spoken to already.
A key advantage that also enables us to capture increasing returns as the industry. We also have a proven track record of value-creating M&A and significant in-house technology and content capabilities, which enable innovation, cost efficiencies, and faster growth. Finally, our unified brand strategy, one brand, Allwyn, will provide a competitive edge and cost advantage to the others. Next, a few words about our strategy, which is basically the strategy that we have consistently pursued since the formation of Allwyn, and which has driven the financial performance, which Ken mentioned. It starts with accelerating organic growth, enhancing the customer offer, driving digitalization, innovating across products and channels, expanding product portfolio, and obviously excel in the digital channel. We enhance this with selective inorganic growth, with targeted bolt-on acquisitions, as well as strategic acquisitions in new verticals, in new markets, and in technology and content.
Next, improving operational efficiency means that we capture purchasing, marketing, cost synergies while sharing best practices across our geographies and markets. We also have a strong commitment to responsible gaming and corporate social responsibility. This is the pinnacle of the responsibility to play and offer the gaming portfolio responsibly. This is what the governments and the regulators expect to have a responsible gaming offer. While the next important part of the strategy, or the overarching strategy, basically remained constant, we have increased our focus on technology and content. This shift is evident in our recent M&A transactions, our continued investment in in-house capabilities, as well as new initiatives such as AI, which are key to accelerating innovation and further differentiating our product, and to continue to deliver a best-in-class customer proposition.
We are also excited about our newly launched One Allwyn brand strategy, as Betano has demonstrated a single global brand has very significantly proved the benefits in terms of cost, new market entries, and our stakeholder positioning. In summary, we pursue a one tech, one brand, one consistent team approach strategy, remaining firmly centered around one clear purpose, making play better for all. Now back to you, Ken, on the track record.
Thank you again, Robert. The platform and strategy which Robert has been talking to have allowed us to deliver very strong financial performance across all our key metrics. On this chart, we have looked at our financial performance through the lens of two metrics that are key drivers of our returns to shareholders. That is growth and, of course, dividends. The chart shows that the combined company really stands out among global peers, delivering both best-in-class growth, over 20% CAGR since 2019, as I mentioned, and that is obviously at the top end of the range of peers from gaming and lottery. On the vertical axis, we are showing dividends as a proportion of that EBITDA. Again, you can see that we are well ahead of peers. That reflects the ability that we have to actually convert that EBITDA into cash returns to shareholders.
The fact that we've been able to do that at the same time as growing very significantly is, we think, a real strength of the platform. This is a really quite rare mix, high growth, strong cash returns. If you look at the size of the circles, you can see that we're also among the largest companies in the gaming space globally as well, which is a big strategic benefit and also benefit in terms of the resilience of those shareholder returns. Moving on to the next slide, we summarize how we've driven that growth. The chart shows our pro-rata EBITDA. So that's EBITDA net to our interest in each of our businesses, and that allows us to split out the contribution of organic and inorganic factors without any noise from acquisition accounting. Essentially, the green floating bar each year is a like-for-like metric for organic growth.
That keeps the interest held in each business stable year -on -year. That is the underlying organic picture. You can see that between 2021 and 2024, we had between 14% and 20% underlying organic EBITDA growth. Each year, we also had that nice contribution from our bolt-on acquisitions as well. We are really very proud of our track record with both organic and inorganic growth drivers. The fact that we have been able to consistently grow through each is a big strength of our platform. Continuing with our track record, on the next slide, we have summarized top line and EBITDA for some of the businesses within the group. We have selected a few examples, including the Czech Republic, which is the business that we have owned the longest, IWG, which is a good example of our bolt-on M&A strategy, and of course, also Betano.
What you can see is that we've been able to drive consistent compounding growth in top line, and also in many cases, even faster growth in EBITDA as we've increased profitability in these businesses. Just to give an example, our Czech business, which is the business that we've owned the longest, and where Robert was previously CEO, was for many years one of the fastest growing lotteries in Europe. We've been able to grow the top line with a mid-teens CAGR since 2012, which is really quite impressive. Stoiximan , OPAP shareholders may be very familiar with. This is a great example of a successful bolt-on growing to CAGR of over 20% between 2020, when it was already a pretty substantial business, and 2024 continues to grow from strength to strength. Finally, from me now, one other slide on our track records.
We would like to highlight OPAP as a great example, not only of our ability to make good acquisitions, but also to drive value. Hopefully, many people on this call will have been along for the ride since we first invested in 2013. OPAP has obviously massively outperformed the ASX through a combination of very strong dividends to shareholders, EUR 13 per share since that date, and also capital appreciation in total, 17% annualized return, which we're very, very pleased with. We've also been very pleased with the strategic progress that we've driven and the support that we've been able to provide to OPAP in areas such as M&A with the acquisition of Stoiximan , which I just mentioned has been an absolutely great bolt-on to the previous largely land-based OPAP platform, and also the introduction of EuroMillions, which has also been a key driver of momentum in the product portfolio.
With that, I would like to hand back to Robert for a few more words on the growth strategies and how we implement them and where we see them going forward.
Okay, thank you, Ken. Let me explain our organic growth strategy. Let's start with the first element of that organic growth strategy we just outlined, which is, yeah, exciting organic growth. Customer focus is basically at the heart of our organic strategy. We are an FMCG business in its expansion. We have a huge installed base of players, consumers, and our teams thrive and enjoy delivering best-in-class products to players through new ways to play, through new games, enhanced games, multi-country games, new prizes, new prize forms, enhanced prizes, you name it, and they are already delivering it. We are able to convey the best practices from market to market. Digital is another major growth engine. We are enhancing online engagement through CRM, data analytics, gamification, and loyalty programs. Retail, however, remains critical as well.
We are innovating still in retail to keep it resilient and appealing with digitalization and customer registration, allowing us to achieve many of the same benefits in retail as online and to create a true omnichannel experience. I think Greece is the best example of it with OPAP stores. Next, let's look at inorganic growth, another pillar in our strategy, inorganic growth, M&A-driven growth. It's been a key part of our strategy pretty much from the start and nicely complements organic initiatives. First of all, it's important to emphasize that we assess all our acquisitions on a standalone basis, but also only pursue acquisitions which are additive to our existing operations through synergies or by creating new growth opportunities.
We target bolt-on acquisitions that strengthen our core, new verticals in existing markets, or more recently in technology and content, which are critical for differentiation and innovation, or even exciting new gaming verticals. PrizePicks and Daily Fantasy Sports is a great example. The next slide looks at the key end markets or areas we are focused on in our inorganic growth strategy and shows a few examples of how recent acquisitions fit within these. In essence, our strategy is highly targeted, focusing on lottery, complementary products, and technology and content. In fact, you could see that some of our acquisitions tick more than one box. At the bottom of the slide, again, a reminder that each of these acquisitions enhances our platform as well as being a strong business in its own right.
To summarize our inorganic growth strategy, this strategy provides all with a robust framework for evaluating opportunities in a disciplined way. We will continue to make value-accretive acquisitions whilst also managing other capital allocation priorities like shareholder distributions. To help to bring our strategy to life, here are some examples from the last few years. As you can see, each transaction has been based on strategic priorities I have mentioned, new tech, all new verticals in existing markets, completely new verticals or existing verticals in new markets. These are all great businesses, but at the same time, in each case, they have more than delivered on our expectations. Finally, on the next slide, a look at an element that underpins many of the areas we have discussed, leveraging content. Allwyn brings strong digital expertise with proprietary technology and the ecosystem around it.
Having control over core technologies, OPAP can innovate faster and deliver at a pace that meets customer expectations. As I mentioned previously, these are now increasingly set not by gaming operators, but by the best-in-class global entertainment and social media products. Additionally, OPAP's best-in-class proprietary content enables the delivery of a pipeline of fresh, locally relevant, high-performing, and unique games, which drive customer engagement as well as retention. Finally, AI is a key engine of future growth in gaming as well. With even greater scale, we will be able to embrace AI at a much faster pace, more professional pace, and thus unlocking new play categories, delivering advanced personalized gaming experiences and advanced marketing. This all further improves player protection at the same time.
On the next slide, we show our technology stack, which is broad and covers multiple critical areas from lottery systems to iGaming platforms and sports betting engines. Owning these core technologies in each and every gaming vertical gives us control, gives us flexibility and speed, which enables faster innovation and reducing reliance on third parties, it's evident. Across many of these functions, we have in-house capabilities, but currently, we have not rolled these out extensively yet across all of our markets. It is a strategic priority to do so for us, and we see significant further value creation opportunity here as we deliver this, and we deliver hence also the better or enhancing innovation. We reduce costs, and we accelerate growth. On the next slide, we touch on our global brand strategy.
We are in the process of transforming global visibility and awareness of the Allwyn brand, as well as rolling it out as a B2C brand and rebranding our operations in the Czech Republic and Greece and Cyprus. Indeed, some of you may have seen our successful partnership with Formula One and McLaren team as a part of that global one-brand strategy. A global brand has many advantages, including reaching new audiences. Formula One and McLaren partnership helps us exactly with that. It helps us to do marketing more efficiently and enhance our platform by supporting our international profile and also trusted reputation. A great example also of one brand in this space in the sports betting world is Betano, because Betano's single-brand strategy, which has been one key driver of its sector-leading performance, has done exactly that.
Betano, as a brand, is a prominent sponsor of high-profile regional or even global competitions: World Cup, Euro Cup, Copa Americana, great examples, and leverages this one brand, same brand exposure across its entire businesses, which multi-brand operators actually are, of course, unable to do. It's a great advantage. On the next slide, we try to show that we are introducing the Allwyn brand in a way that feels familiar and respects local heritage. Greece is a very good example, or the Czech Republic, that's where we started. As you can see in these images, we have kept OPAP blue and Sazka yellow as key elements of their visual identity in the respective markets and continue to connect with our many years of high-profile corporate social responsibility actions.
Allwyn will complement local presence and product brands, giving the best of both worlds and the benefits of scale and recognition of a global brand with the local trust and heritage that our customers always have valued. A few words on the next slide on responsible gaming. We operate at the highest standards of play protection and are always aligned with the global frameworks and certifications for safer gambling, for example, from World Lottery Association or European Lotteries Association. Responsible gaming, actually, for us, is not a barrier or just another priority. It's the prerequisite for sustainable growth and a long-term trust with regulators and stakeholders. They expect us to deliver to the good cause, but at the same time, they expect the consumer protection or responsible gaming standards to be upheld.
It is embedded in our thinking, strategy, and actions, and it's an integral part of our strategy. On the next slide, you could see that more broadly, we seek to make also positive contributions to our communities. It's just what people expect from the lotteries, and here we have a few examples that I have selected to demonstrate just this. The reach of our initiatives is extremely wide, but I'm proud of their positive impact, so I will not go case by case on how we support large hospitals in Greece or support gender equality or volunteering or well-being. It's a huge range of initiatives, and we are very proud of what we could do as a bigger business in respective markets. Important slide, finally, in this section.
In our meetings with investors over recent weeks, we were asked what OPAP will look like in five years. It's, of course, an exciting question to answer. Let me try my best to paint the picture of OPAP 2030. Our ambition is clearly being the leading global gaming entertainment company with number one positions across lottery, sports betting, and iGaming market. To be the market leader has many benefits. We will approach this with the same motivation and discipline as in the past as we seek to expand and densify our footprint across Europe and North America. We want to do it by deepening digital capabilities further and leveraging proprietary technology where possible and proprietary own content to deliver best-in-class consumer experience, gaming experience.
This vision builds on our proven track record of disciplined growth and positions us to capture new opportunities across markets as well as across products. I think we are very confident in delivery and continuing to implement our strategy and are confident that we will continue to deliver best-in-class financial returns to the shareholders being a public company. We are quite ready for this. Moving on, the across Allwyn, and we go a little bit more into the business unit. We will go into greater detail now on our growth platform in terms of organic growth levers within our business units. This is the four business units so that you could even have a good deep dive on how we could report on it.
This slide is an overview of the four key geographic markets in which we operate and which we use as a framework for our reporting. I'll walk through a more detailed section on each business unit, highlighting the attributes of the business and the way in which we deploy our group strategy and drive value creation within each. Let's start with continental Europe. Our continental European business comprises market-leading positions in lottery across Europe, as well as complementary scaled sports betting and iGaming operations in most of those lottery markets. We are the national gaming champion in these markets. Across this balanced product portfolio, we generated around EUR 1.3 billion OVBDA in the last 12 months and grew NGR at a CAGR of 7% between 2022 and 2024.
That growth is driven by both attractive underlying market fundamentals and delivery of various strategic and operational initiatives, which I mentioned in my strategy section. Across our businesses in continental Europe, we benefit from very strong market positions. That is highlighted in three ways on this slide. Firstly, we have number one market positions in all of the lottery markets in which we operate. Secondly, we also have number one market positions in sports betting and iGaming in Austria, Greece, and Cyprus. Thirdly, our extensive distribution networks with multiple thousands of points of sale across all of our markets are normally one of the largest retail networks in the country, representing a substantial and difficult-to-replicate competitive advantage. On the product innovation side, we are always thinking about our customer proposition.
If you have joined our earnings calls, you will know that each time we run through all the exciting innovations we have introduced in the previous quarter. To highlight just a few examples in continental Europe, for example, we have continuously developed our cross-border lottery games, launching Euro Jackpot in Greece in 2024. We hope to launch it also in Cyprus soon, next year, hopefully. These games have higher jackpots and so can generate additional excitement and engagement, especially when these are multiple rollovers. We have also evolved our annuity game offering, which, by, for example, repositioning Lotto in Greece as an annuity game as part of a portfolio rebalancing when we introduced Euro Jackpot, launching Euro Dreams, the first multi-country annuity game in Austria, and launching a whole family of Renta annuity games in the Czech Republic.
We see these games as particularly appealing to younger adults, annuity proposition, and so it's pleasing to have our expanded portfolio here. In digital, within the digital, our initiatives in continental Europe are focused on both driving digital growth as well as digitalizing existing physical retail operations. On the former, we have improved our front ends across mobile and desktop, as well as expanding the games offering and product feature set. For example, launching in-house live casino in the Czech Republic and Austria. Within retail, we have promoted loyalty programs that allow us to engage more frequently with customers through multiple channels. Retail is not anymore about anonymous base. Retail is a lot about de-anonymized concrete base that frequent our retail locations.
The Sazka Group Loyalty Scheme is a great example of this, allowing us to de-anonymize more than 40% of our retail GGR, which is a phenomenal achievement, world-class. Looking across our markets, we see significant headroom for growth in lottery and gaming spend still. Greece and Cyprus have the greatest GGR as a percentage of GDP across all of sports betting, gaming, and lottery. It is about 1.4%. Several of the markets in which we operate are less than 50% of that level. The potential for structural growth is evident, particularly where we are also providing customers with more innovative and exciting ways how to play through both retail and digital channels, so omnichannel experience. As we have implemented our organic growth initiatives throughout continental Europe, we have driven rapid growth in the online channel with a 25% compound annual growth rate from 2019 to 2024.
At the same time, we have seen tremendous resilience in our retail channels, with GGR over that period broadly stable despite customer habits evolving through the COVID pandemic more into online. Our retail in our world has not been cannibalized. As a result, we have delivered a total compound annual growth rate for the period of almost 6%, which is definitely superb in the lottery world. As we move to the outlook for continental Europe, we see significant growth potential as we deliver a high pace of product innovation and enhanced digital offering and content while keeping retail exciting and relevant. That will translate into further compounding growth, high profitability, and substantial cash flow generation. That is the cash base Allwyn business. Moving on to North America.
As we have stated before, we view North America as a tremendous growth opportunity in the casual gaming entertainment sector. It's a very substantial market. A lot is happening. This is actually now the market where some of the most exciting innovations in the gaming are taking place, especially online. Through a disciplined acquisition strategy, we have built a scaled and profitable business, delivering approximately $1 billion of net revenues and $345 million of adjusted EBITDA over the last 12 months to June pro forma for PrizePicks. This is the base in the U.S., the Daily Fantasy Sports PrizePicks, a sizable business already. In this section, I'll go through the exciting growth profile and outlook for North American business in a bit more detail. This is where we are.
I think turning to the next slide, like other geographies, if I do not know if Ken or me, I can cover that as well, and then I will probably move to Ken. Our North American business benefits from number one positions in the markets in which it operates. You see that the recent agreement to acquire PrizePicks, which is the category leader in Daily Fantasy Sports, added an undisputed leadership position in a large and exciting market, operating across 45 jurisdictions with more than 2 million monthly active users. The last 12 months' growth was 50%-60%, and we are the number one provider of e-instants as well in America or e-instants.
Not through PrizePicks, but we provide to state lotteries in the U.S. our e-instants or instant win games business via IWG, which is a company that we own 60%-70%, and this is a great business in its own right and also has some interesting synergies with our operations. We are also private manager. This is the last one in the Illinois Lottery. We are also an obvious lottery operator there, but in one market, possible to grow in other markets. We have three ways of presence in the U.S., as you could see. Illinois Lottery is the largest and most performing lottery in the U.S. It's one of the three so-called private management agreements, and we are very proud that demonstrating that private lottery operator definitely makes sense if you compare the performance with other lotteries in the U.S.
A few words on PrizePicks on the next slide because I think it's important. This is going to be a very important piece of the business, not only in the U.S., but for overall Allwyn Group. The leadership position of PrizePicks is testament to its focus on product innovation and delivering a differentiated customer proposition. They pioneered what is known now as the DFS Plus format, a simplified, very playful way how to engage with your favorite athletes. Because while the fantasy sports category has been around for some years, this is really a simplified mobile-first format where users make more or less predictions on individual players that Americans are obsessed with sports statistics. For example, how many strikeouts a pitcher in baseball delivers or how many assists a player records in basketball. All of that is followed with huge passion among the American audience.
If PrizePicks players are correct in their more or less predictions, they win a fixed multiple of their entry fee. You win a 2x or 5x, very easy to understand, very easy to be very engaged. As one user quoted, "Even a boring American football game becomes very exciting thanks to PrizePicks." This format really removes complexity and delivers more immediate results, making it very appealing for casual users and ideal for mobile play. We see a very exciting growth trajectory in Daily Fantasy Sports, and we expect the market to have a mid-teens growth rate per annum over the medium term. PrizePicks is therefore a great fit for Allwyn, adding to our casual gaming entertainment capabilities. It adds another to Allwyn it significantly strengthens our presence in the U.S. and has strong technology capabilities.
They build up their own tech stack. A lot of people from Georgia Tech, they're based in Atlanta. It's an interesting upside optionality through prediction markets is there as well. There's a big hyperbound prediction market. There's a product called PrizePicks Predict, which is embedded in one app. There's also a hedging and future growth potential exploitation if prediction markets pick up more in the U.S. If you really take a look at PrizePicks and who they are, they are double of the next player, which is called Underdog. They are an undisputed market leader. It's ahead of traditional DFS peers and online sports betting operators like DraftKings and FanDuel, who also offer the product, but they actually build their sports betting businesses. They focused on it.
They focused on the foundations of the fantasy sports products, but PrizePicks user base is growing rapidly. They almost doubled since 2023. This gives us confidence in the business to continue to deliver on its strong historical financial profile. On the next slide, you could see that PrizePicks has delivered exceptional growth with a compound annual growth rate of over 100% in net revenue since 2022. They also, at the same time, produce high EBITDA margins and strong cash flow generation. EBITDA margins have expanded to the high 30s in the last 12 months, and the business has substantially and sustainably delivered also adjusted free cash flow conversion in excess of 90%. Very capital-efficient business. It's exceptional for a business that has been growing so quickly.
The next slide on PrizePicks, we want to make sure that you really understand what we've done with the PrizePicks acquisitions. If you benchmark PrizePicks to the top three U.S. online sports betting and iGaming peers, you could see that PrizePicks has grown materially faster. You could see that it is achieving much higher EBITDA growth and EBITDA margins. Lastly, PrizePicks' engaged user base of around 2 million actives is not dissimilar to the size of the largest peers in online sports betting and iGaming, highlighting the scale and reach of PrizePicks. For all the reasons we've covered, we are extremely excited about the outlook for PrizePicks within the Daily Fantasy Sports category.
To then to the next slide, we look at prediction markets in the U.S., which are highly complementary to DFS, with sports event prediction being the most requested feature from existing PrizePicks customers. This is a fast-moving space, but PrizePicks is extremely well placed to be one of the winners from the development of prediction markets. PrizePicks was the first sports entertainment operator to be licensed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and it has multi-year partnerships with both key exchanges for prediction markets, namely Kalshi and Polymarket. It launched its prediction markets offering earlier this month and with a very large base of highly engaged users, great brand recognition, presence across the U.S., proprietary tech, and a fast-moving management team with a deep understanding of what customers want. PrizePicks is positioned to be a significant beneficiary of the development of prediction markets within one app.
Within one app, that's very important to emphasize. The next page summarizes some of the key details from our acquisition of PrizePicks so that we could demonstrate to you that we thought very carefully about how we structured the deal and priced the deal. We are expecting closing in Q1 of 2026 and are acquiring a 62.3% stake for $1.6 billion. There is an additional potential earnout of up to $1 billion, but this starts to accrue only if average adjusted EBITDA over 2026 to 2028 increases by around 40% versus EBITDA in the last 12 months to June this year. That is around $475 million on average over the next three years compared with the last 12 months of around $340 million.
The maximum earnout of up to $1 billion is not realized unless average EBITDA over the next three years is greater than approximately $735 million. You see the level of ambition and potential in this business. I am pleased therefore that we have in mind the mechanics here, which contemplated an assumption on the earnout for modeling purposes. We are pleased to share that with you so that you could model by yourself what the upside potential is. Another important market-leading, undisputed market-leading position in the U.S. market is through content. Some sort of a good example of vertical integration of Allwyn, which is a number one supplier of online instant win lottery content. Read, it is a digital version of a scratch card. This business is named Instant Win Games, and we acquired a 70% stake back in 2024.
Meanwhile, we're working very closely with the management team. They are an undisputed number one instant provider in North America with 40%+ market share, serves around 30+ lotteries across North America, South America, Europe, and even Asia-Pacific. With over 20 years of experience, IWG has a well-established reputation as an innovation leader in this space. It is another high-growth, high-cash conversion business with significant total addressable market upside in the U.S., given only a small number of states in the U.S. currently even offer iLottery. Every single state lottery in the U.S. that opens up iLottery immediately goes into our e-instants proposition.
While a core part of the rationale for acquiring IWG was that it is a great standalone business and investment, and we felt very excited about the prospects of the business as is, it also provides synergies with Allwyn operations, which include, for example, vertical integration, which brings greater control over game content, product roadmap, and time to market, improves the margin as well. Secondly, it aligns with Allwyn's ambition to deliver best-in-class user experience to players with very bespoke and great award-winning content. It also gives us an immense amount of data, which provides further insight into player behavior and preferences. Turning to the next slide on this e-scratch card category, the e-scratch cards, e-instants are one of the most dynamic sectors of the lottery market. Each lottery, if you look at the growth areas, this is in the space of digital e-instants.
IWG has consistently been at the forefront of these developments with its game innovations. The product has evolved from single price point online scratch games with static bonuses back in 2010 to advanced offerings with boosting power hour, player personalization, as well as multiplayer and multi-stage jackpots. This is where they dominate. This is, again, this is why they are wanted. IWG's unique market position is underpinned by their ability to innovate along these fronts. Being a first in the market with new features, functionalities, or game concepts, IWG has been able to consistently stay ahead of the competition and keep the undisputed market share leadership. On the next slide, recently, IWG has also pioneered one of the biggest innovations in iLottery.
I mentioned that already, which is a multi-state e-instant jackpot, which you can think of as a private EuroMillions or Mega Billions for instance. We do that. Our business does that. This is IWG's number one position in a multi-state jackpot of e-instants in the U.S. and Canada, which is the absolute differentiator for the business. IWG launched multi-state products in the last couple of years with a footprint spanning multiple key markets. They now represent a meaningful proportion of total online instant win game sales across all iLottery U.S. states. Just these two games on the slide generated an impressive $1.3 billion in sales over the last 12 months across the participating states in the U.S., which are all of them if they have online. IWG now plans to replicate that success with a multi-provincial jackpot game in Canada. In the U.S., they have states.
In Canada, they have provinces. Why not have a multi-provincial jackpot game there as well? On the next slide, a quick word on financials. IWG continues to perform very well with over 20% compounded annual growth since 2022 across revenue, earnings, and cash flow. It is also very profitable with over 80% EBITDA margins and has very low capital intensity underpinned by its business model that is scalable and also, again, infrastructure. This business next year will generate about EUR 50 million of EBITDA. Finally, North America, we have also Illinois State Lottery Operations. This is the smallest but very important piece of the business. This is our base of being a private lottery operator in the U.S. Let's take a quick look at that.
We are an operator of the largest privately operated lottery in the U.S. and under our stewardship, one of the best performing lotteries in the U.S. I already mentioned that. We have demonstrated the top-tier performance since it was acquired with the highest growth in traditional lottery sales across the U.S. states for two consecutive years in 2024 and 2025. Illinois also leads the way on digitalization of lotteries, the digital channel, which is powered by our own tech, by the way. It accounts for about 44% of the total draw-based game lottery sales in Illinois, which is significantly ahead of other state lotteries that deliver less than 15% of sales through the online channel. The Illinois Lottery keeps on delivering record net income returns to the state, which significantly contributes to social and community initiatives in the state of Illinois, which is especially in the space of education.
This is for us a strategic beachhead. It's a base from which to drive innovation, refine our product offering, and demonstrate the value add of the Allwyn platform and positions us well for future opportunities in the large U.S. lottery market. Moving the outlook to some sort of a financial outlook for North America or strategic outlook for North America. We expect to maintain our high growth rates across our businesses with upside potential to our base plan from prediction markets. That's the PrizePicks space. This growth is also combined with high profitability and low capital intensity. A very favorable financial profile. Turning now to the U.K., where we are exclusive license operator of the U.K. National Lottery for the next 10 years.
It's been a historic landmark win for OPAP back in 2022 when the verdict came that we off-seated the incumbent after 30 years. That was a culmination of what we could bring as a best of Europe to the U.K. We are at an early stage of our operations in the U.K. and are currently focused on transition, which means upgrading legacy technology infrastructure that has long constrained innovation in the U.K., as well as constrained financial performance. We expect our investment and our commercial initiatives to drive top-line growth, earnings, and cash flow over the medium term and are already seeing an uplift in performance this year with two positive GGR and good underlying trends each quarter in the last two quarters so far this year. That represents a positive change in trajectory after a long period of weak performance.
I'll now walk through some additional details on the next slides on the license, on the business, and the initiatives we definitely intend to take. If you look at the next slide, we leveraged our multinational lottery experience to produce the winning tender for the fourth license to operate the U.K. National Lottery. That verdict came on the 15th of March, 2022. The competition had some favorable dynamics in a competition that was well designed to be as competitive as possible, with many features we do not normally see in our other markets. Of course, we think that we had a lot of great ideas to transform the U.K. National Lottery. We are delighted to have realized a higher score than the incumbent operator was, also being the only new applicant to deliver a qualifying and scored bid.
This underperformance is illustrated on the next slide by the historical growth profile under previous operator. As you can see, from 2016 to 2023, a period characterized by limited investment and innovation and a misjudged relaunch of one of the key games saw that growth rates of only 1% per annum. Very meek. Benchmarking the U.K. to other European markets in 2024, you can also see the relative underperformance with lottery GGR adult spend in the U.K., which is material behind other continental Europe markets like France. There is clearly a lot of potential to increase performance across a range of parameters because the lottery spend per capita in the U.K. is lower than in comparable markets. That is a sizable opportunity for us. The U.K. can be and will be also a growth market for us from that perspective.
Indeed, on the next slide, we highlight that we have already implemented the biggest tech upgrade since the launch of the National Lottery, delivering more than 30 systems and replaced the technology behind the retail channel at the end of July this year, with new terminals already in place for more than 70% of our retail partners. Please think of the size of the retail landscape in the U.K. of 40,000 retail terminals. The completion of the tech transformation is underway. It's in progress because we need to finish up also after the retail, also digital piece of it. There's about 12 million registered customers that play National Lottery on a yearly basis online. This business is 50% retail, 50% online. It's a mature market when it comes to online share.
This will be the focus of our performance improvements as we move on. In terms of outlook for the U.K., on the next slide, we plan to deliver product and player experience improvement from our upfront investments. We were prepared to invest into the transition of the U.K. Lottery to enable further product innovation. This will, we believe, underpin the more sustainable revenue growth going forward and drive also uplift in EBITDA, EBITDA margin, and cash flow generation from weak historic levels. Moving on to Betano, the next reporting market segment. We own a 37% stake in this business. It is one of the largest and fastest growing online sports betting and iGaming platforms globally. Betano has a strong presence across multiple regulated markets in Europe and Latin, including being the clear leader in Brazil, the largest market in Latin America.
Actually, it's one of the most exciting opportunities in gaming globally. It's also fairly profitable and has high cash flow generation with last 12 months EBITDA of over EUR 800 million after several years of very strong top-line trends, including a total revenue CAGR growth of over 80% between 2022 and 2024. Betano's growth and profitability reflect a highly differentiated platform. It includes its single global brand supported by high-profile sponsorships and best-in-class proprietary technology. I already mentioned World Cup, Copa Americana. People do recognize Betano. In this section and next, I try to cover Betano's positioning and track record, its key success factors, and why we believe it is well placed to continue to thrive. On the next page, we try to highlight Betano's positioning as a recognized global leader.
It operates under a single brand, Betano brand, across 19 markets with more than 13 million active players and supported by high-profile sponsorships of events, teams, and sponsorship of leagues with global reach. This leadership has been recognized by the industry, notably being awarded Operator of the Year in 2025 by EGR, which is the company that looks at the sector itself for the second consecutive year. Needless to say, I think it's one of the great examples of how a company originally from Greece could expand so successfully internationally. If you look at Betano's growth on the next slide, the team has been very successful in expanding the footprint organically and profitably over the last number of years, having entered 16 markets since 2016. They are enabled by their single brand strategy, their own Betano brand, and their proprietary technology that they developed themselves.
I mentioned before that Betano is the clear number one operator in the large and exciting Brazilian market across online sports betting and iCasino. This is their jewel. They also have an unparalleled track record in the industry of organically entering other new markets over the last five to ten years profitably and moving forward to achieving leadership or podium positions in short time frames, really. While Brazil is the largest market, Betano also has substantial leading market positions in a number of other markets, for example, in Romania and Portugal in Europe. Turning to some of the key factors which underpin Betano's success. First and foremost, it's its culture. It's the team, obviously. Betano's corporate brand is Kaizen Gaming, with Kaizen representing its philosophy of continuous improvement.
It's led by George Daskalakis, the founder and CEO, and guided by this philosophy that the team have amazing single-minded focus on delivering the best experience for customers. They love the world of sport and passionate about sport, and they continue expanding and they continue consolidating leadership positions globally. The second key success factor for Betano is best-in-class proprietary technology. This technology, and you see all the details about the global hubs and what their KPIs of 700 software engineers. This clearly supports Betano's strategy of rapid innovation. That's why they grow as they grow. They achieve both organic market, they entry at speed to the new markets, great visibility, localize and optimize the core product for local preferences, be it in Brazil or Mexico or Argentina. This is tech of Betano.
Thirdly, Betano is one of the very few, actually few global gaming companies that operate under a single global brand, Betano. You see, as I mentioned earlier, this is combined with a large scale, of course, and this has allowed Betano to operate a differentiated marketing strategy with a focus on the largest global teams and events. This strategy drives marketing cost efficiencies, clearly, and provides significant brand recognition ahead of new market entries. They immediately have an advantage even before they enter a new market because it is recognized from the other markets. Latin America is a great example. For all the reasons mentioned, we are excited about the outlook for the Betano business. We see the further extension of market leadership and share, as well as profitably entering and scaling in new markets and really driving continued GGR growth, margin expansion, and cash flow generation.
I think it's all I have to say so far when it comes to these four building blocks and reporting markets from their unique market-leading positions and growth prospects. Now it's up to Ken to tell you more about some financials. Ken, over to you.
Super. Thank you again, Robert. We've already spent time talking about the high-level financial metrics, our growth, our profitability, our cash flow generation, and I hope that the numbers to a large extent speak for themselves. In this section, I'm going to touch on some of the topics that we understand are of particular interest to OPAP shareholders and the equity markets. Going in no particular order, I will start with dividends.
Looking at OPAP's standalone dividend profile on the left, as you know, the current dividend policy is a minimum of EUR 1 per share, and DPS has been above that level since 2022. However, that level has obviously been supported by the GGR tax prepayment, and the impact at the end of that prepayment on cash flow generation will be pretty substantial, in excess of EUR 200 million a year on cash flow. That's about actually over 50% per share. Obviously, as a single country operator, there's a limited potential for that reduction in cash flow to be compensated for by earnings growth, as well as there being risk around the renewal in future terms of the large concession that runs to 2030. Looking at how we look for the combined company, we've repeated the minimum dividend, EUR 1 per share.
Obviously, looking across the bill, the expiration of the GGR tax prepayment will have an impact on our cash flow generation on a combined basis, but significantly less in absolute terms given the scale of the other businesses. Beyond that, there is scope for base dividend growth based on all the drivers that Robert's been describing in the previous parts of the presentation. In addition, we've highlighted that we will consider special dividends and buybacks when that's the optimal use of capital. Final observation is that the cash flows supporting the combined company's dividends are much more diversified across country products and also across exclusive and non-exclusive licenses. That creates a much more resilient as well as faster growing dividend.
To repeat our capital allocation framework, which we see as being an important part of the investor, of course, we're going to run a policy that ensures significant ongoing cash payments and also an efficient, conservative, and flexible capital structure. Just to recap the key points, in addition to the dividend policy, which we already covered, the shareholders of the combined company after completion will be paid a special dividend of EUR 0.80 per share. Our medium-term leverage target is around 2.5 x net debt to EBITDA, which will provide significant flexibility for further value-creating investments or, of course, buybacks and special dividends.
The next few slides help to contextualize the cash flow generation that will support that capital allocation framework and also include some benchmarking against ATEX and ATEX peers and other gaming and lottery peers. Starting with a few words on CapEx, I think it's worth reiterating that underpinning the shareholder distributions is a highly cash flow generative and genuinely asset-light business. Like OPAP, we've got almost no retail outlets or other fixed assets, and maintenance CapEx requirements are very limited. If you look at the little table on the right, you can see that CapEx as a percentage of revenue is actually very closely in line with what we've seen at OPAP historically across our continental European and North American businesses. 2%-3% of net revenue.
The one exception, of course, is the U.K. where CapEx has been significantly elevated in the last couple of years as we've invested at the start of the new license in support of the technology transition. That's the shaded green bar. As we complete that investment, we expect that CapEx in the U.K. will return to historical levels of a few tens of millions in the relatively near term. You can see those levels on the left-hand side of the chart. What we'll see in the U.K. is a very nice picture from the cash flow perspective. At the same time that we're seeing an increase in top line and profitability as we begin to see the benefits of our investments, which will drive an increase in operating cash flow, we'll see a significant reduction in CapEx.
That will drive a pretty substantial turnaround in free cash flow as CapEx reduces to maintenance levels. I'd also like to remind OPAP shareholders that with the exception of Italy, Greece is actually the only market within the Allwyn footprint where we have typically had upfront payments for new licenses. We are currently in the middle of paying for the upfront payment for the new license, which runs from the 1st of December. We've literally just made the second of three payments for the new license, and the remaining payment is due in April. For almost a decade after that, there will be no material upfront license payments other than any potential payments ahead of the start of the new lottery and gaming concession in Greece in 2030.
Now, to contextualize the dividend payout levels that we're proposing and to give some visibility on cash coverage, this is a chart which shows at the bottom the by Allwyn historically, and the green bar on top of it, dividends paid to the shareholders Allwyn, so the public shareholders of OPAP. In total, we've paid EUR 1.7 billion of dividends since between 2019 and 2024, EUR 300 million more so far this year. On top of that, the OPAP minority shareholders have received total dividends of EUR 1.6 billion, as well as benefiting from the OPAP share buyback program in 2023 and 2024. In 2024, you can see that the business generated almost EUR 900 million of dividends for shareholders.
That implies that the EUR 1 per share minimum dividend is more than amply covered, especially considering the growth of the business and the expansion of the perimeter with the acquisition of PrizePicks. Now I'd like to hand back to Pavel for a few words on the OPAP dividend, please.
Thank you, Ken. As you know, OPAP dividend per share increased strongly from 2020, which was primarily supported by the prepayment of GGR contribution. As previously mentioned, this benefit is due to expire in 2030, which, together with upfront payment for lottery and retail sports betting license, will affect our ability to pay dividends at these levels. In addition, from 2022, OPAP's dividend has been further supported by SCRIP program, which enabled further capital returns. You can see those impacts on the chart.
Thank you. Thank you, Pavel. Now to provide a further frame of reference for the dividends, we thought it was useful to contextualize the historic dividend yield of OPAP over the last couple of years and also the forward-looking dividend yield of the combined entity. Looking at the left-hand chart, which shows the yield on the constituents of the companies listed on the ATEX, you can see that OPAP was a clear outlier with a very substantial dividend yield of over 8%. On the right-hand chart, looking at that number normalized for the expected reduction as a result of the end of the GGR tax repayment, you can see a more normal, I would say, sustainable level of around 5%. Again, looking at the left chart, you can see that the combined company will continue to be one of the highest-yielding stocks on the ATEX.
On the right-hand chart, looking at a broad universe of gaming and lottery peers, the combined company will be one of the highest-yielding companies in the sector, having a best-in-class growth outlook. One final, probably obvious observation, but one that we think is definitely very worthy of consideration, is that we would expect a high-growth company with a well-supported and growing dividend to trade on a yield below where the combined entity is currently trading on a pro-forma basis. That would imply some quite significant upside potential from capital appreciation. On the next slide, just a few words that may be relevant to those who are interested in future index inclusion, which we know is an important consideration and certainly something that we are very focused on maximizing the benefits of.
With the primary listing remaining on ATEX, we do expect that the combined business will remain in the MSCI EM Index and Greece Index. Obviously, a key factor there is that the combined business will continue to have a significant proportion of its revenue and the majority of its EBITDA from markets that are defined as that are categorized as emerging markets for the purpose of that classification. Now, a few words on our capital structure and our balance sheet. The combined company would pro-forma for the acquisitions of PrizePicks and Novibet have leverage of 2.7x pro-forma at the end of the first half and say the same pro-forma at the end of September. If you look across the chart at the lottery and gaming peers, you can see that that number is actually a little bit below the range.
There are certainly well-regarded companies in the sector that have got significantly higher leverage. You'd see the same if you look at our leverage policy, two and a half times is in the middle or actually probably slightly below the range of the listed peer group. Finally, worth emphasizing once again that because of that cash flow generation, we deleverage very quickly, reflecting that cash flow generation, but also strong EBITDA growth. We feel that the leverage policy is very much in line with peers and gives us a good balance between maintaining a flexible balance sheet and giving us flexibility to invest. On the next slide, a few words on our maturity profile and our split between different instruments. Looking at the maturity profile on the left, you can see that we've got no material maturities until 2029.
We actually made the first small repayment of the bond that we had maturing in 2029 earlier this year as well. Over the last several years, we've been very deliberately implementing a highly diversified capital structure. We now have access to all the most liquid and largest debt markets that are relevant for a company like us so that we can achieve the best pricing. We now have euro and dollar-denominated bonds, euro and dollar-denominated institutional loans, and a syndicated bank facility. That includes a supportive group of over 20 banks, including leading European, U.S., and Japanese commercial and investment banks. Moving on to the last slide in the section, we've repeated for your convenience the guidance slides that we published when we announced the transaction, including guidance on net revenue by business as well as our expectations for the margin trajectory.
These slides are unchanged since the announcement of the transaction. We've just included them for convenience. We've included, again, net revenue growth guidance on a consolidated basis to fully frame the outlook. As a reminder, we expect consolidated net revenue growth in the mid-20s in 2026. That will include a tailwind from the acquisitions of Novibet and PrizePicks. We expect medium-term consolidated net revenue growth in the low double digits. That does not include, obviously, Betano, which is consolidated as an equity-method investment. With respect to profitability, we see some upside to margins, gradual increase to 40%+ margins in the medium term. Looking at the individual businesses, we expect that the trends will be broadly in line with recent years and the effect. The margin increase reflects some small operational leverage within the business and efficiencies as we grow.
The second page of guidance is, again, unchanged, so I don't propose to go through it in detail. We've included really granular information on all the key cash flow metrics, which we think are relevant for modeling the cash flows. With that, I'd like to hand back to Robert for some closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, Ken. Actually, I know it's been an extensive, comprehensive defilé Allwyn this slide recaps our guidance for net revenue growth by business. Sorry. This slide is basically summarizing the key reasons why the combined company and this transaction is actually compelling. Since 2013, KKCG and Allwyn have accompanied and supported OPAP and transformed it into a modern Greek gaming champion, delivering strong returns to shareholders.
We have observed and reached the natural limits of one-country focus, and this transaction would be the next stage on that journey. The proposed structure positions OPAP shareholders for success in a fast-paced and changing industry, thanks to Allwyn's scaled and differentiated platform. A platform of multinational expertise, a platform of own proprietary tech stack, own content, additional competencies, and financial power to compete and give back on a global scale. Our track record is more than proven. OPAP shareholders will benefit from a unique combination of growth, geographical diversification, a broader product portfolio, and steady cash remuneration. I hope that the track record and the way how we describe Allwyn and what OPAP achieved under Allwyn's watch since 2013 is the best testament to it. I have been a part of OPAP and Allwyn journeys from the very start, from 2013.
I'm a member of both Boards, and therefore, I would be truly thrilled to continue partnering with U.S. shareholders who know us in the combined business. I have enormous respect to our Greek team, and Greece is and will remain an incredibly important base for Allwyn, with OPAP, with Allwyn Lottery Solutions, Stoiximan, Betano, as well as Novibet teams, all based in Athens, all based in Greece. This marks the beginning of an exciting chapter, and we couldn't be more energized and thrilled about the journey ahead. I think it's definitely a possible journey. We are confident about the journey, and we value the trust that you already have put in us or will put in us as stewards of OPAP and as stewards of Allwyn.
We are committed to continue to deliver on that trust with a very clear purpose, with a very clear strategy, with a performance record, and with, hopefully, the energy ambition that we have and feel across all of our markets and across all the Allwyn because we picked them. With that, I will now hand over to the operator for the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Investors or credit analysts who wish to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. In the interest of time, we kindly ask you to limit yourself to two questions at a time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Ricardo Chinchilla with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hey, thank you so much for taking my questions. I was hoping if you could start by sharing your thoughts on the potential for Daily Fantasy to continue to grow in the U.S. in line with prediction markets. I understand, and you have been providing very good information regarding the fact that the player profile is very different. I think that some people are concerned that the growth of the prediction markets will come at the expense of other sources of players, and those include Daily Fantasy.
Any thoughts on how the growth could coexist and if there are any regulatory issues that could potentially hurt the company now that they are in a partnership with Kalshi given all the complicated regulatory situation in the U.S.? Your thoughts would be very appreciated. Thank you.
Yeah. Very happy to take a first stab at answering that interesting question. I think the basic answer is that we see PrizePicks as being very much a beneficiary of prediction markets. I think the first point to make is that prediction markets and sports betting and DFS are all different products. People who play DFS, and in fact, most people who bet on sport do that because, at least in part, they see it as entertainment rather than because their primary goal is to win money.
Gamification and online social features are really, really important to a big part of the user base, not just pricing. You see that in particular in DFS, where RFU and the payout is significantly lower than in sports betting. It is possible that, if prediction markets do become widespread in the U.S., sports betting customers, typically some price-sensitive sports betting customers, often the ones who are the most skilled, may move their activity, at least in part, to prediction markets, as has happened actually in Europe, where there's been a product called Betfair, which is essentially a prediction market for many years. That's not PrizePicks's core customer base. PrizePicks, and one of the things we like about it, is that it is a much more casual product.
You can see that, as I mentioned, if you look at their RFU and their return to player, which are significantly lower than it is in sports betting. Looking at the upside, which we think is very material, we think that PrizePicks is really in a very, very good position to be a net beneficiary of incremental business from predictions. It has a very strong brand. It has a very engaged user base across the whole of the U.S. It has about 2 million monthly active users, which is about half of what DraftKings or FanDuel would have. It has a really, really good team, which has a good understanding of what customers want, how to make the game fun, very nimble culture.
You can see that from the fact that they were the first sports entertainment provider to receive SGM registration with the National Futures Association. They have been competing successfully with DraftKings and FanDuel's fantasy products and sports betting products for a long time, actually outcompeting them in what were their original home market. They are liquidity agnostic, so they have their own deals with both Kalshi and Polymarket and can potentially incorporate other providers as well. Just maybe last point is that prediction markets are very much additive for PrizePicks rather than online, which isn't the case for online sports betting companies. The number one requested feature, as I think Robert mentioned during the call, actually, is that for PrizePicks players, it is a team-based product, which hasn't been offered historically because of the regulatory construct. Being able to offer that through prediction markets is a big benefit.
If I can add a bit more color on that, I think please feel free to look at, I think it is about four or five slides on PrizePicks in our deck. The first thing I say about prediction markets' opportunity for PrizePicks is, I hope that, and I think they will, I hope they will focus on what really is their unique proposition, which is the Daily Fantasy Sports and the way how they interact with their customers, rather than dropping the pencil there and putting all the energy into prediction markets. Because prediction markets, if anything, and Ben can just mention it, they are more akin and more similar maybe to sports betting.
There's always a lack of depth because either you want to have fun about your sport or you are in the business of financial derivative. I know that they will try to use their front-end ease of use to present even a financial derivative-like predictive market in a human fashion. Honestly, I think there's so much possible further growth in the core business. Yes, we will be trying to benefit also from the prediction markets. I don't want to call it a hype because it's too early, and I'm really not in the best positions to guess it. What I can guess is that the individual states in the U.S. will be, of course, against it because this is a sort of a very vague federal legislation. By the way, people completely forget about consumer responsible gaming because the prediction markets players are saying, "Oh, it's not me.
It's up to you how you play. It's not my problem how much you play and how much you lose." I think in this legislation, we will see an interesting development, the fast and furious development in the U.S. I just should say that I'm glad that we have a great business in 45 jurisdictions, and only five explicitly rejected it or banned it. The others say it's a safe harbor, it's a game of skill, and maybe they will eventually legislate it one day. It's a clear presence here. The prediction markets will be a clear opportunity for PrizePicks, no question. I'm glad that they have it within one app because they don't confuse the customers with one application for sports, one application for Daily Fantasy, another application for prediction markets. You confuse consumers. I think we have that all embedded in one app.
I think I said it for the third time, this is a clear customer insight and customer-focused demonstration of our Allwyn/PrizePicks approach.
The next question is from the line of Maxim Nekrasov with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you so much for the very interesting, very detailed presentation. I have a question on the U.K. We saw some improvement in growth in recent quarters. However, the margins are a bit low. I think it's 3%-4% above revenues. I wonder what kind of margin profile you see in the U.K. business in the medium term and what should drive that, and whether you see returning to 2023 margins possible for that business. Also regarding the U.K., if you can remind us if there are any implications from the recent budget announcement for you. I have a question on the deal as well, but maybe I can ask it after this answer. Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you for the questions. Maybe starting with the U.K. budget. Actually, absolutely no direct impact on the National Lottery from the budget. The U.K. National Lottery is, to a very, very substantial extent, operated under a different tax system and different regulatory construct from the rest of the gaming sector in the U.K. In terms of tax, it's a totally different construct. The main tax is lottery duty, which has been in place since 1994, I believe. It's a percentage of revenue. The good cause contributions, which is actually the majority of the government take from the U.K. National Lottery, is defined in the contract governing the concession. Essentially defined contractually rather than in the general tax legislation.
The increases in taxation on the online gaming sector in the U.K. have no impact, just for avoidance of doubt, on the National Lottery. I think there is actually an interesting maybe opportunity on the margins for the U.K. National Lottery from the increase in taxation on some forms of online gaming. One of the fastest-growing segments in the U.K. has been what's called interactive instant win games, which are essentially e-scratch cards and e-instants. This is the product that IWG is the leader in. I guess you could say that maybe on the very margin, there is some kind of overlap between the gameplay and the audience of some forms of online gaming and the audience for online instant win games.
To the extent that operators of other online gaming products are required to reduce their payouts because of the increase in tax or reduce bonusing or other promotional activities, that does, all other things being equal, which I think they are, make the National Lottery's proposition more attractive. That is actually an interesting angle for us. In terms of the outlook for margin and profitability in the U.K., we expect to see continued good top-line growth in the U.K. in the next several quarters. In fact, as Robert mentioned, we still have not implemented the transition on the digital side, which is probably the most important part of the overall picture for the consumer experience and ability to offer new and reinvigorated products and CRM. That is going to be the key driver of the top line.
In terms of the profitability, there's a cost recovery mechanism in the U.K., which will start to kick in in the next several quarters. That will result in an increase in profitability after the completion of the handover—sorry, the transition, I should say. The outlook for profitability in the medium term is for certainly an increase in EBITDA. I wouldn't say that it's, at least in the medium term, to levels that were achieved under the former license. In the long term, we do think that that is achievable.
Thank you so much. That's very clear. I also have another question on the deal and the transaction. I wonder if any terms of the deal, such as the share of minorities in the combined company or anything else, are expected or could change. Also regarding the 5% cash exit right threshold, just in terms of the materiality, let's say if there is 5.2% or 5.5% of shareholders exercise their exit rights, how is it expected to be treated with this 5% threshold, how material, yeah, it would be taken. Thank you.
Sure. I'm happy to take that. We do not, at the moment, intend to change any of the terms of the offer. Regarding the 5%, we felt it was very important to include a bright line that would make it very clear to investors that the liquidity of the stock was going to remain significant. As we know, that's important for investor base. It's also important for us. That is why we included the 5%. Our response to similar questions has always been that we do not intend to waive the condition.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Memos Evangelos with Piraeus Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the presentation. I wanted to ask two questions. The first one is, how will you preserve the tax status of the dividend for a Greek shareholder, which is currently 5%, if you transfer the company headquarters to Luxembourg firstly and afterwards to Switzerland? Then my second question is regarding the level Allwyn without opap for the first semester or the nine months, if you may. Thank you.
Hi. I can answer the first question about the dividend. We will be paying the dividend from Swiss company that will have sufficient capital contribution reserves, which means that no withholding tax will be withheld on this from Switzerland. For foreseeable future, we think at least for the next five years as a guidance.
Therefore, any taxation that the investors will suffer will be the local taxation, just like we have today. Whatever the Greek taxation will be for them, that is going to be charged. From Switzerland, there will be no withholding tax. This is being achieved through restructuring, and we have a tax ruling for this.
Sure. On the question about net income, adjusted net income, which is adjusted for PPA adjustments under IFRS 3, which is the standard market approach, obviously, was about EUR 100 million in Q1 and in Q2. We will be publishing our full Q3 MD&A, which will have the comparable number in a couple of days.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Iakovos Kourtesis with Piraeus Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon. My question has to do with Novibet. As far as I understand, the combined entity through a PAPO line scheme and Novibet will control more than 70% of the market share of the online gaming in Greece. In case that you have any problems with the antitrust committee, what are your plans to develop the in-house software capabilities if there is an alternative plan? Second question has to do with Brazil. As far as I understand, there are numerous press reports that the government there plans to increase taxation for gaming, online gaming. What would you expect on this front and if such scenarios are included in your guidance? Thank you very much.
Sure. I realize I failed to—sorry, apologies. With regards to Novibet, I do not think we can comment on the status of the regulatory approvals for this transaction. I think we think Novibet will be a very additive business in terms of the operational business and in terms of the sports betting platform. We have many other alternatives to develop or acquire that technology ourselves if, for whatever reason, the transaction wanted to get approved.
Obviously, we have a strong in-house tech capability, including teams in Athens who are working on our lottery technology and actually parts of the online gaming stack as well. Many alternatives to fill that piece of the tech stack. In terms of Brazil, there have been occasional suggestions or proposals or speculation about changes in the regulatory environment or tax. Actually, nothing has happened since the introduction of the regulation at the beginning of the year. There isn't anything on the agenda at the moment that we would consider to be likely to be approved. Our base case is that the current environment will continue.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Katsios Nestor with Optima Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Thank you for the presentation. Do you have any comment on the ATHEX listing? I think you mentioned earlier that you plan to solely list the new entity on ATHEX. Is there any change with respect to your original plan for a secondary listing? Thank you.
No. No change to the plan. The intention is that ATHEX will continue to be the primary listing. We understand that is important for many shareholders. One of the reasons why we like the transaction structure is that we like the ATHEX listing and the whole ecosystem of brokerage coverage and its coverage and investors from the ATHEX community. We do plan in due course to pursue a secondary listing, but Athens will remain the primary listing.
The next question is from the line of Stamatios Draziotis with Eurobank Equities. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello from my side as well. Thank you for taking my questions. Just a couple, if I may. Just wondering about the minimum—well, the shareholder remuneration policy, if you like. You've committed to a minimum of EUR 1 per share. If you could just tell us what the peak leverage will be post the acquisitions related to PrizePicks and Novibet and the payment of the licenses in Italy. If you could provide related to that, in essence, if you could provide a policy framework, i.e., priority of uses between dividends, M&A, debt reduction, tech investment, whatever. In that regard, what scenarios would reduce dividend capacity? That is the first question.
Secondly, I'm basically just wondering about the thought process behind the Novibet acquisition because this inevitably creates competitive overlap with your associate, Betano. I'm basically wondering whether you see any risk that this could influence your relationship with Betano's management and related to that would be their willingness to upsum dividends to a shareholder that is now backing a rival. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. In terms of leverage, thank you very much for the questions. We have not provided specific forward-looking leverage guidance, but we have provided, I think, quite granular guidance on all the key cash flow items that we expect to see over the next 12 months, including, in particular, the acquisitions. We also actually provided the, I think, leverage disclosure in our recent material pro forma for PrizePicks at 2.7 x.
We are currently a little bit above 2.5 x, but we have very deliberately and also very transparently included a caveat that we are comfortable to go a little bit above 2.5 x where we see a very compelling opportunity to invest capital and generate good returns and where we see a good path to deleveraging. That is very much the case with the PrizePicks and the Novibet acquisitions. Business deleverages very, very quickly. I would actually just also comment that, as you could see on the slide in the presentation where we benchmark our leverage policy and leverage against the policies and actual metrics for our peers, a number of them have been quite significantly above their targets for some time. I would say that our adherence to our policy is exemplary compared with some of the other companies in the sector.
In terms of prioritization of dividends and M&A, the leverage target remains our target with the proviso that I mentioned. The dividend policy has an absolute minimum of EUR 1 a share, though. That is obviously absolute. We understand extremely important to our shareholders. Given the cash flow that the business generates in practice, we do not really see the size of the business and the size of the M&A that we might consider. We do not actually really see a situation where there is much potential contradiction between the two elements of the policy. If you look at the size of the acquisitions that we have made historically, maybe with the exception of PrizePicks, they have all been in the sort of EUR 200-EUR 300 million range. That is actually a relatively small sum in absolute terms.
If you compare it with the amount of dividends that we'd be paying under the EUR 1 basis, the moving part in the capital allocation policy is not more leverage or lower dividends. It is higher special dividends or buybacks. That is why we've been looking at that flexibility and the policy in order to essentially allow us to allocate capital to shareholders where that is the—where we think that is the value-creating option. Robert, do you want to touch on Novibet and Betano?
I think because there was a question in the Greek market on Novibet and Betano, clearly, these are competitors in the Greek market, and we respect that. I think we know from other markets where we, as Allwyn, even are fine with a dual-brand strategy or even competitive situation. The Czech market is another example. We have Sazkabet as well as Betano competing openly against each other.
If there would not be a possibility to extract synergies from a Greek market because these are competitors, so be it, because the Novibet acquisition has more value than just in the Greek market. For example, we do own the proprietary competitive sports betting technology that could be deployed in other markets, not necessarily in Greece. I think that would be my comment to it.
I can just also say maybe a sort of comment coming on the dividend flows from Betano, which, as you know, have been very, very substantial, including EUR 150 million dividend in the third quarter. The Betano business has got no debt. It has got a, as we have been describing, amazing, very asset-light business model and amazing ability to enter new markets and become profitable very, very quickly.
There is really very limited requirement to invest within the business in order to maintain the rate of growth that it has delivered historically. There is no debt. Actually, the business has just fractionally over EUR 1 billion of cash at the end of Q3. There is just really no incentive for anybody to retain cash within the business.
The next question is from the line of Buricaran with JPMorgan . Please go ahead.
Two questions from my side, please. Firstly, I just want to touch base on your long-term growth targets. You mentioned low double digit in 2027 onwards. From what I understand, 2027 should benefit from the annualization of PrizePicks. Basically implying that the organic growth trajectory is more like mid-single digit. Is that something—is that how we should be thinking about organic growth?
That is not really correct, actually. We expect PrizePicks will close in Q1, beginning of Q1. I think in the guidance, we've assumed that it closes in Q1. There may be some small annualization effect, but it's not going to be a material impact.
In terms of the organic growth, we should model low double-digit organic growth at least for the next two years post that, 2027, 2028?
No, that's the medium-term target. We haven't specified what exactly medium-term is, but I think that's the assumption you can make.
That makes sense. That makes sense. I just want to check in terms of annualization, but that's very clear. Thank you. The—predict, I guess. You haven't taken into account—
Apologies. Mr. Caron, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Can you please start your second question from the beginning again?
Sorry. My second— Sorry. My second question was basically on PrizePicks Predict. Just wondering if you—in terms of the investments that come with the new app launch, I guess, or the new product launch, anything to take into account in terms of upcoming investments or CapEx associated with this, I guess?
This is a good question. Thank you very much for asking. I know that some companies which have announced plans to enter prediction markets have announced some quite substantial investment numbers. Actually, we do not expect anything like that level of investment. The main reason being that PrizePicks is already present across the whole of the U.S., which means that they do not need to essentially build a customer base in the states where the sports betting players do not currently operate, as the sports betting guys do, if they want to establish a global position.
They've also got very competitive customer acquisition costs, which reflects the kind of quite interesting and differentiated marketing strategy focused on influencers and on social and word of mouth, which has allowed them to grow the business on a very kind of cost-efficient basis. They also have all their tech in-house and the very nimble and, I would say, efficient tech infrastructure, which will allow them to roll out the new features within the existing app very efficiently. As Robert mentioned, a number of other players will, I think, partly for regulatory reasons and partly for technical reasons, be initially launching predictions in a separate app, and PrizePicks do not have to do that, which is a big advantage from the customer experience perspective. It's also a big advantage from the cost perspective and from the marketing cost perspective, I should say.
The next question is from the line of Matavras Baris with Patelec Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you very much for the very extensive and comprehensive presentation first. My question refers to—I would like to get your comment on the latest PrizePicks financing that was completed during November. I was reading in Bloomberg that there was not enough demand from investors, so the underwriting banks had to step in, basically cover part of the offering. The question is, does this have an impact on your funding cost and on your future, let's say, access to credit markets? Thank you very much.
Yeah. Sure. We decided with the banks who were working on the deal with us that the optimal strategy was to split the transaction into two tranches. When we launched the transaction, we were expecting to raise the entire amount in one market, and we decided that the optimal strategy was to split it into $1 billion in U.S. dollar institutional loans and EUR 500 million in bank loans. We did this because it allowed us to achieve better pricing. I do not think there is anything more to read into it than that. If you look at the trading of our other instruments, there has been no material impact on the trading of any of them.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no further questions in the queue, and that does conclude today's conference. I would like to thank you very much for joining today's call, and I wish you a good day and a good weekend. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.