Welcome, everyone, to our Capital Markets Day. I'm Robson Reeves, and I am the CEO of Bally's International Interactive. I've been with the company for 20 years, and I'm joined here today by Nikos, who is the CEO of Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services. Sorry about that. Joined by Nikos, who's CEO of Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services. Unfortunately, Chris can't join us today due to a personal matter, but he'll be available later on in the week. You'll have to just do with us today. I'm going to present to you the combination that you'll see in Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services and Bally's International Interactive, and we'll have plenty of time for Q&A at the very end.
This is a major milestone for the combination of Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services and Bally's because we will create a global iGaming and lottery champion. We'll have significant scale. We'll have over €1 billion in revenue coming through this business with significant free cash flow generation. Both of these entities have market-leading positions, and with the recurring revenues coming from our lottery contracts, we have this stability of guaranteed revenue and income. Plus, we've got exciting growth prospects and significant margins that we generate in our B2C business. Our shared technology, and we'll go through this a bit later, really gives us a clear growth pathway to generate value for all of our stakeholders. What you're going to hear here is the acquisition overview. Nikos will walk you through that. I'll give you a bit of strategic rationale and then some deep dives.
We're going to zoom ahead. Great. We've got two leading businesses coming together. Firstly, in Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services, you've got a leading technology provider, which is present in 40-plus jurisdictions with long-term contracts. The average duration of our contracts is approximately 16 years, and Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services has got a 30-plus-year track record of renewing contracts and winning new ones. They're fantastic in that space. With BII, which is Bally's International Interactive, we're a multi-brand iGaming operator in the UK and Spain, and we have the number two. We're number two in market share in the UK. We have 6 million-plus users, and we currently hold approximately 14% in market share. This combination will make us the first real omnichannel gaming operator across lottery and iGaming, all under one roof. We can actually access all types of different maturities across different markets.
Some markets only allow lottery, others have the full spectrum, and we have that entire funnel, which gives us multiple routes to market and allows us to provide a superior player experience. Just to reinforce how complementary our tech stack is, sometimes people think these will take a long time to integrate. We'll actually have our integration of our technology stack delivered soon after close, and we'll see our first incarnation this year. Again, to just reinforce, we have a billion of revenues coming through the business. Post-synergy, we'll be around €450 million of EBITDA, and we get a free cash flow conversion, again, post-synergies of approximately 95%. I'm going to hand over to Nikos now, who is going to walk you through the acquisition overview.
Thanks, Robson. Good afternoon from my side. Thank you for your participation. I can understand for all of us it was not that easy to be here today. I will start with providing you with a brief overview of the transaction. The scope is the acquisition of the International Interactive division of Bally's from Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services in consideration and a transaction under price value of €2.7 billion, of which €1.53 billion is going to be cash, and the rest, €1.136 billion, is going to be through the issuance of new shares for Bally's Corporation. How we are going to finance this acquisition, we have secured from the banks that we cooperate a bridge financing of €1.6 billion, and we plan to have a share capital increase, an equity increase of €400 million.
The bridge we expect that is going to be cancelled to substitute with a combination of term loans in British pounds with high yield bonds that we are going to issue in the capital markets. We are going to keep our repayable bond, and we are going also to have a secure financing loans from local Greek banks. The structure after the acquisition, we believe that we are going to be on a net leverage ratio of 3.2 times. In terms of corporate governance, first of all, the company, the new group is going to remain listed in the Athens Stock Exchange, and obviously, all the corporate governance standards of the European Union and the Athens Stock Exchange are going to apply. Mr. Kokkalis is going to remain along with Mr. Sokratis Kokkalis in the board of directors, which is going to be comprised of 11 members.
Most of them are independent directors, and the plan is for Robson and myself also to be part of it. Bally's already the major shareholder of Intralot S.A., and after the transaction, we foresee that it is going to be also the majority, meaning have more than 50% of the shareholding. In terms of regulatory approvals, I think we are good. We have obtained everything both from the UK and Gibraltar, and we are ready to go. Last but not least, on the medium term, we do have a plan for a net leverage ratio of 2.5 times, as well as distributing dividends of 35% of the net profits. Now, in terms of steps, what we have done and what is the next steps to go, the first thing is that Bally started with an approximately 25%-27% ownership of Intralot S.A., and obviously having 100% ownership of Bally's International Interactive.
Immediately prior to the announcement of the transaction, Bally's increased the participation in Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services to more than 33.3%, and this triggered, according to Greek law, a mandatory tender offer. The mandatory tender offer finished on August 28, and as a result, Bally's has a stake of 34.35% in Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services. The next step is the acquisition per se on the cash consideration and the shares that I told you before, and also at the same time, the share capital increase of €400 million that we are about to raise. As I said, Bally's is expected to be the majority shareholder after the closing of the transaction. Robson, back to you, so you can discuss the strategic rationale.
Thank you, Nikos. Why does the combination make sense to both Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services and Bally's International Interactive? It creates a truly diversified and operationally and financially stable business, right? We get scale, and we become a global gaming operator. It gives us a really unique position as well to nail the digital convergence that is going to come to lottery and iGaming. All of the digital technologies that live within Bally's International Interactive will enhance our lottery business to make it strong, very strong, and one of the strongest iLottery providers there can be. A lot of our capabilities are so significant in iGaming that these two products really do converge and come together. We've identified very strong medium-term growth levers, including expansion into new markets, as well as increasing the revenues generated from existing customer contracts. This gives us the best-in-class margins as well.
We have significant margins versus our peers and great cash flow, and we'll expand on each point as we continue to go through the deck. We've got market leadership and scaled operations. We have podium positions in multiple markets. You can see that we're number two in the UK, and we're significant as well in global lotteries. We have the full spectrum of capabilities across retail lottery, iLottery, sports betting, online casino, and VLT monitoring, and we have multiple distribution channels. Having these two types of business together, where we're B2B and B2C, gives us massive reach, totally transforms our TAM. The total addressable market which we'll be able to access is €250 billion over time because we have all of the technology to expand globally via every single channel.
You'll see that the revenue is approximately €1.1 billion, and as I said before, we'll get to the €450 million EBITDA full run-rate synergy, plus 40%+ margins, as well as 95% free cash flow conversion. We have this huge operational and financial scale, which gives us a very big differentiator to where we've been in the past. We're able to reinvest our earnings to continue to feed our growth. We've got a very clean organic pathway to keep on scaling. I'm going to hand back over to Nikos to talk to you about some trends.
Thanks, Robson. During this presentation, we are going to touch upon multiple times the first issue, you know, why the market we are competing in, it's a big market and it's growing very fast, and why the two companies or the combination that we are going to create is able to compete effectively within this growing market. I will start with the market. Practically here, what you can understand, what you can see is the digital convergence that both iLottery and gaming sector have been through during the previous years. On the first part is Europe, which practically is leading, as you can see also from the %, the penetration of the digital part in every market is leading the way of this digitalization.
At the same time, in the U.S., you can clearly see that this represents an opportunity from 2024 until 2029 in both verticals, iGaming and iLottery, for the market to be double. This for us is critical, and we believe that this is going to happen inevitably for two things. This is not the case in the U.S. because the people do not want this user experience. It is because of the lack of legislation and the regulation, and we believe this is coming not only because of the user habits, but mainly because the governments and the state governments now in the U.S. are trying to cope with the budget deficits. The legalization of this type of activities represents a clear source of funding.
If we can go now to the technology stack, the discussion about the cooperation between those companies started almost a year ago when Robson and I sat down together to see how we can take advantage of each other's assets, and then we found out that especially in the technology aspect, we are completely complementary. Intralot, what you see on the left part of the diagram on the Player X Suite, has a player account management system, which is the heart of keeping the player's data, which is very simple. It's very, very simple, almost has no logic. It's stable and it can scale. On the other side, Vitruvian platform, which is the customer data platform that Bally's Interactive has, it is a very sophisticated data management and monetization structure.
What we've seen is that we could create one stack, one technology stack that practically would be able to differentiate based on content. iLottery games when lottery is allowed, iGaming online casino on the other jurisdictions. This is how we build this type of architecture, and this is how we build that. We believe that from one side, Bally's is going to take advantage of the simplicity and easiness of deployment, so it can replicate in multiple jurisdictions the operational expertise that it possesses. For Intralot, the key thing is to move the data analytics from the iGaming to the lottery world and try to monetize and give more value to our customers and to ourselves. As Robson said, we do have a plan that we are going to be integrated and operational within the year.
In terms of the markets, as we stand now, you see the first three bubbles. We do have the addressable market of the lottery services, which is €6 billion. There is the UK and Spain market where Bally's Interactive has presence with €14 billion, and there's the iGaming market of the U.S. that the analysts say is approximately slightly above €40 billion. Why this is relevant, Robson is going to explain later that even though the U.S. assets are outside the perimeter, there is an agreement, technology and operational, between the two companies that also the new group is going to take advantage of the U.S. market. Apart from that, we have identified another €48 billion of total addressable market where there are 14 jurisdictions that Intralot has presence, relationships, the iGaming is regulated, and we have a plan.
We do have already a go-to-market for how we are going to launch new B2C operations in those types of jurisdictions. We believe that with the product superiority, the operational scale that we have, the brand recognition, and also the regulatory trust that the new group is going to possess, it is going to be a clear leading player on the total market, which is calculated to be around €200 billion. In terms now of the value chain of iGaming, again here, the new group is uniquely positioned. As we stand now, Intralot is a B2B company mainly on the retail with just a couple of B2C operations. At the same time, Bally's Interactive is a leading force in the iGaming on the B2C.
The new entity is going to span in all verticals and in all distribution channels, and also is going to be the only one that has two characteristics plus an access to 40-plus jurisdictions that Intralot has presence. No other company in the gaming sector has those three characteristics simultaneously. Robson, back to you for...
Thank you, Nikos. We've got an organic growth model that benefits lotteries and B2C expansion. We think that together we can do a lot more than if we were separate because the lottery contracts, the organic growth we'll see there, we know that our data platform can generate more revenue from the existing lottery contracts, as well as increase the iLottery customer base due to the digital convergence that is coming to all of lotteries. We think we can win more high-value and high-margin VLT monitoring contracts across the U.S. and the rest of the world. Also, from a B2C iGaming perspective, we can leverage Intralot's footprint and local expertise that they already have, leveraging the Player X Suite platform to rapidly deploy into new markets.
We think we can help each other because Bally's International Interactive's home market, the U.K., we think that we can do some social lotteries because there is more demand for that. We also think in all the existing Intralot markets, we'll launch B2C iGaming. We've already identified the sort of lottery contracts that we're going to go after and the priority B2C markets as well. We do have the option as well, although it's not a primary focus, to go after M&A. We think that there could be some selective acquisitions because of the fragmentation that you see across European B2B and B2C gaming space. We've got a long track record. These two companies have been around for a long time. We think that we have the capability to be a true consolidator in this space. We also are maintaining our exposure to the U.S. iGaming market.
We've got a commercial deal with Bally's Corporation to continue providing services to North America Interactive. This means that we get a share of the profits when it becomes profitable. We don't have any of the downside risk, but as soon as it becomes profitable, we'll be able to participate in that, which is a fantastic thing. As you know, the U.S. iGaming market and online sports is growing very rapidly. It's forecast to have a 30% CAGR and get to €27 billion by 2029. Again, we gain the exposure to the growth without actually taking on board the risk, and North America Interactive is at an inflection point and will be profitable in the medium term. This could have significant meaningful upside for all stakeholders. I'm going to hand back to you, Nikos.
Sure. We talk about the potential seeders on the top line. We believe, as I said, that there are numerous growth opportunities that are located ahead of us after the closing of the transaction. I will discuss here a couple of examples that I think are representative. The first one is a country where Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services already has a contract with the state lottery, and we do provide the technology and operational expertise and services for the lottery business. We also act as an aggregator on the technology and some part of the services on the sports betting and online casino space. What we have done, and this is a live situation, meaning that we are already talking, we have already started the workshops on how we are going to implement that, and we are going to be live before the end of the year.
What we are going to do is deploy the new common technology stack, along with the operational services, not only from Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services, but from Bally's International Interactive on the online gaming and sports betting space. We do believe that we are going to see a significant upside, and we make a commitment because of the monetization of the data and the retention of the players that the new platform and the people, our colleagues from Bally's, are going to achieve. Taking into consideration that we are taking a part of the upside based on the contract we have, meaning a part of the growth, we do believe that this is going to represent a win-win situation and a case study moving forward.
The next one is another situation where Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services does have presence in the country, not obviously on the B2C space, but based on the relationship and the knowledge of the market that we have, we are going to have a joint venture with the Media Group in order to launch a B2C operation within the country. We believe that the strength of the Media Group, as well as our relationship, and obviously the technical and operational expertise from Bally's International Interactive, is going to make a difference. Based on this model, what we have planned as a go-to-market is to launch one or two new B2C operations every two years, every year in various countries. Here, I would like to discuss a little bit about the predictability of the business we are having, both in terms of Intralot S.A.
Integrated Lottery Systems and Services, but also from the side of Bally's International Interactive. On the left part of the chart, it's how should I put it? It is as a do-nothing scenario, meaning that if Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services, in the next four years, until 2029, does not win any other contract, does not renew any of the contracts that we have, which you know already we have done from 2024, another three. Even if we do not even take into consideration the inflation, what is now contracted, we have $1.4 billion backlog. We do have, from the other part, a significant track record of renewals. Close to 90% of our contracts historically have been renewed with an average duration of the contract, along with the extensions, which is 16 years. You can understand that we do have predictability, but also the track record to renew.
The second, on the other part, the right part of the chart is that the growth of Bally's International Interactive and its ability to compete effectively with high margins, not only grow, but also Robson is going to talk about it, to enjoy double or more than double margins from the competitors because of the way that the data platform, Vitruvian, helped the company to retain the customers and spend much less than the competition.
Thank you, Nikos. As you've said, and you can see from these slides, we generate a lot of cash, and we've got leading EBITDA margins, 39% EBITDA margin. As Nikos said, a lot of our peers are in the high teens or around 20%, but you'll see this later on. This all comes from the power of our very precise marketing. We don't have wastage. The money flows through the system. We retain customers very well. We have a loyal player base. Our metrics are well ahead of most public peers. Also, there's upside here to be realized from our synergies. This will be realized over the medium term. We expect most of these to be realized within an 18 to 24-month period, but it's $35 to $40 million we see from the synergies that we'll achieve right away. We have minimal ongoing maintenance CAPEX.
The biggest outflows come from when there's new opportunity. It's an Intralot S.A. concession CAPEX. If we win a new contract, there can be CAPEX there, but obviously, you gain the revenues and the EBITDA following that. I'm going to hand back to you.
Sure. Two of the most important aspects within our business are the regulatory part and also the responsible gaming. As all the countries are moving, all the world is moving more on a more registered play, a responsible play, and the regulation becomes more and more significant. Gaming is a trust business. The fact that Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services and Bally's International Interactive combined have a longstanding relationship with the regulators, we are doing this business for more than 30 years all over the world.
I think, and you've seen here some indicative cases where we have started and managed a relationship with the regulators, along with the fact that both companies excel in the responsible gaming area, where Bally's, the UK regulatory authorities, is a benchmark on how they treat those kinds of things, and Bally's excel on that. Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services also has all the certification, the tools, and the processes in place where practically we are going to safeguard that we provide a safe play to our players and to the lotteries.
We've got these are the key transaction benefits. We become a truly global business, really scaled. We've got a super easy-to-integrate technology stack, as we've already indicated, because we'll be live with that in a couple of months. We have a unique market position because we both have B2B and B2C, so we can access every type of market around the globe. That really gives us multiple options. Sometimes you don't have many pathways for growth, but we have every pathway available to ourselves, which is significant. We'll have a lot of new market entry. We said one to two countries per year in the B2C space, leveraging the existing Intralot technology platform at its core, whether it's PAM. I look at these two businesses in the form that Intralot, their business is about being everywhere, and hence that's why their technology is good at being everywhere.
We're very good at extracting high-margin business, retaining our customers very well. We end up with high quality, high retention, and we can be everywhere in this combination. We also, as I've said, have maintained the upside benefit that we can get from the North America Interactive business, and we end up with a very solid company with 39% pre-synergy margins, 95% operating free cash flow conversion, which allows us to fund our growth. We can just utilize the cash which we generate to keep on expanding. I'm going to take you through a bit of a deep dive on our iGaming business. What you're going to see is really about our ambitions. You'll see some financial performance and trends, and you'll see what makes us different. We have slightly different market positioning because we like to access every part of society and all of the underserved populations.
We're very differentiated as well. Great. We are a leading online gaming operator. You can see we're generating €270 million of EBITDA in 2024 at a 39% margin. We have 6 million players in our database and 1 million monthly unique players. That means that we actually have a relatively low spend per player, but that makes it sustainable forever. We're very casino-led with 95% of our revenue coming through casino content, but we look at the opportunity that sports will bring. We have sports in our platform, and we are going to use that to access a wider TAM. If you think about it, for the UK, 50% of the revenue comes from iGaming, 50% of the revenue comes from sports. We haven't been playing in the sports area to date, but we're still the number two operator in iGaming because people do flick between the different products.
We're very UK dominant. This combination allows us to spread out our revenue. It's good and bad being UK dominant. You might say you're too concentrated. You can also say that regulation means that you end up with a stable, reliable business. We're very strong in regulated markets. That type of skill will carry massive benefit as we go into more iLottery contracts. No one in the world in the lottery space will have the algorithms that we can have to protect customers and grow iLottery because they simply don't have that technology. This is from the number one responsible gaming market in the world. Here you can see we've got multiple brands. We like to have multiple brands. This is how you can manage the full ecosystem across how players will lapse from one site and go on to another.
You can't manage the experience, you just manage how people flow between each of these offerings. That has led to our 14% market share and continued growth. We'll launch sports in Spain in 2025 as well, but our diversified offering of all of these different brands and different product sets really allows us to be extremely resilient to any regulatory change. You can access bingo players, you can access sports players, you can access slots players. It gives us a real high retention and a lot of strength to continuously sort of hold onto our position. I mentioned our margins previously. You can see here that we sit at 38% EBITDA margin. When you look at our peers, many of these peers are much lower. This isn't just luck. This is due to actually having technology strength.
Because of our Vitruvian platform allowing us to retain customers very well, money's very sticky in our platform. Once you acquire them, you can keep them. You can see from the very bottom chart that we spend 11% of our NGR on marketing versus many of our peers in the 20s. We spend less because we're better at targeting new customers. Our customer acquisition costs are significantly lower. Our AI and ML models allow us to retain customers better and generate a significantly stronger margin profile. This makes us very protected from any changes in the marketplace. We've got much more buffer than our peers. Even in these existing markets, they're continuing to grow. We're expecting a CAGR of around 6% across the UK and Spain. By 2029, we think that the TAM will be €12.8 billion in revenue.
The new combination, if you look at the charts on the right, which are significantly higher, gives us the ability to access this much enlarged TAM, which we forecast to be around €200 billion by 2029. We'll continue to roll out there because we will make sure that we are mobile-first because everything's drifting to being more mobile-first. We'll adapt to changing consumer behaviors, which is the drift again from retail to online, which is where we are strong. We're placed in a position which our technology is great for the movement to online already, and that's where customers are moving to. We're ready to catch that and ready to keep on pushing into that space. We need to leverage the Intralot footprint from its technology, but also the relationships they have in these local markets to access all of this TAM. We've mentioned the Vitruvian platform.
This is our data technology platform, which really creates personalized experiences. It acts in real time, so it captures all the events for every single customer, and it will build real-time profiles for those players, meaning that if someone likes one particular game, it will serve them that game exactly, and it will give the right rewards to each player to maximize lifetime value and boost customer retention. It's proprietary, and it's not something someone can quickly click your fingers and build. We've been evolving this platform for 10 years, you know, to make it better and better and boost the player experience ultimately. That's why players stay with us. That's why players stick, and they continue to spend with us. You'll see later that the drift of our revenues, the longer people serve us, the more they spend with us is what you'll see.
I consider our business to be a data business. We're a data and marketing business. We're very good at understanding what a customer needs and making our offerings evolve to each of you. On this slide, you can actually see that I'm presenting some of the different views that people might actually see from their player experience. It goes from deposits to gameplay. Every single stage is tailored. If you're a customer who comes onto the site and they spend £100, your deposit array will be shaped in the right way for you. You can see here there's £150, and people will be presented with the correct spend amount to actually boost longer-term value. It might be a lower number because I don't want you to burn out, and you may have spent too much.
We try and make sure that we have stability and almost generate the same kind of recurring revenue model that you get from a lottery contract by having such a sticky offering. You can see suggested for you here, which is a curated game recommender. This is all getting fed by the Vitruvian platform. That catches all the data events and feeds it back into the interfaces. These interfaces really are dumb, and they're getting told what to do by our very advanced data platform. We give the right rewards to each player, and it's tailored for each individual. When you look at this, you might see each individual screen 100 different components, but everyone can have a different variable across all of those 100 components.
In reality, we've created millions of different casino floors for each and every player so everyone gets the right experience for them, which ultimately boosts player retention and lifetime value. We have a very scaled and loyal and highly engaged player base. You can see in the very first row of charts that the majority of our revenue comes from the players who've been with us for the longest. They actually spend the most as well, and they retain forever. That's what happens because people don't spend at too high a velocity. We try and make sure that people are spending at a very, very sustainable rate so they can have a good time. They retain well. They're getting value for money. You'll also see that we have more females on our platform, and that's because we've got our bingo-led offerings.
That has allowed us to acquire more females to our sites, and they're very highly engaged, and we get a significant wallet share. By having all of our different brands, we're able to ensure that if someone plays on multiple sites, though people gamble often on more than one website, they end up staying within our ecosystem because they trust us, and they're extremely loyal to our offerings. With respect to new market growth opportunities, the Player X Suite platform, which is built for flexibility and rapid deployment, is very swift at delivering regulatory compliance into multiple jurisdictions. This allows us to go into all of these territories with, in every occasion, you'll have the Vitruvian platform sitting alongside it, making sure that it's truly personalized. These algorithms will be evolved for each market. The UK algorithms will be very different to those in Spain.
They adapt and learn about each player behavior and make sure that we serve the right offerings. A Spanish player is much more volatile, actually, in how they gamble versus someone in the UK. Almost forced by regulation, but it allows us to have a truly tailored experience which scales across every single territory. We've got several planned launches in 2026 and 2027 with a product mix across iGaming, online sports betting, and kino. We're really just turning things off and on to do these deliverables. Your real key takeaways when it comes to iGaming is that our platform gives scalable growth. We have superior margins, significantly superior margins, which is always useful for enabling us to invest more to accelerate growth where there's opportunity, but also adapting to any market condition. We have high retention, and we're very strong in the UK and Spain.
We'll now be able to access a much larger global TAM. We have the best-in-class customer acquisition costs, as you saw, with 11% of our revenue being spent on marketing. We have significant lifetime values from our players, all driven by serving customers with the right content for them because we deliver truly personalized experiences. We'll continue to leverage our proprietary technology as we expand globally. I'm going to hand over to Nikos to talk to you about lotteries.
Thanks, Robson. A few things on lottery from my side. Thank you. In Intralot, currently, we have 49 contracts in 40 different jurisdictions. As I said before, the average duration of a contract is 16 years, and we have a significant track record of renewals and extending the contracts, which is 89%. This is in 2024. We had a revenue of €356 million and an EBITDA margin close to 37%. The majority of our business from the verticals that I'm going to talk and explain later comes from lottery, iLottery, and retail, where sports betting mainly because of TERC and some other contracts we have in the U.S. is the second one. We do have also a monitoring system for VLTs, plus the technology services that we provide to the lotteries. In terms of geographies, jurisdictions, Americas and mainly U.S.
is the region where the majority of our business, of our revenues are coming from. A little bit about the verticals and the business model. As I said, practically there are three or four verticals because you can say lottery and iLottery can be one vertical. The majority of the business, as I said, is coming from the lottery. In the lottery space, we provide technology and operational services to state lotteries, 100% all the verticals, regulated markets, and we have two different business models. The majority of the revenues are coming from a business model which is more common in the U.S., where practically we provide all the investment in terms of infrastructure, startup, and operational services. Through long-term contracts, we are taking back our investment. We amortize the investment and make profit through a revenue share model. We do have the incentive.
We are incentivized in order to provide more, better services to the lotteries in order to increase the value and the returns to the states, and for us also to increase the profitability. This is why, and especially with the adoption of iLottery, the integration with Vitruvian platform and the partnership and the merger with Bally's International Interactive is crucial. The second vertical is the VLT monitoring. The VLT monitoring, we have specialized systems that we connect VLT slot machines or in general gaming machines which do not belong to us and mostly are part of a wide area network, different shops within the country. We monitor the operation, meaning that we make sure on behalf of the state, of the regulatory authority, or the competent authority that the payout is good, the play is fair.
We reconcile the data, we reconcile the accounting, and so on and so forth. This is a big opportunity for Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services because there are multiple machines all over the world, but mainly in the U.S., that are now unmonitored, meaning unregulated. There are more than 600,000 machines in the U.S. alone that do not belong in a regulated environment, meaning that apart from the responsible gaming, the money laundering, those types of issues, the main issue is that the states do not take any tax. That is why now we have seen really a boost of legislation in order for multiple states to regulate this vertical. Recently, we went live also in Nebraska when we won the contract, and in July, we started with the whole state. Last but not least is the sports betting.
In sports betting, we have mainly provided technology and operational services to state lotteries. We do not compete as we stand now in open markets, especially in the U.S., but where the lottery needs sports betting infrastructure. For us, this is a marginal investment because we do have already deployed infrastructure for lottery. We deploy also sports betting, and we are taking again with a revenue share model, mostly there on GGR, not revenue, a part of the profitability. I will not stay long in this slide, but this is again to demonstrate the opportunity of the iLottery. You can understand here where the % is the penetration in every continent and where the plus sign is the growth rates that each continent has experienced and practically how the TAM is growing in the last years.
Another important part is that as we stand now, we do have a diversification in terms of revenues. We do not have any significant contract that contributes hugely to our revenues, with the exception of TERC. TERC also has a uniqueness in the sense that it is not a contract that is renewed through RFPs as most of the other contracts that we have, but it is a contract that is a licensed environment. Practically everyone that has the necessary property can go and take a license and compete in the open market. This is a contract that is a licensing that expires in 2029, but with the relevant license fee and of course the property that we have, we are 100% certain that we are going to renew that.
Practically the key message here is that there is no dependency on a single contract as Intralot used to have 10 or 15 years ago. Again, we are very focused on the iLottery opportunity, as you can see. Practically here, in the last column, there are different percentages of penetration of iLottery within the countries. In the UK, for example, 50% of the business in the UK National Lottery is coming from mobile. You've seen in the bottom, the Scandinavian countries, all the Australia that have the majority of the revenues come from digital. At the same time, you can see US, Italy, and some other jurisdictions there that the percentage, the penetration is minimal. This is going to change, and this is how we believe with the competence from the new group from the Vitruvian platform that Robson explained before, we are going to play a leading role.
To sum up, what I would say is that we are practically in a market that is growing, which is very important, and especially also the combined group has a total addressable market that is big and it is growing. The second thing is that we have demonstrated our ability to compete effectively, so having visibility and recurring revenues that are resilient throughout the period. The other thing is that the growth, especially for lotteries, is going to come from digitalization. Of course, there are going to be new contracts, but now there are very, very few greenfield lotteries. Almost every state, every country has a lottery, so the growth is going to come from the digitalization part.
The technology stack that we are having, we believe that it's going to be a key contributor on our ability to compete effectively, as I said, and the leverage that we are going to have on the Vitruvian platform in combination with the growth of digital lottery is going to be key. Back to Robson.
Okay, I'm going to walk you through the financials. I'm going to go quite slowly here. I guess the key takeaway is the stability and the predictability of our revenues. You can see the recurring revenues coming via the lotteries, but also the core stability that we have in our UK market with the long-term loyal player base will continue to generate money. We've had a consistent CAGR of near 10%, basically, all the way back to 2019. We continue to grow there, and we have significant EBITDA margins. For example, back in 2019, the margin profile of Bally's International Interactive was 29%. Now we're at 40%, essentially. We continue to do that because the players are sticky, and we get better at retaining our customers, but also better at working out how to market. Everything in life, especially marketing, is all about wastage.
Minimize your wastage, and then things get better. We are very focused on that. You can see that we have strong operating leverage as well, reinforced by how our margin increases over time because we actually have automatic scale, and the money flowing through now, the last 10% of the money flowing through, comes through at about 75% EBITDA margin. You continue to scale your business all the way through. The pro forma EBITDA margin for 2024 is approximately 39%, and the operating free cash flow is 86%. It's normally 88% to 90%, but there is a dip driven by working capital, which has already been corrected in half one of 2025. We have a very low maintenance CAPEX profile for the group.
All of the CAPEX, whenever you see the spikes, as I've said before, those are driven by if you win a new concession in lotteries, and then the other CAPEX, which we spend in the Bally's International Interactive business, is really software development costs. That's it. There's minimal maintenance CAPEX. The upside growth levers, which are the most interesting, are all about the new B2C market entries, the charity lotteries that we'll go after across the UK and the US. We see simple upside there, very simple to deliver upside. We get the North America Interactive benefit as well. iLottery, the digitization there, and the digital content there, that is a true strength, which we are really uniquely positioned, and we see this as a great, great opportunity because iLottery is very similar to iGaming. The content is very similar. It's just the mechanism of how it's presented. That's all.
We think the technology combination that we're bringing together is unique, and it actually gives us a strength that no one else can replicate. We also see upside from more U.S. iLottery contracts, not just new ones, but also expanding existing ones and generating more revenue out of those because of the better marketing tools that we'll be able to bring to the table. I'm excited about the financial profile of this business. It throws off so much cash. It's got almost boring growth, very high margin, and the cash generation can just continue to take us down this pathway of market entry. The fact that we know we can go into these markets, and we know that our technology works from being present everywhere from Player X, and we know that we can retain customers by having a truly personalized experience has significant power.
We will utilize our brand portfolio. For example, we have the global rights to the Monopoly brand. We'll use that to access many territories. It's the most global local brand there is. We can automatically take any language through that. All of our customer service tools, all of our operating tools are language agnostic. Someone could be asking a question in Hungarian, and we could have an operator responding in English, and it will live translate all of these things. There's no need for more people. We just have to keep on pouring more revenue through the top. It's super exciting. We have all the capabilities to continue our expansion. Free cash flow. We've gone to free cash flow. This is a beautiful flow. You'll see that we'll just have targeted capital allocation due to our high EBITDA margins and very low maintenance CAPEX.
That throws off a ton of cash, which will allow us to deliver the business as quickly as we wish, pay out dividends, which we'll pay out a 35% dividend payout ratio, but we can review that. That's dependent on performance and capital structure. That's a requirement of a Greek listing. We'll invest this cash flow in growing more. Could be via M&A, but also just growing more and investing to make sure that we can take advantage of new market entries. We think this really does return significant value to shareholders. We can keep on compounding this benefit in this cycle. We will be able to keep a very conservative balance sheet.
As I said, the lever over the medium term, win new B2B contracts, access more territories with B2C, which is a high-margin business, to expand our revenue base, and we'll continue to optimize our business and leverage all the locations that we have in our organization from a synergy perspective with respect to cost, but we're getting significant revenue synergies by just leveraging the footprint that Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services already has. I'm going to move on to 2025. What you can see with Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services and Bally's International Interactive, if I start with Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services, we expect to generate revenue between €330 million to €340 million in 2025 with a margin of 37%. That will throw off approximately €120 million to €125 million.
The CAPEX, which we'll be spending, is about 10% to 11% within that business, which brings the combined post-acquisition group to approximately €1.1 billion of revenue and €430 million to €445 million of adjusted EBITDA at a 40% margin. You can see CAPEX gets lower because of the addition of Bally's. As I said, the Bally's CAPEX is driven by software development costs, plus there's very minimal bits of CAPEX in there, just like furniture, those sorts of silly things. The revenue we will generate is between €750 million to €765 million from Bally's International Interactive at a margin of 42%. We continue to grow margin, as I said, because we retain our customers. Now, you don't have marketing spend going into those customers anymore. Everything gets much more efficient. If we weren't to expand, you'd expect to see the margin continue to increase.
Obviously, there's a max threshold, but you'd expect to see this continue to increase. In essence, we're going to spend that margin benefit that we're growing to expand into new markets, spend that in marketing, get the growth going through. We want to make sure that we deliver the right revenue growth and keep our margins as strong as they are. Let's look at the medium term. As we said, the group has high single-digit total revenue growth. That's driven by the low to mid-single digit coming out of lottery. It's much more guaranteed, very solid recurring revenues, but it's low to mid-single digit. iGaming in our existing markets will be delivering mid-single digit. We think that's a very sensible number. As I've said earlier, our CAGR is approximately 9% historically, and we've continued to grow, but we're saying iGaming from our existing territories will deliver mid-single digit growth.
The new opportunities that we're going after, that layered in, will create this high single-digit growth that we expect to do. It's these three pillars: the very stable lottery, rock solid, UK and Spain, I would argue rock solid if you look at our historics, then layer on these new opportunities to grow the revenue. The group margin will be mid to high 30% in range. This is supported by growth, but also our synergies that we're going to go after. The lottery margins in the mid-30% and the iGaming, as I said, approximately 40%. That's where I want to sit because I want to invest. It isn't necessarily that we're pushing margin to the limits.
We just want to invest because we want to accelerate our revenue growth to make a much more diversified business with revenue coming from more territories, and it will give us the scale to really throw off a huge amount of EBITDA. With respect to the synergies, as I've said, we expect to deliver those over 18 to 24 months. Having said that, most of it's front-loaded. There'll be a lot of it which is front-loaded. The majority are people-related, but they're also to do with infrastructure, such as office space and so on. The total CAPEX we're guiding to is mid-single-digit percentage of revenues, absent of winning any sort of major contract wins or renewals. In 2026-2027, we expect the CAPEX to be in the low teens, with 2% as maintenance CAPEX. That will tail down to approximately 1% as well.
There'll be a slightly negative working capital swing expected in the later years. We expect our corporate tax rate to remain in the same range, 16% to 19%, absent of any sort of regime changes, as well as a net leverage steady state target of 2.5 times. Because we throw off so much cash, we believe that this is very easy to achieve, the 2.5 times, as well as delivering dividends of 35% of net income. As I've said, we might go for higher distributions, subject to performance and capital structure. We're going to continue to invest in our growth, but we can deliver a very healthy balance sheet. We can deliver profitable growth. We'll have very disciplined investment and very consistent capital return. This is all to deliver great shareholder value.
Digging into iGaming, we've got an ecosystem in our suite of existing markets with all of the different brands that we offer that we can adapt to any environmental change. I have no doubt in the Q&A later that I'm going to get asked about tax rates and so forth. Actually, with a margin profile sitting at approximately 40%, we're more resilient than any other operator in the UK there. We, in 2025, will deliver a revenue between €750 million and €765 million, and we expect the mid-single digit growth, as I said previously. Just remember, we are number two in the UK, and this is the most mature and stable market. You know, everyone is fearful of regulation. Regulation is a great barrier to entry, and it creates stability and consistent growth. We've been seeing rapid growth in Spain, more because of changes in regulation there.
Those are significant growth rates and significant opportunities. Our diversification in our revenue streams and by having a multi-brand approach is what's sustaining our growth, and we expect to see sustained growth. As you'll see, more operational efficiencies come from how technology is moving in the space of AI and automation. We're very much watching that space carefully and pushing hard. We'll maintain very disciplined cost management because of our precision marketing. We are always monitoring everything going on in the environment. Be it assessing your own campaigns, but actually, we assess all of our competitors' campaigns at the same time. We understand when people pull out of advertising spaces and then slot straight into that. We're always monitoring there because that's how you can pull down your customer acquisition costs. You're trying to essentially control the cost of an auction and manage things very, very carefully.
That's why we have the lowest marketing spend as a percentage of our revenues, yet we have market-leading growth alongside others. We always are optimizing our processing fees and all of our content costs because we can serve any game to anyone. If a game supplier doubled their rates, well, those games might not appear in front of players. We'll always adjust because our goal is to maximize lifetime value from our customers, which means sustainable spend. It doesn't mean rapid spend. It means spend forever so they stick with you forever. It's beyond looking at the revenues that come from a player. We consider all of the costs associated with that revenue. We're trying to get the maximum flow through to the bottom line. I'll move on to lotteries now. We have very strong recurring revenues in this business because of all the long-term contracts as well.
Already described, 70% of these revenues come from the technology contracts. In Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services, with their 30 years of experience, they've constantly maintained a very successful renewal rate. This is because they've got such deep relationships with regulators and various partners throughout the globe. They've consistently delivered. For example, more recently, they got the Montana contract win, which showcases how we have these long-term U.S. partnerships. The growth in guidance, we expect €330 to €340 million of revenue. In the midterm, we're seeing low to mid-single-digit growth. This is driven by the diversified revenue streams from game management contracts and licensed operations. Just to note, the revenue definition is different here. This is done to align with the Bally's International Interactive definition. So Intralot S.A. Integrated Lottery Systems and Services revenue now deducts the payouts from the revenue. You're getting your true net revenues.
Previously, it was gross. EBITDA guidance is €120 to €125 million, with mid-term margins at the mid-30% range, supported by the growing U.S. market presence, as well as the expansion of VLT monitoring and lottery operations. This is a very stable foundation in lottery. Combining it with our growth levers in iGaming, we think we have a very balanced and resilient revenue profile for the combined group. We have more growth opportunities, right? We see significant growth opportunities coming from this combination because we will have this optimized combined tech stack, which gives us the ability to expand into the new B2C and B2B opportunities. This combination will boost expansion of revenue in the B2C space, as well as I think we can generate significantly more money from our existing lottery contracts by utilizing the technology from Bally's International Interactive.
In the mid to long term, the group revenue growth targets the high single digits. This is driven by incremental opportunities in reality. We will enter in B2C iGaming, new markets using our best-in-class product offering and data analytics. I can't emphasize the data capabilities enough. That is what makes us different. It's not easy to replicate. I've spent half of my life building this, literally. It's very, very hard to replicate. This is what makes us so strong. You've got the Intralot PAM for efficient market entry and share capture. We are also going to expand into the underserved markets in the charity lottery space across the UK and the U.S. We also have the North America Interactive from Bally's, the exposure to that. We will get the share of the profits when it becomes profitable. We are maintaining exposure to the U.S.
without taking on the downside risk, which is significantly valuable. We also see the U.S. iLottery expansion driven by the advanced analytics, which will make us hyper-competitive. That will mean that we will be able to get more traffic, drive more customer acquisition, and boost retention. If you have good retention, your revenues go up as well. Everything layers together. It all gets super compounding. The iLottery digital content, we expect to see greater monetization potential. We will have more engaging features as well deployed there. On to the historical performer financials. The reported revenues proceeds are up 8.2% from $962 million to $1.041 billion. This is driven by the strong top-line growth in the underlying business. As I said, this is net of payouts, and that is where there will be subtle differences.
The pro forma adjusted revenue is up 7.3% year over year from $23 million to $24 million, adjusted for the run rate royalty revenues. If you think about each segment, in iGaming, the growth was driven by return-to-player optimization strategies. We actually adjusted what we paid back to players more because of almost regulation. With stake limits being introduced into the UK, players will not be able to cycle their money. What we did was make sure that the game content players were engaging with, we are giving them more chances to win, but not win at extreme multiples like 1,000x. Players are winning more at 10x, which means that the majority of customer experiences are far better. You could have a 100% payout game, but you could have one payout of a million. That means all the other players always lose.
We changed the balance of our products. We have seen that boost customer retention, and hence boosting revenue because players do not have as many bad experiences. We are always thinking about what is the right environment for customers to engage with. Also, just normal organic market growth has occurred, again boosting our revenues. Our active user base has increased. It makes sense given we are retaining customers better because we are managing all of the experiences better. In lotteries, there's been organic growth across the U.S., Australia, and Croatia. There's been improved revenues coming out of Turkey and Argentina as well. EBITDA performance, adjusted EBITDA up 6.3% from $378 million to $402 million. The pro forma adjusted EBITDA is up 4.2% from $402 million to $419 million after run rate adjustments. The run rate adjustments include the royalty run rate normalization for the full year of 2025.
That was driven by the divested APAC business sitting within Bally's International Interactive and the actual royalty payments received for November and December 2024. The corporate cost allocations are also aligned with the post-acquisition structure. Margins are relatively flat due to the higher marketing investments that we've been making in B2C and the non-recurring DC settlement costs within the lottery space. The efficiencies across iGaming and lottery have helped absorb part of these cost increases as well. Now, with respect to cash flow strength, the low maintenance CAPEX will drive the very strong operating free cash flow generation. We have got the pro forma free cash flow conversion in the mid-90% range for 2023 and 2024. This really does support very flexible capital deployment, such as debt paydowns, reinvestment, and shareholder returns. Just going through CAPEX again, it's very, very predictable, which allows us to plan in the long term.
For the lottery segment, the maintenance CAPEX is low. It averages $10 million to $20 million annually. You can see that in 2023 and 2024. You have the growth CAPEX. As I've said before, this is if you get a renewal or a new contract. That covers all the infrastructure and machinery set up over, say, a two to three-year period from awards to launch. We target a four to five-year payback, which gives attractive returns. The only time you get a spike there is when you can actually make more money, which is fantastic. With respect to the renewal dynamics, the negotiated extensions also require much lower CAPEX than a brand new RFP tender because you've already got the majority of the infrastructure there as well.
As said before, we have an 80% renewal success rate, which means that we have much more CAPEX efficiency because renewals are far cheaper than new. With regards to iGaming, CAPEX requirements are very small. There's barely anything sitting there for maintenance. It could just be some IT equipment. The growth is the very modest capitalized software development costs as well. In summary, I think we're really well placed to succeed in the dynamic and growing B2B and B2C gaming markets. We have got diversified and recurring revenue streams, which give us a lot of stability. It gives us, very importantly, visibility on future revenues. We know what's going to be coming down the road, and we have a lot of predictability there. We've got robust margins, we've got strong free cash flow generation, and that supports the reinvestment for growth, right?
It supports allowing us to give capital returns to our shareholders. We have a balance sheet, which will have strong discipline here because we've got a clear path to deleveraging. We'll get to that 2.5 times net leverage target, which gives us a much stronger financial profile, which allows us to be very strategic and flexible, and also offers significant resilience because we generate such high free cash flow. It will allow us to be more adaptable than many of our peers. The dividend policy is designed to reward shareholders with a targeted payout of 35%, with more flexibility for higher distributions depending on performance, as I've said. That is in line with Greek law.
When you look at all of these things together, the stability of our revenues, the strong returns, discipline leverage, and our capital return strategy, this is a great investment case that's designed for sustainable and long-term shareholder value. This is a great business which will be coming together, and I'm very proud to become part of it. That's it with our presentation. We would like to take some Q&A in the room whenever you want to ask.
Hi, this is Ricardo Tintilla. I'm the analyst for Deutsche Bank. Thank you so much for the presentation. I was hoping we could start with the tax rate impact, right? There's a potential increase in taxation in the UK. You guys mentioned that you guys are already very efficient in terms of marketing. There's very little room or less room than your peers in terms of mitigation, understanding that some of the low 2% and 3% players in the industry are likely going to disappear because of the tax rate. What's really your sensitivity to mitigation, right? Like a 1% increase or 2% in taxation, how much would that impact EBITDA, at least in your preliminary expectations?
Thank you for your question. If the tax rate increased by a couple of %, it wouldn't even have an impact on us. The way to think about taxes, and historically, as taxes have increased from 0% in the UK up to 21% in iGaming, we're very focused on growing our sports offering as well, right? Sports currently sits at 15%. The majority of our revenue comes through at 21%. If we can get more revenue into sports, that's a mitigation. There are conversations about harmonization as well, right? They're saying maybe that 15% becomes 21% alongside iGaming. That would have little impact on us. It would have material impact on our peer groups. Everyone has normally two things that they pull on whenever costs increase, which are more structural. They either look at their people, so get rid of people, or they look at marketing, right?
If you straight away say, you know what, taxes increase, I think various operators will reduce their marketing, right? As we know, like simple sort of supply and demand, that makes it cheaper to acquire. All of these dynamics, if taxes increase, will mean that marketing will get cheaper. It also is very likely that it has a greater percentage disruption on our peers. We have had a constantly evolving increased profit margin as well. Simply put, I think we would automatically be able to mitigate, call it mid-single-digit impact on taxes by seeing marketing become cheaper. It doesn't mean that you spend less on marketing. It just means that you might grow faster because people will be exiting the market. Also, again, if people are spending less on marketing, your retention will increase as well.
We have never seen a drop in our EBITDA when taxes go up because we're very, very adaptable. We have much more room than our peers, right? You've got the likes of some of the others, like an Evoke or something sitting at 18%. The hit there is material, right? If it's harmonization, that would be material to them. For us, that would be probably the best possible outcome. It's harmonization. I'm not sure what will happen. I know that I expect this government to be very rational with the changes they make to tax. It will go up. I don't expect it to be particularly significant because of the dangers of displacement to the black market. You can easily increase the tax number, but you might not earn as much tax anymore if there's too much displacement to the black market.
I believe that this government is very aware of that.
Perfect. If I may follow up with a question on leverage, what's the maximum leverage that you believe that this business could withstand in case there is an attractive acquisition or if there's a one-time distribution to your shareholders? How comfortable would you, what's the maximum leverage that you would be comfortable with?
I'm going to hand that one over to you, Yanis, if you would like to take that.
Yes, hi, I'm the one who was in lieu. Although the free cash flow is very significant and we have a huge cash conversion, our middle-term goal is to go to 2.5 times. Up to 4 times is easily we can go for an M&A for these kinds of things.
Good afternoon. James Wycroft from Jefferies. Just a couple, please. Could you just maybe talk us through the product capability on sports betting and where you'd want to take that product next, how to expand it? Secondly, just in terms of, could you give us a bit more color around the ongoing relationship with Bally's and iGaming in the U.S. so we understand that better and how that dynamic works? It looks like you're going to deliver pretty quickly. You haven't mentioned buybacks. I assume that's part of the possibility. Where would you be thinking in terms of M&A if that's something you did call out?
Thank you. With respect to sports betting, where we want to take that, we've been very careful in driving our customers into sports betting with our existing offerings because, as I've said, there are stake limits on slot machines. There are no stake limits on sports. You have to get this balance right because you want people to be able to flow the money through all products. You don't want someone to win $50,000 on a sports bet and then can't cycle it in any which way. We've gone for a much more casual, lower staking model on the majority of our offerings in sports betting. As you would have seen recently, we announced a sponsorship deal with regards to Nottingham Forest with Bally's. We're going to use that as a bet, and it's called Bally Bet. That's going to be our leading sports brand.
It is where the majority of our sports betting is coming from, and we're going to push that pretty aggressively. The reason why we did that is if there are tax changes, which I strongly suspect there will be tax changes, we expect a lot of our peer group, who all are very strong in sports or have a large percentage of their revenue in sports, to pull back in their marketing. Therefore, we want to be marketing in that space to what is currently a lower tax product set. Sports betting, we have all the usual capabilities, all the data analytics around it, around predicting lifetime value, giving the appropriate offers to customers, free bets, and so forth. We'll do more around prepackaged parlays. It's more casual, higher margin as well because essentially, it's an accumulator, which creates a higher margin bet.
We launched sports in Spain, which is very sports-led. We see growth coming from sports. We're more using it as an acquisition vehicle because we do accept that our strength is in iGaming. We'll make sure that we get the funnel right, get people into iGaming, and retain them in that. With respect to our relationship with North America Interactive, Bally's International Interactive helped create that business, set up the launch for all of North America Interactive. Once there is profitability there, there will be fees paid to Bally's International Interactive and Bally's Intralot combined, which will look like approximately 50% of all profits out of North America Interactive. It won't be exactly a profit share, more because as soon as you get into profit shares, it has different licensing implications.
We have made sure that we're charging appropriate fees for our data technologies that we'll be helping them with and so on. For M&A, I think there's a few different angles. There are opportunities in some territories that we might not be present in, where we might feel that it's better to access that market if it's got something very distinct and unique. We are very interested in even some acquisitions in the UK market. I find it quite exciting when I think about the impacts that could come from a tax increase, actually, because some people will want to walk away from that market. Immediately, when you say we generate EBITDA at a 40% margin in the UK and someone might operate at 20%, I could offer them a sensible multiple on their business, put it on my platform, and I'm paying essentially half the multiple, right?
It would even be better than that. You don't need more people, as I've said. All of our technology is fully scaled. You don't need to add any more people. I believe that we could be a great consolidator. I would love to add more revenue to our platform, be it in the UK, Spain, Nordics, and other territories. We will be very disciplined and careful. We will make sure that we can get synergies out of the deal. That might be, I want to buy people who might not be very good at data analytics because I know that I'm good at it. We will focus on the synergy. There is always going to be a careful eye on making sure that we deliver our promises to our shareholders, where we've talked about appropriate leverage. If you get the EBITDA, that automatically helps with that. M&A, disciplined.
I think there's opportunities out there. I think there's significant opportunities out there.
Hi, Richard Stevens from Deutsche. Just a couple of quick questions, please. First of all, when the UK regulations reduce the maximum stakes down to £5, how did that impact you? Is there any more sort of annualized impact going forward? The second question on lotteries. For the ones which you don't renew or don't win, what is the reason? Is it because you haven't got the right sort of functionality? Is it price? Presumably, some other competitors have some quite good offerings as well.
Could you repeat the first part of the second question?
Once the lottery contracts which you don't renew or don't.
Yeah, OK.
Is it due to price or something else?
OK.
I'll start with stakes. As you correctly say, stake limits went down to £5 for over 24s, and under 24s, they're sitting at £2. It hasn't had any impact on us. In fact, I would argue that it's carried a degree of benefit because, as I described with our games, we made sure that people weren't winning large multiples. It meant that we still paid back sufficiently to every single player. As soon as people don't win walk-away money, they don't withdraw, right? If you don't withdraw, there's processing fees around deposits and withdrawals. People just kept on cycling the money through the system, and people aren't losing as quickly anymore. Actually, everyone's getting a better experience. They're playing for longer. It's boosting retention. It's increasing margins because you don't have all the fees of the deposit withdrawal, deposit withdrawal cycling. Stake limits for us have been very beneficial.
It's obviously different if you haven't balanced your ecosystem. Actually, having big wins on something and nowhere, which is 24/7, which is all online casino, that creates a jarring mechanism for people flowing the money through the system. I think it ultimately has meant that we have a safer marketplace for consumers. It will also mean for people who actually do believe in responsible gaming as an operator, and we're very strong around regulation, you get big benefits. It makes us more profitable.
Until, I think it was 2017 or the beginning of 2018, we were practically as Intralot everywhere in terms of verticals, in terms of distribution channels. I think it was only one contract that from the beginning of the company we have lost. The problem is that at that time, we had an EBITDA margin of close to 15%. We were burning money. We make a decision to practically rationalize the investments and make sure that, first of all, we go on relevant projects. A first part of the contract that we have not renewed is because we have not participated in the same RFP when it came for renewal. Example was Malta, the license in Malta, and also the sports betting in Morocco. The second thing is that we do not practically submit proposals when the returns are not adequate for the company and the shareholders.
There are cases that we have lost because of pricing and because we said, you know, for us, it didn't make sense. That is why now we are not in 100% renewal rate. We are enjoying a 35% or 37% EBITDA margin and a healthy cash flow.
Nicholas, I'm not sure I fully understood your sort of walkthrough with respect to Turkey. I understand the licenses are effectively perpetual for the operator, but in terms of the company's revenue generation, can you share?
In Turkey, the area that we compete is the one of the electronic agents. Practically, there is a central product that comes from Sport Auto, which is the sportsbook. All the electronic agents take the same feed, the same odds, the same product, and they compete on marketing. You can have a license in order to set up an electronic agent and compete in the open market. As I presume Bally's or every other company is doing in an open market in the B2C space, you pay some fees. You renew the license. You have to adhere, you know, with properties and compliance and stuff like that. This is exactly what we are doing. We are now number two in terms of market share. We are there for many, many years. We have an established brand, which is Beyond It, along with our Turkish partners.
The next round of license that they are going to renew, our license expires in 2029. As it did in 2019, you just apply and provided that you do not have any violations or this kind of stuff, you renew the license, paying the relevant fee. That is why I said there is no risk that somebody else is going to offer a better pricing or, you know, do some weird thing and get a license from you because it is open.
Hi, good afternoon. I'm Praveen from Buckley's here. You talked about new iGaming markets that you are looking at. Can you just elaborate more? What are the markets you are looking at? Are those in Europe or Latin America or elsewhere? The second question is on your iGaming PAM. Does that include new states regulating the iGaming in the next few years? What's your sort of outlook on iGaming regulation in the U.S.?
On the first part of the question, because I'm taking because I was the one that mentioned the two examples, we have identified four markets. Three are in Europe and one in Latin America, obviously, for obvious reasons. We cannot disclose. This is something that is in advanced stage, meaning that we have the go-to market. We have started recruiting the people. We have started the licensing process, different in every country, especially the two first. In 2026, we will start the next two. Robson, please.
With respect to iGaming in the U.S., that will sit with Bally's North America Interactive, which is outside of this perimeter. When it becomes profitable, as I said, we'll be able to share in the upside. Thank you. Are there any questions online?
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Thank you all for joining us today. I think this combination is super exciting. I think we've got amazing growth prospects. We are very uniquely positioned to be able to access all forms of gaming online and prepared for the digital convergence that is coming to lotteries, but just across the globe. This is going to be a great opportunity for us. I'm really, really positive and happy to be part of this company going forward alongside Nikolaos Nikolakopoulos and Andreas Chrysos, who isn't with us today. It'll be an awesome company. Thank you.
Thank you.