Good day, and welcome everyone to the CIRSA Q4 2025 financial results presentation, hosted by Joaquim Agut, Executive Chairman, Antonio Hostench, Chief Executive Officer, and Antonio Grau, Chief Financial Officer. My name is Becky, and I am your event manager. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only, but if you require assistance at any time, please press star zero on your telephone and an operator will be happy to assist you. Please note that in the Q&A session, you can ask questions by phone or in writing via the webcast, and the answers will always be given orally, with the order of preference being given those verbally. I would now like to advise all parties that this conference is being recorded. Now I would like to hand over to Joaquim Agut, Executive Chairman. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Thanks to everyone for being here today, attending our Q4 2025 results presentation. I'll start with the company highlights. On the third chart, 2025, it has been for Cirsa, another great year of strong performance coming from the precise execution of our plans implemented by the different management teams. As always happened, since this management team took over the company back in 2006, we always delivered all our financial commitments. Regarding 2025 results, both revenues and EBITDA exceeded our revised guidance. Revenues ended at EUR 2,339 million. This is an improvement year-over-year of +8.8%.
EBITDA closed at EUR 753.5 million, an improvement of 7.8% year-on-year, giving a margin of 32%. In retail businesses, Cirsa achieved growth targets of mid-single digits as committed, our online business unit kept growing very well, online figures reach and improve our IPO ratio commitments of delivering revenues above EUR 500 million and EBITDA above EUR 100 million in 2025. By year-end, online revenues ended at EUR 529 million, an improvement year-on-year of +25.8%, EBITDA ended at EUR 104 million, an improvement of 22%. Q4 2025 represents our seventieth consecutive quarter of EBITDA growth, excluding COVID time. EUR 134 million were invested on bolt-on M&A across of our highly fragmented markets and at very attractive multiples.
Last July the ninth, we launched our successful IPO, facilitating growth, acceleration, and debt reduction. Financial cost has been reduced by more than 200 basic points, strengthening Cirsa's profitability. Our dividend proposal of EUR 75 million to the AGM is going to be representing about EUR 0.45 per share. At the end of the day, we're nothing new. We say what we do, and we do what we say. Going to the next chart, and continuing with Cirsa highlights, mention that our strategic model is consistently delivering solid and predictable growth. Cirsa's organic growth comes from our local and resilient low-wage clients, and on exploiting the omnichannel opportunity we have in all markets. go-to-market strategy deployment, product renewals, and full entertainment offer are driving growth year-over-year by retaining customers and growing new ones repeatedly.
A unique and well-balanced diversification by geography and by gaming segment is key on achieving financial targets regardless of business cycles. M&A, through accretive bolt-ons, takes place in all our fragmented markets. Markets where we have long-standing know-how, experience, and recognition. We have a solid pipeline of targets across the world, in land-based and online. We closed several M&As at the end of last year, November and December, and is clearly reinforcing our inorganic growth for this 2026. As reported many times, our M&A bolt-ons should represent around one-third of our delta revenues and delta EBITDA year-on-year. Our guidance for 2026 is as follows: in revenues, the range would be between 2,500 and 2,560 million euros.
This is an improvement of between 7% and 9.5%. EBITDA is going to be between EUR 800 million and EUR 820 million. This is an improvement of +6% to +9%, with a margin at 32%. Now I'm going to hand over to Antonio, who will take us through the business overview.
Thank you, Joaquin. Welcome to everybody on the call. In page 6, I'll start with an overview of the performance of our business portfolio. Here you can see that in 2025, all our 4 business units delivered growth both in revenue and EBITDA. The only thing I would like to highlight here is the remarkable growth that we achieved in our 3 main business units, starting with the online business unit with +26%, slots +5% revenue growth, and our casino business unit growing at 4.9% at constant FX. I also have to say that the last 2 business units had almost no impact of bolt-on acquisitions, as most of them were completed by the end of Q4 last year. Going to page 7, we have added.
all our retail business units to show you its constant and healthy growth profile. In this perimeter, we have achieved the target that we set up for our retail segments. In the guidance we gave you a year ago to be in the mid to high in the mid-single digit. We achieved, as you can see, a growth of 4.6%, which would be at local, at constant FX of 6.1%. This growth, together with our constant search for productivity, both in revenue and cost, allow us to compensate the FX impact, which was EUR 26 million in revenue and EUR 14 million in EBITDA, and deliver a higher than a higher growth in EBITDA than in revenues. The growth in EBITDA was 6%, which I think it's remarkable.
As I said, all this with very limited contribution of M&A, as the relevant purchases were completed in late Q4 last year, which is also setting a good basis for growth for 2026. Now, starting in page 8 with our biggest business unit, casinos. In casinos, the organic growth was of +4.9% at cost and FX, 2.2% in actual numbers, which is in line with our historical trend. This has been the result of managing along the year, 2 million customers that made and visited us 37.5 million times, so very relevant numbers. The growth in our portfolio of countries was led by Colombia, Dominican Republic, Spain, and Morocco.
Important to mention that Panama, after a weak first half, we have seen from August, September on, a clear market recovery that we have noted in our numbers. This was not only a recovery of the market, but also due to relevant changes within our team in Panama, plus updating several of our casinos there. We shifted a bit our marketing approach, growing to a more local approach than we used to do in the previous quarters. In terms of M&A, we closed 2 transactions in Q4. In November, we closed the acquisition of the casino in Marrakech, the one located in Hotel La Mamounia, a flagship hotel within Europe. Right now, we own 4 out of the 7 licenses in the country.
The second acquisition was closed in December. We acquired 4 casinos in Peru, which is positioning us as the number one operator in the country. In this business unit, going forward, the strategic drivers will be: number one, is to continue updating our gaming and entertainment offer with the best slots and Electronic Table Games that you can find in the market. We want to maintain in our casinos, the best gaming experience for our customers. By the way, in some of these cases, with the suppliers, we have exclusivity periods to enjoy those slots while our competitors cannot. The second driver would be the execution of our goldmine strategy, as you know very well. For 2026, we have 18 projects, which most of them are already in process, compared to the 14 that we completed last year.
This with returns that are in the range of 25%-30% returns, and almost, I would say, at almost no risk. The third axis would be to keep using our unique technology and best practices toolkit, especially everything what refers to customer data management and CRM, which is an area that we transferred several years ago from our online practice. In the following page, you have the slots Spain business unit. Here, remember that we are combining two integrated businesses, the main one being the operation of slots and BARS, which accounts for 80% of the numbers that you have in this page, and our B2B division that designs games and slots for the Spanish market.
I have to say that 2025 was an outstanding year, with a growth of 5.4% and achieving a EBITDA of EUR 2,022 million. If you just look at the operational slots in bars, this business grew by 7.4%, which shows the health of this business in Spain. The main drivers from this growth were our commercial strategy, addressing the best-performing bars in the country. A way to look at that is that if you look at the number of A bars within our portfolio, this percentage grew from 24 to 25, from 40% to 44%. The amount of good bars in our portfolio has grown. Also, the second driver has been the slots suppression program.
This year, we replaced 8,200 slots that have been performing extremely well. Our B2B unit continues launching new releases of what we have told you many times, the Manhattan slots. We have new releases, new versions of this model. At ICE, we launched the Manhattan Magic and the Manhattan Premium, as you know, we were able to test those models in advance. In our case, since August, we deployed more than 1,300 slots within our portfolio, and this is why you see these growth rates in our business. Again, here, in terms of M&A, the main transaction was concluded in December 2025, adding 460 slots in the region of Valencia. For 2026, we will continue taking advantage of our Beltika integration.
This means that we'll be deploying the best games faster than our competitors. Also the second, let's say, axis to improve would be to extend the usage of data that we receive on a daily basis from our 25.5 thousand slots to increase the productivity of our operations and our logistics. That's it for the slots business in Spain, and then I'll jump to page number 10 to our online business, the one with the highest growth within our portfolio, that in 2025 has increased its total weight on our revenues up to 23%. Already playing a big role in our, in our business.
First message here, as Joaquim Agut mentioned, is that we have achieved the commitment that we took a year ago of delivering above EUR 500 million of revenues and EUR 100 million of EBITDA. The final actual numbers were EUR 529 million revenues and EUR 104 million EBITDA. This has been the result of managing 2.6 million unique players along the year. That took us to a growth of 25.8% in our revenues, that in a like for like perimeter, because here we should exclude the first year, the first half of Apuesta Total that we didn't have in 2024. This 25.8% in an organic view would be 13.1%. Another way to see the evolution of the business would be looking at the turnover numbers.
We think this is a better indicator of the business performance because it excludes the sports betting margins fluctuation from one month to the other. Again, if you look this in a like for like basis, taking out the first half of Apuesta Total, the turnover growth was 37% for 2025, and the growth was 14.7%, which is pretty much in line with the guidance we gave you for our organic growth in the online channel of above 10%. In terms of EBITDA, as I said, EUR 104 million, despite having two months, which the industry experienced unusual customer-friendly results. For 2026, we have four big priorities or topics that we will follow in the coming months.
Number one, we want to keep a very competitive sports betting platform, both in terms of content as well as in core functionalities. In 2025, we implemented the Bet Builder, the Cash Out, the Early Payouts functionalities. For 2026, we have already in the pipeline, the substitute functionality, will include prediction markets, will improve also streaming and some other betting functionalities. Point number 2 will be to improve the mobile UX and the end-to-end customer journeys through using, well, softwares that are giving us analytical information around that. Third axis for 2026 will be, and I think this is hell of a good opportunity for us to grow, is to enhance and differentiate the casino offering. We want to expand the portfolio with exclusive content. I'll give you some examples.
During 2025, we added more than 2,000 games and Live Casino games across all operations, for 2026, we'll be implementing on a monthly basis around from 60-100 new titles every month in our main markets. We'll be looking for exclusive branded slots for each operation. Also, around the casino offering, we will make a progressive rollout of gamification features to increase the frequency and loyalty of our customers. The fourth point I would like to highlight here would be that we want to continue leveraging the CRM as a direct growth engine by increasing the use of real-time triggers and personalized journeys supported by AI tools. Now, I'll leave it to Antonio Grau to follow with the financial positive chapter.
Thanks, Antonio. Good morning, everyone. We'll start with the financial results presentation. First, I would like to begin by highlighting our performance in cash generation. This is a critical metric for our company, and once again, we have delivered outstanding results with a 17% increase in free operating cash flow before M&A. This structurally strong cash generation is supported by two key pillars. First of them is the investing class EBITDA margin of 32%, comfortably above our long-standing target of being above 30%. Second, the highly efficient, high return CapEx profile, representing only 8.2% of revenues. We have already discussed EBITDA growth and its contribution to cash generation, let me now highlight two effects within the year, which offset each other.
On one hand, we made a EUR 21 million license payment for our online business in Italy, securing the next 9 years without further payments for this concept. On the other hand, we benefited from a favorable timing effect in gaming tax payments, amounting to approximately EUR 15 million, which will in 2026. Sorry, on overall, these effects balanced out, and we have delivered an excellent cash generation performance, totaling EUR 394 million of cash generated in the year. Moving on to earnings evolution, that's on slide 13. Thank you. While EBITDA increased by 6.8%, you can see that our net profit rose by 165% and adjusted net profit by 47.6%. This is reflecting an improved operating leverage. Brief remark on the markets for your better understanding.
Our 2025 financial expenses include EUR 12 million of non-recurring cancellation costs, which were mostly incurred in Q4 with the refinancing of EUR 1 billion in bonds that we performed late October. Looking ahead, combining our ability to grow net profit ahead of EBITDA, with the expected significant reduction in financial expenses in 2026, which I remind you, will be approximately EUR 60 million savings. I remind you, important, that's with no corporate tax impact, so that's direct improvement to the bottom line. We see obviously very positive prospects for further improvements in both net profit and adjusted net profit in 2026. Going same slide, shareholder remuneration now. First comment on our adjusted earnings per share, they increased by 35%, reaching EUR 1.37 per share.
Following our 35% dividend payout policy on adjusted net profit, we are proposing a dividend of EUR 0.45 per share, which we expect to pay in full at the beginning of May, after the AGM takes place. Moreover, this is important, the expected improvement in adjusted net profit in 2026 supports the potential for a significant uplift in the dividend for the distribution of 2026 results. I'll move now to capital structure, slide 14. With year-end leverage of 2.7x, we have made our target of 2.75x leverage, representing a 1.1 month of reduction during the year. This is, there's a slight uptick in Q4 of 0.1 notches in leverage ratio, which is entirely attributable to the fact that most of our M&A activity was concentrated in Q4.
In addition to reducing debt, we have also significantly strengthened our liquidity, increasing our cash position to EUR 672 million. That's EUR 122 million over 2024 year end, or 22% increase. We'd like to reiterate once more our mid-term steady-state leverage range of 2-2.5x. Let me close finally, by emphasizing that our balance sheet remains robust and well-positioned. This gives us both the financial flexibility and the operational capacity to continue investing in value-accretive opportunities. Together with our strong and resilient cash generation, we are able to self-fund around EUR 150 million of M&A activity every year, while fully meeting our financial obligations, sustaining progressive dividend growth supported by our improved earnings, and continuing to reduce our leverage ratio.
With that, I hand back to Antonio.
Thank you, Toni. I start with the future growth plans in page 16. First of all, one premise that is not written here is that our industry is growing in all our markets and channels. Maybe with the only exception of Italy, of the retail channel in Italy, because of very restrictive regulation, but for all our markets and channels, our industry is growing. This is due basically to, first of all, the under-penetration of gaming in these markets compared to the more developed ones, and also the good macroeconomic environment that we have in the selected countries that we are in. Remember that we speak about Latin America, but we are in the selected countries that we decided to be.
On the page where you have how to capture this growth, first of all, in organic terms, we have our main business as usual activities, most of them already commented. Summarizing, I would say the number one is that we want to keep a top gaming and entertainment offer in both channels. We are continuously searching for new game suppliers, new slots, new Live Casino suppliers, and new advanced Electronic Tables options. That's number one. Also, second, we are using advanced tools and softwares to verify that the user experience and customer journeys are competitive, because we want to improve the level of satisfaction of our 6.2 million unique customers across the markets. The third axis is that it is in our DNA, the worst productivity and efficiency.
Nowadays, most of our plans are coming through the development of technology and the use of AI, that allow us to automate manual operational processes, and also being faster to execute, especially in the online channel. Together with these business as usual activities, we are supporting the business by our CapEx plan, mainly in 3 lines: goldmine strategy, expanding our best-performing casinos. Second, the slot replacement program, especially in the slot business in Spain and Italy. Thirdly, investing in technology and our gaming platforms in all channels. These organic activities will be complemented by M&A in 2 ways. Bolt-ons, already commented, you know that all our markets are highly fragmented, and the options to keep contracted the market are huge.
What we expect, in this case, what's new here is that we have started to explore larger projects, not only LATAM, but also in Europe, where we have seen that we have markets that fulfill our strategic criteria, and also the potential to the potential synergies with our operations are very high. Doing all this, we are convinced that will benefit the shareholder value. We'll have higher earnings, more financial resources to invest in growth, and increase the dividends to the shareholders. Going to the numbers in page 17, where you have the guidance. This guidance is not only based on my previous page and all the plans that we have developed that go into very big detail if quarterly plans in every single casino are on operation, but are also based on a very good start of the year.
In January, stars were aligned. We had black numbers in all our operations, which is something that we have not seen for the past, maybe, 24 months in every single operation. Not only that, but also the sports results were in our favor. February also started this similar trend, but maybe the sports betting matches were not as good as in January. All in all, this has been a very good start of the year. Very good, very solid start to commit to this guidance. Going to the numbers, we'll follow the same figures that we gave you in our 3 years plans before the IPO.
In terms of revenue, we expect to grow in the mid to high single digits. These are combination of mid-single digit in the retail businesses, plus more than 10% growth in the online business. In EBITDA terms, our guidance is to be in the range from EUR 800 million-EUR 120 million, reflecting the mid to high single digit growth and the continued operating leverage. EBITDA margin, if we do the math, will be in above 30%, 30 to 32%. On top of our regular CapEx from 7 to 9%, M&A will continue to contribute around one third of our growth for the year, as Joaquim commented at the starting of the presentation.
Lastly, the dividend proposal of the board of directors to the April shareholders meeting will be of EUR 75 million, which is following our policy of 35% of the net adjusted profit. That's it from my side. The final remarks will be done by Joaquim.
Pedro, thank you very much. Well, you have seen that the strategy and our execution works. We have achieved 70 consecutive quarters growing every day. The second point I'd like to make is about our unique diversification. Diversification is a real key pillar of our consistent financials delivery, regardless business cycles. 2026 is another year where we have a strong set of opportunities, where growth will come from both sides, as Antonio explained, organic and bolt-ons. We are ready for another interesting acquisition, especially in the online arena. The management team is fully committed to deliver shareholder value. It will deliver an attractive dividend policy, plus an growing cash flow generation, as it has been deeply said during the call.
2026 guidance, I'll repeat it once again, in revenues, we are going to be between EUR 2,500 million and EUR 2,560 million, +7 to +9.5%. Variation year-over-year, EBITDA will be in the range between EUR 800 million and EUR 820 million, is an improvement between +6% and +9%. Dividend proposal, also mentioned several times, for 2025, is EUR 75 million, corresponding to EUR 0.45 per share. The last point is about ESG, which matters to you, sir, responsible gaming. We have a focus, and we want to keep our leadership in our industry. It's just an important area for the company. This is it.
From now on, we would love to take your questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads now. If you feel your question has been answered or for any reason you would like to remove yourself from the queue, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Ricardo Benavides from Santander. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hello, all. Thank you. three questions from my end. Firstly, regarding these M&A priorities and your interest in European markets, what would you say are the most interesting countries right now to look at other than Spain? I have 2 questions on the online gaming segment. Firstly, have you, in 2026, current trading, seen any type of anomalous behavior in terms of sports results that could have affected you, like in September or October last year? Lastly, I just want to double-check something I heard now during the presentation. Did I hear you correctly saying that you are considering to implement substantive functionalities of prediction markets in your online gaming offering? If so is the case-
Yes
... do you still maintain your view of the, of what you stated-?
Yes
last quarter, that you believe there is no real competition from these prediction market players? Thank you.
Okay, let me start by the countries question. Let me tell you the opposite way. We are not considering the purest and European countries, where we think regulation, compliance, and so forth is not so clear. You can keep out of the formula Bulgaria, Romania, the old Soviet republics. What we are looking for is opportunities in the Western Europe, the traditional Western Europe.
France and above France. Second thing, on the online, we have not seen any anomalous behavior. What I just said is that in January, results were in our favor, but of course, you know that along the year, this usually compensates, but we haven't seen anything special on. I don't know if you have any specific question, but I, we have not noticed anything new on this.
No.
Regarding productivity, we have the same idea. We don't think this is gonna be competition for us, and because of regulation, this is impossible to happen in our markets. We thought that maybe during the year we can add those options in our offering, which I don't think will mean a big thing, but it's also always nice and to add new features and new options in our offering.
A quick follow-up on that then. Would you be rolling out prediction markets throughout both Europe and Latin America, or is it just regarding any specific geography?
We will start with the Spain, but this is not going to be a big priority for us. This is just an example of new markets that we'll be adding into our sports betting offering.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Francisco Riquel from Alantra. Your line is now open, please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I want to ask about margins. First, slots, Spain, you have reported another quarter with above 50% margin. I wonder if above 50% should be the new normal, if you can update on the guidance for margins in slot Spain. In online, margins have actually fallen a bit in 2025. You were guiding for an improvement to mid-20s. If you can update on your margin guidance for the online business for 2026 and medium term. Finally, for the group, EBITDA growth will be one percentage point below revenue growth.
If you can comment on the reasons for this, margin pressure in 26, if it is related to the business mix, or if it is also like for like by business? Thank you. Hello?
I'll start again. I thought we were on mute. Sorry. I'll start with the margins. In the slot operations within Spain, we're gonna stay with a target of being above 45%. We think what we have achieved in 2025 was extraordinary. We want to keep our target above 45%. In online betting and gaming, you're right, we are in the range of 20%, our aim is to move this to 25% in the coming two years. You have to also understand that this also has a lot to do, the sports betting margin, depending on how friendly are the sports results to our customers. Again, the target remains to move to mid-twenties.
Regarding your question about being margin with pressure a bit down, we are working in all sort of productivity plans to really catch up and align more our cost increase with the revenue increase.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ed Young, from Morgan Stanley. Ed, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I've also got 3, please. The first of all, I just wondered if you could give a bit of color on what you're seeing on the consumer demand picture across your different markets. Organic has clearly been a bit stronger than perhaps you or we expected over the course of 2025. You talked about normalization in a couple of your countries. Just an update on what you're seeing from a consumer behavior point of view would be helpful on a geographic basis. The second is online growth, as you mentioned, 13% underlying ex M&A, nearly 15% turnover growth. How should we think about online growth into next year?
You've given some very light color on it, but we've also got the World Cup, so can you help us think through growth into 2026 in online? Finally, you've mentioned in the presentation you're ready for another AT experience. Could you just talk about what the context looks like for M&A at the moment in online in terms of targets, seller valuations, et cetera? Thank you.
I'll start with the consumer demand. What we're seeing, as I said, the industry is growing everywhere in all our markets. Let's say in the European markets, those growth rates would be below 5%. In Latin America, I'm talking now about the retail businesses, below 5% in Europe, above 5% in Latin America. As I said, our slots business in Spain last year grew 7% with almost no M&A, so it's very healthy. The online business, overall, our plans include a growth of above 10% in any market where we are in. That is a situation of the market.
Now going to online, we see the World Cup as a step up in terms of customer acquisition, but it depends a lot in terms of bottom line of how.
Scores.
The scores evolve. If we have, I don't know, Germany, England, or Argentina winning the World Cup, I'm sure the margin will be very poor. If we have Indonesia winning the World Cup, the margins will be great. We see this as an opportunity to capture new demand, which has been the case in the major sports events, especially the World Cup. We see going forward, what you said, the turnover growth for last year was 15% is where we see the organic growth of our business. We have mentioned this many times that if we want to grow the weight of the online business in a portfolio where all the retail business are also growing, we'll need to go through M&A.
Joaquim well mentioned that we have in the pipeline several, I would say two good opportunities to build a strong position in one of the existing markets, but I cannot disclose more many details around it.
Yeah, it will take some time. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Luis Chinchilla from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open, please go ahead.
Hey, thank you so much for taking the questions. I wanted to start, very briefly with Mexico. Have you guys seen any impact or suffering any impact from the cartel activity this week? Do you anticipate that this would materially impact operations there?
We had 10 casinos closed, an average of 2 and a half days. Since yesterday, the 100% of the casinos are fully running open and without having any problem in terms of visits and customers' consumption.
Perfect. Thank you. Talking upon, you know, prediction markets and your appetite for M&A, do you guys anticipate that, you know, perhaps, some of the acquisition targets might be in the technology front? Or do you guys anticipate that you have, enough, you know, technological capacities to make these offerings without having to, you know, go to market to acquire them?
We don't need to go to acquire technology, for sure. We see this as a marginal improvement. We can do that on our own and based with good agreements with third-party suppliers.
Wonderful. Thank you. That's all I had.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Karina Elias from Barclays. Your line is now open, please go ahead.
Hi, thanks a lot for the presentation, and thanks for taking my questions. Obviously, you've mentioned that the 2028 are probably the next bonds that you're looking to refinance, but just with the dividend now being paid, is it safe to assume that the payment on the PIK probably will be done in cash? Is the intention to potentially look to refinance those PIKs simultaneously than what you're doing on the 2028? Thank you.
Yes.
Yes. Sorry, Karina, this is decision by one of our shareholders, so that needs to be asked to them. That's something we'll be paying the dividend at the beginning of May. That's a decision from them what to do with that.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Stuber from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open, please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. 2, please, if that's okay.
Sure.
The first one is, could you say what the EBITDA contribution, you expect to achieve from the 3 acquisitions that you made in December? That's my the first question, to see sort of how far we are, in terms of how much of the incremental EBITDA is already in the bag. The second question again on M&A: Could you just, give us your latest thoughts on entering Brazil? And again, when, whether this would be, via organic or inorganic means. Thank you.
Yes. First question, the balance of the acquisitions we did last year, impacting in 2026 as incremental EBITDA, would be of EUR 14.5 million. Regarding Brazil, we stay at the same point. I just read a few days ago that 51% of the Brazilian market still offshore, we have no intention in the short term to approach that market. You're right, in case we decide to go there, whenever everything is normalized and under control, we will go for an M&A.
God knows when.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question is from Pravin Gondhale from Barclays. Your line is now open, please go ahead.
Hi, morning. Congratulations on the results, and thanks for taking my questions. My sort of first question is on the full year guidance. The guidance implies flattish EBITDA margins, with EBITDA growth, lower than the top-line growth. Could you please appreciate there are, the faster online growth is related to margins, but in 2025, we had a few headwinds like adverse sports results and IPO payments or softer casino performance in Mexico and Panama in H1, which is recovering now. Could you please sort of, elaborate a bit more on embedded assumptions for different divisions in the guidance and, what drives the conservatism, for the EBITDA growth, guidance there? Thank you.
Yes, about the margin, I think we need to remark that we think a 32% margin is a very good margin, by the way. It's not around pressure, but as you know, we are increasing the weight of the online segment, which has a lower margin than the retail businesses. This is why we cannot keep improving. As Joaquin said, on the opposite side, we are working in many efficiency plans within the company to compensate that growth in the online channel. Our margins remain above that target of 30%, but if you make the average of the guidance, we would be in the 32% for 2026.
Thank you. A follow-up to that, could you help us, what was the sports results impact in 2025 on online margins, both for revenue and EBITDA, if that would be helpful? Thank you.
Sorry, Pravin, could you repeat that question? We didn't catch the beginning of it.
what was the impact of adverse sports results in 2025, both for revenue and EBITDA in online?
The impact in 2025.
Of what?
What you say, sorry?
Adverse online sports results.
sport results, sorry. Yeah.
Sports results impact, yeah.
Yeah. Okay. In 2025.
Well, GGR margin dropped compared to our average in the range of 350-400 basic points.
Thank you very much. This is really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Shelley from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions, and thanks for the presentation. Three from me, if I may. How should we think about casino revenue growth in 2026? Should it be similar on a constant currency basis to 2025? On the M&A cash outflow line for 2026, can you just give us a sort of a starting point as to where we should base our expectations? Lastly, you've outlined financial expense savings in your release. Could you give us an early idea of what cash financial expenses should be for 2026? Thank you.
Yes. In the casino segment, you should expect a similar trend that we had last year, around 5% growth in the overall business unit.
Sorry, to correct you. The growth that we have had the last 20 years. Yes, yes.
About M&A, I don't know if I heard you well. The plan considers to keep that EUR 500 million in 3 years. We should be investing around EUR 150 million. This, of course, would take place along the year, and what is coming from the previous year would be around EUR 14 million of EBITDA that will be in 2026.
Let me comment you that in 2025, in terms of cash outflows from M&A, we had a significant amount coming from a previous year acquisition of Westside Hotel, so we had EUR 115 million, which impacted 2025. In 2026, we have hardly no payments coming from the year before, so the investment we do will correspond to acquisitions performed during 2026. As we said, as of now, aligned to the plan that we explained to you of this EUR 400-500 in 3 years, which would be around EUR 150 per year, which is a figure that allows us to, I mean, to pay the dividend, to pay. I'll comment in a second the financial cash cost, okay.
To pay the financial cost, to pay the dividend, and still to reduce leverage ratio, yeah. Going to financial cash for next year, I mentioned about 60 million EUR savings for next year. You can think of cash payments in the range of EUR 135 million to 130 million, okay? That's more or less where we should be by next year, which could correspond in terms of financial accounting costs, let me say P&L, not cash, or somewhere around a bit north of EUR 140 million. That's where we should be.
Guys, that's really clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Fabio Pavan from Mediobanca. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning, all, and congrats for the good numbers. Few questions. First one is on casinos. If I'm right, there should be an acceleration in goldmine projects to 16-18 for this year. It is fair to assume impact would be fully visible in 2027 numbers. Second question is a follow-up on online. You managed to exceed the guidance for 2025, is there any guidance you can share with us for 2026? I think I will stop it here. Thank you.
For the casinos, you're right, we're jumping from 14 to 18, but we are in the range of the number of projects that we accomplish every year. Just to give you an example, within the 5 casinos we acquired by the end of the year, we are already starting those sort of activities to improve and enlarge those casinos. This is, I would say, an average, what you would see in the coming years.
Not only that, and that is what makes us, you know, this constant growth of 5% every year during the last 20 years, because this is our, a business as usual practice that we keep implementing all the time.
With regards to online, we are not providing here a guidance for the year, but I think if you take the numbers that I've said, that we would be growing above 10% with similar or maybe a bit better margin for the year, you can make the math.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Joanna Saw from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Apologies, my question has been answered already.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Clark Lampen from BTIG. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. I will follow on the trend of some of my peers and ask three here, if I may. Could you clarify, I guess, whether guidance for over 10% growth in the online segment in 2026 contemplates any M&A contribution, or is that. I assume that's a fully organic number, but I guess I'm just curious if you guys could provide a little bit more context around maybe the likelihood of M&A? Second question on the casino business, I think, Antonio, last quarter, you had mentioned that a lot of the goldmine projects, excuse me, had already started and could be completed relatively earlier in 2026. Is it fair to think that we'll start to see the contribution in the first half of the year?
Third question, I guess maybe circling back to prediction, I'm sorry if I'm harping on a point that maybe you guys see as less consequential, but the shift in tone around prediction this quarter relative to last, and I think if I heard right previously, you are considering launching prediction in Spain first, maybe a little bit later in the year, around the midpoint of the year. Could you help us just understand what went into that decision, particularly because I think if I have it right, it's banned in that country. Help us just flesh that out a little bit more and understand what went into that decision. Thank you guys very much. I appreciate it.
Okay. question number one on the online growth, we are expecting that +10% coming just from purely organic growth. If anything new comes into the company, that will be added to that +10% growth. The gold mines. Gold mines, what we do, I cannot say that this is going to happen in the first half of the year because some of these projects, because one of the main rules that we have in our gold mine projects is that we cannot interfere the day-to-day operations. This is done in different phases. We start by one piece of the casino, then the other one, and the other one, and this is why this is happening along all 2026.
I'm a bit with around prediction markets, this is not an issue in our markets. As we said previously, this had no impact in our markets because of regulation restrictions, the prediction operators, Polymarket, and so on, so on, are not operating in our markets, and this is just adding a new different content into our portfolio, but we don't expect big things coming out of this.
Let me add one thing that may help you to understand this prediction issue. In European countries, especially, in many of them, what is not allowed by law is forbidden. You don't have illegal things, you know, happening. That's illegal.
Yeah. This means that any prediction market would require a gaming license, would require paying taxes, would require everything.
It would.
Yeah
... a specific regulation to make that happening.
Exactly.
Otherwise, it's forbidden.
It is impossible to replicate what you've seen in the States with the regulations.
Right
in our country, to be clear.
Yep.
Thank you. We currently have no further questions, so I'll hand it back over to you, Joaquin and Agut, for closing remarks.
Thank you very much.
The doors of.
investor relations and finance team will remain open to any further questions that may come in the coming days.
Hope to see several of you in the coming days and weeks. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
You should take a-
This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.