Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the FDJ United conference call. I now hand over to Pascal Chaffard, Executive Vice President, Finance, Performance and Strategy. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You might have read the press release published after the close of the market, and this presentation is also available in the investor relations section of our corporate site. I'm very pleased to comment on our activity for the Q3 to the end of September 2022, and I will present our adjusted upwards guidance for the whole year. My presentation will be brief, yes, to allow as much time possible for the Q&A session. Let's move to slide three. The good trend observed in H1 continued in Q3 with a 12% increase in revenue both in the quarter and the first nine months. I will comment now on the Q3 only. Revenue amounted to EUR 592 million and that's...
Sorry about that, EUR 529 million. There is a typo at the end. Sorry again about that. The lottery revenue increased by 14%, supported by an important number of high jackpots on EuroMillions compared to a low Q3 2021 comparison basis. For the record, we call high jackpots those over EUR 775 million, and we had 16 of those in the quarter versus 6 in 2021, same quarter. It's not just a matter of luck, but above all, the result of the marketing work and the mechanics of the game that we have so high number of high jackpots, because in some cases, we create those jackpots by adding EUR 130 million jackpot created by us.
Sports betting revenue was stable after an H1 decline of 5%. We told you in July at the H1 results stage that we had to wait and see how activity would play out with the return of the championships from August, where the punters are there when games offering is attractive, and I will come back to this a little bit later. Stakes were up 6% at point of sales and up 35% online, and we are really delighted with this performance. It's important for us to continue to record growth at point of sale, even if online growth is, in essence, much faster. Over the first nine months now, revenue increased by 12% also to EUR 1.8 billion.
I would like to remind you that we have benefited from a significant catch-up effect in lottery in H1, estimated at nearly two-thirds of the growth, with all points of sale open in 2022, while 10% of them were closed in the first half of 2021. Based on our performance at the end of September, we now expect a revenue growth of more than 8% and an EBITDA margin around 24% for 2022 as a whole. Before covering the details of these figures, a quick comment on the fact that revenue growth is stronger than the growth in stakes. In Q1 alone, the player payout ratio of sports betting was stable, but that of lottery declined by 1.2 points because the mix was more tilted towards draw games, as Loto and EuroMillions grow rapidly.
Over the first 9 months, the lag between revenue and stake growth is due to both lottery and sports betting player payout ratio. On sports betting now, the 9 months player payout ratio is 1 point lower than 2021. This situation is good for FDJ. We have, if I may say, saved player payouts before the World Cup, as we know that this kind of events usually drive higher level of player payout. In simple terms, for us to be competitive during this competition, which is key for recruitment. Let's now consider the Q3 detailed by activity, lottery and sports betting. The 12% growth was driven by lottery, with revenues up 14% to EUR 478 million.
At the H1 stage, we told you, as I said before, that two-thirds of this growth in lottery was related to a COVID catch-up. In Q3, this catch-up phenomenon has faded with only a minor impact on the sanitary pass, but it's really minor compared to what happened in H1. The growth is driven first by draw game, +17%, which benefited from many EuroMillions jackpots as I have already commented before. Instant games also boost posted dynamic growth of +7%, thanks in particular to the success of the different launches and re-editions of our games.
We already talked about Cash in February, but other games as X10 or X20 in June, and also the fifth edition of Mission Patrimoine in August have been big success. We've talked about the dynamics of online lottery in a couple of slides. Now we look a little bit at sports betting. Sports betting revenues were stable in Q3 at EUR 97 million. July suffered from a high 2021 comparison basis with the end of the UEFA European Championship. Since August, notably, thanks to the beginning of the different European football championship, stakes have grown by 9% on August and September. This is really very good news after this difficult H1. The growth is back and strong at the point of sale and even stronger online.
On the nine months revenues, the increase is 12% to EUR 1.8 billion on the basis of stakes up 9.5%. This performance reflects that of lottery with stakes up 15%. In sports betting, H1 decline in activity was greatly reduced after the good recovery observed in August and especially September, as I have just mentioned. With a strong Q4 with the FIFA World Cup, we expect that H2 will globally erase the decrease of H1 on sports betting. If we take a look now at the details of stakes by distribution channel, in both Q3 and over nine months, our two channels are growing nicely. At point of sale first, +6% in Q3 and +8.5% over nine months.
Even without the COVID catch-up already mentioned, this growth reflects the good intrinsic dynamics of games and the health of our 30,000 point of sale network. On the online, the growth is very strong, plus 35% in Q3 and 17% over 9 months. In Q3, online stakes accounted for 13% of total stakes, compared to 10.5% in Q3 2021. Over 9 months, they represented 12% of total stakes against 11% for the same period one year ago. Online lottery was very dynamic, with stakes up 39% in Q3 and 22% over 9 months. In Q3, online lottery stakes represented 12% of the total lottery stakes, 2 points higher than year-on-year.
Important to mention that this performance is totally responsible as almost exclusively based on the increase in the number of players with nearly 5 million players in the 12 months to the end of September. The player base expansion has obviously benefited from a favorable context in draw games, especially for EuroMillions, which I already mentioned and which is an important recruitment tool for the lottery. For sports betting, we do not yet have the market data for Q3 but Parions Sport en Ligne, which has largely outperformed the market for the last several quarters, recorded a very strong increase in Q3, probably outperforming the market again. We will be sure of that in a few weeks, but I think we have beaten the market.
Now if we look at our financial performance at the end of September, it came in higher than expected, and the overall environment remains favorable so far, despite the difficult economic environment. To date, we have not seen any impact of a potential drop in consumption related to a reduced purchasing power from customers in France. During our IPO roadshows, we explained that we were a resilient business, not a cyclical. Half of the growth of lottery comes from COVID catch up and half from what we can call our normative growth pace of a little bit more than 5%. The EBITDA margin will be at the end of the year close to 24% instead of more than 23.5% that we announced at the beginning of the year.
This kind of exceptional level of growth, and especially EBITDA margin, is the result of both the online momentum, and we know that online lottery is aggressive, but also the result of point-of-sale operating leverage with a significant marginal contribution. This shows also that a FDJ performance should be analyzed on a medium-term perspective rather than only on a quarterly basis. We will have the opportunity to come back to our medium-term perspective, our strategy on lottery, sports betting, online gaming, international, our environment, our performance, including extrafinancial performance during our investor day that we will organize. You can already pencil your diary for November seventeenth from 4 P.M. CET. It will be in person, physical and online, to allow a maximum of you to attend this event.
Thank you for your attention, and I'm now ready to answer your question. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on the participant keypad. We have the first question from Nils Andén from JP. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. Firstly, on the online mix, clearly going in the right direction, how much of this is the organic natural change in consumer habits, and how much is to do with your own marketing efforts? On the same point or similar point, can you confirm the launch of poker is still on track pre-World Cup? Then, second question, the ZEturf potential acquisition. Can you just expand on the specific appeal of this and also confirm the approximate consideration? I assume it's all cash that you would pay for this acquisition. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for your question. It's hard to say which part is from organic natural change and which part is from marketing efforts. It's both, but if I may say, without marketing efforts, we cannot really leverage the natural organic change. What we see for lottery, online lottery on the quarter, 39% growth, it is driven by the appeal of the EuroMillions jackpots that, as I explained, we organized the game to have those jackpots to drive people to our offer and to play our games.
This is why now we have something like 5 million people playing on an annual basis to our games online. I think that if we are not good at marketing, we would not have this kind of growth. It's not enough to rely on the natural change to capture new clients on online. It's an effort because they have to give their ID, they have to put their CB card, et cetera. They will not do that if it's not easy. If we don't have a good experience online, it will not possible to do it.
I think, yes, there is a natural change, but if we don't accompany it by a really good marketing team, a good also good games, it will not possible. I think, a big part of that is due to the quality of the marketing team of the FDJ, and we are confident that we will be able to continue to have this double-digit growth on online lottery. On sports betting, it's we have a good pace of the market coming back in Q3. I don't know exactly, as I said, the numbers that will come from the market, but I am quite sure that we have beaten the market on Q3.
The question is how FDJ is able quarter after quarter to beat the market. It's because we have invested on all the capacity that is important for the customers to find in our offer a good offer, good odds, a good experience, and so on and so on. We are better and better, and this is why we are able to have this gain in market share on the sports betting, and we will continue to improve. To answer your question on poker. Yes, we still aim to launch poker before the end of the year and before even before the beginning of the World Cup.
It will be set by the end of October to the decision of the regulator to authorize us to do poker. Yes, we will do so by the end of the year for sure. On ZEturf, it's a little bit sticky. Maybe of ZEturf are kept to precisely the same thing. We are still in exclusive negotiation and we're still give you some more information when we will talk to you at the end of the day on November seventeenth. Let's assume that this exclusive negotiation leads to finding and leads to a closing.
If it would have been done today, we would have financed that with our cash. Yes.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Edward Young from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hello, thank you for taking my questions. The first one was on the sports offer. I think historically you've talked about liquid acquisitions because you felt like the offer for sports wasn't at the level of some of your peers. You were quite positive there that you were talking about the offer, the investment you've made. Do you think you've sort of caught up on a stand-alone basis and any kind of acquisition will be a kind of bonus or expand into new verticals like horse racing? Or do you also think there's a capability improvement that you can see? My second question was just to clarify. You said you are creating opportunities for these large jackpots.
Do you simply mean in terms of game design and payout levels that you're designing the games to have more long cycles? Or was I misunderstanding, you were suggesting there was some sort of overlay you were putting in to stimulate some of these? It's not what I understood, but I just want to double check that. Then third of all, the routine question, please, if there's any update on the EC investigation. Thanks.
Okay, thank you for your question. Yes, you're right on the sports offer. We can say that we are at the level of the market, at a good level today. We have improved on every aspect of our offer. This is why our market share is growing. Our market share is not at the level of the best of the three of the market. If we go to the end of our acquisition with ZEturf, it will improve our market share in sports betting, and also give us the capacity to operate on another vertical of what is allowed in France on online gaming, which is horse race betting.
As I commented with the previous question, we will also have a poker offer. We think it's important to be a winning actor on this online gaming activity to have a presence on the three activities authorized in France. Sports betting, poker and horse race betting. We will achieve that if we go at the end of our negotiation with ZEturf and when we will have launched poker. We have a good basis, and we will have a good level, a good scale. It doesn't mean that we are not interested in growing again more rapidly and doing some complement.
As you know, this activity, online gaming, is an activity that is a scale activity. There is a lot of consolidation in the world and in Europe of those type of activity. We are only present in France, so we will look at other opportunities to grow faster in France, if possible, and out of France, if possible also. We think that we will arrive at a good level, but still, if we want to have more scale effect. If we want to have a more important place in this activity in Europe, we will have to continue to look for opportunities to grow. The question about EuroMillions. Clearly we don't have overlays on EuroMillions, so no risk on EuroMillions.
What we have done with the mechanics of the game is to monitor how fast the level of the different steps between the different level of jackpots are going. How fast it is growing as the jackpot is growing. This is a question of mechanics of the game. Other thing, two years ago, we have modified a little bit the game to make less probable the fact to win the higher jackpots and to have more opportunity to have draws without winners. We have more high jackpot because we have less probability to have a winner.
The third thing is that we have invented some years ago, that's a very good opportunity, some percentage are on the game that are allocated to the capacity to organize high jackpots by ourselves. The community of EuroMillions, that's not only FDJ, but the community of Romania. 3-4 times a year, maybe 5 times sometimes, we have the opportunity to have what's called a mega jackpot. Jackpot of EUR 130 million that we propose directly. It means that we have directly over EUR 75 million.
We are directly at high jackpot level, and it's more probable that we arrive to something like EUR 200 million when the first step is EUR 130 million than if we come down from EUR 70 million. These are all what we have done. What I call the mechanic of the game. Really, it works very well. Update on the European Commission. Sorry, no update. This is the same story we told when we disclosed our H1 results.
I'm afraid that we will all have to wait until first half of 2023 to have a decision of the European Commission. Still, I say it again, we think that we are in a good position, that we have good arguments. It's no problem. We are confident. Sorry for this. We are confident, but we do not have any news flow on the European Commission.
Perfect. Thank you for the detail in those answers. That's really useful. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from c .
Hi, good evening, everyone. I've got two questions to go. Firstly, on the guidance upgrade. In H1, you increased consensus EBITDA by EUR 35 million. You didn't touch the guidance, and today you're increasing.
Sorry. We cannot hear you very well. Is it possible to?
It might be quite noisy around here or the line is poor.
The line-
Is that a little bit better?
Yes, that's a bit better.
Thank you. Apologies.
If you can just repeat. Sorry about that.
Sure. Apologies for that. My question was in H1, you increased consensus EBITDA by EUR 35 million, and you didn't touch the full year guidance. This time you're upgrading the full year guidance by something that looks like EUR 30 million. Just wanted to clarify how much of that is cash out and housekeeping, or whether it is really something that's been particularly well in Q3 in October to date. Second question, also focus on the European Commission, of course. The local regulator, the ANJ, it is also becoming more stringent. I'm not talking about sports betting. On your lottery products, you have more marketing restrictions. You've had some pushback. You have some product launches. They're now looking at Amigo for 2023.
I'm curious how much of that increasing regulatory pressure was already expected and is included in your medium-term guidance for 4%-5% revenue growth. At what point is the pressure basically taking you to the low end, to 4%? What sort of pressure would make the guidance difficult or impossible to deliver on? Is that all okay? Is that all as expected?
Okay. Thank you, Jaafar, for your question. I really well understood it now. First thing was on the guidance. Yes, we did not change our guidance, H1. It was because we were cautious. We were cautious because we didn't know how the second part of the year will. What will be the second part of the year. We were cautious about two things. First thing, as you remember, we had -11% stakes in sports betting H1, -5% on the revenue.
We were wondering whether we will have a good recovery of sports betting when the different championships begin again in August or not. We are delighted to see that there is no problem of sports betting. The market is going back at a really good pace. This kind of caution is not necessary now because we know that we will deliver correctly on sports betting. The second thing is, globally, our activity in lottery. We were wondering whether the situation, the environment, the purchasing power problems of the French people, potential purchasing problems could have or not an impact by September.
How will this beginning of Q3 ending of Q3 happen? We have no impact on our activity of the environment, not at all to date. As I say, I don't say that never we will have an impact, but to date, we don't have any impact. We had two scenarios, if I can say, at the end of H1. A cautious scenario and an optimistic scenario. Now we are clearly on the optimistic scenario for the year, as points of sale are going very well. Online is going very well.
Adding to that, we have some luck in Q3 with an exceptional number of high jackpots in EuroMillions. We are now in a position to be quite sure that we will achieve the new figures than those that we have delivered today. This is why we were a little bit cautious. We said that at the end of H1, yes, it's going well, but let's see how September will go. If September is okay, we will confirm that we'll be able to do better than our initial guidance. It's a good news, really.
The other thing, the last thing maybe on this point, but it was very hard to do, really. We had a little bit underestimated the level of the COVID problem remaining in 2021 to figure out what 2022 could be. A little bit, for example, on scratch cards, we did not figure out that, maybe in 2021 we had a small part of the scratch card with a COVID impact. In 2022, we had no COVID impact at all. We had a better growth, for example, on this kind of products. Yes, our local regulator, ANJ. The regulator...
The objective of the regulator is to fight against excessive gaming and to verify that all our games are fit and proper, and that we do all the efforts that are necessary to make our offer as good as possible in a responsible gaming way. This we have discussions all the time with the regulator, and it's normal that the regulator asks us for different efforts on our games. All that is into our guidance, to be clear. We are not surprised by the fact that ANJ is asking us to limit the part of the business done with sensitive customers. It's normal. It's their goal.
Our objective of FDJ with the exclusive right is also to fight against excessive gaming. We have discussion with ANJ. We don't always agree with them, but it's a discussion. They have decisions, and it's normal or that is normal. No. I think it's important to understand that a regulator is doing his job and we are doing our job, and the regulator is doing his job. All that they have decided is not compatible with our guidance. We have that in mind when we disclose our guidance.
Yes, we will have to do efforts on Amigo, but we were prepared to do that. We knew that Amigo was authorized with some conditions that we have to do studies and to propose some adjustments on the game. We have proposed adjustments. We have discussion with ANJ. I think no problem with that. We have other games to launch also. Really it's the normal life of a company like FDJ, which has exclusive rights and has to justify this exclusive right with objectives that are given by the regulator on responsible gaming. No problem for us.
Thank you. I mean, on Amigo, which is your example. If I'm correct, one year ago, the maximum stake was EUR 20. As you just said, you said, "All right, let's reflect the risks and take it down to EUR 10." That's what you said.
Mm-hmm.
If my understanding is correct, the ANJ came back and said, "No, that won't do. It needs to be 8." I appreciate what you're saying, that this is expected back and forth, debates with the regulator, and hopefully it's evidence-based. How do we get comfortable with this? 'Cause presumably if it becomes EUR 2, then it's a problem. How do we assess when the pressure becomes too much and when the pressure is business as usual?
What we say is that we don't have only one game. We don't rely on only one game. Amigo is 8% of our business. If Amigo is less interesting than it was before, we will do better on other games. It's a question of mix, and we have all the opportunity to invent, launch, or modify some other games to have growth and a responsible growth. What we put in our guidance is a responsible growth, without making more problems with excessive gaming. I think really the question is not Amigo. Amigo is one game, and we have 100 games.
The question is the global mix, and let's look at what we've done this year on growth on lottery. The growth does not rely on one game or one other. We have many opportunities, and our job is to take the better opportunities and the opportunities that are the more compatible with a responsible way of having our growth. I remember precisely when we changed a game called previously Rapido to Amigo, and at this time the impact was very strong from Rapido to Amigo. But we had some compensations launching other type of games. Really, it's our job to have the better mix to have a growth in a responsible way.
Okay. Thank you, Nicolas.
The next question comes from Karen Sherr from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, it's Karen Sherr here. Good evening. Just a couple of questions from me. On the World Cup, do you think they'll be helpful for profits this year, or is that more for next year? Just thinking about your customers are getting captured in Q4. But given it's year-end, are you expecting any benefits this year, or should we actually anticipate some support for next year from the World Cup, from the new customers captured? Secondly, on the EBITDA margin guidance on the upgrade, what's behind that? And given you're already going to be at about 24% this year, should we start thinking about a potential step up for the 2025 target? And then lastly, just building on the point around jackpots, you've said that you've kind of increased them.
Given the popularity, do you think you're gonna keep the jackpot level elevated going forward? Thanks.
Sorry, it was very hard to understand you because there's a lot of noise on the line. If you can repeat, I think I catch quite okay the two first question, but the third question on jackpots, I'm sorry, but I didn't hear it very well.
On the jackpots, given the popularity this quarter, do you think you're gonna keep the level of jackpots elevated going forward, so keep them at a very high number per quarter?
Okay. I will try to transfer your question if I have correctly understood. Sorry, the line was really very bad. On the World Cup, if I have well understood, you want to know whether we will see the consequence of this World Cup this year or next year with the recruitment of new players. Clearly, this year we will benefit from stakes that will come with the World Cup, and we anticipate a nice growth in stakes on sports betting in Q4.
What is to be said is that on revenue, it will be less attractive on the Q4 than in stakes because we think that we will have a more important player payout on the World Cup than we had on the rest of the year. Usually, it is the case. If we look back at the Euro Championship of 2016, the one of 2021, the World Cup 2018, each time the level of player payout was high because the different matches are easier to predict than the regular matches, not in the World Cup.
It is quite important in stakes, less important in revenue and on an EBITDA basis, very short term, and less important also. It is very important to have a good result at this World Cup because it's a good way to recruit players. What we think is that players that we will recruit during this World Cup Q4 2022, we will benefit from the impact of those recruitments on 2023. It's important to try to recruit new players. It's also important not to have churn of our players to other operators during this period.
Yes, in 2023, we hope that we'll benefit from the impact of the good business we will do during the World Cup. It has been the case, for example, in 2018, with a very important player payout, but a very important amount of new players recruited during the World Cup won by France in Russia. The second half of the year has been very attractive because those new players had an impact on the business. Your second question was relative to EBITDA margin. If I well understood, how this 24% EBITDA margin on 2022 change or not the 2025 target.
Really, I think it's really too early to have some conclusions about what will happen in 2025. To be clear, my first thing today, first question is how that will happen in 2023. In 2023, I will have some inflation in my cost base that I will have to take into account. It will be quite challenging in 2023, and it's too early to have a vision on 2025.
To give you another answer, we will talk a little about that during our investor day, because we will give you a vision of what we can aim now on 2025 with this 8+ growth in 2022, and this EBITDA margin at 24%. If you wait until November, we will talk about that again. It's a little bit too early today. Your third question was about-
Jackpot.
Yeah.
Yeah, jackpot.
The level of the jackpot on EuroMillions, what we have, is just a matter of what the mechanics of the game is permitting. Also a question of luck. We'll have quarter-over-quarter some differences, quite important differences. As I said, Q3 2021, six jackpots, Q3 2022, 16. We will have those kind of differences quarter after quarter. Another thing to say about that is the maximum jackpot is, as we have reached, EUR 230 million. Last time it was in July, if I recall correctly. It means that next time it will be possible to go until EUR 240 million.
If we reach EUR 2,240 million, it will be possible next time to go to EUR 250 million. This is what is in the rules of EuroMillions accepted by all the lotteries. We have some room to beat the record of jackpot and to offer some more million of euros in the future. We are not at the end of what is authorized. Today, the maximum authorized is EUR 250 million.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. We have no more questions at this time.
Sorry.
Yeah. I'm sorry.
Maybe we will relaunch the call because we cannot hear anything now. Jennifer, is there any further questions, please?
No, we have no further questions.
Okay. No further questions. Thank you for your attention and I hope to attend our investor day seventeenth of November from 4 P.M. It will be possible in Boulogne and also online. We are waiting for you at this time. Again, have a good evening and goodbye to you all.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.