Good morning and w elcome to the Media and Games Invest Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to CEO, Mr. Remco Westermann. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yes, good morning. I would like to welcome our investors, analysts, and other stakeholders that are present in this call and w e are going to present MGI, Media and Games Invest SE's, Q4 numbers and also the full year 2022 financials and main achievements. After a short introduction, I will present our markets, our mission, and our growth drivers and a fter that, Paul, our CFO, will present the financials. After that, there's time for Q&A. We'd like to start with the first page 3 and with content on it. Yeah, presenters pictures on the left side and but going to the main facts. Company has changed in the last years and w e are a leading or have become a leading ad software platform with strong first-party games content.
We did EUR 324 million revenues in 2022 with the EUR 93 million adjusted EBITDA, which represents a 29% overall growth and an 18% organic growth. Strong year of organic growth, and that's what we have proven in the last years, that we are able to increase our organic growth at the time and we have to realize that 2022 was not an easy year. It was a year with a lot of headwinds. We're covering some of that later in the presentation. Company has now over 800 employees. Yeah, as said, we have pivoted from a gaming company to an ad software company with now 80% ad software revenues, 20% consumer games revenues. Over 550 software clients. Definition of that is clients with more than $100,000.
Year 97% customer retention rate, which we're really happy with. That means that large customers have done now 97% of the revenues of the same period before, which is in a market with headwinds and CPMs that are under pressure. A good achievement, we think and o verall, we're talking about 96%, that's over the full customer base. Also there we have a pretty stable base, and growth has come from new customers. Coming to the next page 4. What are the main events that happened during Q4 2022? First of all, we continued to show revenue growth also in Q4, largely organically and mostly driven by new customers.
Then we had, and we're really happy with that, an integration of Match2 One, our SMA platform with Shopify, which enables now Shopify users or people that have a shop in Shopify to easily use our advertising services. We integrated with Google Open Bidding, which again is another big partner that we added, which enables us to reach more people in the internet and get also more customers, customer reach. Also very good achievement here. Further, as already mentioned before, there were further macroeconomic headwinds in both our segments, which means the advertising markets, people were hesitant in spending budget still, and also CPMs went down. There was less demand, the prices for ads also go down, so the CPMs.
Also on the gaming side, after very strong COVID years, we had. Yeah, there is less demand for gaming. So, those markets are under pressure. Nevertheless, we were able to really show good growth. Then, we sold our EG7 stake as part of strategic refocus. Yeah, we have decided to really focus more on the advertising part, more on selling the shovels than shoveling for the gold itself with the games. Games are still very important, but we cleaned up our portfolio. That's also the second last point on this slide. For games portfolio cleanup. We really said, let's stop smaller games that are not really future-proof and not really adding that much that w e did a cleanup, and as part of that also we sold EG7 stake, which is more focused on MMOs.
While for us now, casual games are more value apps, mobile games are more value add to the advertising story. That's also the point. The second point is pace. We added 100 new casual games in Q4. Strong retention rate, I mentioned that already before. And then yeah, we completed our relocation to Sweden. Was a long process, but since 2nd of January this year, we are now in Sweden and took a bit of efforts, but we're there. Then and EUR 75 million securitization, sorry, program was established. Paul will give some more details on that later in the presentation. The extraordinary meeting approved Deloitte as an auditor. We have a Big Four auditor, which was in demand of many of our investors starting from 2023, but they already were involved also in our 2022.
And then, the appointment of a nomination committee. We have extended the board and let's say are also there working on improving our governance. Coming to the next slide. What happened talking about governance or ESG? Also here we have some good achievements. Carbon neutrality, very important, but already there since 2020. We're still further working, also involving our users, and we have, for example, a water project, which we're doing, which is about saving water, about becoming more conscious about water. Going very well. On the social side, in our board, we have a gender balance. Good gender balance now.
We're working on more of that also in the rest of the team. Not always easy with a very tech-oriented company because you have to find also women that are good and really fitting in there but i t's really worth focusing on it. In terms of employee training, another focus point which we are now putting more emphasis on is training our employees, such as governance and compliance, but also management skills and expertise a nd then one the governance side, already mentioned the relocation to Sweden, but also improving our control and compliance management systems. We did a lot of that in 2022 with KPMG and also before and we are further working on optimizing those processes. Yeah, very happy and proud. Our ESG rating under MSCI improved from a single B to triple B.
Still room to go, but already really good achievement and showing that the efforts that we're putting in here really are also paying off. Coming to the next slide. We decided in this presentation, to give a bit more background on the market that we are in, which is programmatic advertising, because we are realizing that it is a market that not all investors understand as well, and therefore we decided to put some slides in the presentation here. First of all, why is advertising important? It is important to promote products and services, and ideas to potential customers and target groups to enable free content, especially in the internet and in apps, building brand awareness and generating demand, so overall driving business growth. And then, why is programmatic advertising so important, or so special?
In the early days, normal advertising was done, which means a company calls the medium, makes a deal to really play ads, buys ad spaces, and then does it. The whole publisher side has become so complex with so many apps, with so many channels, that it's hardly possible anymore to do that in a manual way. Also the manual way is very time intense and takes also time till the ads are there. That's the reason that programmatic is growing so fast. With programmatic, we can serve many more channels, automated, fully automated, and doing transactions in under 100 milliseconds. Coming to the next page 8. Here you see also the growth. So it's yeah, advertising is growing altogether. It's a strong growing market.
The share of programmatic advertising is growing, let's say makes programmatic advertising grow faster. We're now in 2022 over 50%, 2021 already past the 50%, and it's further growing as a share of the total base. So, even in the period where the total advertising spend is under pressure, like we saw in 2022, we see that programmatic is taking larger share, and by that still growing. Advertisers are shifting their budgets to programmatic. Coming to the next page. Yeah. How does programmatic advertising work? It's basically simple, and for those that are in financial markets, it's an auction place, and which means that the advertisers put a demand into the system, the publishers put their supply into the system.
So, at the moment somebody comes on a page or in an app page, where there is an ad space, this ad space get auctioned, the demand and supply are being matched. It's very important, of course, that it's not a blind matching because that would not lead to any efficiency, but that data are really used to match demand and supply in the best way and to really make sure that also the one, yeah, that bids most, gets the ad, which is the best also for the publisher. In this sense, that's the system very easily explained and then c oming to next page, page 10. How do we make money with programmatic advertising? Basically, every part of the chain is being paid so, t he demand side, the advertising is paying part.
The supply side, the publisher is paying a part of it, and also for the data which enriched the, let's say, the matching, there is a payment of that. So that's basically how we do. It's a cut of the dollars or the euros that go through the platform. There's also some SaaS business where we get to receive payments, but that is only a very small part of the business. The majority is really directly related. Coming to the next page 11. The world is not perfect, and especially, tech is not perfect, programmatic advertising is not perfect.
There are still hundreds of parties in this chain. Often the matching between an ad and a publisher, what we saw before, sorry, and the demand of the advertiser, takes several parties involved. That makes it very intransparent and very inefficient. That's one thing that's changing now and where we are also actively participating in. Which brings me to the next chapter. That's our mission. How do we make advertising better? Coming to page 13. What do we do? We want to make advertising better, less complex. MGI operates a fast-growing, integrated ad software platform that matches global advertiser demand with publisher ad supply while improving results via data. The bold terms here, integrated, global, and data are important because I'm gonna cover them on the next pages. Coming to page 14. Integrated solution.
Instead of having several parties in the chain, we have decided we want to be vertically integrated, which means that we can directly match demand from an advertiser with the supply of the publisher. We don't have all the kind of different parties between that. We all do this in-house in one platform. The second is, we also do this multi-channel. Currently in the value chain, there's often parties that only do apps or only do web and those things. We have decided, and we did that also by our M&A strategy, that we want to cover in-app, web, mobile web, connected TV, and digital out-of-home. We can serve all, and we can also use data cross-channel. Very important. We optimize effectiveness via data. I said before, that's very important. We have first-party data from our own game studios, third-party data, and contextual data.
I'll cover more of that later. With a wide range of capabilities, we can do brand marketing, performance marketing, and whatever the customer wants. Very important, privacy first. It all needs to be privacy compliant, brand safe, and performance-oriented. We also work on innovation at the moment, AI, SDKs, Visual Intent. I'll cover some of that later in the presentation. Coming to the next page. Yeah, what is changing in the market? There is an 80% problem, as we call it. We had before 2022, there is a market where we call it an opt-out market, where people had to opt out if they didn't want their data shared. That's changing now. Cookies are disappearing, IDFA from Apple is disappearing, and we have come into an opt-in market where people have to give consent to really share the data.
Instead of having almost all the data available, which was in the opt-out phase, we now have only 20%, roughly 20% of opt-ins, partly even less, and that makes it much more difficult to identify and to also optimize the targeting. We need new privacy-compliant ways to identify the audience and enable efficient targeting. Coming to the next page, what are we doing for that? Because this is, of course, also an opportunity to look at this. The market is changing. That gives the possibility for parties that are fast to really react to that. First of all, we have in-house a very big first-party opt-in database, which comes from our games, which gives us still access to the data as before, with a high percentage of opt-ins because we can stimulate them. Then the second part is contextual.
We are also very good in finding parts of the internet or matching, let's say, parts where people are having a certain interest with the demand of an advertiser. We do this via Moments.AI and also via ATOM, which I'll cover later. This is very important. It gives us an opportunity. Coming to the third part, which is the global, which is on page 17. To scale global makes absolutely sense. More and more advertisers work globally, also want to have global contracts. Publishers become more and more global, and also the efficiency, of course, gains. The more volume we run over the platform, the better it is. With now over 20 offices worldwide, we reach over 2 billion end consumers on a monthly basis, and we have 1.7 billion ad impressions that we serve daily.
Coming to the next page. Who are we working for? We're working for very big advertisers, we have a good share of the top advertisers of this world, some of the logos you see here. We're also working for a lot of small advertisers. The same counts for the publisher side, where we work for, let's say, most of the top publishers, also for a lot of small publishers. It's good that we have such a diverse customer base because it drives, of course, innovation, also we have the ability to scale with our customers. Coming to the next slide. Strong in mobile. Mobile is where we, let's say, have a real core position.
Part of that via our own games, the AxesInMotion games, for example, with, yeah, let's say, 800 million downloads altogether, and also a lot of third-party games where our SDK is integrated, so where we are in the app and where we are serving, are able to serve ads. Coming to the next slide, here are some examples, by the way. Yeah, what is, what did we accomplish? I mean, really showing that the being integrated, being strong, in a, let's say, in a contextual data e-environment and also being global really helps us. We have been able to build one of the larger players in the open internet in the last four years. We have become a top five worldwide exchange for mobile in-app ads.
We have one of the largest SDK bases in the world, being integrated in the top apps in the world, top 15, and we really have a good score on the quality, on Trust Index, which is the result of emphasizing on quality, privacy, brand safety, and transparency. The company has really had a great development in the last 4 years in becoming a very strong player in the programmatic advertising field. How are we further growing? Coming to the next page or next chapter, I think I will go immediately to page 22. How are we growing? Adding customers. We added over $100,000 customers in the last year. We want to further do that. There is still customers around there and also scaling customers, scaling smaller customers to become large customers is, of course, very important.
Strategic partnerships, Google I mentioned already before. We have also a partnership with Getty Images. Some partnerships are important to further also build our position. Cost efficiency is super important because of course the more cost efficient we can do this in our integrated way, the more we can also pass on to advertisers and publishers. Integrations of the platforms that we acquired, but also working on low-cost structures. Innovation. I'll cover innovation on the next page. Accretive acquisitions, we acquired Dataseat and AxesInMotion in 2022. We are a bit slower, a bit more careful with M&A now, but I'll also say a few words on that in the few slides further in the presentation. Coming to the next page. Here are some examples of our innovation. ATOM already mentioned a few times.
It's an extension of our SDK, so the software development kit that we integrate in apps. It allows us to generate profiles on the mobile device of a user without privacy data leaving the device, and it allows us to target the user in a privacy and contextual way. CTV retargeting. Yeah, here we see the multichannel aspect of our platform. We are able to re-engage users that are playing on consoles, for example, either for getting new users but also for customer retention, where we do the re-engagement or let's say the advertising via CTV and targeting exactly those profiles. Very good results, and really showing it's unique in the market and really happy that we were able to prove this, and we're working on further multichannel things. Moments.AI. Yeah, it's the next generation contextual AI-empowered advertising solution.
AI is everywhere at the moment since we have ChatGPT, but we are using AI already for quite a while. It's of course the only way to cover all the data that we have, and especially if you go contextual. We have crawlers that crawl the internet all the time and then also define via AI routines, the best contextual places to place ads and match them with the advertiser demand. Visual Intent is an continuation of that. It's a partnership with Getty Images. Getty is one of the largest photo database in the world. Getty Images are all around the internet, they are shown. In the, how to say, cooperation with Getty, we are able to show ads next to the Getty Images.
We have contextual, how to say, spaces, where we can show the ads and, this is, yeah, very well accepted by advertisers, and we're rolling that out at the moment into the market. Go to the next page. Yeah, growth. What's our growth strategy? It's basically buy, integrate, build and improve. In 2022 and also currently, we're putting more emphasis or most emphasis on, integrate, build and improve. Integrate means further. We did a lot of acquisitions. We acquired over 30 companies in the last 10 years. There's still work to do, especially on the, programmatic advertising space to integrate platforms better. They're all connected. Of course, we are now looking at, getting unified modules and in the end working towards one platform.
That's not a crash and do it directly approach because that would be, let's say, getting too much focus internally and not externally. We also need focus to grow, but we're doing this in a step-by-step way. Build and improve. Yeah, build improvements, innovate as shown before, generate more users and internationalization. A few words about M&A. We haven't done M&A in the last period. Our leverage was on the high side. We've said even if we do M&A, we want to stick with our leverage between 2 and 3. Also prices, especially companies, were much too high. I mean, they had to come down in line with also public valuations. We see that happening now. We are carefully looking into M&A, but as said, keeping an eye at our leverage.
Brings me to the next page 25. Our flywheel. Yeah, it's very simple. Bringing all these ingredients together, our games, our SDKs, our data and our vertical platform, means more access to data, more advertisers, more publishers, more critical mass. That drives our revenue growth and also our profitability. I would like to hand over to Paul to go to the next part, the financials. Paul.
Thank you, Remco. Yeah, starting here now with Q4 and full year 2022 financial highlights. As Remco mentioned, in the beginning already, in the fourth quarter, we saw a very strong organic growth of 13% with overall growth of 16% year-over-year. What we see here as well is that we have limited growth from M&A, therefore, the overall growth is largely driven by organic revenue growth. While on the full year 2022 side, on the right side, we see that we have grown with a CAGR of 64% now since 2018. That always included quite a lot of M&A, therefore, yeah, that I think puts the 16% well into perspective to the 64%.
We are actually very happy with the underlying organic growth. Looking at the year-over-year, we had a 29% revenue growth, and 80% organic, and therefore the company is in very good shape to also further grow organically. That brings us to the fourth quarter financial highlights. So making a deep dive now, also below the revenues. Here we see that next to the 16% revenue growth, we've also been able to increase the EBITDA from EUR 23 million to EUR 32 million, which is a 35% EBITDA growth, so much faster than the revenues also by realizing more synergies and cost efficiencies. We have also been able to increase the adjusted EBIT from EUR 19 million to EUR 28 million, so 45% even outgoing the EBITDA growth.
Overall, a very solid EBITDA margins with 34%, which increased year-over-year, from 29%-34%, and also very solid EBIT margin of 30%. While we also see that the cash flow has increased in the fourth quarter, to EUR 74 million, where we have a EUR 48 million receivable financing effect and which also supported the very strong cash conversion of 229% in the fourth quarter. We will make a deep dive in a few minutes, on how that worked and how that look, in the balance sheet and paid out.
Looking now first into the long-term financial development. Here we see that we have really shown very consistent long-term profitable growth now over many, many years, and have also been able in 2022, despite several headwinds, to further increase our EBITDA margin from 28%-29%, as well as further increasing also profitability for the overall group and t herefore, we're actually being very pleased with these numbers, where we also will see in a few minutes where all this growth is actually coming from. Overall, a very strong achievement from a financial performance perspective. Looking now to the segment performance. Here we see on the left side that the demand side has grown 3 times as fast as supply side, which is also in line with the investments which we have done.
At the same point in time, we have also been able to increase the EBITDA margin from 24%-36% on the demand side. Overall, a very strong quarter on the DSP side. While on the supply side, we also have been able to further grow the revenues by 13%, which was also largely done by organic revenue growth. That was despite several headwinds, especially by decreasing CPMs in the overall advertising market.
As we could also see earlier in our net dollar expansion rate, that we, despite decreases in CPMs of 10%-40% across the mobile games industry, we were actually able to keep our wallet share or even increase it, and therefore the net dollar expansion rate was rather stable while we had several headwinds here, and therefore, also very strong organic growth of the supply side segment. Looking now on slide 31 into the customer growth and what is really driving the overall growth behind the revenues and o n the left upper side, we see that we have increased our software revenues to now 80%, and the direct to consumer revenues were sitting at 20%.
The 80% also includes placing ads in own games, so fully, software-driven revenues, fully automated and o n the ad impression side, we see that we have also shown a very sustainable growth during the last 4 quarters, despite several headwinds in the market, therefore have really been able to further grow the company organically. The main growth driver for 2022 was in the end, adding many, many new software clients. Taking any M&A effects out, we added more than 130 new software clients to the group, therefore ended up by end of the year with 551.
And, that was in the end, the main growth driver while the existing customers, and that's reflected in the net dollar expansion rate, remained rather stable at 96% and a s mentioned already, that's also a very strong number taking the big CPM decreases into account and t herefore, we expect or we assume that we have actually increased our wallet share considerably here in 2022. And then also, on top the very strong customer retention rate of 97% also shows the customers stay on the platform. On top, we adding a lot of new customers on a constant basis every quarter, every month, and therefore growing very nicely organically despite several headwinds in the market. Coming now to the operating cash flow and cash conversion.
And, here on the left side, we see that the operating cash flow has more than doubled in 2022, where we also had the EUR 48 million receivable financing effect, which is a bit more explained on the right side. By deducting the interest expenses from the operating cash flow, we come to a very strong free cash flow of EUR 102 million, which also has helped us to further de-lever the company in the previous quarter.
And, looking at the cash conversion, because I think it's always important to show also some transparency here, we actually also taking out the receivable financing effect, we're able to increase our cash conversion to 83% and constantly growing that as well over the previous years, while taking also the set off from the receivables into account, we actually were looking at a 135% cash conversion in the fourth quarter. Overall, very high free cash flow, very strong cash conversion, which is driven by strong operations, but then also supported by a receivable securitization program, which we in the end see here on page 33 a bit more in detail.
So, our net working capital development since we started that business was in the beginning until the end of 2019, always negative, very similar to every other games company a nd when we started to enter the advertising business, we were building up positive net working capital as advertisers pay within 60 to 90 days. That's the collection times and the payouts to publishers being between 30 to 45 day and t herefore, we have invested in recent years, a lot of capital actually into our working capital, which then was sitting at EUR 50 million positive net working capital by end of 2021, which is 20% of the revenues.
We have been able now, through a state-of-the-art securitization program to bring down our net working capital to a balance profile again. So EUR 2 million, which is then 1% of net revenues. The program is in the end up to EUR 75 million, which allows us a true sale of receivables on a non-recourse basis at very favorable cost, which is cost of funds, which is similar to a three-month EURIBOR or +1.55%. That is in the end achieved as we have an investment grade rating on the receivables as the customers mainly being Fortune 500 companies.
And therefore, it's in the end, the perfect fit for a company like us, a very profitable, strong, receivable portfolio, and in the end, to further also diversifies the financing sources and b y end of 2022, out of the program, EUR 48 million were used and have therefore decreased the net working capital by end of 2022. That brings us now into the CapEx and which has led to strong organic growth in previous years. We see the maintenance CapEx and ad software and games licenses. The investments have been decreased slightly here, on the games quadrant from 10 to EUR 9 million and on the ad software side from 24 to EUR 23 million. We kept actually these CapEx rather stable to also enable further organic growth in the future.
While on the M&A side, as communicated to the market, there was not a strong focus in the last 12 months and therefore we actually decreased here our CapEx massively by roughly 40%, which is driven by the M&A part and i n the end, therefore have also followed the strategy as communicated and reduced the overall CapEx. That brings us now to the net leverage and interest coverage ratio. Here we see now on the left side, what we have been achieved over the last quarters. We constantly de-levered since we peaked in the second quarter of 2022 at 3.7 times in net leverage and have now achieved 2.9 times by end of 2022.
And also taking into account : The document describes a company's financial performance, focusing on its balance sheet and leverage. The company has achieved a net leverage of 2.7 on a pro forma basis, bringing its overall leverage within its target range of 2-3 times. The interest coverage ratio remains stable at 4 times, indicating strong interest-bearing capabilities. The MGI balance sheet shows that intangibles constitute a significant portion of total assets, which is typical for an advertising and games company. The impairment test for these assets is regularly conducted by EY, having previously been performed by Deloitte for many years
Due to the fact that we have moved to Deloitte as an auditor now, we have also moved advisors on that side. As Remco mentioned already, due to the streamlining the business, we proactively took a one-time amortization of EUR 23.6 million, which is 2% of our total assets, and therefore go with a very clean balance sheet now into the future. Looking at the cash position, that remains very strong with EUR 150 million and therefore also provides us certain flexibility for several bond buybacks, as well as also the reduction of total indebtedness.
On the right side, looking at the total liabilities and equity, we see that the long term liabilities are mainly consisting of two bonds outstanding, EUR 235 million and EUR 175 million, while we also have several earn out payments, which I think it's important to mention that they're actually being highly conditional, and if they would come into effect, that would mean that we roughly have EUR 25 million additional EBITDA for the group and o ut of the EUR 112 million, EUR 26 million can also be paid in shares in a few years' time and t he remaining part, EUR 86 million, could come in cash.
Looking at current developments of certain key KPIs like for example, also the eCPMs which are also driving certain performances for these companies, we could also expect rather EUR 30 billion cash out over the next 3 years. Therefore, we have also a very good natural hedge here, looking at the earn out payments, and the current market developments. Overall, a very strong cash position, and net interest-bearing debt of EUR 274 million and a very strong equity ratio even after the one-time amortization, which we have recognized now in the fourth quarter. That brings us to the revenues and EBITDA guidance.
We have increased the guidance during the year due to the overall strong performance and the strong organic growth which we have achieved, especially on the back of all the new software clients which we have added to the portfolio. Therefore, we have been able to end up in terms of the revenues at the top end of the guidance with EUR 324 million revenues, while on the EBITDA side, we actually were slightly above the guidance with EUR 93 million and therefore, ended the year very successful at the top end. Looking now into the midterm financial targets, here we have been able to now tick the box again on all of these targets. Also on the leverage, which was one of the key focus areas over the previous quarters.
We also have been very confident that we can further grow the company over the next 3-5 years with these targets. Even 2023 is a bit difficult to predict. Here we expect that after the 1st quarter when we have more visibility on the achievements, that we then also provide another guidance for 2023. We also remain very confident and positive about this year and that we can further grow organically also by adding many new software clients to the portfolio. Also all the innovations which Remco has just mentioned certainly will also support further organic growth in the future. That brings us to the end of the financial part, and I would like to hand over again to Remco.
Thank you, Paul. This is the end of the presentation, also maybe summarizing it in a few words. I think we had a pretty good result in 2022. We really were able to strengthen the company further to invest a lot in future growth and also to show growth during the year 2022. Of course, it was a year with headwinds. Looking forward, the headwinds are not yet over. People are becoming a bit more positive, but still we know that consumers have a lot more cost for their energy that, let's say it might not be over yet. The outlook is a bit more positive, but we don't see, let's say, huge improvements yet on the advertiser side. Also, the CPMs are still low. Let's say lower than they normally are, also corrected for seasonality.
Also in this market phase, we can grow, we will further grow. At the moment, CPMs go up, advertisers start spending more. We will of course see that also then as tailwinds instead of the headwinds that we see now. We look full confidence into the future and would like to thank all investors, all our stakeholders, also the team very much, of course, for making this possible and also would like to get your support also for the 2023. From Sweden. Handing back to the moderator. Thanks.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will pause momentarily for any questions to register. Your first question comes from Jörg Frey from Warburg. Please go ahead.
Hi, gentlemen. Well, thanks for the presentation and w ell, probably you've partly answered my first question. Are you seeing any signs of a pickup in CPM prices? Any pockets of the market where you or differences in publishers or context where the market is already improving? That would be my first question, and some follow-up thereafter.
Yeah, I can. Sorry, I was fighting with my unmute button. Jörg, thanks for the question. Do we see any improvements? I would say I would differentiate it a bit. There are some sectors that are really, let's say, long-term damaged, I would say, as advertising spenders, which is hyper-casual as one. The whole, let's say, hyper-casual games were very strong in the charge, in the App Store charge, but due to CPMs, but also high competition level, it looks like hyper-casual is really, yeah, not out of the market, but really has had long-term damage in that. Also, venture capital funded companies, not in the blockchain area, those kind of things we see that there's less spend. But those are more, I would say, strategic categories or strategic parts that do less.
If you look at the more classic advertisers, the digital advertisers or more digital companies or more classic companies, there is a bit of hesitance. Nobody exactly knows where the markets are going. Everybody's looking at its costs, also driven by the shareholders, of course. There is still hesitance on spend, and with less spend, there are lower CPMs. To your question, and I said it before, we don't see improvements now. I mean, of course, even the first quarter is always even weaker on the media side, because then in general, less budget is spent. If you look at seasonality or corrected for seasonality, we don't see improvements yet. We hope that it will happen during the year, but as said, we can also work very well in this market environment.
Good thing is we also don't see further-
Yeah
worsening of the numbers or worsening of the CPMs. I think we are in an environment where everybody is a little bit wait and see. Yeah, in the end, we know that advertising spend will grow again.
Maybe to add on that.
Yeah. Right. Right.
Maybe to add on that very briefly, on the positive side, as Remco mentioned, we are able actually also to work with these headwinds. On top, there's also an opportunity if the market obviously recovers, that our revenues also see a very nice appreciation in terms of organic growth, from that CPM increase, and that then also the overall efficiency of the MGI Group also looking at infrastructure cost, and revenues per ad and these kind of things would increase. There is actually also an opportunity going forward. The question is when is it coming, right? That's the $1 million question.
Right
I would say but, overall, I think that's also very positive, to, as a takeaway. Yeah.
Mathematically, Q4 is the, basically the quarter where the really easy comparisons would start, or how would you see it, before 2023, I mean?
Sorry, I don't fully understand your question. Can you please repeat it?
No, I mean, Q4 was already a quarter where we had substantial double-digit declines in the comparison base. I mean, as of Q4 2023, it should get much easier for you. That's more was my idea.
That's correct. I mean, we have now a year of, let's say, lower CPMs. Let's say Q1 last year was still okay-ish, and after it started declining. Basically from Q2 onwards, you should have like to like. At the moment we are still comparing with stronger quarters from last year.
Okay. Yeah. A bit on the M&A and cash side. First of all, can you update us a bit on how much of the synergies or the synergy potential of the recent acquisitions you've already recognized? My understanding was that the AxesInMotion synergy is pushed for much growth. It's probably the they are put a bit pushed out further in the timescale. Related to that, while you've touched on your cash pile of EUR 150 million and your reluctance to cautious regarding M&A, how much cash do you actually want to retain for while the speculative M&A, I mean, in terms of opportunities and what level of cash do you consider necessary as a minimum for your underlying business?
Okay, let me answer the first question that you have on synergies. Synergies are not just. Let's say you switch a button, and they are there. Especially revenue synergies, just develop over time and w hat we have done with the M&A on for example, now the programmatic side, we connected the platforms immediately. Let's say demand side platforms, buying on supply, et cetera. We are all the time improving those pipes, but also we getting more and more customers using those pipes. That synergy, for example, is developing over time. We have some synergies that are more, let's say, one-offs in the sense of duplicating platforms. We bought, for example, LKQD, the CTV platform a year ago, roughly, I would say. The platform was technically not in a great shape.
We wanted to migrate the customers to the Smaato platform that we also acquired, but that takes time. First of all, you have to build the features or the same features that the customers are used to on the LKQD side, on the Smaato platform, and then you have to start migrating. We are at the moment in the phase of migrating those customers. The first customers that have been migrated are really happy with even having now also new features, but also the old features. That's a platform that is planned to be shut down by the end of Q1 this year. You can see that's more than a year actually since the acquisition that we take to really get rid of a platform and then immediately have a cost saving.
on the personnel side, we of course had cost savings much faster. I would say there is, yeah, not a lot of potential there anymore unless we duplicate the platform, because then also people that were working on both platforms can now concentrate on one platform. I hope that gives you a bit of background on the synergies and to give a exact percentage is difficult, but we still have a lot of room for further synergies-
Yeah, yeah.
... to come out.
You would say it's fair to assume that the realization of synergies still lifts you gives you additional organic growth potential at a current stage or?
Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Also between gaming and media, but also within the media side or the advertising side.
Great. Thank you.
Paul, do you take the cash part or should I?
Yeah. I can start and if you have anything to add, just fill in, I would say. In regards to the cash position, yes, very strong, sitting at EUR 150 million by the end of the year. Therefore, we've also announced in the press release that we are potentially buy back some bonds and also reduce the overall indebtedness of the Group. Also looking at saving some interest expenses due to the overall increased interest rates.
There is no concrete number where we say, "Okay, we want EUR 150 million, EUR 100 million on the balance sheet." I mean, for the business, we would need from a working capital perspective, EUR 30 million-EUR 50 million. While and I think that's what you also were asking for, there's also a certain flexibility which we would like to keep as a group as, there's also opportunities out there, which you cannot always plan for. Therefore, certain cash position is always helpful to take advantage of them. Let's say it's also net leverage is one of our key focus areas. So we plan to make sure to really stay within our 2-3 times net leverage target also in the coming periods.
Yeah. thanks and good luck for the opportunities.
Thanks, Jörg.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question is from Sven Sauer from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi, Remco. Hi, Paul. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is regarding the divestment in EG7. Could you maybe elaborate on the rationale behind selling your stake, if you can? Are there any company-specific issues that led to the sale of your stake? Was it more, yeah, that you required some cash? I mean, as far as I can tell, you did make a slight loss on this investment. I was just wondering what the reason was for divesting at this stage.
Yeah, I can answer that. Thanks, Sven, for your question. Let me go back a bit further in time. I mean, the question was also why did we buy this stake? Originally, and I can release that now. When we bought it, we were really very strongly focused on gaming, and we were just starting to build our tech stack, or let's say we had first results, but it was absolutely not as strong as it now. At that time, we also were looking at, let's say, having equality between gaming and media and also further building on our MMOs. As part of that, we acquired, let's say, a minority stake of 8% that we had with the idea to have the optionality to buy the whole company and to just strengthen our MMO part.
EG7 had bought some MMOs where we were also in the process to buy those companies or those company parts in the early phase, and they're really nice assets. To your question also, that we now sold the stake has nothing to do with EG7 being a good or bad company. We are actually convinced it's a very good company. They have great games, and they are really doing well, and also the financials are really nice that they showed. The company is good, but we have changed our strategy.
We have decided, you cannot do everything, and you can also not invest your money in everything. We are now investing our money in the AdTech side, where we grow faster, and where we really have been able to build a strong position, and where we're convinced that we can build an even stronger position. As part of that, we have said we focus less on the MMO side, and we'll certainly not invest much more money in the MMO side, which means also not buying any EG7. As such, it doesn't make sense to hold an 8% minority stake because we're not a financial investor, and decided then to sell the stake.
Yeah, we took a small loss on it. If you look how the markets altogether went down, I think the loss is absolutely acceptable and not that high. It gives us the extra cash which we can deploy in, for example, other M&A or also in internal growth. I hope that answers your question.
Yeah, thanks. A follow-up question regarding the EUR 23 million write-off. Is it possible to disclose which games this resolves around? Also on that topic, I mean, when reading the report and the press release, it reads like this was an intentional move of writing this off due to the change of focus of the company. I was just wondering, I mean, this was an official write-off due to impairment testing, so you had to do this write-off or was this write-off something that you didn't have to do?
Paul, you want to take it first, and then I take it or?
Yeah.
I can.
I also provide some background. It's especially older, smaller MMO games from a longer time ago, looking at the Aeria Games acquisition, for example, which we did once upon ProSieben, but also some games which were already launched in the year 2000 early on in the gamigo times, and where we had certain values on the balance sheet also from these times, where in the end, we now decided due to the refocus of the company to not further invest into these IPs, even there were still revenues and customers.
The outlook of the games would have been from our perspective, without large investments, rather than negative from a free cash flow perspective. Therefore, we also said, okay, let's really streamline the business, focus on the organic growth parts, and therefore, rather reduce the workforce by 50 people, and then also disconnecting these games and proactively writing off the assets. There were no auditors or anyone forcing us to do so. It was a proactive decision. There are still certain possibilities to use the IPs or to maybe also sell them off at a certain point in time. We rather wanted to have a very clean approach here going forward and therefore did this proactively.
It's also in line together with the sale of the EG7 shares, which you have mentioned before, because in the end, both things go into the same direction. Less focus on the MMO games and rather really focusing on the infrastructure software side, advertising business, and then having creative games in the portfolio, which also provide a lot of first-party data to target the audiences. Therefore, I think it concludes in the end all the developments and transformations which we have executed over the last over the last years.
Yeah. I can give some game names. It was Grand Fantasia, Shaiya, Aura Kingdom, Last Chaos, for example, and some even smaller games. We are looking at also the yield of a dollar invested, and those games have become quite small user bases, and then to invest on new DLCs to really keep the game alive or also keep it growing has a much lower yield on a dollar than basically if you do that in larger games. That's the reason that we said let's invest those dollars really on the larger games and let them grow. Also, let's say we looked at technology, some of the games have pretty outdated engines where it's a pretty high investment to really update also that one.
We have really done a, yeah, clean sweep basically of the games portfolio to really make sure that the games that stay in the portfolio are really future proof and that we get those out where the focus would not have really made a lot of sense for the next 3 to 5 years. We could have keep them running, but it would not have added. I hope that answers your question.
Okay. Yeah. Very clear. Thanks a lot. I have 1 follow-up question, and I will go back in the line. Regarding the earn outs on the 1 slide you mentioned, where you showed that you are in your balance sheet expecting EUR 112 million in earn outs, of which EUR 26 million can be paid in shares. I was wondering, I mean, is this referring to the current earn outs for 2023 or for the next 2, 3 years? Could you elaborate the split of these earn outs for which goes how much which goes to how much goes to which company?
I can provide some high-level numbers on it. As you mentioned, there is potential EUR 112 million earn-out liability as of the 31st of December, 2022. Thereof, we have EUR 26 million which can be paid in shares over the coming three years. That's at the full discretion of the MGI Group and obviously also depending on further key performance indicators and how the company or how the company's performing regards to revenues and also EBITDA. That includes, for example, the acquisition of PubNative in 2019, but as well also the Dataseat acquisition which we have done in 2022.
Then we also have cash considerations of up to EUR 86 million, which also being fully based on EBITDA performance of the acquired companies. Here obviously also, we have a pretty nice natural hedge. If the CPMs stay as they are, that also means lower revenues and that is then also reducing the potential earn-out payments. Based on a very rough kind of estimate, and that's really hard to predict, because there's always a lot of different input factors and economic implications. But they could also be reduced to EUR 30 million, which would be split over 3 years horizon, which would obviously minimize the potential earn-out payments, looking at the overall size sitting on the balance sheet.
I think that's also what we have communicated on the capital markets already. We have a very nice natural hedge across our deferred purchase price liabilities. I think that we can see that also the strategy of MGI always really being rather risk averse, sharing the same risk with the sellers of these assets, and thus in the end works quite well. Obviously, yeah, it's in the benefit of both parties to make that work. Some things I would say rather take a bit longer due to the current market conditions. While in the long run the investments have a very positive outlook.
Also maybe to fill in on the AxesInMotion acquisition, they're constantly adding millions and millions of users and downloads to the overall game. Also there obviously is lower CPMs, which we saw across the mobile games industry is impacting certain revenues. That can also change rather fast in a 6-12 months time, which would also be the benefit for us. Also here, lower CPMs obviously have a certain impact on potential earn-out payments in the future. It's a very balanced risk profile, I would say, between the sellers and us.
Okay. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Remco.
Thanks, Sven.
Thank you, Sven.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Westermann for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much. I would like to thank everybody for listening into this. We are of course available as always for further questions and further comments and presentations. We're looking forward to 2023. We are really very well positioned in, let's say, in the market with a bit of headwinds to further build our business, to further grow our business. We're looking forward to periods where we get tailwinds instead of headwinds. Thank you all, looking forward to our next meetings. I'm handing back to the moderator. Thanks.
Thank you.