Hello everyone, and thank you for joining Remedy Entertainment webinar. My name is Veli-Pekka Puolakanaho, and I manage the investor relations at Remedy. Today, we will go through Remedy's financial statement bulletin for 2021. With me are Tero Virtala, Remedy CEO, and Terhi Kauppi, Remedy CFO. We will have a Q&A session after the presentation. Terhi, the floor is yours.
Thank you, and welcome everyone also on my behalf. Let's first have a look on our Q4, and after that, the full year 2021. The Q4 was a busy and very strong period for us. Our revenue was EUR 19.8 million, and operating profit EUR 11.3 million. Terhi, our CFO, will soon dive deeper into these financials. Beyond the financials, we started to aim for bigger, longer-term growth and transforming Remedy to multi-project model five years ago. We have driven this change patiently to make sure we can both strengthen our creative capabilities while we develop our organization and our capability so that we can more predictably develop at the same time several high-quality games, and have successful game launches on a more frequent basis. Now, in this Q4, a lot has happened in that front.
Smilegate's CrossFire HD with single player story mode developed by us was launched in China. Alan Wake Remastered was launched by Epic Games. Both of these games have received good player reception. In the Q4, at the game industry's biggest annual show, The Game Awards, we also announced with Epic Games Publishing that Alan Wake 2 will launch in 2023. At the end of the year, we also signed a global development license and distribution agreement with Tencent for the cooperative multiplayer game, Codename Vanguard. Indeed, we definitely had a busy and successful Q4. When we look at the full year 2021, like the Q4, it was a really strong year, but from two important perspectives for us. It was strong financially, and it was very strong operationally. Financially, 2021 was a record year for us.
As planned, we stayed on the growth path. Revenue was EUR 44.7 million, operating profit being EUR 14.7 million, almost 33% from revenues. The year started with the capital raise of EUR 41.5 million, and with the launch of Control on then-New Generation consoles. With the help of our proprietary technology, Northlight, Control was in fact one of the first bigger games that more extensively utilized the advanced possibilities of this new console generation, like ray tracing. In the summertime, we made an agreement for Control spinoff, cooperative multiplayer game, Codename Vanguard, with 505 Games, and we also agreed collaboration terms for a future bigger budget Control game, which from now on is codenamed Heron. On top of that, we had all the Q4 game launches, Alan Wake 2 announcement, Vanguard agreement with Tencent.
With all this, Board of Directors also proposes a dividend of 0.17 EUR per share. However, as I started, while all these great achievements are one part that financially makes 2021 a strong year, the other part, at least equally important for us, are the successful operational developments that we carried out in 2021. From that perspective, when we look at the past year, first of all our game projects made significant progress during 2021. Secondly, with the ways of working and new close partnerships that we have, the visibility to our future game roadmap is better than it has ever been.
For us, it means that our focus will be even more on creativity, on game development, on building our publishing capabilities, working with our known partners, existing partners, so simply said, to make sure we can now execute this roadmap well. What we have done during 2021 in this operational front, we have been investing more in developing our game leadership teams, which are now stronger than they have ever been. We have continued with the successful recruitments, done a number of people-related developments. Our preparations are ongoing for Remedy Studio in Stockholm, Sweden. There have been significant developments, a number of them to our Northlight technology and tools. We have new external development partnerships. Overall, we can summarize that the ability to execute now the roadmap is stronger than it has ever been.
Of course, this is highly important, that all the operational developments, what we are doing, they have already helped us so far. Most of all, they are offering us a really strong foundation to succeed in the forthcoming years, so to achieve the long-term objectives that we have set for ourselves. That by the end of 2025, we have created several successful games, and out of these games, at least one game has become a major hit game. We own at least three expanding game brands, and all of these brands will have this long-term hit game of themselves. We have built capabilities so that for each game we can select the right commercial model for that game. For some games, it's going to be self-publishing, self-financing. For others, working with publishing partners. For some others, the co-publishing in between these models.
We are also driving the developments that great people continue to be a key focus for us. We aim to be the most attractive gaming industry employer in Europe, and the aim is that we reach these objectives step by step while having a profitable and growing business in which we manage always our risks well. We are aiming for these objectives, as a reminder, by following five key strategic guidelines. The actions we do and actions we have done follow these guidelines. First of all, we are systematically building a portfolio of recognized growing game brands, and now we have three Remedy-owned franchises on which we are working: Control, Alan Wake, Vanguard. Secondly, we are creating longer and longer engaging games in immersive and expanding worlds. All the games that we now have in development are step by step becoming long-lasting.
This applies both to our story-focused single-player games, but we can especially see this with the two multiplayer service-based games we now have in development, codenamed Condor and Vanguard. We are step by step further strengthening our position in the value chain, and we have been doing that all the time. Now it should be much more visible with the new deals we announced for Condor at Tencent. These are concrete steps how Remedy is becoming also a game publisher and having a stronger position in the value chain. We are iterating towards bigger games with professional and scalable game productions and all the operational developments that I just mentioned in the previous slide on the game team leadership, on Northlight, on our external development capabilities, ways of working, they all apply here.
We empower our creative workers, teams, and people, and we have continued to invest into our people, both recruitment-wise, but via onboarding, how we support and develop our people, how we build and develop teams with these people. In addition to these guidelines, we are now in the process of setting up a studio in Stockholm, Sweden. This is the plan that we execute, that we continue to execute. When we have a look at the game portfolio, naturally this is a central part of what we do and where we are going. Currently we are supporting or developing seven announced games and projects with our partners. Three of these games in the portfolio have now already been launched. CrossFire, in fact, consists of two separate games, CrossFire HD and CrossfireX, and four projects in this slide are currently in development.
Let's have a bit closer look at each of these projects. With CrossFire, we have now collaborated with Smilegate for over five years, developing story modes to their hugely successful CrossFire. As I just mentioned, it's good to note that there are two separate CrossFire games. There is CrossFire HD for the China and PC and CrossfireX for Xbox. Both of these games, they have a multiplayer part from Smilegate and Remedy-developed single-player story modes. CrossFire HD was already launched in 2020. CrossfireX, in fact, just launched yesterday. We have been already paid for the development work. There is some support work that goes on. On top of this, both of these games with the longer-term perspective offer a royalty opportunity for us.
In relation to Control franchise, we have Condor in development and a bigger Control game codenamed Heron as well. Condor, we signed a deal in the summertime with 505 Games. It's a four-player cooperative player versus environment game, and Remedy is going to be a co-publisher in that game with 505. Condor has been progressing well. It's now in the proof of concept stage, and the bigger budget Control game has now progressed into the concept stage during the Q4. We have the Alan Wake games. Alan Wake games we are developing with Epic Games. Alan Wake is a Remedy IP.
Epic is paying for the development and marketing and publishes these games, and from the sales revenues that these games will generate, Epic will recoup its direct investments, and after that, the net revenues are shared 50/50. Alan Wake Remastered was launched in October last year with good reception from fans and critics. The game did not yet recoup all its investments in 2021, and therefore during last year did not yet generate us royalties. The sales have progressed well in line with our expectations. Alan Wake 2 was announced at The Game Awards in December 2021. The Game Awards has grown to be industry's biggest event in terms of viewership. Alan Wake 2, we are happy to say, was one of the highest trending games of the event with a very positive sentiment. This is one sign of the gamers' excitement and anticipation for the game.
Alan Wake 2 continues in full production and will launch in 2023. Vanguard is our long-lasting service-based cooperative multiplayer game that utilizes our world-building and narrative strengths as a studio. Development is progressing well, game is in the proof of concept stage, and we are gradually ramping up both the internal team and adding selected external development partners into the project as well. At the end of last year, we signed a global development license and distribution agreement with Tencent, and it's good to say that we had good partnership options to consider. Eventually, after evaluating and negotiating with different partners, we believe that for Vanguard, Tencent was the best one. We see Vanguard as a global opportunity, and Tencent can significantly support in realizing that potential.
We also saw that for a free-to-play service-based game, we as the developer of that service want to be very close to the player and community, and we wanted to publish the game, especially in the Western markets. Development will be co-financed by us and Tencent. We are developing and publishing the game worldwide, excluding selected Asian markets, where Tencent is going to localize and publish the game. We also licensed Tencent the worldwide rights to develop and publish a mobile version of the game. Forming this partnership with Tencent, most importantly, of course, it supports Vanguard in becoming an excellent game. It's also an important step for Remedy towards becoming a game publisher with selected future games, and this takes us again a step further in our ambition to create long-lasting games to a truly global audience.
Now, at the heart of Remedy, at the heart of a creative game development studio are, of course, our world-class talents, our people. We have continued successfully our recruitments. We have kept the bar high and now have 320 people. We are developing ways how we onboard, support, develop, and most importantly, how we are building high-performing game development teams with these talents. As a next step, also in attracting top talent and building our game teams further, we are now in the process of establishing a second studio in Stockholm, Sweden. Like our home base, the capital area of Finland, Stockholm is one of the European game talent hubs. Early results for us in Stockholm have been good.
There is clearly interest in the game development community on Remedy establishing a new studio, and we have already had good success in recruiting, most importantly, highly talented senior developers. While our own talents are more and more focused on the most crucial parts of the Remedy games, we are complementing this with selected external development partners that are able to bring us their special expertise, and this also allows us to scale up the productions more flexibly when needed. We are continuing to expand all this in a managed way that best supports our growth objectives. As a conclusion for this part, as a reminder, all this is done to make us the stronger company as a category-defining creative super developer.
We have said it a number of times that we truly have rare skills of creating world-class gaming brands, and out of these brands, we create distinctive benchmark-setting games. We now have teams and an organization to develop multiple high-quality games at the same time, while many of the world's other AAA game developers can just develop one big game at a time. We have always been a highly appreciated partner by the world's leading gaming companies and publishers and platform holders, and with some of the future games, we definitely continue collaborating with these world-class partners. We are also step by step building the abilities to self-finance, self-publish some of our future games. Very importantly, we continue to be the creative organization. At the heart of Remedy are highly creative, highly empowered people and teams, and we are a very attractive home to these professionals.
With all this year-over-year, we are a profitable growth company that manages its risks well. Let's next talk more on financials. I'll hand over to our CFO, Terhi Kauppi.
Thank you, Tero, and good morning to everybody also on my behalf. As stated already, we had a strong year both operationally and financially. Let's look a little bit more what does this financially strong year mean. Our Q4 , first of all, the revenue level increased to EUR 19.8 million. That's a growth of 39.4% or 5.6 million euros. The growth is driven by increase in development fees, which increased by 177% to EUR 18.3 million versus the level of EUR 6.6 million in comparison period. There were two factors driving this development fee growth.
We agreed, first of all, a new contract for Vanguard with Tencent, and in relation to that, we agreed that they compensate in development fees for past development work of Vanguard, and we could recognize this amount in Q4 . Additionally, we agreed a new amendment with Epic Games where they compensate for Alan Wake 2's increased scope. This also triggered a retroactive revenue recognition in development fees. These two items together impacted the Q4 development fees and thus revenues significantly. There are also two factors affecting the royalties level. The royalties were clearly on lower level than in comparison period. EUR 1.5 million versus EUR 7.6 million, decreasing 80%. The first factor is that in comparison period, we had many good P2P deals for Control.
Secondly, we did not have new games bringing in royalties this quarter. As mentioned, Alan Wake Remastered or CrossFire HD did not yet generate and does not yet bring in royalties for us. Historical breakdown of revenue and our royalties in this timeline have been mostly from one game only, and there has been fluctuation over the quarters. Royalties represent a significant potential for revenue growth, and they are of high margin, whereas development fees are more stable overall in nature. The royalties depend on game sales and are affected by seasonality, marketing, and discount campaigns, but also P2P deals have a significant role nowadays. Development fees are the basis of our revenue and expected to grow also over time since our portfolio of projects is expanding. As seen in this slide, Q3 was clearly a lower quarter and Q4 higher.
We have a variation from quarter to quarter, and past performance of a quarter does not mean that in following year, automatically the comparison quarter performs in a similar way. Overall, our focus is not on quarters, but on longer-term revenue and profitability growth. We reach the EBIT level of EUR 11.3 million, and that is 56.9% of revenue, increasing 70% from comparison period and having overall about 10% higher margin level. It is important to remember that similarly to revenue fluctuation, there has been and will be EBIT fluctuation between quarters, and although the multi-project model should even that out to some extent.
Because the nature of our business is just such that there is and will be large buckets of revenue items, and the timing of these buckets cause periodical fluctuation because our cost base is steady and slowly growing. On full year financial year comparison, we increased our revenues by 9% to EUR 44.7 million. The ratios in which development fees increased and the royalties decreased are about the same because development fees grew year on year by 38%, whereas royalties decreased by 42%. The development fees growth during the full year is due to a broader games development pipeline as we have good partnerships, contracts, and we receive higher amount of development fees overall.
The amount of royalties also for the full year was lower as Control is already two and a half years old game, and although still selling well, the sales curve has flattened, and we did not have yet boost from new launches since, although the Alan Wake Remastered launch in October, it did not yet generate royalties for us. For full year, the EBIT was EUR 14.7 million, and that's 32.9% of revenue with 11% growth. We could increase the operating profit margin slightly even from the high level of 2020. Running a multi-project model to generate top quality games requires world-class talent, and we have invested to that to drive sustainable growth. Our cost base is increasing on steady but controlled manner as we continue to expand our project and start new initiatives.
This increasing resourcing is visible both in personal expenses and in external development costs. Our personal expenses in Q4 were EUR 5.7 million. That's actually 0.4 million less than in a comparison quarter, but that's due to a different quarterly timing of bonus accruals during the year 2021. The capitalizations were on same level as in comparison quarter, but external development costs were EUR 2.9 million, and that's 60% more than one year ago. It's especially important for us to be able to utilize external development capabilities in order to ensure scalability. We will be investing also in future heavily to external development. Operating cash flow in quarter four was negative by EUR 2.4 million. Timing of incoming payments affects the operating cash flow on quarterly basis.
The amount of external development costs paid out was higher than in comparison period. The cash position was 55.6 million EUR, including the EUR 7 million cash management investments. For eight consecutive years, we have been able to grow the revenues. 2021 was once again a record year for us. We have always been profitable, and now the level was higher than ever before. As mentioned, we have had new agreements in Q4 , and with the partnering terms, we do affect our growth and profitability in significant manner for years to come. We are taking steps towards self-publishing in risk-controlled manner by now starting with co-publishing, like with Control and Vanguard projects. Also, as announced yesterday, on our journey forward, we see as logical step to transfer to Nasdaq Helsinki's official list during this year.
We expect this step to increase our brand awareness, improve the liquidity of our share, and help us reach a broader owner base overall. Now back to Tero for outlook.
Thank you. Yeah, on outlook, overall, I'm really happy with how we have developed. We have said it consistently that we are patiently building a long-term profitable growth company, and we have now started a new phase in that growth path. This year, we have four games out in the market, Control, Alan Wake Remastered, two CrossFire games, and many major games now in development. We are moving to a stronger position in the value chain, which now will also mean that we have more games into which we are also ourselves investing. We are all the time growing our personnel, investing more and more also in the external development, as well as now building our publishing capabilities. These will all require investments, but they will also make us stronger for the future to take us to next levels in our longer term growth plans.
With all this, we expect in 2021 our revenue to keep on growing and operating profit to be on a lower level than it has been in 2021. Then when we look at the long-term prospects that we see for Remedy beyond 2022, with our multi-project model, the plan has all the time been to get into a position in which we have a growing number of high-quality games out in the markets selling and creating royalties for a long time, and many high-quality games in development that allows a regular and successful new game launch, which then will grow the live game portfolio, again creating the sales and royalties. Revenue-wise, this gives us two key components, development fees and game royalties. Now, at the moment, we have several games in development, each with a world-class partner and agreed long-term development fees.
This forms a growing and predictable revenue basis for many years to come. On top of these development fees, we are then building the more scalable revenue streams with game royalties. Now, individual game royalties, they of course depend on many variables. Each high-quality game has the potential to succeed. Depending on so many variables which are not all in our control, our assumptions for individual game royalties are always conservative by default. We also know that if a success comes with the game, it will drive significant revenue and profit growth for many years. This naturally also applies to the three games that we launched in the end of 2021 and early 2022 with our partners.
In addition to the games we now already have in the market, we have four game projects in development, and we'll have major game launches between 2023 and 2025. With the operational developments where we started this presentation, and growing the world-class personnel and external development capabilities, our abilities as a company to execute this roadmap towards these major game launches successfully is stronger than it has ever been. As a summary, we now have started the next phase of our long-term growth plan. Control, Alan Wake Remastered, two CrossFire games have been launched and are in the market selling. At the same time, we have a portfolio of development projects, and the visibility into that game roadmap is really good. During the next years, we will be launching major games, meaning also more royalty-generating games in the future.
All in all, with all this, the future definitely looks very promising to us.
Thank you, Tero. Thank you, Terhi. If you want to ask questions, please do so. Type your question into the chat or request a speaking turn by raise hand button in Zoom. If you are participating by phone, please dial star nine to request for a speaking turn. We are now ready for questions, and, in fact, I see that we already have some in chat. The first question is that will you continue to work on CrossfireX and CrossFire HD campaigns now that the both games have been released?
We are continuing with the small team to support the launches of these games and seeing if our single-player story modes will need some support work. These are major initiatives for Smilegate. Crossfire has been a hugely successful game, especially in China. Now, in a way, new games out in the market, Smilegate's aim is that these would succeed for years to come. Now, having launched these games, the main focus is ensuring that the launches have happened well and the player base is being served. For us, it's a small team that continues to do the support work.
Thank you, Tero. Among all the existing projects in the pipeline, how does Remedy prioritize them among different projects? And which ones are the ones with more resources supporting it?
Well, first of all, even though we have been expanding our multi-project model, it's still not a huge amount of projects that we have. In a way, those projects that haven't been a high priority for us have been dropped in much earlier phases of the conception and early development. The games that we now have in development are all important to us and have high opportunities for the future. How we are managing this portfolio relates to our capabilities then to lead this multi-project organization. We have said it sometimes earlier that even though we have four major games in development, they are in different phases of their life cycle. Some are in the very, very early conception phase. Some are in the proof of concept phase. Some games may be in the pre-production.
Some are in the full production. The personnel requirements, the external development requirements, the commercial activities that the games require depend a lot on the phase in which the project is. What we are doing is that we are allowing the games to spend enough time with small teams in these earlier phases so that when they proceed in the next phases, which will require more personnel, in a way the basis, the technology foundation would be ready. The kind of like design side clear, the core elements of the games have been tested so that this in the way higher personnel project phases would be clear. They would be much more execution-focused and would be not as short as possible, but still kind of like would not be delayed because they are also very cost-heavy phases.
In that sense, for example, at the moment, Alan Wake 2 is in the production phase with the full production size team. Definitely now the aim is to have that game out in the market in a way with the highest potential quality. Then when we start having people freeing up from that project, there are going to be more people that we can put into the next projects. The idea is that we rather keep projects in these earlier phases with the smaller team knocking on the doors of the next project phase so that they definitely are ready to move on when we have people to go to these projects. At the same time, we have 320 people. We have external development partners, and our projects, none of the projects are taking kind of like this amount of people.
Even though we now have one project in full production, we have more than enough people to drive the other projects in these earlier development phases, and they will still continue in these phases for a while.
Thank you, Tero. In our Q4 report, we say that Alan Wake's scope and development budget is extended. Can we give some color into that?
Well, that's in one part, that's the nature of ambitious, complex game projects that we have agreed also with our development partners that when we start a project, we have a pretty good idea what game we are making, what the production plan is. When we know that it's going to be years of development, with 15, 16 different disciplines, the ambition level for the game is high. The early production plans are never made in detail for years to come. The idea is that with the partners, we are following the production, we are evaluating the game, we are learning all the time that what are the key elements that the game should have, to what parts of the game should we put even more focus.
Now, for example, with Alan Wake 2, with our publishing partner, Epic, we have been constantly evaluating the game, and we have seen that it's justified that on some areas of the game we will be investing more and therefore the scope of the game is being expanded, and that requires bit more development budget as well.
There is one question again related to Alan Wake 2. Why are you pursuing TAM-limiting factors such as horror or non-old-gen compatibility on Alan Wake 2 if the goal is to build more commercially appealing games?
We have been evaluating the markets, and we see that the gaming market is a huge market which has different segments, different categories. With our publishing partner, we have been evaluating that, for a game like Alan Wake, where should we take it? What would be a clear focus for the game? We have also evaluated what the potential for that type of game is, and we see that there is plenty of potential with the positioning we have chosen. Also the highly important thing is not just in a way the size of the target segment, but also the fact that when we go into a certain segment or category, what are our skills? What's the brand in question?
What's the ambition and motivation of the development team so that the game that we develop eventually is going to be a truly high-quality, unique game that stands out in that category. We believe that in a way, with the combination of all this, the choice that we have made is the right one.
Thank you. One question related to Codename Heron. How much can you utilize already developed Control assets when developing the Heron game?
Well, we have said also in our strategic guidelines that one of the guidelines is to develop our capabilities to step-by-step create bigger games and have more scalable game productions. One thing that we are doing in relation to that is that we are systematically developing synergies across our games, and that relates to creative aspects. Now, in a way, Condor and Heron both are set in the Control world. That means that a lot of the, in a way, world-building and creative work that was done for Control can be utilized. There are technology developments, gameplay elements, systems that we have developed for those games that we can utilize.
When we are developing art assets, certain group of the art assets can be used across the games, and then if especially when it's based on the same game world even more. We are building libraries for that, so definitely both in Condor and Heron, there are art assets that can be utilized. Overall, without specifying exactly the percentages, definitely there are synergies, and those are being utilized.
Good. Thank you.
having said that, when the games come out one day, they always need to shine. They always need to bring something completely new. in a way, what we have gives a foundation. It does give some efficiency and saving, but there is always a lot of new work as well.
Good. Thank you. Could you please quantify guidance on EBIT? Does EBIT lower mean or what do we mean by that?
Oh, I could take that. At this guidance, what we are saying, the level of detail is what it is. It is, it's an overall level. That's it.
Fair enough. There's a couple of questions on the royalty model on CrossFire HD and on the other hand, our expectations on the potential for the royalties for HD and on the other hand, CrossFire X.
Yes. We cannot open up the details how the royalty model actually works. Overall, we could say that compared to the partnership agreements where we share the development fees, and then we share the revenue, and we are talking about then normally about the revenue share. In comparison to that, the model where the business case is mostly based on the subcontracting in itself, and then we talk about royalty opportunity on top of that. The importance in a total business case overall is an overall lower. In relation to CrossFire HD versus CrossFire X and so forth, we cannot comment unfortunately.
There is a question on updated view on pursuing work for hire or subcontracting deals. What type of role do they have in the strategy?
Well, when we have said that one of the strategic objectives is to create our own brands, have a stronger position in the value chain, definitely the main focus is on Remedy-owned IPs. At the same time, we have said it all the time that if there are lucrative enough opportunities to work on partner IPs, something that is significant as an IP, provides a big opportunity, fits with our skill set, is highly motivating for our people, in addition to the financial possibilities, would build some additional synergies to Remedy that we could utilize with our other games. Definitely, that continues to be an option.
Thank you. There is a question on hires. Lots of hiring ads for Vanguard and Alan Wake 2, but no new hires in the quarter. Seems like it's more difficult to find that. Does this mean higher costs?
Well, first of all, there have been a lot of new hires. Sometimes, when there is an open job at which hasn't been closed, yes, it can imply that position has not yet been fulfilled. Sometimes it is that we may have number of opportunities for that type of job roles, and the job ad is kept open even though there are good candidates in the pipeline. But overall, yes, we are hiring for the open positions that we have. I think we started to see already in 2017 the increasing competition for the talent that there was, and we saw that it would just intensify in the forthcoming years, and that happened. Our recruitment is very systematic. Very systematic.
Again, last year it was almost 3,000 high-quality, good quality candidates applications that we got. People with the industry background who see our open ad evaluate themselves that I could actually be a good fit for that position. They apply for us, and our bar is high. It's still, depending on the year, between 1%-2% that we eventually then hire. That part is working. At the same time, when we have an underlying highly growing industry where especially with the higher quality studios, mainly senior level people, often senior level people are being looked for, I would say that yes, the competition for talent has intensified. It's not that drastic 'cause the competition has been high for many years.
also with the COVID pandemic and increase of the remote work, we have also been seeing that now many companies are in a way offering the remote possibilities. That has definitely affected the job market. As for Remedy, we have been utilizing that trend as well. Overall, I wouldn't say that our recruitment costs per se are growing, but there is a possibility that as we go on, that in a way, there might be pressure overall in the industry with the salary levels.
The good thing in the gaming industry is that it's not all about salaries and money. It's the total in a way compensation with the bonus models, with different type of commitment models, but it's also very much that talents want to work with the highest quality games in the companies, that are able to support them and their developments as part of high-performing teams that are focused in making the best games that they want to work with. Overall, it's a big combination that needs to be built to attract, keep, and develop the people and teams. We have at least so far been successful with that, and we have very systematically continued investments into those.
As one part, in addition to hiring people here, hiring people remotely, now setting up a second studio in Stockholm is a good approach. I would say that for us going further, that we are not only trying to attract people here, but we are also basing Remedy into those hubs that already have the talents.
Good. There is a question on our ambition to transfer to Nasdaq Helsinki's official list. What's the rationale there? What's the plan? On the other hand, there's a timeline.
Overall, as companies mature and grow and move forward, we see this as a natural step for us. Clearly, as mentioned, the impact on overall brand awareness, the liquidity on our shares and the increase in the ownership base are for us positive things to move forward. We have been many years already in First North. In that sense, it's nothing that new. Yes, there are then some more regulation, but actually not too much compared to what we already comply. The plan is during this year and that is what we stick. Surely as we plan forward and see, the schedule becomes clearer, but we do not have or cannot give any insight to that yet.
Thank you, Tari. What is the current M&A strategy for Remedy?
Well, we have our long-term goal plans. We have a clear plan how we are pursuing that. It's been focused on the organic growth. We have never said that, M&As would be excluded from that. As I said it, the clear focus has been and continues to be on the organic path.
Good. Regarding our expansion to Stockholm, is your aim still to have a small team in Stockholm? Will this studio work on a single project? If it's so, can we know which project?
Yes, we are definitely. We are investing in having a studio in Stockholm. That's in the process all the time. The aim is to have approximately 25 senior-level developers in that studio by the end of this year. It's been progressing well. We have been able to already attract a good amount of senior-level developers. On which project or projects they are working on, I can't specify in more detail.
Thank you. There's one more question. Possible cooperation with Netflix, Amazon, or HBO on the game side. Is this something that we are looking into?
Well, Remedy is a highly interesting and lucrative partner for many, in a way, big brand owners, major gaming companies in the world. We have always been a good partner, an active partner, trying to find ways how we can build games that are bigger than the ones that we could just build by ourselves. We are active in communicating, having discussions with all the potential major partners. What the future holds, we will then later see.
Thank you. Thank you all for the call and the questions. We will be back with the next earnings webinar on thirteenth of May. That's all for now. Thank you.