Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for 888's 2022 interim results presentation. I'm joined by Yariv Dafna, our CFO, who's in our London office. Starting with the agenda on slide three, I'll run through some highlights and then hand over to Yariv to discuss financials. I will then provide an overview of our strategic progress during the first half before concluding and opening up for some questions. Turning to slide four and getting into the highlights from the period. On a pro forma basis, as if we had been an enlarged business for both periods, revenues were broadly stable and in line with guidance we gave in June. Adjusted EBITDA was GBP 142 million. Strong growth in retail revenues was offset by online revenues being down just over 20%.
The decline in online revenues is mainly due to lower online revenues in the U.K., where we've implemented a series of safer gambling and affordability measures on players' accounts. While this causes some pain to our financials in the short term, it puts us in a much better position for any future change in regulations in the U.K. For the reported financial results, which just reflect 888 on a standalone basis and include Bingo, revenue was GBP 332 million and adjusted EBITDA of GBP 50 million. Looking at our strategic highlights, this has been an incredible period for the business. The most significant transformation in the 21 years that I have been in 888, with the main highlight being the acquisition of William Hill, which closed on July first.
Alongside that, we continue to expand into further regulated markets with launches in Ontario and in Virginia, and we are just in the process of launching our first 4 African regulated markets with our strategic partners. I'll expand on these and our long-term growth strategy soon, but for now, I will hand over to Yariv to walk through our financials.
Thanks, Itai. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Starting with slide 6, you can see the financial highlights for the first half on a reported basis. For the first time, we are presenting results in pound sterling, and this is how we will be reporting our results going forward. Revenue were down 13% to GBP 332 million. The main driver for the decline in revenue were the U.K., which was 25% down, and the Netherlands closure, which was about 3% of revenue in H1 2021. The decline in the U.K. was in line with the market, which was down 23% according to the latest UKGC data.
The decline is also driven by the enhanced player protection implemented last year and in the period, while the framework includes significant expansion in the number of players with deposit limits, as well as reducing the maximum stake for online slot games to GBP 10. Looking at the remainder of the business, excluding the U.K. and the Netherlands, our revenue increased 2%, a pleasing performance against strong period in 2021. Adjusted EBITDA was down 29% with the EBITDA margin down to 15%. This margin decline largely reflects phasing of costs and an increase in costs from player safety measures. Adjusted PBT was down 39% to GBP 33 million, impacted by the reduction in EBITDA and an increase in a non-cash FX losses.
We had GBP 16 million of exceptional item in the period, mainly related to our M&A activity, and therefore the reported PBT and profit after tax were significantly lower. Turning to slide seven, you can see the pro forma financial highlights. We completed the acquisition of William Hill on July first and the Bingo sale on July seventh. This slide presents the enlarged group financials as if we were a combined business and excluding the 888 Bingo result. Revenue was broadly stable at GBP 943 million, and adjusted EBITDA was up 26% to GBP 142 million, driven by the retail performance. Retail saw really strong growth as the shops were shut for most of the period last year.
In the last 12 months, the U.K. retail business has generated revenue of GBP 513 million and adjusted EBITDA of GBP 97 million, and we are really pleased with the recovery of the business. William Hill U.K. online revenue were down 28% with active fairly stable, but output down 29% as the team implemented additional strong player protection measure and reduced the slots stake limit to GBP 10. William Hill International revenue were also down 28% following the closure of certain markets like the Netherlands, as well as strategic changes to increase focus on selected core market. The EBITDA was stable relative to last year. On a last 12 months basis, we saw GBP 1.9 billion in revenue and GBP 299 million of adjusted EBITDA, reflecting an EBITDA margin of 15.8%. Moving to slide eight.
In the last few years, one of our key goals was to build 888 into a leading regulated online betting and gaming business. We made further progress in the first half of 2022 with 85% of the pro forma revenue coming from regulated and taxed markets. During H1, we launched 888 in Ontario, SI Sportsbook in Virginia, and WSOP in Michigan. Looking forward, we see a clear path to almost 90% of revenue to come from regulated and taxed markets with a long tail of offshore markets served by our scalable global platform. Slide nine, you can see the diversity of the business from a geographic and product perspective.
The U.K. remain our most important market with 38% of revenue from U.K. online and another 28% from the U.K. retail. Italy remains our number two market, making up 7% of the enlarged group revenue, and the 888 brand has continued to grow market share in the first half, even with retail fully open. The Americas made up 5% of our revenue, and Spain represent another 4%. From a product perspective, you can see the strong benefit of the transaction with a better balanced product split with 20% betting, 51% gaming, and 27% retail, all on a pro forma basis. Moving to slide 10, I will provide overview of our net debt position and the long-term financing we have put in place as part of the acquisition of William Hill.
In total, we have approximately GBP 1.8 billion in external debt, and in the table below, you can see how this is split between the different instruments with maturity mainly being six years. Most of the debt is variable rate debt, and based on the current market conditions and the forward curves, we expect cash interest costs to be approximately GBP 65 million in H2 2022, and GBP 130-140 million in 2023. This represents a blended interest rate of about 8%. In addition to the external debt, we have approximately GBP 100 million of capitalized lease liability under IFRS 16 and cash of GBP 178 million, excluding customer balances. This brings the current net debt to approximately GBP 1.7 billion.
On a last 12 months basis and including the planned GBP 85 million of OpEx synergies, this would be 4.4x leverage. With our long-term debt structure in place, the strong progress with our integration plan, we are confident about our plan to achieve the mid-term, in the meantime, a net leverage of 3x. Turning to slide 11, a few words about our outlook for the year. For the second half of the year, we expect revenue to be broadly similar to the first half, such that on a pro forma basis, we currently expect revenue of approximately GBP 1.9 billion for the full year 2022, consistent with the last twelve months period. Within the business, we see real stability in retail, which has been running at approximately GBP 500 million of annual revenue since the U.K. reopened.
Within online, there have been many factors driving revenue, including significant changes in regulatory and compliance matters, but we believe that the last twelve months run rate of approximately GBP 1.4 billion is a good indication of our business run rate for the short term. As you can see from the actives over the last twelve months, we see continued strong consumer engagement, and this gives us confidence that our product and marketing investments are working. As for the synergies, we still expect single-digit millions in 2022, increasing to at least GBP 54 million in 2023. It is too early to talk about 2023 in detail, but I can say that our priorities and focus are on integration, execution of our synergy plan, and on cash generation and deleveraging.
We remain confident that in our plans and outlook, including the mid-term target of 3x leverage, and I expect to give you more details on this in the Capital Markets Day we plan for later this year. With that, I will now hand over to Itai to tell you a bit more about our strategic priorities, key achievement, and growth plans.
Thanks, Yariv. Turning to slide 13. I thought it would be useful to provide a reminder of our refined growth strategy pillars. We have a clear framework in place to deliver sustainable long-term growth built around three areas. Firstly, market focus. This means ensuring we invest our resources in the markets with the most attractive opportunities when we can deliver superior returns. Secondly, reinforcing our sustainable competitive advantages. These are the three pillars that act as enablers and really drive market share gains. All of this is underpinned by continued investment in our talented people. Thirdly, we will be supporting our growth with strategically and financially attractive M&A that enables us to benefit from scale advantages. I'll expand on progress against these elements. On slide 14 and our market focus, we made really strong progress here with further regulated market launches.
In the U.S., we launched SI Sportsbook in Virginia, and I'm delighted to say that we will be launching Sportsbook and Casino in Michigan in the coming months. By the end of the year, we should be live in four states on a B2C basis. Just north of the border, we launched 888 in a locally regulated basis in Ontario in April, and the initial results here have been really pleasing. Canada is one of our growth markets, and we see really strong potential there with our strong brand and product and content leadership strategy, really building us a strong position in the Canadian market. Within our long-term investment strategy in emerging markets, we are in the process of launching our first four regulated African countries, which I'll expand on shortly.
Finally, the combination with William Hill is really complementary in terms of market focus, giving us top three position in the U.K. and Spain, and top five position across several other markets. There are some additional markets where the William Hill and Mr. Green brands perform strongly that we could now consider growth markets for the group. Equally, there are certain markets where having all three brands won't make sense, and we are working through all of these now as part of the integration to decide where we can optimize our investment decisions and marketing approach. Turning to slide 15. I'm delighted to tell you about the huge progress we made in 888Africa. We set 888Africa in March. It is a joint venture with a team of founders with huge experience in the online betting and gaming, and real passion for product and customer excellence.
Right now, we are launching our first four countries in Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya, and Mozambique. The operations are under the brand 888b et, which is already scoring well in our target markets, leveraging the global brand awareness of the 888 brand. It is very early days, but we are really pleased with the rapid progress the team have made. As you can see from the slide here, we've got some great branding and offers as we roll out the 888 brand into all of the markets. Industry commentators expect the addressable market in Africa to grow rapidly over the medium- term. This is a really exciting opportunity for 888, and we think this could be a source of significant value in the coming years. Turning to slide 16. Our growth strategy is underpinned by investing in our sources of sustainable competitive advantages.
We made further progress with each of these in this period. Our product and content leadership plan means building best in class products and creating easy, quick and seamless player experiences. During the first half, we launched a whole host of great new products, including a new bet slip for 888sport with a tabbed layout, making it quicker and easier to use. An industry first live slot experience using Safari Riches, one of our really strong in-house game brands. We rolled out a great free-to-play game in the U.S., which is called Perfect 10. Our second pillar is world-class brands and marketing. We rolled out our master brand plan for 888 in the period, uniting all of 888 sub-brands under the Made to Play banner, giving us a really consistent and strong brand positioning. Our third pillar is customer excellence and customer safety.
It was great to see another improvement in our customer satisfaction scores, which was really supported by the rollout of Amanda, a new virtual assistant to help customers get really quick answers and resolutions to any issues they have. This also helps us streamline our customer service, saving time and cost, and freeing up time for our excellent team to help customers. Customer safety is one of the most critical focuses for us, and it was great to continue rolling out our Control Centre into more countries as we strive to drive higher and higher standards in player safety. I'll now turn to the third part of our strategy, strategically and financially attractive M&A. Before talking about the transformational acquisition of William Hill, here is a short video about the combination.
As you can see, this landmark combination bringing together two really strong businesses to create a powerful and large business. Turning to slide 18. The combination brings together some of the industry's strongest brands, with 888, William Hill and Mr. Green. On an enlarged basis, our brands serve almost 6 million customers, and in the last 12 months we generated almost GBP 2 billion of revenues and over GBP 380 million of EBITDA, after reflecting the synergies that we expect to deliver. This acquisition fits perfectly with our strategy and really accelerates our plan to become a global leader. We are now a top three player in the U.K. and in Spain, and have significantly enhanced market positions across a range of the most attractive markets, including key markets like Italy, Denmark and Germany.
We further boost our competitive advantages with the addition of unique brands and some really great products. As we integrate and deliver synergies, we expect the acquisition to deliver really strong financial returns. Turning to slide 19. I'm pleased to report that we are making really good progress with our integration. We have a really structured integration plan that is driven by strong principles to drive quick wins with cost savings and maintaining and engaging in our key talent. It's been great getting to know more of the William Hill team, and as we're getting into the integration, it is becoming even more clear to us how much upside potential there is in this combination. Turning to slide 20, a few words about our teams and plans. I was delighted to announce our new leadership team before completion.
We have an excellent team built up from people across both businesses and also from outside of the business. A significant new appointment for us is our new Chief Risk Officer, Harinder Gill, who started with us just last week. Safer gambling is a critical focus for us as we further build and strengthen our approach to provide fun and entertainment to our players, but doing whatever we can to minimize risks that come from our products. Alongside the new team you see here, we have a huge depth of talent across both businesses. Together, we are really focused on the huge long-term value creation potential from this combination. We are building a powerful proprietary technology platform that will deliver class-leading products and content globally, delivered from a portfolio of amazing brands and always with focus on customer excellence. Turning to slide 21, and to conclude.
The first half of 2022 was a truly transformational period for the group. Financial results were solid as we left a record period, with the U.K. performance more or less in line with the overall market. We continue to invest in new regulated markets. Our extensive M&A activity has given us a platform to create a world leader in online betting and gaming. We are making really good progress on execution of our integration plans, and look forward to telling you a lot more about this and our future at an investor day in November. With that, we'll be happy to take your questions.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally as you will be advised when to ask your question. Once again, that's star one if you would like to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Richard Stuber from Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Itai , Yariv . Thanks for taking my questions. Three for me, please. Having had William Hill now under full ownership for six weeks, is there anything which has surprised you on either the upside or downside versus your pre-completion expectations? The second question is, could you give us an update on the timing of the Netherlands license, please? Thirdly, could you just clarify if any of your term loans or any debt facilities have any financial covenants which we should be aware of? Thank you.
Thanks, Richard. I'll address the first two questions, and Yariv will address the debt one. First of all, in terms of surprises, I think we are pleasantly surprised by a few things. First of all, the talent that we've been exposed to in William Hill across the board of the business, the depths of the knowledge that they have in all parts of the business, online, specifically retail, which is a new area for us. A very, very strong leadership team there and very strong position in the U.K. market. We've identified both the growth synergies and obviously the cost synergies that we've been working on for months.
We're very, very comfortable that we'll manage to achieve them. I would say we're definitely pleasantly surprised with talent, with some parts of the business that are performing well, like retail. Unpleasantly surprised, to tell you the truth, there isn't anything that really unpleasantly surprised us. In terms of the Netherlands, that we are working on the license there, renewing our license there or getting a new license there, and the expectation is in the second half of this year, but obviously these regulatory processes have their own pace, and we can't commit to a specific date on them.
Richard, first of all, maybe another piece on the Netherlands. We were expecting Q3, and this now seems to be more like a Q4. This is just to be more accurate on the expectation. In terms of covenants, we don't have a specific financial covenant that we need to meet as part of the overall debt. However, if we are using the RCF more than 40% of its level, then there will be some very light financial covenant that will kick in.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Ivor Jones from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. You've talked about the opportunity from William Hill. You talked about tremendous upside. You talked about huge long-term potential. When you were answering Richard's question, you said you identified growth synergies. Could you expand a bit on the opportunity that results from putting the two businesses together, beyond the synergies? You're baking the synergies in when you look at the net debt to EBITDA multiple, for example. How would you articulate the opportunity now? What are the growth synergies? Where are they gonna come from? Then more specifically, on the international side of William Hill, I don't really get how EBITDA is stable on declining revenue if you're focusing on particular markets. Is this a business being run down? Trying to get more cash out of it?
What's happening on the international side? Thirdly, is 888Africa gaming only, or if it's sports, will it get access to the William Hill brand for its markets? Thank you.
Thanks, Ivor. I'll address the first question in Africa, and Yariv can expand on the second one. In terms of the growth synergies, we're gonna have an investors' day in November, and we're going to expand much further on both growth synergies and our plans on the cost synergies. For now, the areas that we see a big kind of potential for growth, first of all is the brands. The group has significant brands both in terms of sports betting and in gaming.
We're planning to take the best brands for each market, invest in them, and then obviously reduce investments in brands that need to be rationalized and that have a lower potential in each market. This gives us an opportunity to put our resources behind the most successful brands with the highest potential for growth in each market rather than investing in all brands in all markets. The second potential is in terms of platform. We are planning to work under one enhanced platform for the entire group. That will create both cost synergies and growth synergies as we deliver the best technology and customer experience to all of our customers over all of the brands across the group.
There's the synergies, obviously, in gaming, bringing 888's best-in-class gaming products over to all of William Hill's business, including 888 Games, the games that we deliver to William Hill's customer base, both online and in retail. In terms of sports betting, there's obviously taking all the capabilities that have been built in terms of trading and managing a sports book on William Hill and leveraging them also on 888. We're seeing a lot of them, and we're uncovering more and more as the integration plans and the teams are working closely together. There are more, you know, specific areas in terms of marketing, in terms of CRM, in terms of customer support. We're basically finding areas of improvement and growth in almost every part of the business.
As these are unfolding, like I said, we will be sharing more of these in the November call. We're very confident in terms of our cost synergies, and we're identifying and prioritizing in terms of our roadmaps. We're prioritizing areas that will bring us the quickest growth synergies. That's from that perspective. In terms of Africa, the brand there is 888bet, actually, which is the first time we're launching that brand. It will obviously be focused on sports betting and gaming. The lead product in Africa is actually sports betting.
In terms of access to William Hill brand, obviously, we have access to William Hill brand everywhere outside of the U.S., so we can use that brand if it makes sense in the future. At the moment, we've decided to launch with 888bet, and that will be the lead brand in the African markets.
Okay.
Yariv.
Ivor, with regard to the EBITDA of the international, so, just to be fair, you know, there was some optimization in terms of cost in this part of the business, but there were also some gain on the accounting side, including also some FX benefit. You can assume that the real underlying performance is that EBITDA is actually performing less good than last year.
What's the future for international online?
You know, financially, of course, you know, international has significant synergies with the 888 business, and this is what we are going through these days. There will be a review, market by market, in which, as Itai mentioned, we will need to decide what is the brand and go-to-market for each of this market. This can give us both a potential better growth for the future from the low point that we are at, and also strong cost synergies looking forward.
I'll just add to that, Ivor, that we believe a big part of the potential growth of international is actually in sports betting. The group, if you look at both William Hill brand, Mr. Green brand, and obviously 888 brand, on the international markets, which are all of the kind of European markets and North American markets that we've been focusing on, they've all scored really well in gaming, and I think will score even better as we integrate platforms and offer the 888 gaming experience across all the different markets. The real big potential is in terms of sports betting.
Again, unifying the sports betting brands to one lead brand in each market, putting the best sports product and know-how behind that product, and growing the business in our focus markets in sports betting has, I think, the biggest potential for growth in the future.
in the future, as you allocate marketing resource between U.K. online, 888 online, and international online, the relative performance of those businesses is gonna depend on that group wide allocation decision. It's gonna be hard to interpret the performance of those three lines if you keep reporting them. Is that right?
First of all, performance is not only based on marketing, performance is also based on product, customer experience, and many, many other things. We actually saw.
The brand choices you make, right?
Yeah. Obviously, brand choices, which we are making now. The brand choices are being made now and will be rationalized already in Q4 this year. You know, just to give a simple example, 888 in the U.K. is a challenger brand coming from a you know, very low market share base, 888sport. William Hill is you know, one of the top three brands in the U.K. Building a brand in the U.K. is extremely expensive. For 888 to become kind of a top-tier brand would take a few more years of significant investment in branding.
Now that the group has William Hill, obviously we don't have to invest that kind of level in branding, but we can still grow 888sport on more of a performance basis. If you take that and work that out between all of the different markets, you know, we feel we have a better way to grow sports betting in all of those markets, focusing the marketing investment and the product investments and roadmap into a single brand in each of the markets while keeping the other brands, I would call them secondary or tactical, or removing them altogether from the market.
That's really helpful. Thank you both.
Thanks.
Before we go to the next question, please be reminded that if you would like to ask a question, it's star one. The next question comes from the line of Joe Sheridan from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Three from me, please. Firstly, on affordability checks, obviously significant impact from those through the period. Where do you think you now are in terms of affordability checks relative to your expectations of what may be enforced on the industry post the white paper? Secondly, just on platform integration, previously you talked about a best of both approach, which sounded slightly complex to execute. Have you refined your views at all in terms of how you will structure the enlarged group platform? Lastly, just in the U.S., what were the US losses in the first half, and what are your expectations now for 2022 and, if possible, 2023?
Okay.
We'll start with affordability and cover U.S., and then we'll hand over to Itai to discuss our platform integration. In terms of affordability, we believe that we did a massive progress toward what is going to be the new regulation. In 2021, we removed the threshold in which we are going to do an affordability check from GBP 2,000 of net loss to GBP 950, and at the beginning of this year, we took that down to GBP 500. This is also and this is a massive change toward the what's going to be the regulation. Now, it's not only about when we are meeting the customer for the first time, you know.
This kind of change require also more resources internally in order to process all these affordability checks, and also a lot of additional costs that we need to do with external that provide us all the data that we need. All these costs are already in the number, reflected in the number, and therefore we expect a minimal impact to come when the regulation would be set. You know, the GBP 10 slot limit is also some kind of affordability. Last year we aligned ourselves to GBP 20 limit. William Hill took it down to GBP 10 already from the beginning of this year, and we align as well recently to GBP 10. We are cross-organization now on GBP 10 slot limit. Moving to the U.S. losses.
U.S. losses for the first half of the year was GBP 8.1 million. This is about GBP 2.5 million more than last year. If you look at that on a full year basis, we will be close to 20+ million for the full year, and this could be also a good estimation for the next year.
Yeah. Regarding platform in terms of the platform, that's actually one of the areas of integration that will take more time. As you mentioned, it is complex. There's no easy solution to unified platforms, migrate players. That's something that we need to do very cautiously in order not to disrupt the business while we're planning that. But we are confident that the group is going to work over one platform that's going to be a unified platform that's gonna take the best components of both. The teams are working on identifying that and building the plan for that these days.
Like we said, we're six weeks into closing the deal, but we will have much more information about that in our investor day in November. As you know, 888 has been building its own platform and proprietary technology, both front-end and back-end for the last 21 years.
Sorry, for the last 25 years. We're very confident in our abilities to you know to build a platform to migrate players from one platform to the other, which we have done in the past, including in our sports betting business, and to integrate external components into our platform. We will share much more about that. That will take time. That's not a quick win, but that's a huge amount of value that will be created as we move on with that plan, and we integrate more parts of the business under one unified platform.
Just to follow up on the affordability side, what percentage of your player base do you think is now recreational?
It's a good question. We don't measure it necessarily in that way, but, you know, if you look at what we are saying about active versus ARPU, you see that, you know, the ARPU went down by 29%. This is a massive change. The more the ARPU go down, the nature of the customer become more recreational players.
Great. Thanks.
There are currently no questions in the queue. As a reminder, please press star one if you'd like to ask a question.
Okay, we will now take some questions from the webcast. The first question has come through from David Brown from Goodbody. David asks, "Just a quick one around the debt. Can you give any color on covenants associated with the debt?
As I mentioned about the covenant, the debt is very light in terms of the covenant. We don't have financial covenants to meet unless we withdraw from the RCF more than 40%, and in that case, the overall debt to EBITDA needs to be, there is a ratio that needs to be met, and this ratio is very high, well above the current level, of course. There are some customary negative covenants that we need to meet, as you can expect in every debt deal. You know, the ability to sell material assets of the business and so on and so forth, but all in a very customary level and quite light.
The next question comes from the line of James Wheatcroft from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon to you both. Just sort of two follow-up reminders, please. Firstly, could you perhaps give a little bit more color on what's going on in William Hill Retail and the sort of shape of what you expect to come over the second half of the year? Secondly, can you just give us a reminder of the mechanism for the deferred GBP 100 million payment to Caesars?
If you look at the retail, we saw actually a very significant recovery of this business. The retail was reopened in May last year. The last twelve months reflect maybe a full mode of operation. In the last 12 months, we see GBP 513 million in revenue and 97 in EBITDA, which is a very pleasing performance. We expect this runway to continue looking forward. In terms of, there is not much change in terms of the number of shops. This is a very stable, you know, all these our business went through optimization during the COVID, so it's a very optimized and running well.
As for the 100 million deferred consideration, in order for Caesars to get the 100 million, we need to achieve in 2023, GBP 427 million in group EBITDA. Below 400, there is no deferred consideration. In between these two levels, there is a certain formula on how much we pay out of the total amount. Any number below 400 next year means there is no deferred consideration.
Great.
The next question comes from the line of Ivor Jones from Peel Hunt. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Two on North America. One in relation to Ontario. I can't remember what you said about whether you have pulled out of that province or the whole country ahead of getting licensed, or if there is a risk that you're obliged to pull out before you get the license. There's a drop in revenue. Could you just talk about the opportunity and risk around that potential pivot point? You answered Simon's question about the U,S. Probably being loss-making next year, and that makes sense in relation to continuing to invest. What needs to happen to get that to break even and then to profit in terms of new markets entered or market share gained? Or how do we know there's a roadmap to making that a positive contributor? Thank you.
Okay. I'll answer that. Actually, Ivor, we were really one of the first operators to get the license and to launch in Ontario. We did not have to close the existing business that we had there, so we migrated it to the licensed business in Ontario, and we have been operating there successfully since launch. We believe that's you know one of the big. Canada in general is one of the big growth areas for the group. We've been trading there well for many years. We have a brand presence, we have good customer experience. We obviously have a very solid customer base there.
As more of the provinces will regulate there in the future, we believe that's a really strong growth market for the group and has been performing well since we launched. Sorry?
Sorry. You didn't have to pull out of other parts of Canada and you won't pull out of other parts of Canada?
No . The licensing requirement was not to pull out, it was to separate. We separated the liquidity just in poker, so there isn't shared liquidity between Ontario and the rest of Canada. And obviously, all customers that are coming from Ontario have to sign up, register, go through all of the regulatory processes in Ontario, and we have to limit players from other states. It's very similar to how states work in the U.S. Obviously we have those capabilities in our system and that's how we're operating in Canada.
Now in terms of the U.S., we shared the plan, and I think we're only, you know, we only feel more confident in our plans in the U.S. at the moment. We're focused on certain type of markets that we believe can bring a faster return. These are markets that have a fair market conditions in terms of their cost base, in terms of licensing market access deals. We're focusing on markets that also now have or we believe will have access to gaming. The best example for that is Michigan, that we've just secured our license access into the market, and we're planning to launch Michigan very shortly with the sports betting and gaming in the next half of the year.
We are going to work, like I said, in a selected amount of higher potential markets in the U.S., leveraging the SI brand. If anything, we're, you know, very positively surprised by the strength of the SI brand in the U.S. We are still in the initial phase of roll-out. We launched in Colorado a year ago for the football season, just less than a year ago. Colorado is a very competitive market only with sports betting. We launched in Virginia earlier this year. We're launching the third market now, which is, like I said, Michigan. We're going to focus on these markets, leveraging the SI brand, leveraging the SI traffic that we're getting, which has been growing significantly.
SI as a sports content provider has been or sports publishing group has been growing significantly. We can leverage from the strong brand that SI have in the market to reduce our CPAs. We don't have to build a brand, which is extremely expensive in the U.S. We can leverage from the content that the SI Sportsbook is getting from SI Publishing to engage more with our players and keep the cost of promotions and CRM lower, which we know those are the two highest cost base of the U.S., both acquisition and CRM.
Our plan and what we're doing is leveraging the SI assets to reduce both of them and build a route to profitability faster than some of the other operators through focus on markets and lowering both acquisition and CRM costs. Sorry, was there a question that I missed there?
Don't think so. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
There are currently no further questions in the queue, so I will now hand back over for some more webcast questions.
Thank you. Firstly, we come to Philippe Le-Coguiec from ODDO BHF Asset Management. Have you any acquisitions in the pipeline? If so, how will they be financed?
We're always, obviously not only open, but looking at different areas of M&A and acquisitions. Obviously, after this significant acquisition and our current level of leverage, we're focused mainly on execution of our plans, of our integration plans, on realizing the synergies. I don't expect any meaningful acquisitions in the near future. Like I said, we're always looking open to do M&A activity.
Great. He also asks, are you planning to distribute dividends or buy back shares?
On the dividend, there was a clear guidance from the board that the dividend would be suspended until we are taking the leverage level to around 3x. No expectation for dividend until we get to this new level of leverage.
Okay. What pro forma adjusted EBITDA margin is targeted in the medium- term, and do you have any committed facilities undrawn as of end of June 2022?
The first part of the question, obviously we are not happy with the EBITDA margin that we come with in the first half of the year. We will start to improve it already in the second half of the year. This will go back to the level that we saw previously, the 17%-18%. Looking forward, obviously with the synergies that we are going to realize in 2023, and we already say that this will be GBP 54 million, the EBITDA margin will go and cross the 20%. In terms of committed facility, yes, we do have an RCF of GBP 150 million, which is undrawn at this point.
Great. The next question is from Jason Lee from Ares Management. Jason asks, on the GBP 5 million synergy estimate, is that the P&L amount in H2? What is the annualized amount? And what is reasonable EBITDA margin for H2? Is it fair to assume double-digit positive free cash flow in H2?
It's somewhat of an overlap with what I just said. The GBP 5 million, first of all, it's an EBITDA to be achieved already in the second half of the year. Of course, on an annualized basis, this will be a high single digit. When we are talking about GBP 54 million coming next year, this is again a real contribution to the EBITDA. I mentioned already where we think the EBITDA margin is going to be.
Okay. The next question is from Colin Long, from Lord Abbett. Please provide more color on the 29% EBITDA decline in H1 and any margin guidance for H2 in 888.
Again, I will add maybe on what I already mentioned. The H1 EBITDA is below our normalized level. Obviously, we were in a transaction mode for so many months, and the market has changed. The U.K. Went down 25%. It took us some time to start making all the adjustment needed for the new level of the business. This all will be handled already in the second half of the year, in which we are planning to have an improvement, a meaningful improvement in the EBITDA margin, and obviously again, with the synergy on the next year. We are planning to cross the 20% EBITDA margin.
The next question is from Anthony Brinkman, from Principal Global Investors. Can you give us your thoughts on the consumer right now? Have you seen any changes in behavior?
I will maybe start and then Itai can add to this. You know, I looked at this issue of the recession and how the player react together with all the changes that we are doing in the safer gambling. All the changes we do in the safer gambling basically bring a result of a decline in the ARPU of the player. We were mentioning in the U.K., 29% down when actives were actually stable. This is in a way offsetting or overlapping any impact coming from the macroeconomic situation. I have no doubt that part of the decline in the ARPU is a result of the macroeconomic situation. I wouldn't say this is a significant part of it.
Yeah. Not much more to add there, apart from the more significant decline that the business saw and overall the market is in the U.K., where we know that the cost of living. There's more pressure from cost of living than some of the other markets. In the other markets, we saw the business stable throughout this year after very high comparables of the last two years. You know, we can't really specifically say that there's a big impact of the cost of living across the whole business. We definitely believe that in the U.K., part of it is already built in the numbers that we saw in the first half of the year and the last year.
Great. Well, that's been all the questions we've had today. I'd like to pass back to Itai for any closing remarks.
Thanks everyone for joining us. Obviously, we still feel very confident about the combination with William Hill. We believe that over the medium term, it will achieve great benefits. We're now focused on executing the integration plans, delivering the synergies. We're focused on that and only on that in the near future, and we will share more on those plans in the November Investor Day, which we're looking forward to seeing you all there. Thank you very much.