Earnings Call: Q1 2021

May 20, 2021

Quarterly report

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to A Crowd Q1 Report for 2021. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in a listen only mode and afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. I am now pleased to present CEO, Robert Anderson and CFO, Gustav Vaden Bring, please begin your meeting. All right. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this Q1 presentation for 2021. And welcome again, as I said. Let's start off with introducing myself maybe. My name is Robert Anderson. I am the CEO. And with me, I have Gustav Walden Bring, who is the CFO. And I will start with going over the quarter in an overview, and then I will explain how the journey ahead looks for us. Then Gustaf will come into the picture and present all the financial details. And then I will be back for some closing comments and then we have a joint Q and A. So to start off with, what we are doing is a rapid transformation towards the media house of the future, and I will go into more detail later what this maybe a house of the future means actually later. But first, let's look at our Q1 in key figures. So we did about almost EUR 5,600,000 in revenue, which is a sharp increase. Of course, this is in part driven by Our acquisitions, EBITDA amounted to €1,400,000 and profit about €750,000 for tax. I think noteworthy here is the NVC figures that are 2 30% increasing and cash flow was €388,000. So looking at some key events during and after the quarter. Well, first of all, in the beginning of the quarter, We acquired the assets of Power Media Group, which is Vonage Matching Visions and Traffic Grid, basically the start of our new group of companies with this acquisition. This led to us now having a structure with 2 operational segments, which is iGaming and affiliation and what we like to call as a service segment. We also did obtain a license in Pennsylvania. This is a really big state and all really opens up for us to enter the U. S. Properly with our organic built products. We did provide an update on the U. S. Strategy. We actually withdrew from a potential acquisition there. We see larger upsides with focusing on organic growth and spending the money there. U. S. Is becoming increasingly expensive for acquisitions. But we did do after the quarter, we did do the acquisition of the gambling cabin, a Swedish based company that I will also explain more about later. If we look at our group development in terms of revenue, as you can see, we pretty much doubled or more than doubled Our revenue, this is of course largely driven by our acquisitions. But as you can see, the underlying business is also growing quarter on quarter from Q3 onwards. Noteworthy here is also the amount of NDCs, which we have been able to produce. As you can see, Q3 was a real low watermark for us. So I think there we saw We started seeing the effects of the initial change work that we did when I joined in February or actually March. So from this point on, we have been able to increase indices quite significantly. And of course, now we are getting to point where we are starting to reach critical mass in terms of the numbers of customers that we delivered, so that we actually have a lot better leverage when we negotiate with our partners. Looking at the revenue development in those two different segments, we have the affiliation segment, and it's really nice to see the continuous growth in these segments quarter on quarter, although the comparison with Q2 is Or with Q1 2020 is a little bit tougher. And then it's the same as in as a service, you can say that it continues to grow quarter on quarter the whole time, which is also very nice. A little bit About the background of this company or what we are trying to do is connecting people, content creators and businesses. And our vision is to be the media house of the future, and our goal is to create the best ecosystem with within media and the affiliation industry. And with that, our mind is always business first. With fearless thinking, we do leap forward. So this is our approach to things. So now I'll try and explain the media house of the future a little bit. So the house for us Means that we have different components and it creates an ecosystem of synergies. So we don't We have not been after when we are buying to buy more of the same, which happens in this industry a lot. We keep on piling in affiliate websites basically our approach has been quite different. We are focusing on synergies in the ecosystem, all right? And the Media House of the Future, this is a mindset where we want to be in the forefront, we don't want to follow, we want to lead. And that's the position that we are taking here. So if you look at yesterday, we were a company in the crowd with our core business and core business still is web affiliate comparison websites. It generates a lot of revenue, of course. But what we have done now is, of course, we have organically started up live events with the festival. We are very active in streaming, All with PMG and our dream stream that I will be getting into more in detail later, but also within the gambling Kevin, right? And in SaaS, we have WONICS and we have our traditional sites. So I think here poker is an Extremely good example in explaining our synergies. So if we look at it from the point of view that we bought the gambling cabin, They are very strong in poker streaming and it's owned by a guy nicknamed Beng Jan, which is a Swedish famous poker player And he owns and runs the company or we own it now, but he runs the company. And of course, there is really large synergies between his company that he now runs, which is the TGC, and the live events, In the sense that there is a lot of cross selling and content can be created and promoted across the board. And we also have poker listings, which is one of our strongest brands that will also benefit From this in terms of getting new content, which will help its rankings, which will make it a more interesting site. So already In poker, you have you're touching live events, you're touching streaming, you're touching but also you're touching BaaS, because we have a streaming component in the business as a service similar to WONIX or similar to Matching Visions, because That's the Dreamstream project that I will get back into later. And then we have the software as a service, Which all this actually runs on, we are actually running all of this on top of Vomix ourselves, and that's our primary data collection tool. So all in all, poker touches in all of these areas. And of course, if you look at our ideal state of tomorrow is that we are getting All the synergies working a lot more together. We are just touching the surface of what we can do with all these components now. Moving on. So to try and explain this and the strategic move that we are doing is the fact that I now have used also the old net gaming just to visualize this a little bit more in detail, is that we are transitioning from the traditional website comparison to a much more software based core and services with high barrier markets. So We are moving up the value chain, if you will. So once again to clarify, Because it's really important that you understand. So we have the BaaS business, which is the traffic grid and matching visions. And then we have the SaaS business, which is Aflat and Vonix. These together creates the segment as a service, yes? And then we have the affiliate business, which is our old core business, which we still have a very solid base in, and That's really important for us. And inside each of these segments, we have, of course, the brands. And DreamStreams, I will explain more later, but we have TrafficGrid, we have Vonex, we have Matching Visions and AFAT As well as that we have the gambling cabin, because they have a software tool, which is really fascinating. I will talk more about that soon as well. And if we look at our traditional affiliate business, we also have some really strong brands within there. I want to highlight poker listings a little bit extra, because This is now where we start seeing across the board synergies that are really interesting. And otherwise, you have all of these traditional brands, and we are going to say start seeing a lot more synergies in sports, for example, because The gambling cabin are really active within sports as well. And there's so many examples of all these good synergies that we can bring, but we only have so much time today. Looking at our strategic work a little bit, of course, Geographical expansion, we are taking our current product into new geographical territories. It's a no brainer basically. We are also aiming for diversification of revenue streams, which means that we will reduce risk in the company with not being, let's say, Casino Europe only. We are going into other verticals. That work has begun. I'm not going to disclose which verticals we are looking at. We will do that in due time. And of course, to be a service company, where we focus much more on the software as a service and the business as a service part of the company as well. This translates into some tactical actions in the near term is we are focusing on U. S. Rollout, but we are also preparing for the Netherlands rollout. We have the rich content streaming, which is a new traffic source for us. Although jacking into our traditional business, it still is another traffic source, which reduces the risk. When it comes to going beyond the core, It's of course, as you have seen with our acquisitions, it's the systematic M and A that is a part of it. So when we have kind of widened our Ecosystem, we have done so with acquisitions and those being then the PMG acquisition as well as The gambling cabinet. And then operational excellence is to maintain focus and actually get make sure that we take care of all the synergies that we are so dearly talking about. So now we have I got into place where I feel the organization is in a really, really strong place. We have a strong management team in place, and we are really starting to see that our work is the positioning we are taking is quite unique and our work is going to pay off, and that feels really good. An update on the U. S. Legislation map. We have 9 licenses and business certificates in the U. S. Currently. We have also applications filed and are which are are standing and then we are of course waiting for regulations in for example California, which will be a really big day when it opens up. A little bit on the Dutch market as well. What it's looking like now is that it should reopen based on authorities' statement in October 2021. And historically, we have been a really big there in the Netherlands before the regulation started to happen. We are, of course, fully compliant with the current rules and regulations, But we do own 5 trusted brands that are basically waiting for it to open up and it's still ranking really well. So once the Dutch market opens up, we see really good opportunities for us there. And if you look at the Dutch markets, is forecasted to grow almost 20% year on year. And we are geared up for this launch. Like We can't wait. This will be quite a good market for us. And at the meanwhile, we are adding Sports brand to our portfolio for the Dutch market as well. Now to talk about these examples and Dreamstream is A really good example on how fast we can move into new revenue streams. DreamStream is based on Matching Vision's Software, but it needed tweaks in order to handle the demands that streamers do instead of just static affiliate sites. And we already by launching this and the deals we have struck generated over 1,000 NDCs in March, And that's just in March. And of course, now we have streaming content and we reach a new generation of players. They are on Twitch and YouTube and necessarily do not go on to a comparison engine site to find the best bonus or find the best casino, but rather to watch someone play and then they will follow them on to whichever casino it is. And This took us not very long time from idea to execution. So I like the power behind this that we can see in the in the organization from idea to actual revenues. And this, of course, has a little bit lower margin. It has about 7% to 10% margin for us. But to try and explain it, we have the streamer will get its commission. We take the commission from the operator and then we pay commission to the streamer and in between basically, which is Let us call it the fee for our work and our software. We take about 7% to 10% of that. The nice thing here is that we actually can add as many Streamers as we want, and we really don't have any work on top in the sense that this then becomes a hockey stick that takes off by itself. The Gambling Cabin, it has strong streaming content. I really recommend you if you are Swedish, to go on to that site and watch some of their streams, not only does it make me crack up, but it's really well and solid produced. They also have a very good business With Sanskaspiel, who is the largest operator in Sweden, they also have something called the reduction tool, which is a software based, it will help you make better bets. So you should also, if you're into sports betting, probably check that tool out actually. Their revenue model is very diverse. They charge for creating content and podcasts directly, but also they have an affiliate revenue model and of Of course, the revenue model for their software. Fast growing company, we are also then coming into Eurocap season, so we have some really strong options during the summer. The festival, this is our land based live component that we have started up organically during the spring. The festival concept is a sports betting casino and poker experience. Primarily, I would say at the moment, it is poker focused, but the idea here is that it will be like a triathlon in iGaming. It's going to generate a lot of content that can be utilized across the board, also for the gambling cabin, but also on Poker listings and it can also go up in matching visions as content for other Poker affiliates, for example, we have the direct synergies that I talked about before, and we have we are seeing that this is also bringing some indirect synergies with people that want to be associated with something like this, but is actually not into gambling itself. This is Not it wasn't really expected to open that many new doors, but it's clear for us that it's doing that now. So just to sum up my part of this, we have our 3 growth pillars. It's affiliates, it's software as a service and it's business as a service. And although a little bit cliche, but we are moving up and to the right, which means that we are going towards being software based with the core and services, and we are going for markets that has high barriers to entry. And now we will hand over to Gustaf to start going through the finances. Thank you, Albert. I will give you a flavor of the financial development in Q1. And to start with on a group level, since we're now on a new company, which is comprising 2 different segments, We'll start with the group and then we'll go to asset service segment and also the iGaming affiliation and we'll end up with a financing position and cash flow. But we can clearly see that our revenue development, we have increased our revenues with almost 123% sequentially and that is of course mainly driven by the acquisition of the Power Media Group, as you can see in the graph to the left. We also see that the growth is coming from the agemie affiliation segment sequentially as well, So, both segments are showing growth. The NDC development has also developed strongly compared to the Q4. If we switch to see the revenue bridge on this page, we can see compared to Q1 2020, there being quite a lot of changes. So if we compare to revenues we had in Q1 2020, you can see that there's a service segment, which is mainly comprising the acquisition Our media group has generated a big piece of the revenue increase. But also, the increase comes from what Robert told you about Poker listings, which is doing really well, specifically in U. S. So, there's an increase in poker revenues and also in the sports betting revenues. And the delta then with the decrease is coming from the casino in Europe and also mainly related to the product offering adjustment we did in July regarding the Dutch market and that is mainly within casino. We turn to the cost base. As we now have a different company with different kind of cost base and different revenues as we have 2 different business models more or less together. We'll try to explain that from the cost bridge and that if we compare sequentially to Q4 2020, you can see that the cost base actually hasn't moved that much in the underlying are gaming affiliation business. The increase in the cost base comes mainly from the asset service segment. That means that it's Power Media Group, which is coming into our full group that is comprising the main part of the cost, the personnel cost has in fact decreased somewhat And the increase within the ag gaming affiliation segment within the cost base is mainly related to marketing cost and other operating costs. You can also see that more in detail in the interim report. The EBITDA Development on a group level as well is increasing quarter by quarter. You see in Q3 2020, we had our lowest level And that was mainly related also that we adapted to the Dutch market, which was important for us. It is now going to reopen in October 20 21, which Robert told you about. We are step by step increasing the EBITDA reaching EUR 1,600,000 In Q1 2021. If we switch to the iGaming affiliation segment to look at that separately, We see that revenue development is we show a growth in Q1 around 13% in total. And that is driven by poker and sports betting, which had been mentioned earlier. But what is primarily satisfying for us is to see that our MVC development is increasing quite significantly in both Q4 and then trending up even more in Q1 2021. And how our revenues split? We have, as I mentioned, seen growth in poker And that is also driving down the growth in North America. We see increased traffic on those sites and mainly the apocalypses.com. And that we will see also onwards that it's going to be favorable through the gambling campaign and all the festival and all the different pieces we are putting together within the poker. So increase in poker, increase in North America and what we don't see is that our revenue model, If you followed our split between fixed fees revenue share and also CPA, historically, we have historically went over to more and more revenue share up to around 55% to 60%. In Q1, we have a lower part of rev share and the simple reason for that is that our fixed fees has been higher than previously, but also that we've been growing a little bit more in poker, which has somewhat more CPA. EBITDA development in iGaming affiliation is also trending up, mainly driven by Poker and sports betting, what is important to keep in mind is that we in the iGaming affiliation segment where we run the News and comparison sites, we have a different kind of EBITDA margin, which is somewhat higher. So we're operating with a margin around 45% to 55% on EBITDA and in Q1 we reached 53%. The cost base, as I mentioned earlier, in the agenuation has been relatively stable, increased slightly in Q1 'twenty one compared to Q4 'twenty. That's related to the marketing costs. Switching to our new segment as a service, which is mainly comprising the SaaS and BaaS solutions, also showing growth. So the figures Q1 2020 to Q4 2020 is was not included in our group Naturally in 2020, but we show them for pro form a basis comparability to install the trading. We see revenue growth mainly in the bar segment and that is comprising Magic Visions primarily. The SaaS segment is mainly comprising VONIX. And we will see onwards that we'll have more focus on VONIX and To generate more growth since Lunix and the software solutions also operating with a higher margin on the market. Tennessee development is also showing growth for the Basel segment. EBITDA also increasing, mainly driven by Matching Visions and The new YouTube and Twitch setups that we have set up, the Dream Streams. You also see that RU development, that's what we call revenue generating units, that's our customers. So it's our main affiliate customers over a certain threshold, but it's also the customers we have that are actually having our subscription setup with for the software like AFAT or for Linux. It will switch to group level yen again, that we're looking on the financing and cash flow. We are step by step decreasing our gross debt from around NOK 24,000,000 in Q2 2020 to NOK 22,000,000 in Q1 2020 will continue to decrease our gross debt. It's mainly the amortization and earlier we have also bought back some bonds. So mainly the amortizations in Q1 2021. And our net debt Towards EBITDA, our leverage is around 2.7% and 2.9% in the last quarters. And our model is business model is generating High EBITDA with high margins and the cash conversion is high, which you will also you have seen in previous reports. What you might have seen in our report this time is that we have a lower cash conversion around 57% than we usually have. It will in the coming quarters bounce back to around 80%. And the reason for that we have lower cash conversion this quarter is explained by the acquisition we have done. So we have temporary effects in the working The acquisition we have done, so we have temporary effects in the working capital related to those. That will be phased will time wise out over the coming quarters. So that's why our operating cash flow is somewhat lower and we also had tax payments related to Regarding the cash flow from investments, mainly related to the acquisitions of Power Media Group And the cash flow from the finance activities is the interest payments, which is around €400,000 Quarterly for our bond and then we have the amortization of our bond as well. So that's how cash flow looks like. And I thought I was going to leave over To Robert now. All right. So I'm back. So some closing comments then. Well, we are moving towards being a service company. I think this is really important To understand that strategic journey that we are trying to do, we are adding new revenue streams to lower our risk profile. We have had some really strong quarters when it comes to M and A. We are now moving into A state where I would like to call opportunistic M and A. So we are still continuing to kind of a bet all the a lot of targets to see what's interesting. But now we have have a large piece of the puzzle and we also need to focus on taking care of the acquisitions and the values that we are creating. So we are not really seeing ourselves on the spree going forward, but there are some interesting aspects and prospects out there. But what we can count on is that we will always have shareholder value in focus to create that. So with that, I think we will go over to Q and A. But the one thing that I want to repeat, because this is something that I have a bit as a mantra in life, is that the only constant in life is change. So you can expect expect things to continue happening and changing. We are as far from a static company as you can find. So with that, Thank you. And now we open up for Q and A. Thank you. To ask a question please press 1 on your telephone keypad now. So that is 1 to register for a question. We have a question from the line of Innsbak from Strategic Investments. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, Robert. This is Jens. Can you give us Some on the NDCs, how did it grow organically without the acquisitions of the affiliates? Yeah. I think that is stated in the report. You have separated The new additional numbers, if you go well, I don't want to flick back through the report, But there are they are separated when you look at the NDCs there. Okay. I was just looking at The e mail you sent and there was no specific there was organic growth Of the revenue, but it didn't I didn't see if it was also in the NDCs. Luzter, is this something you want to jump in and clarify? Sorry for changing here. But I think it shows In the report as well that there is organic growth in the NDCs. And it's increasing both to last year, but quarter by quarter as well. And that is generated to a big part also through both the sports betting, but it's the poker And the poker listings. So that are the main drivers from the MVC increase. Does that answer the question? Another question I have regarding the Netherlands. You expect it to open up in 20 in October. How much do you expect For revenue this year? Of course, this is something that we can't close. I mean, first of all, it's very dependent whether they do launch on time or not, which is completely beyond our control. But what I can say is that it's been our largest market before, and that's why you saw has taken big hit during last year when we went when we had to shut down to be compliant. And now we are just waiting and maintaining a lot of good rankings. So as soon as this opens up, which is estimated to be In October at the moment, of course, this can change and has sadly changed a few times already. But it should then be able to quite quickly generate Quite some good cash. I'm not going to give you a forecast. Okay. That's all for me. There are no further audio questions registered. So I hand back to the speakers. All right. Well, then that's it for us. So thank you so much for listening wherever you have listened from, and we will publish this presentation on our website in a little bit. So if you do want to view it again and go it through, please do. That's it for us. Thank you very much.