Acroud AB (publ) (STO:ACROUD)
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Apr 30, 2026, 9:09 AM CET
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Earnings Call: Q1 2023

May 17, 2023

Robert Andersson
President and CEO, Acroud

Good morning, everyone, welcome to Acroud's Q1 presentation. My name is Robert Andersson and I am the CEO. We will go through some highlights, we will go through key figures, a summary, Tricia will continue with the financial details, after that we will have a Q&A session. Starting with the highlights. 20% adjusted EBITDA growth, 33% revenue growth, and 176% NDC growth. This all compared to Q1 in 2022. If we look at some key figures, revenue amounted to EUR 9.3 million. That's compared to EUR 7 million in the year before. Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 2.14 million compared to EUR 1.78 million in the year before.

Profit of the tax has been slightly negative, while the really good news in the quarter is our New Depositing Customers reaching almost 93,000 compared to 33,000 in the year before. If we look at other things in the quarter, Tricia started as a CFO in March. Tricia has been part of the company for a very long time, and she has been second in hand to the CFOs before, and it was really time for her to step up to the plate, and I'm happy to say that she's doing a marvelous job at it. April revenue was EUR 3.6 million. This is a 51% year-on-year increase, and this is attributed to our NDC number. As I said, it's a record in the quarter.

NDC is of course is a KPI showing pretty much future revenue. The more NDCs we have, the more certain we will be of future revenue, since most of our revenue is on rev share. We did, however, have a 7% dip compared to Q4. This is really due to the sports results in February, where we took a massive hit. All the likely results happened, which is actually very unlikely, and this is usually quite bad for sportsbook. This affects everyone that has a big sportsbook, which we nowadays have. Source revenue did decrease 11%, but EBITDA was up 10%. This is us focusing on higher-margin business. We are focusing on less volume, but higher profitability here. We have constantly ongoing restructuring measures to support our subsidiaries and increase growth and profitability in the organization.

If we look at the group revenue development, as you can see in Q4, we did hit the EUR 10 million mark, and now we landed at EUR 9.3 million. Again, this is attributed to pretty much wiping out all of sportsbook in February due to some really, really, like, results that. Well, it's really unlikely that it's all this likely wins, and this happens every now and then, but over time, it really delivers nice numbers. If we look at Acroud as a group company, we're a house of brands and a house of companies, if you will. Matching Visions is, for example, our network model where we have a lot of sub-affiliates, smaller affiliates.

Invonix is our software that is purely on a SaaS model, which a lot of our peers are using to track revenue and other sources of information. TheGamblingCabin is our content production and streaming site and department, if you will. PokerListings, poker-focused site with information as well as normal affiliation and a lot of other things. All this is based on our diverse offer. We work a lot with SEO, although that's becoming a smaller part, and this is part of our risk diversification that we've been working on over the last few years. Now we have paid pay-per-click advertisement in-house. We have the advertisement networks that I mentioned, which is when you have sub-affiliates and you aggregate a lot of other affiliates through our software.

Then we have the media partnerships, which is a trend in the industry and moving towards. This is something that's also working really well for us, and I hope to see some really fruitful results over this year. Now I will hand this over to Tricia, to go over the financial details. Maybe Tricia, a little bit of an introduction of yourself first would be great. Thank you so much. Off you go, Tricia.

Tricia Vella
CFO, Acroud

Robert, welcome to this presentation from my end as well. As an introduction, my name is Tricia, I've been the CFO for Acroud since March this year, I will be presenting the financial details for quarter one of 2023. Starting off with group revenue. Robert. Group revenue stands at EUR 9.3 million for Q1. Compared to EUR 7 million in quarter one 2022, this represents an increase of 33% over last year. Our revenues are coming from mainly two business areas, which is the SaaS business, which has contributed to EUR 3.3 million revenue out of total group revenues and also our iGaming business, which has contributed to just over EUR 6 million of our total quarter one revenues.

The indices, as Robert has stated, has reached an all-time high in Q1 2023, reaching over 92,000, and this shows an increase of 176% compares to prior year. Moving on to our revenue bridge, which this slide is comparing Q1 2023 as compares to the last quarter. We can see that the main movements in revenue are represented by a decrease in the SaaS network model and a decrease in the casino revenue, which are our traditional SEO business. This has been partly set off by an increase in the sports betting revenue, and we can see minor decreases in poker and other revenues.

Moving on to our costs, where we are also comparing quarter one with quarter four. We can see that the main movement in the costs are represented by, again, a decrease in the network model, which moves in line with the decrease in revenue. We can see some minor increases in costs, such as other external costs and personnel costs, but these are not material. Next slide. Our group adjusted EBITDA has amounted to EUR 2.1 for quarter one. This shows an increase of 33% over the same quarter last year.

Our group EBITDA margin blended has resulted in a group EBITDA margin of 23%, which is split into our SaaS business, which operated an EBITDA margin of 14%, and our iGaming business, which has operated at an EBITDA margin of 33%. Okay, moving on. Now we are focusing on the iGaming business. Revenue has for quarter one amounted to just over EUR 6 million. As we can see highlighted in the graph in white, our majority of revenue is coming from sports betting, and we can see an increase from prior year, which is mainly relating to our new paid media business. Poker has remained pretty much stable, and there has been a slight decrease in the casino revenue, as already highlighted. Okay, moving on. Our revenue models.

At this point in Q1, 78% of our iGaming revenue is coming from our referral deals, and this is mainly the paid media business, which mainly runs on referral deals. Also, 10% CPA revenue and 12% other revenue, which are mainly the fixed fees in the iGaming affiliation. If we look at the revenue by affiliation type, 63% of our iGaming revenue is coming from the paid media business. 27% has been delivered by the SEO business, which is our traditional websites, and 9% have been contributed by our social media business, which is mainly our TheGamblingCabin brand. Okay. Indices in the iGaming keep delivering high numbers, reaching almost 77,000 in Q1.

As we can see, a massive increase as from Q2 when the acquisition of Acroud Media was done. EBITDA development in this segment has reached almost EUR 2 million. As already stated, there has been a slight drop from Q4, but an increase of 33% since last year. Now this the adjusted cost base. In the iGaming segment here, we are portraying the other external costs and the personnel. The personnel costs have remained pretty much in line, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. We can see an increase from last year when it comes to other external costs. This is mainly coming from the paid media introduction. Also the other external costs have remained pretty much in line with last quarter.

Moving on to our second business, which is the SaaS segment. Starting off with revenue. Revenue has closed off at EUR 3.3 million in quarter one. This shows a slight decrease year-on-year of 19%. Our revenue subscription model from this segment has had a healthy increase of 23% when compared to last year, and it has remained pretty much stable since last quarter. The adjusted EBITDA, even though we had a decrease in revenue, as Robert already stated, EBITDA reported from this segment has increased by 10% over the last quarter and has amounted to EUR 464 thousand.

RGUs or the revenue generating units, which represent the number of clients serviced by our subscription model business, has remained fairly stable when compared to Q4 and has had an increase of 4% when compared to the same quarter last year. Moving on to our financing and cash flow. Our gross debt at Q1 closed at EUR 20.9 million. This represents our external bond. We can see some movements quarter-on-quarter. This is mainly coming from 3 different things. First of all, we are accruing for the amortization of the bond as the bond was issued in 2022 with a discount. We also accrue for the redemption fee, which is due at the end of the term of the bond. We can also.

Some movements are also in relation to the FX exposure that this bond has, given that it is issued in SEK and our reporting currency is in EUR. That explains some movements between the quarters. The net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio has closed off at 2.3, which is the lowest we can see here. Here we can see the fruitful result of the new acquisition, which has improved our EBITDA and thus lowered the net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio. Moving on to the final slide, cash flow development or operating cash flow for Q1 has closed off at just over EUR 1 million, with a cash conversion of 48%, which is quite low, but is coming, and mainly from the negative net working capital, which we already were working on and improving in Q2.

Cash flow from financing activities for quarter one amounted to EUR 1.1 million. This mainly represents the bond interest, which is paid quarter-on-quarter. Finance liabilities, which are also paid quarter-on-quarter, and also some dividends to the minority. With that, I close this part and hand over to Robert for his concluding comments.

Robert Andersson
President and CEO, Acroud

Okay. With that, as you can see, we have delivered a quite stable business as usual quarter. I really do look forward to the coming quarters now, and with that I open for Q&A.

Operator

If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Robert Andersson
President and CEO, Acroud

Okay. If there was no questions then, we thank you very much and we will see you in about three months. Thank you very much.

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