Good day, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Better Collective Third Quarter 2022 Presentation. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to slowly press star one one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please use the Q&A box available on the webcast link at any time during the webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to a speaker today, Better Collective CEO, Jesper Søgaard. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Better Collective's quarterly webcast, which we host in connection with the release of our Q3 report. My name is Jesper Søgaard, and for those of you who do not know me, I'm the Co-Founder and CEO of Better Collective. As always, I'm joined by our CFO, Flemming Pedersen, who'll guide you through the financials for the quarter. Thank you for tuning in and for showing an interest in Better Collective. Please follow me to the next page. As usual, we ask you to pay attention to this slide where we display our disclaimer regarding any forward-looking statements in today's webcast. Please turn to page 3. Please see the agenda for today's presentation as displayed on this page. Let's get going. Please turn to the next page.
Yet again, we delivered a quarter of great performance where Better Collective grew 32%. Generally speaking, Q3 is a quarter impacted by seasonality, with July and August being two slow months, followed by a high activity month with the NFL kickoff. As a result, 45% of the group revenue also came during a strong September. Overall, the growth was mainly generated by our Europe and rest of world business, which in turn was driven by LATAM and our media partnerships. Turning to the U.S., the business grew 17% year-on-year, which is satisfactory. The U.S. performance was impacted by the NBA and NHL seasons being pushed into Q3 during 2021, but not in 2022.
Moreover, in the U.S., the interest for revenue share agreements increased during Q3 as a result of the decreasing spend from U.S. sports books in their aim of reaching profitability, which also impacted us during the quarter. In Q3, we delivered many new depositing customers, and 80% of those were sent on revenue share agreements. In the quarter, we also had an all-time high revenue share income. Year to date, we reached more than 1.1 million new depositing customers, which is a significant record and milestone for Better Collective. Upon closing Q3, we still haven't been visibly impacted by the decline in the macroeconomy, and we expect Better Collective to remain resilient but not immune during this period. October revenue reached EUR 26 million, which is more than 50% growth year-on-year.
We have intensely been preparing for the FIFA World Cup, which will take place during November and December, and we expect to see high activity across our brands as we're looking into an action-packed Q4. Lastly, we also maintain our financial targets for 2022. Please turn to the next page. Here is a quick overview of our financial performance. Q3 delivered growth of 32% to revenue of EUR 59.7 million. Our EBITDA increased by 7% from Q3 2021, and given our record high revenue share income, the quality of the EBITDA was higher year-on-year. Revenue share income was an all-time high at EUR 25 million, which equates a 73% growth year-on-year. Seeing that our revenue share income is increasing is a development I remain extremely excited about.
During Q3, more than 354,000 new depositing customers were delivered, while 80% were sent on revenue share agreements, which bodes well for our future stream of recurring revenue. The operational cash flow was EUR 13.1 million, which is an increase of 25%. Please turn to the next page as I pass on the word to Flemming.
Thank you, Jesper. It's my pleasure to do a thorough walkthrough of the numbers and the Q3 financials, so please follow me to the next page. As mentioned, the revenue for the quarter ended at EUR 59.7 million, which is a 30% growth compared to the same period last year. I'm really proud to see us deliver such growth in an unstable macro environment. The organic revenue growth landed at 23%, and the revenue split was 69% from publishing and 31% from the paid media segment, with 72% of revenue coming from Europe and rest of world, and 28% coming from the U.S. business. Please turn to the next page. Moving on to operational earnings, the EBITDA came in at EUR 14.6 million, which is flat compared to last year, and the EBITDA margin was 24%.
Allow me to explain the development in the earnings and how it's bridging to our full-year financial guidance that we are maintaining, as Jesper mentioned. Starting from the left, the first marking shows our full-year 2021 EBITDA. In the beginning of 2022, we guided for EUR 75 million with an assumption of the big U.S. business being solely CPA-based one-time payment. This year, we have already spent much time going through Q1 and Q2 developments, so I will not dive further into these. Moving into the moving parts in Q3, we saw good underlying performance combined with a sports win margin that positively impacted the quarter slightly with EUR 1 million on a year-on-year basis. This stands in contrast to Q1 and Q2, where the sports win margin had a significant negative impact compared to previous periods.
The last impact on the EBITDA shown on this slide during Q3 was the move in the U.S. business to revenue share contracts, which we now estimate to impact our full year 2022 EBITDA with more than EUR 10 million. Let me elaborate a bit on that on the next slide. As mentioned, the move to revenue share in the U.S. is now estimated to impact our EBITDA by more than EUR 10 million for the full year. During Q2, the estimate was more than EUR 5 million, as we at the time had signed new contracts on the revenue share with two sports books. However, we have made more contract closings during Q3, which means that we now have gone from two to four U.S. sports books that we are working with on revenue share terms.
Let me give you an example to illustrate the effect of this undertaking. In September alone, we had one sports book that could have generated an additional $2 million in CPA revenues. There is no doubt that the easy choice would have been to take the offer on CPA. However, following careful assessments, we are confident that this undertaking will be transformational in the long term by generating a consistent flow of recurring revenue. Based on our long-standing operations with revenue share in Europe and rest of world, we are drawing on our experiences here and are therefore confident that this move really is going to pay off and furthermore strengthens our relationship to the sports books.
We remain very excited about the move to revenue share in the U.S. as it will make our revenue share less seasonal, as well as enable us to take part in the overall growth in the market rather than only relying on specific sports events and state launches. Please turn to the next page. New depositing customers landed at more than 354,000 NDCs, whereof more than 282,000 or 80% of that were sent on revenue share contracts. It goes without saying that we are pleased to see the strong development in our revenue share accounts, in particular as this development builds Better Collective's future recurring revenue streams. I would also like to mention that year-to-date, we have reached more than 1.1 million NDCs, which is a significant record and milestone for Better Collective.
As depicted on this slide for 2021, we delivered a total of 857,000 NDCs, and we are therefore excited to have passed the 1 million milestone already in Q3 this year. Please turn to next slide. On this slide, you see the revenue share income as a percentage of the group and the absolute revenue share income. The main conclusion to be drawn from this slide is that we have managed to diversify our revenue streams while still increasing the absolute revenue share income. As can be seen on the slide, we have acquired businesses with subscription-based content, as well as businesses that are mainly monetized through advertising. This has brought down the revenue share part relatively. Further, we have acquired our paid media business in Atemi, which at the time of acquisition in Q4 2020 was solely CPA-based.
We have now invested a lot in moving this toward revenue share-based contracts, which can be seen in our recent revenue share income numbers. Significant growth we have seen in the U.S. initially pushed revenues towards CPA. However, as you know by now, we have started the move to these two revenue share agreements, and we therefore expect the recurring revenue stream to steadily increase from here. I'm satisfied to see the main growth going forward will come from both revenue share income, subscriptions, and advertising as these combined make up a steady stream of recurring revenue. Please turn to the next page. To illustrate the development in our revenue share accounts, we as usual share the index development in our two important KPIs, sports wagering and sports win margin.
We have seen an increase during the past quarters in sports wagering, also referred to as the total betting volume. The spike reflects high activity with sports fans as well as the strong NDC development. The general business cycle has had no visible impact on our business, and the sports wagering is a key indicator for this. On the right side, you see the sports win margin, which in Q3 continued to bounce back towards the historical average, which is a trend we expected to see as the decline in margin was due to short-term factors, of which we also elaborated on during the last or the previous quarters. Please turn to the next page. Q3 cash flow was EUR 13.1 million, which is an increase of 25% year-on-year. The cash conversion was 86%.
By the end of Q3, capital resource stood at EUR 41 million, of which cash was EUR 33 million and unused bank credit facilities of EUR 8 million. Net debt to EBITDA ended the quarter at 3.38, which is slightly above our financial targets, but will be expectedly be well below 3 after Q4. I would like to highlight that following the closure of Q3, we landed a new club financing agreement with three banks, replacing the one bank arrangement that we established back in 2018. We are pleased to have diversified the financing among three banks at very attractive terms. The deal leaves the group with EUR 240 million in committed funding with an accordion option on top.
Even though current times do not suggest for large M&A, especially in the private market, funding is now in place should this situation change. Being able to land such an attractive deal under the current macroeconomic uncertainties is truly impressive and a proud testament to the quality of our business, and not least our ESG profile. Please turn to the next page, and then I'll hand the word back to you, Jesper.
Thank you, Flemming. I would like to spend the last few minutes reviewing our Q3 business performance. Please follow me to the next page. Despite Q3 being a seasonally low quarter, we are very satisfied with the performance and positive results the group achieved. In an otherwise uncertain environment, Better Collective is seeing good momentum. We managed to land no less than three new media partnerships during Q3, and we can now count Chicago Tribune, Boston.com, and Sports Illustrated to our strong portfolio of media partnerships. During Q3, we saw good U.S. development despite it being a seasonally low quarter, which was impacted by a decreasing ad spend from sports books. Furthermore, 2021 was fueled by pandemic-delayed NBA and NHL seasons that were running in Q3, which naturally was not the case this year.
As we've been particularly successful at moving more of our U.S.-based partners from CPA to revenue share agreements, we see a short-term impact on our U.S. performance. Both Flemming and I have already addressed the ongoing move from CPA to revenue share in the U.S. is looking highly promising. At Better Collective, we have always favored revenue share agreements as we invest for the long term. Another testament to this is our paid media business, where we have invested a lot in moving this from CPA to revenue share over the past two years. This is paying off nicely now. Recently, we hosted our annual strategy meeting, where management set the goal for Better Collective to become the world's leading digital sports media group. What that journey will entail will be further elaborated at our first ever Capital Markets Day on March 23rd, 2023.
Please turn to the next page. Hardly surprising, we look forward to an action-packed Q4 with an extremely condensed football schedule heading into the upcoming FIFA World Cup. We have been busy preparing for the World Cup, and we expect to see high activity during the coming weeks. Additionally, other major sports are also in peak season during the remainder of 2022. As you can hear, we have a really busy time ahead of us. We remain satisfied with the development of our esports community, FutBin, which is heavily skewed towards Q4 as the new FIFA game launched in late September. The busy Q4 is reflected in the month of October, delivering revenues of EUR 26 million, which is a year-on-year growth of more than 50%. Please turn to the next page. Before rounding off our Q3 webcast, allow me to do a quick recap.
We delivered solid top-line growth of 32% in uncertain times. Our revenue share income continued its all-time highs, growing 73% year-on-year. We remain unaffected by the macroeconomic environment, and we expect to remain resilient, but not immune. October is off to a good start in an action-packed Q4. This concludes our webcast presentation. I'll now pass the word back to the operator and open for questions from the audience. Thank you for listening in.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. Alternatively, you can use the Q&A box available on the webcast link at any time. Please stand by. We will compile a Q&A roster. Just give us a moment. Now we'll go and take our first question. The first question comes from the line of Oscar Rönnkvist from ABG. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you, and good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. First of all, I have a question for Flemming. Just if you want to elaborate on the increasing amortizations we saw between Q2 and Q3.
Yeah. Thank you, Oscar. The delta in amortizations is what we have under amortizations is stemming from our M&A and partly also from media partnerships. If we compare to last year, we have acquired 2 businesses, Canada Sports Betting and FutBin, where there is some amortizations, but also some of the media partnerships where we have fixed upfront payments, we have to capitalize those and depreciate over the period of the contract. If you recall, during this period, we have signed a lot of new media partnerships, i.e., the New York Post, Chicago Tribune, and Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston.com. It's a combination of M&A and media partnerships.
Okay. Thank you. Next one, just a question on staff costs. Staff costs, I think, came down slightly between Q2 and Q3. Also we've seen an article in the U.S. where we've seen some layoffs maybe. Maybe you can elaborate on that and what we should think about staff costs going forward.
Yeah, as we also elaborate a bit on, you can say in our Q3 report, we have grown a lot. We have also invested a lot in, not least in the U.S. as the market is emerging and growing. You can say we also now you can say really focused on scaling the business and of course part of that is to basically look at the cost base we have. In the U.S. in particular what you mentioned, we have acquired three businesses and some of the functions there have been combined and consolidated and also you can say some of the group functions that we have in Europe are being utilized also for the U.S. business now.
Yeah, I think two headlines, of course, consolidation of business in the U.S., so we operate as one entity. Also, I would say a focus on scalability and focus on profit.
Okay, just to make it clear, you don't really expect headcount to increase rapidly going forward, but you're rather happy with the development or the level at the moment?
It depends on the timeline, but on the short, medium term, you're right.
Got it. Thank you. The final question I have is regarding the U.S. expectations. I noticed just a change in wording where you previously said that you were expecting U.S. revenues to exceed $100 million in 2022. Of course, some of that has changed because you send more entities on revenue share contracts, but now you changed that reach $100 million. If you change it to reach instead of exceeding. If you just could elaborate on the U.S. expectations for Q4 onwards.
Yeah. I think that's the same wording in our vocabulary. There should not be any, you could say, translation put into that.
Okay. Understood. Thank you very much. That was all for me.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Please stand by. The next question comes through line of Hjalmar Åhman from Redeye. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Maybe first on the trading update for October, would you say that there's, I mean, a lot of CPA boost or NFL season start boost in that number, or any boost maybe from FutBin and release of the FIFA game? I mean, if you compare that looking into November, December, any big difference in those months, so to say? I know we have the FIFA World Cup, of course, in November, December, but except from that.
Yeah. Now we gave the October number as we usually give the number following the quarterly closing. This is in line with our expectations. Clearly, Q4, as we have said many times this year, will be very action-packed with the World Cup in football. You're right on the launch of the FIFA game. It's also, if you can say, specifically related to FutBin. We have basically all major U.S. sports ongoing as we speak. With the caveat that the World Cup is in a different season than normal, it's of course should bode for high activity, and that's also what we have planned for.
Right. Uh, a-and a question on FutBin . Um, you have the subscription model there partly, and I mean, if that grows now in, uh, Q3 with the new game, would you expect-- or Q4 with the new game, would you expect that to kind of hit a higher level on recurring revenue for FutBin, or will it be more very much, uh, seasonally focused Q4 and Q1 still?
I think you can say in general it is very much reflecting the seasonality of the game. Also the traffic follows, you can say, exactly that. Most of the revenue on FutBin is in non-endemic advertising, so advertising outside of betting, and then you can say we have the smaller subscription part on top. The main monetization on FutBin is plain advertising, and that is basically correlated with traffic that spikes, you can say, related to the game and also football events.
If I can just chime in, it's also obviously affected by the general prices in the ad spend.
What we have seen is high traffic growth, but as seen, I think in the general ad spend market is that CPM rates are slightly lower than compared to last year.
Got it. Thanks. I don't know if you can comment that much, but maybe you can elaborate a bit on the U.S. rev share mix. I mean, compared to the total, what is today? I know we got the kind of numbers that you expect, but if you can just give some expectations on how big this effect is. I mean, is rev share basically, I mean, a very small single-digit share now and will be like 50% in a couple of years, or if you can give any flavor on that?
Yes. Obviously, it's still early days, and the effect we have mostly right now is the dampening part where, as Flemming explained, we have one operator in one month actually to the tune of $2 million, which we are not recognizing because.
It's on revenue share. With that said, we are seeing now some operators where we are turning profitable with the revenue share. It's picking up, and it's very much as we have seen historically with our European business that there is a damping effect. As long as we grow the NDC numbers, it can last quite a while, but eventually it's turning profitable and growing then the revenue share contribution. We're in the early phase of that, but very pleased to see that traction in the business that we are now making the move with several sports books in the U.S., and we can expect that future return of revenue in the U.S. business as well.
Great. Thanks. Maybe also follow up. Are the majority of the operators in U.S. open to the revenue share now or still some that are reluctant to do that?
I think in general the climate is good for such conversations. Obviously, it's also a basic negotiation and coming to agreement. There's no doubt that we sense a different climate for having such discussions now.
Right. Maybe final question, just maybe difficult to comment. In 2023, you'll of course have the impact from the transition to revenue share. Can you give any flavor on how much that could potentially impact in that year?
No, I think we will have to see how it develops and then also how we build that into our forecast and guidance for next year. Of course, now we have started this and as we have in Europe, it's really something we believe in is value creative. Of course, it's up for negotiation with, as you also allude to with the books, what they prefer and how we can land a win-win contract for both parties. We'll have to see until we give the guidance next year.
Yes, that was all for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Dear speakers, at this moment, we are on for the questions over the phones. Please continue.
Yes. Hello, this is Mikkel from Investor Relations. We have a question online which is regarding revenue share agreements versus CPA. You write in the report that the product is built to cater to these agreements. Can you elaborate on that and especially explain how you add value long term for your direct customers so that CPA isn't the most beneficial for you and the customer?
It's Jesper here. We think that is a very important distinction with Better Collective in this market, that the products we build, the brands we own, they have a very big audience that is recurring, coming back to our site to get inspired as what to bet on. We have the Action App where you track your bets. We're constantly in the mind of the users and ultimately the customers of the sports books. Therefore, for us, we add value for the lifetime of the users, and we believe it's great to be aligned with the sports books. We tap into that lifetime value that we're actually adding to the sports books.
It's absolutely right that our products are built for lifetime value rather than just a one-time engagement with the users. Flemming, if I can add, why not just take the CPA? I think that's a more, you can say, financial calculation where we estimate the lifetime value of a player. Why is it then attractive for the sportsbook to do that if the long-term value is higher? They basically relieve some risk by paying upfront as they also spend a lot of marketing on other channels and customer acquisition. We share the risk, of course, with the anticipation of getting a higher gain long-term.
Yes. We take the next question on M&A and whether we can elaborate a bit on our thoughts here.
As I think Flemming alluded to, the current market may not be the most ideal for this, as we in our industry, especially with the private businesses, most of them are cash flow positives, and when prices are dampened, they are not that interested in selling. If we all of a sudden see an exciting opportunity in sort of a distressed sale, we have the capacity to execute it, and we always entertain and engage with our pipeline of M&As. Timing-wise, I think it's just hard to predict right now what will happen. It's not like things are significantly changed from our usual commentary related to M&A. We have a strong pipeline. We engage with a lot of conversations.
Whether or not it's possible to come to price agreements right now, it's just very hard to predict and say.
Yes. We have a question in terms of our revenue in October, which was EUR 26 million. How much of this was U.S.-based? I think, yeah, Flemming, do you wanna?
Yeah. We sort of lean forward and give the additional months, but we are not going into further details until we close the quarter. We're non-disclosed.
Yes. We do not have further questions online. We'll send it back to the operator.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Alternatively, you can use the Q&A box available on the webcast. Dear speakers, they're on for the questions on the audio lines. Please proceed.
Well, that concludes our Q3 webcast. Thank you very much for listening in, and have a great day.
That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.