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Earnings Call: Q4 2017

Feb 7, 2018

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Thank you for joining us here this cold morning in Stockholm. It's a full house here, everybody in the webcam. It's a proud moment for me as the Interim CEO to present the full year and this amazing Q4 that has been produced, and it's been hard work for the team. It's a proud moment for me representing them here today, this morning. It will be me, Henrik Persson, who will be doing most of the presentation. I'm joined by our CFO, Klas Svensson, who will go through some of the financial slides. In summary of the Q4, our best quarter ever. We grew our revenues to EUR 20.1 million. We had a 16% growth between Q3 to Q4. We had an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 11.1 million, which equals a margin of 55.5%.

We saw a record-breaking NDC intake with 113,000, which is also a 12% growth between Q3 and Q4. Highlights for the full year, revenues coming in at EUR 67.6 million. We grew the company 69% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA at EUR 36.1 million with an EBITDA margin of 53% and an NDC total of 386,000 new paying clients to our customers. It's a year-over-year growth of 88%. To give you a flavor, you can triple that. We have closely sent over 1 million clients to our partners over the year, which we are very proud of and what we believe is true market leader standard within the online gambling and hopefully soon to be also the financial vertical. I want to highlight that this is not a one-man show. We're a great team behind this. At the end of December, we were 282 people full-time.

In addition to that, we were 140 journalists writing unique content on a daily basis on our assets. I believe that we, in many ways, have a rockstar management team in place. You see a few new faces. You see our new Head of M&A, Marcus Nässholm, who heads up a team of three full-time in our M&A team for the time being. We have, as of January, Åsa Hillsten as our Head of Investor Relations. She will be taking over after Anne Rhenman, as Anne is leaving us mid-April this year. We have Pia-Lena Olofsson joining as Chief Financial Officer as of January, taking over after Klas Svensson, who will leave us in mid-May. These are just a few of the great people we have in the organization. Behind them, there is a strong force of very talented people working out of our offices.

Agenda, a bit about Catena, what we do, KPIs, financials, a bit of the product news in Q4 and Q1. We get quite a lot of questions on what's happening in the U.S. for the time being, I will go through that in quite some detail in what's currently happening. Then some key takeaways. Summary, as you saw, we moved in in Q4. We also moved into financials, which means we have customers outside the online gambling industry. What we do, we build assets, as we call them, websites that will guide people to where they want to gamble or where they want to invest their money. All these sites are connected to something that we call, you see it on the left big circle, you call it Catena Core. That is the system where we do the content, the SEO, the product management.

It's part of our secret sauce. We then run these assets, everything from SBAT, AskGamblers, PokerScout, RightCasino, et cetera. We then send them over to some of our clients. It could be anything from CMC Markets, Ladbrokes, bet365, Golden Nugget, Interwetten, et cetera. Give you a flavor, in Q4 alone, we worked with over 1,000 brands. We charge them through four methods, rev share, CPA, fixed fees or hybrids. We only get paid once we have sent the client that has made a deposit to play or to invest. We work on a no cure, no pay basis. In many ways, we're equal to a lot of other lead generators in the market that you are familiar with. It could be TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, PriceRunner, Lendo, MoneySuperMarket. We try to advise and guide people where they should gamble or where they should invest their money.

Identify the need, attract the visitor, promote, lead, and we earn. Going back to the NDC number, which is the true driver of our revenue. As mentioned, we grew the company between Q3 to Q4 with 12%, reaching an all-time high of 113,000 new depositing clients. A year-over-year growth of 88%, which I believe is quite astonishing. Looking at revenue growth, we did 16% quarter-over-quarter growth. We reached an all-time high of EUR 20.1 million. Out of the EUR 20.1 million, EUR 17 million was on search revenue, and EUR 3.1 million was driven by PPC or paid media. Just a glimpse on the revenue and growth. We saw a 20% organic growth during Q4. We saw a 28% year-over-year growth. We have seen a growth in revenue annual rate of 137% since Q4 2014.

We believe we have a very good underlying business that clearly shows even in Q4 as it did in Q3, that we are able to acquire, integrate, and take care of these assets. As of today, we have done 28 acquisitions, where all of them are still live, active and generating revenue for us over the past five years. Singling out our search revenue, which is our true backbone on what we're doing, the traditional search through Google, Yahoo, or traffic we don't pay for, as we say. We've grown that 93% Q4 to Q4. We grew it 17% Q3 to Q4, which is once again a very solid quarter-over-quarter growth, we believe. It also is a true foundation of what we do and our core knowledge, and that we will continue to build on our search revenue.

In Q3 was the first time we actually split out and started to report our different revenue streams from sports and casino. We have continued to focus on our sports. As you can see in Q4, we moved sports from 21% in Q3 to 29% in Q4. Casino is now 66%, and our new vertical of finance is already 5% of our revenue in Q4, which was also when we actually bought the assets. Looking at the revenue and how we split the revenue between the different models, rev share, CPA, and flat fees. Revenue share was 60% in Q4, CPA was 32%, and flat fees was 8%. I've guided that these will change a bit. I think rev share should be between 60% and 65%. It depending on season, it depending on a few accounts.

If there's a big win, in one of the rev share account, it can vary. But we believe that we have stabilized that where we want to be, around 60-65%. CPA will move between 25-30%. But also there can be one-time events like happened this week. We had Super Bowl. It's a huge event where we can do specific CPA-targeted campaigns. We have Olympics coming up starting this weekend, which is also a unique event where we can do customized campaign, where we prefer to do maybe in hybrid between CPA and rev share. Then we can see a CPA upswing during certain periods of the year.

Our flat fees that comes in at eight, which is a very solid ground for us to be on, is our floor, is a listing fee that our operators pay to be on our main targets or main tier 1 assets. Looking at EBITDA. Solid margin in Q4, 55.5%. We grew our EBITDA 17% from Q3 to Q4. In line with our revenues, which we're very proud of. We're continuing to grow our business but still keeping and improving our margins. Klas will now go through a few slides on the cost base.

Klas Svensson
CFO, Catena Media

Yes. If you look at our expenses, what you can see here is that our operating cost as a percentage of sales has been very stable the last three quarters at 35%. What also have affected the last quarter is, of course, that we have grown the number of employees. A quarter ago, it was 245 employees. Now we're 282. Other effects we have had now in the fourth quarter is also the first quarter we've ever had full effect of our new office cost in Malta. As you also can see, we have had some one-off costs in the fourth quarter, some costs related to the listing change and also the change of our CEO in October. If you look at the next slide, this is to try to show how our financial costs are what is based on.

You see the biggest amount there, EUR 1.7 million, that is the interest cost we have on our bond. The other one is EUR 0.9 million is the fair value of our bond. That's also a cost. It's not a cash flow effect on it, but it has an effect on our financial net. The same goes for the notional interest rate, which is based on our committed future acquisitions cost. The last one, which is positive number of EUR 900,000, it is effects from foreign exchange during the quarter. There we are. If you look at our growth rates now, you can see the last three years, we have a sales growth of average of 113%, and our EBITDA results up 87% in average during these three years.

If you look at the growth rate or the run rate we have now, we are at EUR 44.5 million in annual EBITDA result. Next slide here is the full-year figures. A little bit the same as two slides ago, where we show our interest cost for the full year. Here, of course, as you can see, the main part is the interest cost on the bond. Then on the balance sheet, we have very solid balance sheet. Equity is EUR 97 million. We have committed acquisition costs of EUR 61.3 million, out of which 50% of this can be paid by our shares. The short part of this within the coming 12 months is around EUR 27 million, and the rest is longer time, or about one year ago, or in the future. I think that's

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Thank you. Next up, I'm going to go through a bit of the product news and what is coming and what we have done. As earlier announced and discussed, we moved into the financial verticals, specifically the trading verticals, which means stocks, bonds, CFDs, and FX. That's where we're going to be number one before we move on to maybe other financial verticals or other lead gen verticals. We bought a company called (Beyondbits), finance-focused lead gen company in Germany. Five, six employees, roughly 2,000 NDCs per quarter, and EUR 800,000 per quarter in revenue when we acquired them. Based out of Malta. These are now integrated, but they're still under earn-out, but they're performing very well. I think that was a very key asset for us to come into this vertical.

We're now building the organization internally to be able to cope with further expansion into this vertical. Our biggest acquisition to date, which was done in Q4, was BayBets, very strategic into Germany, sports, rev share heavy, very solid team. The 23-man strong team has now moved into our Malta offices, working from our premises. They don't have a two-year earn-out, but we still have a very integrated way of working, and they're already supporting some of our other German assets. We believe we have a very strong German team in-house now, opening the way to further expansion into Germany, which we believe is a core market for sports and casino in Europe. Few other acquisitions we have done. We bought into a product called PokerScout, one of the oldest domains within poker. It was a strategic purchase for us for the U.S. market.

It has been the go-to page for a lot of the industry over many, many years. Some unique software and statistics that we're now utilizing in our American push. Squawka, one of the biggest news sites for sports in the U.K., we took over during the quarter in Q4. A huge fan base, a huge Twitter following, but it was run as a newspaper, not as a lead gen company. We are now transforming their traffic into a traditional lead gen. As our other assets, we integrated them onto Catena Core, as I spoke about before. So far it looks promising. It's the first acquisition where we buy into the traditional news and trying to convert that into an efficient lead gen business. Events after Q4, we did the acquisition of Dreamworx, also a German focus, but a mix between sports and financial.

It's also now partly driven by the BayBets team out of our offices with Fussballwetten.de, deutschefxbroker.de performing according to plan. I've been getting a lot of questions on future financing and how you will continue our aggressive growth strategy. As we all know, we have a very good cash conversion. We have good liquidity position. We're generating good cash flow every month. However, we announced this morning that we have appointed Carnegie Investment Bank to go through a refinancing of our current bond with a new bond. We believe as we are a mid-cap company, we are a mature company or a much more mature company than we were when we did the initial bond. It will create bigger flexibility for us to take up even bank debt if we want to, a bigger frame that we can utilize as we continue to grow the company and see opportunities coming up.

The work is launched today, the roadshow starts on the 12th of February, and we aim to close the transaction during Q1. Talking about M&A, a bit of just a focus on where we're looking, which I think is important. We are continuing to look in the U.K. We look in Germany. We look in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Australia, Japan, and the U.S., so quite a broad focus, but most of these countries are regulated. We focus much of our effort on regulation. In our online gambling lead gen business today, 60% of our revenue is regulated, which we believe is the highest regulated part of revenue in the gaming industry, or gaming-related industry as well. Our strong three-man team is out scouting the globe in these regions now for M&A targets, and we have a very interesting pipeline.

To round off, let's jump into the big country of the U.S. A lot of things are happening, I wanted to give you a snapshot of where we are today and what we believe will happen. New Jersey, one of the biggest markets, and we are the largest and most profitable portfolio in New Jersey, where we have our own license Estimated the online gambling market was $250 million in 2017, and it's estimated to be $300 million in 2018. I've said it before, we have so far only been able to do CPA, but we have now sent in the application early 2018 for a rev share license, which we're very hopeful about, and we believe we would be one of the first to actually get one if we do. Nevada, we are one of the significant affiliates for that for poker.

There is possibility that Nevada will expand in to include casino games in the future. Our key customer there is World Series of Poker. Key assets will be PlayNevada, PlayUSA, PokerScout, Online Poker Report, and USPoker. Pennsylvania, as we spoke about during Q3 report, it got regulated or the bill got signed in the 30th of October. We expect that we see revenue coming from Q3, Q4 this year. Other, we are also actually active in daily fantasy sports, where we have a top-tier assets. Catena recently launched a partnership with the Michigan Lottery, and realized our first revenue during this product here in 2018. On the down left, you see some of our key sites within the U.S. currently, and some of our key markets or key products and key customers. What seems to be happening in the U.S. as we look now?

We're expecting a Supreme Court decision on sports betting in the first half of 2018. Around 20 states are expecting to consider the bill, if the decision is positive. We see that the NBA and MLB now support regulated sports betting and are advocating for the inclusion of mobile sports in all state bills. First state to regulate sports betting market could launch in late 2018, and market is forecasted to be EUR 6 billion revenue by 2023. That is both online and offline combined. We are well-positioned with our assets and our PlayNJ brand or PlayNJ. When we look on the state level, we now see movement in six states. Everything from New York, Michigan, Illinois, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, where there is something can happen in 2018 already.

As a spiral effect from what happened in Pennsylvania, we're now seeing that a lot of more talks is going on in the U.S., which we are prepared for. In most of these states, we have ranking assets that we're not monetizing on, for the time being, but we are prepared for the launch. We're currently 14 people full-time in the U.S. A bet for us, but something that we already have significant revenue from and are well-positioned. Okay. Some key takeaways. We see continued strong underlying growth with record revenues and profit. We have scaled our organization to make the next big jump in further expansion. We have a strong M&A pipeline. We're ready to push further into sports and finance.

We're happy to announce the new financing, which will open up even more doors for us and for our shareholders and for our expansion into further markets and also further into finance and sports. Thank you so much for coming. I open up for questions, which I guess there will be a few.

Moderator

Thanks very much. Maybe I should start with one or two questions. If you look on Q4 or second half or 2017, is there any products, regions that stands out positively and negatively versus your plans that you could elaborate a bit on? What movements do you see compared to what you thought?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

I think we try to work with a system where we would have no country that would stand for more than 10% of the revenue. We work with a thesis that no asset should be generating more than 10% of the revenue and no market that should be more 10% of the revenue. I think we have a very nice diversification. However, there's always seasonality in some of the assets. Some perform better than others. Overall, we have a very healthy mix in our product portfolio through sports and casino and our financials as well.

Moderator

On that last note, when you look on the casino, sports, finance, and think a few years out, where do you see the ideal split, or is that the wrong way of thinking of it?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

I think our ambition is we believe that there's a lot more to do in gambling. We just scratched the surface, and we see that when we're out looking now as well. Financial is interesting because what we started 5 years ago when consolidating online gambling, it hasn't really started in the financial vertical. There's a lot of small and even big ones, but nobody's taking the grip of the industry. We believe that we can be that force, where we can continue to grow the financial sector quite fast. We also see that the financial, we look on the traditional industry, the banks are losing a lot of traffic to the new platforms. People are getting more engaged in their own investments instead of calling their traditional stockbroker, maybe.

They're now going on to these new, very user-friendly platforms to invest in stocks and bonds or even FX. There's a trend switch from traditional to more online platforms, which favors us.

Moderator

Clearly looking at the numbers, they are very impressive, and the target you've outlined for a bit longer term is also ambitious and impressive if you reach it, of course. Or even if you get close to it. Still, I'm just thinking, a part of the journey is going to be M&A, and you announced a few things the past few months, quarters, and just wondering how much do you integrate and how do you ensure that you keep the momentum into both companies and control in terms of process, organization?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

I think we have done, over five years, 28 acquisitions. I think we have mastered how to integrate assets. We have mastered how to integrate staff. We have also built a software that can cope with integration and scale quickly. How we did deals back in 2014 and how we do them today is quite different. It's also because we're much more mature today. We have more advanced systems, and we have more advanced and thorough processes on how we actually integrate. We look at between five and 10 cases a week, and we have still only done 28 acquisitions, only, in five years. We are selective. We will only pick the ones where we see that it has a good rev share, it has a unique position in the market or a new market. It needs to add clear value to what we have.

We are not in this for just a multiple arbitrage. We're buying products and systems and assets that we really like and that we believe will grow long term.

Moderator

Clearly, you have a lot of things pointing to that revenues can continue and grow. When you look on costs, you showed here cost to sales and different metrics on the different lines. How should we see 2018 or a bit longer, if you want to answer it that way instead, in terms of where that ratio should go? Up, down, flat?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

No, I think, we know for the past three quarters, it's been between 34% and 35% in our cost of sales. We have also, you must remember that we came in in 2017 with around 100 staff, 105, I believe. We closed off the year with 282. We have moved from Nasdaq First North to Nasdaq Mid Cap, where we have scale-up organization, both in terms of compliance, but also towards compliance when it comes to regulated markets. We have increased our workforce in terms of seniority. We've also gone into new markets. That requires language skills, unique language knowledge, and connection with our customers. For us going forward, we will need to add staff when we go into a new country. We are in a base now where we're very happy. We've built up a true force of nature internally now.

We will have to grow it as we grow, I don't think we will need to grow it at the pace we have done.

Speaker 7

Do we have any questions from the room?

Stefan Knutsson
Analyst, Remium

Hi, Stefan Knutsson from Remium. Your paid revenue is now down to 15%. How do you see the long-term split of search and paid revenue?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

When it comes to paid, we're quite optimistic, I must say. We do it when we see that there is value in the market. We could probably push that quite a bit, but that would also squeeze our margin. Our core business is search, we do paid because when we see that there is a gap in the market and when there is an opportunity. As you have seen, it's been quite flat for the past quarters. It will be seasonal more than anything else going forward.

Stefan Knutsson
Analyst, Remium

We can expect that, for example, during the World Cup, it will probably pick up.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

That should, yeah. Normally by big events, CPA would go up, it's also a matter of prices also go up during big events. When we see that we can get the margins, we would do it, naturally they will be more heavy during big events.

Stefan Knutsson
Analyst, Remium

Okay. Thank you.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Yep.

Moderator

Well, I just got my question answered, so I'll hand over to the next one.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Yeah.

Moderator

Do we have any questions on the call?

Speaker 8

One here.

Speaker 7

Oh, sorry.

Speaker 8

Oh, sorry. I have a couple of questions. Can you tell me about the development of AskGamblers and JohnSlots in new countries that you've gone into, Germany and Italy?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Yeah. During 2017, we started because we have a few really big tier 1 assets, where we saw a gap that we actually could roll them out to new markets. We did that with JohnSlots and AskGamblers. These are two very big assets. It takes time for them, but naturally we are seeing good progress. It will take time for the search engines to pick them up in the new countries. We are coming in a lot faster than we would if we would have built something from scratch in those countries. We see a positive trend going into that, and we will continue to roll them out in more countries.

Speaker 8

We're now seeing that New Jersey has two more licenses coming up, Hard Rock and Ocean Resort. Is it something you're looking forward to or possible partners?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

We have very good relationship with both. They will for sure expand the market, because it will be a new customer or two new customers. Hard Rock, which is an amazing brand, the global expansion for them, they are in a lot more states. We are already in discussion with both of them.

Speaker 8

How do you see Pennsylvania compared to New Jersey? Because Pennsylvania is a bigger state, and they're having, I think, 13 licenses.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Yeah.

Speaker 8

I think it's going to be a bigger market. What's your thought on that?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Over time, I guess it will be. New Jersey, they've already lived. It's already operational. In the long term, Pennsylvania, due to numbers, should be a bigger state.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Yeah.

Moderator

Operator, any calls on the line? Questions on the line?

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I remind you that you will have to press 01 on your telephone keypad now to ask a question over the phone. Our first question comes from the line of Victor Hagenberg from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Victor Hagenberg
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Yes, good morning. Could you put future acquisitions into the context of current debt levels, possible new refinancing of the bond and the existing contingent considerations?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Sorry, can you take that a bit slower?

Victor Hagenberg
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Oh, the future acquisitions, could you put them into the context of your current debt, net debt, the new possible refinancing of the bond and the existing contingent considerations in the balance sheet?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

For future acquisitions, we will continue the strategy. I spoke about that. When it comes to the new bond, we have, as we said in the 2020 target for EUR 100 million EBITDA, we have a net debt to EBITDA of 1.5-2.5, that we will stick to. We said that we will be able to move out of it during very short periods of time if we find that we need to, it will also be reflected in the new refinancing of the bond that we're doing now.

Victor Hagenberg
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Okay, thanks. Did you see the upcoming year, do you see any market dynamic changes ahead with your affiliates in general, the relationships with operators?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

If we start with the online gambling side, we don't really. We get quite a lot of questions what's happened when a country get deregulated. We have been through that quite a lot now with 60% of our revenue regulated. The dynamics hasn't changed much. The only thing we see is that we're getting closer and closer with the operators. With many of our big customers, we're actually part of their rollout plan when they go into a new country. We sit with their management, discussing on how we can assist them. From our end as the market leader and the biggest lead generator for online gambling in the world, we become a natural partner for them going forward.

Even in countries like in the U.K., where we now see that U.K. Gambling Commission is taking quite an active approach on how the operators market themselves, and it also put a squeeze on the affiliates. Most of the ones that has been announced in the market as tightening with their affiliates, we are actually getting closer with, because we're very transparent on how we run our business, which is required from the U.K. Gambling Commission.

Victor Hagenberg
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Okay, you haven't lost any clients of late then?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

No.

Victor Hagenberg
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Great. Okay. Thank you.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Unless there are no more questions over the phone, I hand back to you, speakers.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Any on emails or anything? Just on the finance part, you said trading. Can you just give some more examples, so we can think where you will find opportunities in the finance? Explain that a bit. As I said, we target the financial trading tools like FX, CFDs, bonds and stocks. We work with most of the platforms and now our customers, if it's Saxo Bank, CMC Markets, Plus500, eToro, E*TRADE, we work with all of them. We just started to look into Germany. That we really only started to look into it. We're now building the team internally, which was based out of London, where most of our customers are based or have subsidiaries, like in Malta, which has become the hub for online gambling and the gambling operators, the same as in London. The dynamics is the same.

We get paid the same through rev share, CPA, hybrids. The big difference here is the customer lifetime value is a lot higher. I think we touched on that during the capital markets day, where on a CPA level, we get paid something between $800-$1,200. While in gambling, we get between EUR 200-EUR 400, depending on market, depending on product, if it's casino or sports. Clearly, the value of the customers are a lot higher, which also represent that you probably would want to do a bit more of the rev share. Over time, you wouldn't get the steep upswing as you would do on the CPA, but long term, you build a very solid business. That's what we are happy with today, in that we have 60%-65% of our revenue through rev share, between 6%-10% in fixed fees.

We believe that we have built a very sustainable business over time, and that's why we also like the financial sector. We see the search terms for finance is going up quite rapidly. It's clear that people all over Europe, primarily where we've been looking now, take a more active role in their own trading. We want to participate in those industries where there's clearly a lot more room for growth going forward.

Speaker 8

It's in the trading part and it's in more the retail part than in the institutional fund side of the world.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

It is, but I think we will also see the more traditional banks coming in as customers, as they get more ready for it, I would say, for affiliation. The online platforms, the new one, are a bit more advanced when it comes to that already and are already seeing a lot of their traffic coming from affiliates.

Speaker 8

I forgot one question. The finance part, are you only going to be in buying financial companies or are you thinking about building something in-house?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

We are actually already doing that. We are working on a product called AskTraders, which is coming from AskGamblers. It's a product that we're working on internally. We are building our own assets as well, but we see a clear gap in the market, and we don't want to lose time. The fastest way for us to be operational is to buy into new markets, consolidate them into Catena Core, and use them with our assets as well, that we do internally. We are building internally.

Speaker 7

Hello. Dan Siljighoij. Great report. First question is, looking forward, the revenue mix, what would you say would be casino, sportsbook, and finance going forward, as a guess?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

It's quite hard to guide it. It will depend a bit on how we acquire going forward, I would say. Organically, we know that we're growing at the pace we are and that we have guided the market on. There is naturally quite a few big sports event. We have the Olympics starting this weekend. We have the Cheltenham horse race in the U.K., which is a very big event for the U.K. We have the football World Cup coming up this summer. Naturally, it's a very strong sports year. Our organic growth should be driven quite heavily by these events. Then there's always unique events that comes up, big boxing events, that gathers a lot of traffic for a week or so that we get. If they happen in our core markets, we see an upswing in that market during those weeks.

We haven't guided anything on the future.

Speaker 7

Second question is that, are you looking into other verticals than those three?

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

We scanned quite many. We scanned up to 20 before we took the decision. We will now try to be number one in what we're doing. When we feel that we are that, and when we have the capacity, we will look at other verticals. We are a lead generator. We can lead traffic wherever we want. We can use the systems and the knowledge we have. It just has to make sense. The timing has to be right. I believe there is so much we can do in what we just started. I want to do that good before I actually take on more.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Yeah.

Moderator

If you look on just the acquisitions, just two more questions.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Yep, go ahead.

Moderator

If you look on the acquisitions you make and have made and terms, upfront payouts over time, multiples, how is that changing, and what do you think it will change ahead, given how you're shifting products and categories and so on? Is there any big shifts in how-

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

In how we structure the deals?

Moderator

Or just how you pay, or how much you pay, or

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

I think what you want to come to is the multiples, if we see them changing. We have normally paid between two and six. We paid 4.2 or 4.3 for EBIT upfront, most of our BayBets, which was our biggest acquisition so far. Germany, where all our clients pay taxes and VAT, so it's very much working as a regulated industry. All sports, I think we don't see the multiples going up, right now at least. It's hard to foresee what's going to happen in two years or three years. Right now, we see the levels being fairly the same. In terms of how we structure, sometimes we pay all upfront. We do that when we feel that we have the capacity and we can do the work actually better in-house, faster.

For BayBets, we did a two-year earn-out due to the fact that the team in BayBets are amazing. We wanted to connect them to the company. We wanted to make the founders big shareholders of Catena, for to continue expansion into Germany and the DACH region, where they are very strong, which is already proven in some of the acquisitions we have done, which has been leads coming from the organization itself. It's always going to be a mix on what we believe is the right for the company at that point in time. So far it worked very well for us. We don't see a change in dynamics, when it comes to price or how we have structured it in the past, and how we would structure it in the future.

Moderator

Okay, you answered both questions at the same time, no more from me. Okay. Thanks very much, and congratulations on-

Henrik Persson Ekdahl
Acting CEO, Catena Media

Thank you