Hello, and a warm welcome to Embracer's Annual General Meeting. My name is Simon Jönsson, analyst at ABG. Today's agenda is as follows: a presentation by Johan and Lars, followed by a presentation by Gearbox Head, Randy Pitchford. Then we will hear from Emma Ihre, Head of Sustainability, Mikael and Cedric from Asmodee, and market insights from Newzoo expert Tom. To finish off, I will be back with a Q&A. That said, I leave the floor to Kicki.
Thank you, Simon. Dear shareholders, a very warm welcome to Embracer's 2022 Annual General Meeting, and of course, a very welcome to Karlstad. It means a lot for us to see you all here in person, and of course, also everyone that is participating on the web. Now, everyone here representing Embracer today, we believe this is a very important event because it gives us a unique opportunity to actually discuss with all of you the last year, Embracer's past year. Now, as you maybe have noticed, it has become a tradition to hold the Annual General Meeting here in Karlstad, and also now in this beautiful museum. If you have the chance, you should actually go and see. There are so many stories about the history of Värmland in this museum.
Not only is Karlstad the capital of Värmland, but the whole region here is actually considered to be the crown jewel of Sweden, if you didn't know it already. A fitting home really to Embracer Group's headquarters. Now, most of you probably also know that, there is an expression that the sun always shines in Karlstad. I guess you heard that before. I would like to think that a bit of that sun shines down on us. Embracer is now the most diversified gaming and entertainment company in Europe. We have leading and growing positions in PC, console, mobile, and tabletop. All I can say, where are my sunglasses? Embracer is much more than that. We are a global company with values and integrity that reach out to almost all corners of the world.
Now, as you all know, the world looks very different compared to when we met a year ago. The start of 2022 has been dark, and for the very first time since the Second World War, we now have a big war in Europe. That, of course, affects us in different ways. All of us are affected, and that has now gone on for six or more than seven months. Unfortunately, it seems that it will continue for an unknown future. When this horrible war broke out in Ukraine, many of our Eastern European studios were directly affected. As an organization, we saw firsthand the personal struggles that created for many of our people.
I personally talked to many of them, employees in Ukraine, in Russia, Hungary, Serbia, and Croatia, and many more, and all of them had stories to tell, and they talked about their families and their friends. Many stories were heartwarming, but most stories were very heartbreaking and simply unbearable to think about. I have to say that I'm extremely proud and humble how we all came together and responded. With lots of hard work, willingness, many companies and employees across our entire organization cared for the safety of our people and their families. In my opinion, it absolutely reflects the thoughtful and responsible nature of our corporate culture, and it's a fine demonstration how the organization is made up by strong, independently driven people who make great things happen.
Now, as we close the books for our financial year 2021-2022, and despite the pandemic we had to face throughout last year, we can look back at another stable and eventful period for Embracer. If you recall last year's AGM, Lars presented a strategy to further widen the scope of our operations. I just want to take a moment to highlight a few of those developments from last year that we from the Board sees reinforce that strategy. First of all, sales and profits grew significantly. We welcomed many new companies to the Embracer family through strategic transformative acquisitions bringing scale, new revenue streams, new strategic opportunities, and also redefining the direction of our gaming ecosystem. You will hear much more about this from Lars later today.
We have also invested heavily in our games pipeline to drive future organic growth, and we also continued our sustainability journey. A highlight last year was, of course, that we hired a Head of Sustainability with lots of and long experience in sustainability and finance. Last but not least, we also further developed the group's governance structures. In addition to all this, we also had the process, as you are very well aware of, about to change the listing venue to the main market at Stockholm, Nasdaq Stockholm, before the end of this year. That, if anything, triggered the need to comply with stricter requirements. You will hear later as well where we are in that process because it's getting closer. A big part of that effort was, of course, the transfer of our reporting to IFRS.
The Board is very proud of the organization that has completed the largest IFRS conversion ever in Sweden. What all this ties together is Embracer's decentralized model, and it's all about empowering great people. As you know very well, many of the entrepreneurs that join our family also become shareholders of the company. It is a huge benefit to have so many shareholders operationally active. They are very ambitious, they are skilled, and they share our long-term commitment to building something lasting and extraordinary. This partnerships acts as the foundation for which our values and governance model was built. Finally, to conclude, I want to acknowledge a part of the organization that is closest to my heart, and that is, of course, all our great people.
During the six years I have been with the company, it's almost six years. I have traveled, and I met many of our employees in many places. I've gotten to know them quite well, I think. If I should just describe them with a few words, I would say they are an extremely dynamic and passionate group of people, and they have helped define this company to what we are today. I can say with strong confidence that with them, we can look forward to delivering even more joy and entertainment to millions of players worldwide. With that, I would like to declare Embracer's 2022 Annual General Meeting open. I will start with a question. The question to you is, see where I have the question. Here I have it.
The question is, you know, the Board, it's maybe late to ask this, but, you know, the Board has proposed that this meeting should be in English, and that is, of course, for everyone to understand what we're talking about also on the web. So my question is if we can agree to hold this meeting in English.
Yes.
Great. Thank you. Now, we will also hold a public Q&A session during the presentation when we present the business activities later. This Q&A session will only be open during that specific presentation, just so that you know. Now, the first point we have is to elect the Chair of the Meeting, and I have to also make sure we have the right slides up here. The Board of Directors, they have proposed that I'm elected to chair the meeting here today, and that has also been published in the notice on the 18th of August. I'm wondering if there are any other proposals. No? Can we elect me to be the Chair of today's meeting then?
Yes.
Thank you for the confidence. Due to other things, including the webcast, there are several unregistered shareholders and guests at the premises here today and also participating remotely. Can we invite these to attend the meeting? Of course, I have to point out that in addition to the company's representatives that we also have here today and the auditor, there are only shareholders who are here in person, by proxy, or cast their vote in advance that are entered into the share register with representatives and assistants who have registered that have the right to speak, vote, and give proposals to the meeting. Very long sentence you wrote to me, Johan. Thank you. During the Q&A, we will, however, allow everyone present at the meeting and remotely to be able to ask questions.
Can we agree on that? Thank you. I have next to me here Ian Gulam. He has been here with me for many years now. Ian is the Chief of Staff and the General Counsel, and he's here to keep the minutes from this meeting. I also would like to inform you about the executives in the company that we have here today. In addition to me, from the Board, we have. I will present them a little bit more in-depth later. We also have David Gardner from our Board, and we have Jacob Jonmyren. We also have Erik Stenberg, and Lars Wingefors is here, thank God. We have also the company's auditor, EY, is present here through the company as a main responsible auditor, and that is Johan Eklund, that we will meet later. Yeah. Okay.
We have now come to item number three, and on the agenda, and that is preparation and approval of the voting list. I would like to leave it over to you, Ian.
Thank you, Kicki. As everyone that met me at the door, I have checked everyone off that have been notified prior to the meeting to attend. I will not keep this long and just say that two people might have snuck in without me noticing, so I just wanna say their names. [Märta and Sven Bäckström], are you here? No. Okay. Good. I'm just gonna recalculate a bit, and then I'm gonna give you the numbers. To summarize, everyone that has been entered into the share register and notified their participation as set out in the notice and also have been checked off here today. We today have in total 579,792,811 shares present.
Of that, 52,260,204 are A shares and 527,532,607 are B shares. This sums up to 46.77% of the number of shares in the company and 57.04% of the number of votes in the company.
Thank you, Ian. Can we approve the approved voting list then?
Yes.
Now we come to item number four on the agenda, and we will appoint one or two persons to certify the minutes. Do we have any suggestions?
Jimmy Bengtsson.
Thank you. Are there any more suggestions? Okay. I find that's not the case. Can the Annual General Meeting resolve to appoint one person to certify the minutes? Yes. I would like to ask Jimmy then. Where is Jimmy? There. Up there. If you are prepared to actually verify the minutes, maybe today as well before you're leaving. Great. Thank you. Can we resolve then to appoint Jimmy together with the chairman to certify today's minutes in accordance with the proposal?
Yes.
We have now come to item number five on the agenda, and that is a question of whether the meeting has been duly convened. Can you explain to us, Ian?
Absolutely. So, the notice for the annual meeting shall be published on the company's website no later than four weeks prior to the meeting and at the earliest, six weeks prior to the meeting. At the same time, the notice must be published in the Swedish official gazette, Post- och Inrikes Tidningar in Swedish. At the same time, an ad must be published in Svenska Dagbladet. The notice was published on 18th of August on the website, and the ad in Svenska Dagbladet, and the notice in the Swedish official gazette was published in the respective newspaper on 23rd of August this year. The prerequisite for notice and convening the meeting are therefore fulfilled.
Yeah. Great. Thank you. Does the meeting then consider that this meeting has been duly convened?
Yes.
Now we have the approval of the agenda. The proposal for the agenda have been announced in the notice, and it has also distributed to the participants here at the meeting today. Can we resolve to determine the proposed agenda?
Yes.
Thank you. I find that the agenda has been approved. We will now hold the presentation of the operations within the group. I would therefore like to ask Lars, our CEO, Lars Wingefors, and also Johan Ekström, our CFO, to take the stage and start the presentation. Also, as we did say, this presentation will end with Q&A. I think we would like to save all the questions that you might have until the presentation is completed.
Thank you so much, Kicki, for the kind words about Karlstad and Värmland. Last time we were on stage, Johan reminded me that we actually had 13 acquisitions on this stage a while ago. We will not have 13 acquisitions today, thank God. We will have hopefully a lot of interesting information about the past year and a little bit about the future. Without further ado, I would like to give you the operational and financial highlights of last year. The year ended with net sales just about SEK 17 billion, which were 89% growth year-over-year.
The organic growth were -7%, and the reason for that were mainly that in the previous year, we had the release of Valheim that was unexpected success that we did not have a similar title in last year. I was really pleased to see the pro forma growth of our acquired companies actually grow 18% during last year. If you're splitting up the sales, the net sales of our games, our own games, were close to SEK 14 billion during the year, which is more than 116% growth. Our net sales with the important publishing were about SEK 3 billion. Our adjusted EBIT were SEK 44 billion, which was 54% growth, year-over-year. During the year, we released many, many titles.
On this slide, you can see a selected number of key revenue drivers. On the PC console side, we had successful release of Biomutant, made in Stockholm. We had continued success of Gearbox title Borderlands 3. We had a fantastic success of Hot Wheels Unleashed made by Milestone in Italy. Valheim continued to perform throughout the year, as well as Metro Exodus, our first AAA title that were released way earlier in our history continued to perform very well.
SnowRunner, we continued to build more content for, continued to perform well, as well as Risk of Rain 2, one of Gearbox in the publishing titles, as well as Deep Rock Galactic, that is published by Coffee Stain, and made by our friends at Ghost Ship Games in Denmark that also joined the group during the year. We also had a great success on mobile. Here are two examples, Sudoku.com and Blockudoku. Overall, our mobile games had more than 1.5 billion pro forma installs during the year. So 1.5 billion people downloaded our mobile games. During the year, we completed games, meaning released games that has been under development for a number of years of the value of SEK 1.2 billion.
We invested more than SEK 3.5 billion during the year for future game releases. At the end of the year, we had SEK 6.1 billion in ongoing game development of games that are to be released in the future. In total, we had 223 game development projects under development at the end of the year across our 118 internal game development studios, as well as external studios. 118 game development studios is a significant increase from the year before where we had 60 studios. In total, we engaged more than 8,500 games developers at the end of the year, which is up from 5,000 the year before.
The total headcounts at the end of the year were more than 12,500, which is more than doubling of the year before. We made a direct share issue of SEK 6.2 billion in December on the back of the acquisition of Asmodee. Thank you all shareholders in this room for taking part of that. During the year, and I will come back to that, we entered into our widened strategy of transmedia with the acquisition of Asmodee and the tabletop segment, comics by Dark Horse.
Finally, there is a note here about IFRS, and Johan will talk a little bit more about that, but we have spent a lot of time on the IFRS and main listing. A lot of people, as you heard, joined our growing ecosystem during the year, more than 6,000 people. Here you can see the logotypes of all the companies that joined the group during the year. In total, we made 35 acquisitions during last financial year. Now, the year ended end of March, and since end of March, we had a number of more family members joining the group. I'm extremely proud to show this slide. It's so many amazing people and companies and IPs underlying these businesses. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to take you through all of those companies today, but one day, perhaps.
If you look at the current state of the group today, this is our global presence. The group is made up of 12 operating groups. We are very close at 15,000 in total head engaged headcounts, and we have 130 internal studios across the world. Here in Sweden, we have Coffee Stain, operated out from Skövde. We have Amplifier, operated out from Stockholm. We have traveling west. We have our most recent operating group that heads up Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montréal, headquartered in London. We have in North America Gearbox in Texas, and we will meet Randy soon. We have Dark Horse in Milwaukie. We have Freemode, our 11 th very recently founded vertical Freemode out from California.
We have our friends and gentlemen and shareholders, Saber Interactive at Fort Lauderdale in Florida. Going back to Europe, we have Asmodee from Paris. We have the former Koch Media Group now called PLAION, out from Munich in Germany. We have our original business that I was part of funding in 2011, our friends at THQ Nordic in Vienna. Also in Germany, we have our first mobile business, DECA. Finally, we have the very successful and global leader in brain and puzzle games, Easybrain, headquartered in Cyprus. Without further ado, I will hand over to Johan.
Thank you, Lars. Yes. Last year, we continued to see a healthy growth in our net sales, growing with 89%, reaching SEK 17 billion. Adjusted EBIT also grew, growing with 54%, reaching SEK 4.4 billion for the fiscal year. The growth was driven by a strong performance in all operative groups. We also maintained a high pace on an ambitious M&A agenda. The number of operating groups grew from six to 10 during the year, and we also concluded 31 bolt-on acquisitions during the year. If you look at the balance sheet, as per the end of March 2022, we have our operational balance sheet items on the left-hand side.
As you can see, we have a total of SEK 9.3 billion of operational assets. The majority of this is related to our games portfolio. Here we have invested SEK 7.3 billion in total, where the vast majority is invested in ongoing unreleased games, SEK 6.1 billion, and SEK 1.2 billion is completed, released games. If we look on the right-hand side, we have our financial balance sheet items, and it's worth noting that we have invested SEK 68.4 billion in goodwill and IP rights stemming from acquisitions that has been made. This is financed by equity, SEK 35.5 billion, and also, provisions for additional considerations, SEK 14.5 billion, as well as net debt of SEK 14.4 billion.
Looking at this current financial year that we're in, we expect to see a strong cash flow generation, and we also expect to be in line with our communicated financial leverage target at the end of this current financial year. Looking at the cash flow generation for last fiscal year, we generated SEK 200 million in operating cash flow. We are self-funded operationally, despite investing a record SEK 3.5 billion into our games portfolio. On the financial side, we raised approximately SEK 25 billion in increased borrowings from banks, SEK 19 billion, and equity of SEK 6 billion. This was used to finance our M&A activities that had a cash outflow of approximately SEK 34 billion during the year, where the transaction related to Asmodee as well as Gearbox are the largest. At the end of the year, we had SEK 5.8 billion in cash balance.
If we take a step back and look at what the cash flow has been over the last five and a half years, we can conclude that we are generating a positive operating cash flow of SEK 1.8 billion. The vast majority of the operating cash flow generated was invested back into the business and our games development portfolio. On the financial side, we have raised approximately SEK 44 billion in equity and debt, which has been used to finance our M&A activities, where SEK 40 billion has been spent. The investment also shows in our operational KPIs. We have doubled the headcount this last fiscal year. So we are at the end of this fiscal year, we were close to 12,800 people.
The number of development projects that we are working on has increased from 160 to 223, and we have almost doubled the amount of internal studios from 60 to 118. If you look at our growth investments on the right-hand side, one key priority for Embracer is to invest in order to pursue future profitable organic growth opportunities. If we see the investments over the last five years, we can conclude that in 2018 we invested SEK 400 million, and last fiscal year we invested SEK 3.5 billion into our games portfolio. If you compare the investment with the value of the completed games, we are investing 2.5 to three times more than what we have released during this same time period.
As our games portfolio matures, we have expectations of significant positive impacts on profits and cash flow from releasing the games. Yes. That being said, we are entering the other section here, sustainability, and we would like to welcome Emma Ihre on stage, our Head of Sustainability. Welcome, Emma.
Well, it's a green one, I guess.
It's the green one, yes.
Yeah. Just have to clean a little bit after you.
Sorry. Sorry for making a mess.
No, no. Okay. Thank you very much, Johan and Lars. My name is Emma Ihre, and I'm Head of Sustainability at Embracer Group, working together with Karin Edner and the rest of the team at the headquarters. If we look back one year, it is clear that we already then had a lot in place. We had established a sustainability strategy, smarter business framework. We have started to implement our sustainability efforts, and we reported to make it easier for our stakeholders to follow what we were doing and assess our performance. What have we done during this year to walk our talk, to manage our sustainability risks, and to develop our business to actually do good for people and the planet?
I don't think a day passes without us talking about, like, either internally or externally, our values and how to implement our values in a very complex reality, and with lots of ethical dilemmas. It's also a complex reality with a lot of wonderful opportunities to do good. Our values, first of all, we are human beings in the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, when we look at ourselves in the mirror. Embracer has donated a considerable amount of money to aid organizations working in Ukraine, and actions have been taken across the group to support those affected in the war. We have supported our colleagues, our family members in Ukraine, but also in Russia and in Belarus. They are all affected, but in different ways.
We have intensified our stakeholder dialogue, and among many other things, we have strengthened our governance and risk analysis. We have also started to work more strategically with climate risks. What we love to do is developing great games and advertainment. That's our passion, and that's actually the reason why we exist as a company. Is it really possible to do good and at the same time invest in our own success, to do both at the same time? We think it is, and I would like to show you one of many great initiatives where we as a company think and act broader, more long-term. I would so very much like to invite Cedric and Micha to the stage in Sweden, in Stockholm, but I know you couldn't make it, so I invite you from Paris. Please welcome.
Thank you very much.
This is one example of a business case linked to sustainability. Welcome.
Thank you very much, Emma. Can you hear me loud and clear?
Yes.
Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Cedric. I'm the Head of HR at Asmodee, and as you may know, we have recently joined the Embracer family, and we specialized in tabletop games, among other very interesting things. We're headquartered in Paris, as you've heard from the presentation before, hence the accent. I hope that's okay. The idea here, very briefly, is that we offer you some perspective with our journey with Access+ , together with Micha, and then hopefully we'll tell you more about our sustainable journey. I guess at Asmodee, we exist to bring people together. That's why we get up in the morning, that's what drives us, and we want to do that in a sustainable and positive way, obviously.
We have that belief that games can bring people together, as I said, and that there is game for everyone, and we mean everyone. That's because we have that firm belief that we initiated back in 2018 a number of scientific research to get a better understanding of the benefits of gaming activities. These initiatives are known internally as Asmodee Research, and to keep it short, Access+ , that you see here on the screen, the logo of it, is a direct outcome of this Asmodee Research team. In short, Access+ is a studio that adapts some of our Asmodee iconic games to players living with cognitive disabilities. We bring people together, and with Access+, we bring people together, whatever their conditions. We believe that we'll provide this equal and inclusive access to all of our games.
Now to get into the specifics of this initiative, the best is to hear from Micha directly, who is the man heading Asmodee Research and the Director of Access+ studio. Over to you, Micha.
Thank you, Cedric, and thank you, Emma and Embracer, for this opportunity. I'm Micha, and I'm really pleased to be there with you all today. As Cedric said, at Asmodee, we believe that everyone, no matter their condition, should have access to the joy and benefit of tabletop games. With Access+, we are more than happy to carry an inclusive vision of gaming within the group. With Access+, we are working with academics, healthcare experts, to bring a range as inclusive and accessible as possible to a wide audience, from children to adults and the elderly, inclusive, including people living with cognitive disabilities such as autism spectrum, Alzheimer's, ADHD or depression, for instance, to stimulate their cognitive function, spark positive emotion, and foster social interaction. All our adaptations are based on scientific research, the input of professionals, and tested directly with patients.
From A to Z, we are working hand in hand with our expert for the game selection and all the adaptation, such as the card and symbols are bigger to ease the handling and recognition, including several levels of difficulty within the box to assist the care providers, selecting pertinent event, symbols or challenge that will have meaning for the players, and we have included expert recommendation in our rule book and website to inform caregivers and patients of the benefit of these games. Since the creation of the studio, we have adapted three iconic games from our catalog, Dobble/Spot it!, Timeline, and Cortex. This is a concrete complementarity between them in terms of gameplay and cognitive stimulation.
These three titles will be released in the coming weeks in France, Belgium, and Canada, and we are very pleased to make them available for a global audience and health professionals as well, and we can feel the excitement here in the distribution unit. The team is already working on future adaptation and international localization for 2023. In the end, Access+ titles are ideal games for health practitioners, schools, caregivers, families, and friends who have people with cognitive disabilities and other care. Thank you for listening, and please reach me if you have questions.
Thank you very, very much, and we look forward to that launch in a week then and to follow your great work. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Okay. We're not done. We're already started a new year, and the coming year we will create even more value for you and for other stakeholders. Some of our tools for doing that is, of course, like Kicki said, investing in our great people, making sure that we are always compliant with our various policies and working towards our sustainability goals. We have many different tools in the box to create more value to think and act broader and more long term. As you know, and as Lars always says, we are here for the long term, and we know we don't think that treating people with respect and caring about the planet will pay off in the long run. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
I have to leave it clean now after my comment.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
So much, Emma. I will try to clean the table here as well. Let's welcome our friend Randy from Texas. Randy, are you online?
Yes, I am, Lars.
Hey, how are you?
I'm perfect. How are you?
Not bad. Thank you for taking the time to tell us a little bit more about what's going on at Gearbox.
Thank you.
Without further ado, I would like to hand over to you.
Thank you, Lars. Hello, everyone. I'm excited to talk to you today about The Gearbox Entertainment Company. I led my company to join the Embracer Group because I believe in Lars' vision of a decentralized collective of autonomous member companies that naturally diversify across mediums, across markets, products, and experiences. I believe that Lars' vision for the Embracer model is the best and fastest path to accelerate my mission to entertain the world. I pledged my commitment to Lars and the Embracer model, and Lars pledged his commitment to empower me to build The Gearbox Entertainment Company of my dreams. Prior to joining the Embracer Group, we had already demonstrated success in IP building, transmedia development, product development, and publishing, and we have demonstrated our ability to scale our creative engine. Gearbox acceleration was limited by the interests of traditional blue blood publishers.
These guys had a particular idea of the kinds of games Gearbox should be limited to making and the pace at which we should do it with the brands that they had rights to. With Embracer Group, the future power of The Gearbox Entertainment Company is being stimulated and unleashed, and access to capital is a big part of that. Let's look at the next slide. It's my ambition to maximally develop the existing and established owned intellectual property that Gearbox has while stimulating the ability to simultaneously create new original IP across a spectrum of genres for a spectrum of different kinds of customers with a spectrum of different kinds of business models. To accomplish this, we must increase our capability and momentum, and I'm happy to report that the execution of our thesis is proving out to be successful.
Since we have joined the Embracer Group, the entertainment company of Gearbox is accelerating in powerful ways, building an exciting future. Let's look at our human power. Next slide. When we joined the Embracer Group in 2021, The Gearbox Entertainment Company employed just over 500 people worldwide. Today, the global footprint of our talent exceeds 1,200 people. Our growth was primarily organic, fueled by our passion and drive to build the future of The Gearbox Entertainment Company with record-breaking growth in both our headquarters in Frisco, Texas, and our development studios in Quebec and Montreal.
We also experienced growth supported by some exciting M&A activity that would not have been possible without Embracer, including the acquisition of the publishing slate and talent of Perfect World North America , now Gearbox Publishing San Francisco, the acquisition of Cryptic Studios, developers of Star Trek Online and Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter online, and the acquisition of Lost Boys Interactive, which is a game development studio populated by veteran industry-leading talent and world-class capability that's supporting not only development within Gearbox Software but also development for other leading developers and publishers around the world. The sum of this growth and what you will continue to see from Gearbox in the coming months and years is a key point of evidence in the successful execution of our strategy.
I want to share with you the elements of The Gearbox Entertainment Company and how they are working together to help catapult us into the best possible future that we can imagine. Next slide. Gearbox Software, of course, is the development and production unit of The Gearbox Entertainment Company that I founded in 1999 and is currently led by Mr. Steve Jones. Gearbox Software achieved a major victory this past year with the launch of a new franchise, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Next slide. Wonderlands shattered all of our target expectations, both critically and commercially, and I'm thrilled to report that in addition to great financial rewards from this victory that will be coming our way in the coming quarters, we have established a firm beachhead, and we now clearly have a new franchise on our hands, with future experiences already under development at Gearbox. Next slide.
Some of you noticed that I was on stage again post-pandemic at opening night live in gamescom recently in Germany, where I announced with Geoff Keighley there New Tales from the Borderlands. I am very excited about this new Borderlands video game. It will launch this October on all leading platforms, including the Nintendo Switch. Let's go to the next slide. Of course, Gearbox Publishing is the commercialization unit of The Gearbox Entertainment Company, and it's led by Mr. Steve Gibson. Next slide. Gearbox Publishing has brought to market a spectrum of interesting and successful titles, including most recently in the fiscal year we're talking about Risk of Rain 2, Tribes of Midgard, and Have a Nice Death, and these titles have exceeded our expectations. Next slide. One of my most anticipated new projects coming from Gearbox Publishing is Homeworld 3.
It's shaping up to be something very special, a sequel many years in the making that's very highly anticipated from a loyal and dedicated Homeworld fan base that helped the franchise earn more than 50 Game of the Year awards to become, as best as I can tell, the highest-rated strategy game franchise of all time. We're coming with Homeworld 3 soon. Next slide. Gearbox Publishing also has several unannounced titles in its lineup, and I want to make the point that the power, range, and capability of the Gearbox Publishing team is growing to where we have the capacity now to compete with the largest publishers in our industry and bring to market AAA video games at any scale across all leading platforms with world-class marketing and sales.
Note that the quality and success of our products and the profit margins of our development efforts will be accelerating as more and more Gearbox brands and more and more Gearbox Software- developed games are brought to market by Gearbox Publishing in the future. Next slide. A brief look ahead. I'm gonna talk more about this in a minute, but look, we've got a number of known and announced titles coming in the immediate future from Gearbox. With 10 AAA titles spanning both established and original IP in development at Gearbox Software and more than two dozens SKUs in the future lineup with Gearbox Publishing. I'll make more comments about our future in my closing remarks in just a moment, so let's continue going through our key verticals. Next slide.
One thing I am very excited about from the last year is that we officially formed one of our newest business verticals, Gearbox Studios, which is leading transmedia projects in film and television for The Gearbox Entertainment Company. I've personally taken the role of President of Gearbox Studios as I continue to establish and build this new group. Here are some of our already announced early achievements. Next slide. The Borderlands motion picture with Lionsgate Entertainment. We completed principal photography in 2021, and we're now in post-production. I'm very, very excited about the work that I have been able to do with the talented team at Arad Productions, director Eli Roth, and actors Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, absolute legends, with other very talented cast and crew member working from Craig Mazin's awesome script.
When this film enters the commercialization and promotion phase, I am confident that our studio partners at Lionsgate will bring the thunder. The entire world of people that enjoy movies will come to know and appreciate the Borderlands brand, and this will be a boon to the future of our franchise. Next slide. It was also recently announced that Gearbox Studios has partnered with Legendary Entertainment to bring Duke Nukem to the big screen. We're just getting started with Gearbox Studios, so you can expect action across all of our IP and for new IP to be developed with transmedia plans in mind or actually already in hand. Next slide. To support our transmedia franchise planning and our full spectrum strategy, last year also saw the formation of Gearbox Properties, led by longtime Gearbox veteran producer and creative director Randy Varnell.
Now, Gearbox Properties is a new business vertical at the Gearbox Entertainment, and it serves as the custodian of our intellectual properties, our franchises, and brands across all projects in interactive, transmedia, and other consumer merchandise categories. Now, encompassed within Gearbox Properties are a number of centralized capabilities that serve each of the other verticals. You see, Gearbox Properties is future-focused with a full-spectrum franchise development strategy. Now, in addition to managing franchise planning for existing franchises and brands, Gearbox Properties is also the birthplace of new IP that can be developed by Gearbox Software or Gearbox Studios and/or brought to market by Gearbox Publishing. With that, let's take it to the next slide. I wanna talk about the future of Gearbox.
With the increasingly powerful and accelerating capabilities of Gearbox Software, Gearbox Publishing, Gearbox Studios, and Gearbox Properties, The Gearbox Entertainment Company is building an exciting and prosperous future, well-positioned to not only maximizing Gearbox existing and new IP, but also to help support the maximization of IP within other Embracer Group companies. We believe that great entertainment, great stories and characters, and interactive experiences can delight different audiences across different mediums and with different business models. We believe that by creating, supporting, and synchronizing and amplifying different experiential manifestations of our creativity, that all of our applications will be lifted and benefited. My vision is to maximize IP through the development and commercialization of manifestations of our IP in many mediums to many different kinds of customers in many different kinds of places. Success depends upon the best talent for each respective manifestation.
We live in a world where most intellectual property is singularly developed from a specific medium as a starting point and only rarely adapted to other mediums. I think that the Embracer Group is extremely well-positioned to change all of that. We have some of the greatest intellectual property in the world, with everything like at Gearbox with Homeworld and Borderlands, to the Embracer Group at large with Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider. We have powerful IP that is dormant and not yet maximizing, and we are creating new intellectual property every day. We have some of the greatest talent in the world in areas of interactive entertainment with Gearbox Software and other Embracer Group developers. We have some of the greatest talent in the world with graphic novels and comic books and story and character development with Dark Horse.
We have some of the greatest talent in the world with board games and tabletop experiences with Asmodee. We have talent in mobile, and we have talent in hyper-casual, and I'm just scratching the surface. It's beyond the scope of my time here today to completely articulate the full capabilities of the Embracer Group. For my part, The Gearbox Entertainment Company has at least five new games with existing IP in development, AAA games, and an additional five new AAA titles with new original IP in active development at Gearbox Software, with many more in various stages of incubation and development. Excitingly, there are over two dozen new titles on the slate for Gearbox Publishing, with many more in various stages of incubation and development.
Finally, I want to point out that I have also been leading several efforts in collaboration with several other powerfully specialized companies within the Embracer Group, and the idea is to build new avenues of product franchise and IP development across mediums, simultaneously building a franchise plan where the IP is optimized for the various manifestations we can imagine down the road. I believe that will contribute to the proof of the power of the Embracer Group strategy in the years to come. I am absolutely thrilled for the road ahead, and I'm excited to be a part, just my part of helping to lead us there. I'm grateful to be part of the Embracer Group with Lars' vision enabling and amplifying the success that is very plainly ahead of us. Thank you everyone, and thank you Lars, for your time today. Cheers.
Thank you, Randy. You are fantastic. You're always creating some new headlines, so let's see.
Hey, I've got exciting stuff, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. Thanks for everything you've done to help me accelerate and amplify Gearbox vision.
Thank you so much, Randy. Let's move on to next point on the agenda. Newzoo. Last year, we had the honor to welcome our external market research company presenting, and I think it was very worthwhile for all shareholders to understand more about the overall global games market. This is an external presentation. This is not the official Embracer standpoint on the market. This is from Newzoo. Tom Wijman.
Hi, Lars.
Hey.
Yes.
Welcome.
Hi. Thank you. Thank you for re-inviting me.
Honor. I think we have support changing slides, so I will leave it over to you.
Yeah. Okay. Yes, thank you very much for having me. Indeed, I'm here to present Newzoo's take on the global games market this year, but also contextualize it to the past few years and looking to the years ahead. Just for a brief introduction, Newzoo is a games market specialist market research firm. The data that I'm showing you today comes from our Global Games Market Report. But in addition to that, we also do direct consumer research and engagement-based data. Next slide, please. So starting with the year in gaming to date, and starting with the consumer-generated revenues in the games market, this is a global view this year.
The worldwide games market will generate $196.8 billion, that's +2.1% growth from last year. I'll start us off saying our revenue scope is all consumer spending on game software, whether that be physical or digital, full games, in-game spending, and subscription services across all platforms and all segments. 2.1% growth for the year, it's not as good as it has been the past two years, but those two years were particularly good for games, because of people being locked at home and having no access to other entertainment options.
With that in mind, the fact that the market is still growing even this year, or we forecast it still to grow this year, is testament to its strength. Diving into what that means by segment and what some of these growth drivers are, I put some of the information there on the right of this slide. Let's start with PC, +0.3% year-on-year growth, so really that's a flat market. A bit healthier if you zoom in just on the download and box PC games because the browser PC gaming segment is declining and has been declining for a while. What are some of the revenue drivers here?
I think to put that in context due to the other traditional gaming segment console because PC gaming revenue is largely generated by live service games. If you look at the top 10 games or top 20 games generating revenue for PC, most of those are live service titles. Any disruption or delay in game development hits the PC market relatively less hard than it does console market. There is still the effect of games being delayed into 2023, sometimes even 2024, that limits the growth potential of PC games this year. The same is true for the supply chain disruptions, meaning that players cannot get their hands on the latest PC gaming components.
That is starting to get better, but there is still more demand than there is supply for many high-end PC gaming components. The simple equation there is if people have new hardware, they tend to buy more software. Therefore, if they cannot get their hands on new hardware, they tend to spend less on new software. Now we're gonna move over to console because it's an extension of the same story. We forecast the console market to shrink slightly this year, just -2.2% year-on-year growth, still generating almost $53 billion in a year, and more than 1/4 of the total games revenue. A very healthy market, but not the best year for console growing maybe. There's three main drivers for that.
First of all, this year, we have not as many blockbuster releases as we had in the past years, and console, as opposed to PC and definitely mobile gaming, is a hit-driven market. Less so than it has been in the past because of live services, because of DLC, because of in-game spending, but still definitely more so than PC and console gaming. With less releases hitting the market, that just means less spending on console games. The same thing is happening here because the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft are still hard to purchase, so the supply has not yet caught up to demand. It means that the install base is lower now than what it would be if the console cycle would've evolved normally.
There is a slow ramp-up of the install base, meaning people don't have new consoles, therefore they don't buy console or they don't buy content for the console. What is offsetting some of these declining factors is the continued growth of subscription services and free-to-play in consoles. Like I said, it's no longer as hit-driven and seasonal as it once was. The saving grace for the market this year is mobile, although mobile gaming has its own struggles with the changes made to privacy regulation, user tracking, and mobile gaming more so than PC and console gaming relies on user tracking to identify high-value users and converting those into players. There's been some changes there due to privacy regulation, due to changes made by some of the larger controlling players of the platform.
Besides all that, it's still a growing market for the reasons listed here. The dominant business model, free-to-play, makes it easier to convert players, makes it easier in times of inflation. There's a lot of growth generated from emerging gaming regions. I'm talking Southeast Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Northern Africa, which are all mobile-first regions. People get access to their own, to the internet via their own device on mobile-first, play games or have the ability to play games via mobile-first, and therefore mobile is the main way of gaming in these regions. The development cycles for mobile games typically, as a generalization, but typically are shorter and easier than they are compared to PC and console, particularly for AAA games.
Therefore, there was less of a disruption, due to the shift of working from home over the past two years, which is why there are now so many delays or a lot of delays, for PC and console games. Because it's not a hit-driven market, even if there are less hits coming to the market, it doesn't impact spending as much. Now I wanted to point out one thing because this is a question that we, at Newzoo have been getting a lot this year. There is of course a lot of, news and talk about inflation and a potential recession hitting the market and whether gaming can survive a recession. Our thesis on that is that gaming is not recession-proof. The saying recession-proof would insinuate that there's not gonna be an impact at all.
Of course, if people have less disposable income, then yes, they might spend less on gaming. Gaming is resilient to it compared to other forms of entertainment, but also compared to the past. That is due to the multiple reasons due to the role that gaming plays in people's life. For a lot of people, it's escapism. It's a way to get out of their daily struggles or a way to, you know, step away from real life for a moment. It's very important, especially if you look towards more of the core gaming segments. Therefore, people will give up other forms of entertainment before they stop spending on games.
Plus, the rise of the subscription model and free-to-play monetization means that the barrier to pay for gaming content is a bit lower than it was during the last great recession in 2008 to 2011. Therefore meaning, you know, it's not recession-proof, 'cause nothing really is, particularly, an entertainment form of leisure, which gaming still is ultimately. But it is definitely resilient to a recession. Next slide, please. The same view here, but then the revenue split per region. Here we can clearly see that the Asia-Pacific region is the major revenue generator for the global games market. 49% of revenues this year will come from Asia-Pacific.
It's all still growth market, +2.7% year-on-year growth, mainly due to the growth of mobile gaming, which is very much coming from Asia-Pacific, which is a mobile-first region. Even in its mature markets, China, Japan, and South Korea are now mobile-first markets. Looking towards the Western mature markets, Europe at 70%, 70% of the global market, a bit over $34 billion generated. We see a flat market there, and that is because it's more as opposed to Asia-Pacific and the emerging regions, a PC and console market. As we saw in the previous slides, PC is flat and console is even declining a bit. North America, similarly almost flat, for the same reasons as Europe really.
There's a bit more mobile gaming in North America compared to Europe, which is even more so focused on PC and console gaming. Therefore, it's a bit more growth compared to Europe. The two emerging regions that I spoke about, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa, are growing very healthily and is what's driving most of the growth in the global games market this year. Next slide, please. Now how does that look to the rest of the year? This is where the good news starts coming in. The relative slowdown of growth that we see this year is just a temporary blip on the radar according to our forecasts.
We're still on a trajectory of a very healthy growth to 2025, which is when we forecast the games market will generate $225.7 billion. We expect that console gaming, PC gaming growth will pick up again next year when the release calendar is a lot fuller and the install base will continue to grow. With the ongoing growth of mobile gaming, that means all three segments are on a trajectory to very healthy growth. Next slide, please. Switching a bit how we're looking at things. Now we're no longer looking at how much people are spending, but how many people across the world are playing games. This is always a very impressive number, I'd say.
This year we forecast by the end of the year, 3.2 billion or 3,198 million people will play games across the world. I'll say our definition of players here is all people who have played a digital or a board game, video game on a PC or console or a mobile device, via cloud gaming service, via VR standalone headsets in the past six months. The main driver for growth in players is people in emerging markets getting access to the internet, getting access to gaming devices, which in most cases is a smartphone. Growing middle class, cheaper mobile internet infrastructure. There's little player growth when we look at regions like North America, Western Europe, even China, Japan, and South Korea, where gaming is largely mature.
If you have an interest in gaming, you will have started playing games. The exception there being 2020, which is why you would see a relatively large jump from 2019 to 2020 when a lot of players were either activated or reactivated because of the lockdown measures at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of players, as you can see on the right, play on mobile, even those that also play on console and play on PC also play on mobile. 2.7 billion out of the 3.2 billion people that play games play on mobile. Looking at the other two segments, just over 1 billion PC players, which does also include browser players, which is again generalizing, but generally a more casual group of players.
Console players only draws in 600 million players across the world. As we can see from the revenue slides, generating more than 25% of the revenue generated in the games market. Growing to over 3.5 billion players in 2025, like I said earlier, driven by better internet infrastructure, mobile internet access, cheaper smartphones. Next slide, please. For the last part, taking a look at some of the more exciting growth markets in games, looking at the growth of VR games. The chart we're looking at now is the consumer spending on VR games, not VR headsets. Our market sizing here only covers the headsets capable of six degrees of freedom, and the VR game revenues generated to the headsets.
Just typically this excludes either the enterprise headsets or the headsets that are only capable of three degrees of freedom, which is most smartphone-based headsets. The easiest way to understand this is the three degrees of headsets. They only allow you to move your head, while six degrees of freedom headsets will also simulate the idea of walking or moving across a room. It's a very exciting compared to the overall games market. Oh, sorry, can we stick to the last slide? Can we go back to the last slide? Thank you. It's a very exciting market, comparative to the rest of the market, quite small. $2.1 billion generated by VR games this year. It's impressive for the install base.
People that do play VR games tend to spend quite a bit, and it's also growing very fast. You can see the chart on the right, almost 50% year-on-year or compound annual growth rate. Every two years, roughly, the market for VR game content has doubled, and we expect this to continue well into 2024, when VR game revenues will generate $3.7 billion. That concludes the market overview. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Tom. I have tons of questions, but unfortunately we don't have the time today. I would like to have you back one day. Thank you for sharing this intelligence with us.
Be happy to. Thank you so much.
Let's dig a bit deeper and doing some deep dives into our business. I would like to start with the updated strategy we set at last annual meeting a year ago, embracing the transmedia strategic direction since September 2021. We got working immediately to adapt to this strategy by doing a number of things. We started off acquiring our first MMO business, followed by the transformative acquisition of one of the leading board game, or the leading board game company in the world, Asmodee, based in Paris. Followed a few weeks later with acquisition of one of the largest comic book publishers in North America, Dark Horse.
Followed now this year by the partly you can argue it is part of the transmedia strategy, that we made an acquisition of the assets from Square Enix, the carve-out of Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montréal, including the iconic IPs of Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and a number of others that also are very well positioned in this transmedia strategy. Followed by the, you can argue, transformative acquisition of Middle-earth Enterprises and the IP rights of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, based on the works of Tolkien. Why did we adopt this strategy? We believe, and you heard Randy a few minutes ago, we believe that it's building IP value, more personality and character for a world deepens the relationship and visibility with fans. Our fans is everything.
Tabletop games, comic books, TV, film are very efficient channels to build IPs, while we believe gaming is the best channel to monetize it. We see strong connection between these different forms of entertainment. So, how? Building a transmedia company, creating an even stronger ecosystem based on diverse IP portfolio, new technologies and services complementing our core gaming business from creation and execution to distribution. Cross-fertilizing IPs and strengthening licensing partnership across gaming categories, different content formats, and platforms. So, what? This integrated approach, together with our decentralized model, builds resilience and has proven to be attractive for both organic growth and growth by acquisition. We are well positioned to grow faster than the market in each of these segments, thanks to our IPs, our operating groups, and the investments we have made in recent years.
A unique spread of risk within gaming gives us a strong starting point for stable, profitable growth. I would like to share with you a few successful examples of transmedia expansion based on external IPs that we don't own within the group but are very well known to many of you in this room. There are countless examples of successful transmedia expansions as different forms of entertainment are converging. This slide illustrates some beloved, mainly external franchises that have expanded from video games to TV series, movies, comics, and tabletop games. For example, League of Legends from Riot has created a popular Netflix series. The critically acclaimed game, The Last of Us, developed by Naughty Dog, is coming to both comics and TV series. Hit film franchises such as Mad Max and James Bond GoldenEye have become era-defining games.
Meanwhile, many tabletop games, such as Warhammer 40K and Cyberpunk, have also led to substantial global game franchises. Looking at the group, we do have great examples of transmedia execution within the group. Looking at Tomb Raider, the iconic IP created in 1996 that sold more than 88 million units, has made its way to movies, comics, books, and coming to animated pictures and tabletop games. We also heard Randy talking about Borderlands and what's happening with the Borderlands, and obviously there is the movie announced. There is also the spin-off of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands that successfully were released last year, as well as tabletop books and comics. Within Asmodee, we have Exploding Kittens that obviously were a tabletop game that made it to mobile, now being announced as a TV series, and with many more plans.
Looking at some examples of internal IPs with transmedia potential, and I have to note this is not confirming movies or new games and stuff. It's just some examples. Not necessarily all of them has to become transmedia, but there is potential. Obviously, we have hundreds of IPs across the group. Here you can see some really strong IPs that I believe has great potential to not only be what they are from the beginning, but also to be adapted to other medias. Some of them here are announced, some of them are not announced yet. Johan?
Thank you, Lars.
Leaving a bit transmedia to more financials.
Yes. Thank you very much. We have done the follow-up of acquisitions made, and we have used data running up to end of June this year. We have done in total 81 deals. The deals that has been part of the evaluation or the deals that been part of the group for more than a year, that's 52. On the left-hand side, you have what we call operative units and standalone companies, where it makes sense to talk about the adjusted EBIT on a trailing 12 months basis. On the right-hand side, you have the studios that we have added to the group. In total, it's 18 operative units and 34 studios.
The day one consideration for the operative units is SEK 12.9 billion. An adjusted EBIT that these companies generated on a yearly basis at time of acquisition was SEK 2.5 billion. If we compare that to what they are generating as of end of June on a trailing 12 months basis, the corresponding number is SEK 3.3 billion. It's up 32% or SEK 0.8 billion. It's worth noting that within the trailing 12 months adjusted EBIT, there is no material contribution from AAA games released during that time period, which obviously can have a large impact on the adjusted EBIT.
It's also interesting to see that, when a company joins Embracer, one of the rationale is to continue to invest in the company in order to accelerate, the business plans. We have added approximately 1,300 people to these companies organically, since the time of acquisition. If you look, on the right-hand side, focusing on the studios, obviously, to evaluate the studio, you will need to, have a bit longer time, in order to, see the performance of scheduled game releases. Part of the rationale, of course, of adding studios to Embracer, is to increase the IP portfolio, to add development capabilities. At time of closing, it was roughly 1,700 people, in total of this, over these 34 deals being added.
There are also financial benefits of integrating backward. You know, you will see CapEx savings on games, or also royalty savings depending on what relationship you have with the studio at time of acquisition. That being said, it will take some time or longer to evaluate performance of a development studio. There are very good examples of studios and games where we have definitely exceeded the financial expectations. To mention a few, we have Experiment 101 with Biomutant, Warhorse, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Bugbear, Wreckfest, Gunfire, Remnant, NWI with Insurgency: Sandstorm, and 4A with Metro. Also here, we see that we continue to invest in the companies after they become part of the Embracer Group. We have added close to 580 people to these studios post closing.
Looking at the overall picture, the overall evaluation, the performance of the 52 deals that has been evaluated has either met or exceeded management expectations with one exception.
Thank you.
Yes, as both Kicki and Lars mentioned earlier, we are currently involved in a large project. It's about changing the listing venue to a regulated market. Just to give you a flavor of the size, it involves all 12 operative groups. It's more than 300 legal entities, part of the project, over 50 jurisdictions. We have a very thorough project process that we follow, and the work is split in seven work streams. At the start of the project, we had identified 140+ activities in the action tracker that needed to be done, and 53 milestones. The rationale for engaging and initiating this project is to broaden the shareholder base of Embracer, increase liquidity in our share, as well as to make Embracer better known worldwide.
It also allow us for share buyback programs, and it will overall increase the governance structure and control structure of the company. At the end of the day, making Embracer a better company. We have been moving along according to our time plan, and as of today, we can say happily, that we are progressing according to time plan. The ambition is to be ready for a listing at Nasdaq Stockholm main market by the end of this year. Obviously, there are some key milestones ahead of us, but, if they are reached as planned, it should work. We continue to build the corporate capabilities at the parent company. Currently or today, we are 50 people in the parent company. Four years ago, we were nine.
At IPO, we were three.
Yeah. During the year, we have strengthened the team with these great people you see in front of you. They are providing us with increased competence and expertise in important areas such as treasury, sustainability, investor relations, corporate tax, data privacy, internal control, as well as information security. It is the increased capabilities at the parent company as well as in the operative groups that allow us to initiate and execute on large projects such as changing listing venue. Over to you, Lars.
Thank you, Johan. I will try to wrap this up, but I would like to just show a slide showing our current position of Embracer Group 2022. I'm normally trying to be humble, but someone asked me to put a globally leading position within AA, A in the development and publishing. That's the reality. We have a leading position in co-publishing and work-for-hire development, a leading position in mobile game or ads monetized mobile games, as well as board games development and publishing and global tabletop distribution. Regionally, we have a leading position within comics, video games distribution, and film distribution. We have created and acquired and built sizable capabilities within AAA development and publishing.
We just got started on retro gaming with some ambitious plans, as well as we've been doing a lot of what we define as asset care over the past year, bringing older games and IPs back to new platforms. I would like to share a few closing remarks with you. The strategy of empowering great entrepreneurs and creators continues to be successful. We believe this is a superior operating model for building a sustainable and long-term group within a creative industry. We firmly believe that empowering great people to make their own decisions is the best model to drive profitable organic growth that will outpace the overall market. The group is strategically in a strong position. Today, we have more than 10,000 highly skilled game developers engaged in creating the largest pipeline of games across the industry.
With the opportunity to build deeper strategic partnerships, we have a significant opportunity to notably improve cash flows, increase margins, and give better predictability going forward. We will continue to invest for long-term organic growth by allocating capital to games with high expected return on investment, as well as other growth initiatives within entertainment and services. The group will grow our pipeline of transmedia projects based on our own IPs across the group and cooperate between segments to create new transmedia IPs with a plan for PC console, mobile, tabletop comics, books, and with partners within film and TV. We expect to maintain, but not materially expand, the current scope of our business, and to solidify our existing position across PC console, mobile, tabletop, entertainment, and services throughout complementary value-accretive bolt-on acquisitions.
We continue to optimize the company for long-term growth of adjusted earnings per share and free cash flow per share. Investments in organic growth will be the key driver of this, with gradually improving free cash flow as our games portfolio matures. However, we need to realize and adapt to the fact that the world has changed for the worse since last Annual General Meeting a year ago, becoming darker in recent months. We need to adapt to the challenges of geopolitical and social issues around the world and the macroeconomic reality. The increased cost of capital will impact our business going forward. Factors such as decreased consumer spending due to less disposable incomes and uncertainty, inflation, increased interest rates, our lower share price, and changed global capital flows from growth investments have all impacted our business.
The adjustments in the cost of capital will, compared to before, require current and future investments to have a higher minimum hurdle with the safety margin to justify the capital allocation than before. We need to continue to be sharply focused on the execution of our ongoing businesses around the world. The management and the Board of Directors will continue to review the performance of operating groups to optimize capital allocation within and between operative groups while providing support and guidance to each operating unit. My experience is that difficult times create the greatest opportunities. I'm committed to keeping financial discipline and a continued strong balance sheet. We are on a journey together that has been amazing.
We are now passing some bumpy roads, but I'm very confident that there will be, past this challenge, a even stronger group in the future. With that said, and sorry for showing this slide and having you to read all this as well, I would like to put myself in the sofa with Simon. I don't know if you have any questions for me.
Glad to be back, and welcome to the shareholders. There was some very interesting presentations here. Starting off the Q&A, I just wanna say that for all of you on the web, you can still post your questions, and I will go through them later. For you in the audience here in Karlstad, you will also be able to ask questions later on.
I will start with a few of my own. Maybe I should start with Lars. What are you the most happy about the past year? For you, Johan, I know your answer, I think.
No, you know, I think there is so many fantastic things happening across the group, so it's like picking your children.
We can pick a few.
Impossible. No, I just think there is so much success being created, and I'm glad to see many new IPs being created and many new successful games being launched, many fantastic people joining the group. I think that makes me smile. As you just heard, there is also challenges. I've been spending, you know, more time on geopolitical and social issues the past year than ever before, and there is other things. The daily agenda is for sure full.
All right. Maybe a question on the overall market here, because as a group, you have a very wide scope. You cover a lot of ground in the entertainment market, especially in gaming. My question is: What do you see currently in like a broader theme about the consumer? We know that the consumer sentiment is very weak right now. What do you see compared to previous years and also before the pandemic?
Oh, yeah. You know, obviously, I'm bullish on the gaming market. I think there is a lot of excitement about gaming. There is still, you know, the billions of players out there that engages. If you're able to pull off a great release, you will have immediately some amazing traction. I think the underlying market is strong. Now, the consumer spending is obviously a more marginal effect currently, but having the size of the business, even 1% or a slight decrease could have an impact. I think that is obviously something we are trying to adapt to, as I just stated. I think there are some positive signs.
I think there is more signs now that there is a better flow of new hardware coming to the market that will help the console, I think more than we were expecting a few months ago. I think that's positive now also for the holiday season. I think for overall market, there is some amazing games coming out, not only from Embracer, but from our peers that I think will bring back the market to more positive numbers in the end of the year.
I wanna talk a bit about Saints Row. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that you have said or written that you feel quite confident financially about the game. I was just wondering if you could provide us with an update on what you mean with that and what you see currently.
I think I stated before the release that we were confident in, you know, in the financial profile of the investment. Obviously, personally, I had hoped for a greater reception of the game. It's been a very polarized view and, you know, there is a lot of things that could be said in detail around it, but I'm on one hand happy to see a lot of gamers and fans happy. At the same time, I'm a bit sad to see also fans not happy. It's difficult. I think we need to wait for the quarterly report in November to have, like, more details around this. We are still fairly early in our release window and still collecting data and there is a lot of bug fixing.
There is more content coming. On the financial side, I know or I'm confident we will make money on the investment. Would it have as great return on investment that we have seen in many other games? Not very likely, but we will make money, and that's a very good starting point at least.
Indeed. Also due to the response of the game, which I think surprised you a bit maybe, certainly surprised a lot of people.
Yeah.
Did that change your longer term view, for the franchise in any way?
You know, obviously you always want every installment and of any IP to be greater than the last one, but you know, what you do is, you know, this is quite a process to evaluate your position, the outcome, and there is hundreds of people engaged in this, you know, game in a way within the group, and so I still have a great trust in those people, and I'm sure they will recommend things for the future.
Got it. With the console supply ramping up, it could be a good holiday season for games, and Saints Row is probably one of the bigger releases this fall. Yeah, we'll have to see. Turning to other releases, we have, for example, Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed recently, also Way of the Hunter. What do you think about those releases? Are you happy with the response from the community, et cetera?
Again, quite early to say. I think when we brought back Destroy All Humans!, the first time, two years ago, I think there were more buzz around it and excitement from all those fans. Now, it's been a good reception from fans, but I think it's been harder to break through that noise. I think the game is great. They've done a fantastic job to bring that back to very high, you know, standards. Way of the Hunter is obviously a new IP in a niche market built on a very experienced team that have made similar projects before.
I'm hearing and getting data that there is a lot of engagement from a lot of players around the world and the KPIs of the game is constantly seem to be doing well. I think there is something good for the future there.
In terms of Tiny Tina, could you say anything more about the royalties for the game?
No, I think we need to wait for, you know, both our publishing partner, Gearbox team, and Johan's team to. I don't have any color on that. As you heard, Randy is confident about he will have some.
Yeah.
Financial benefits as well in the future.
I heard. Also on the Middle-earth acquisition and the Tolkien rights, what has the internal reaction been from studios?
I think it's been amazing. You know, we never had so much outreach to, you know, any of our acquisitions as we had with this one, from what I understand. You know, in the respect of the team that had been working on this for 45 years, the deal is not closed yet. In the respect of the works and Tolkien Estate and all stakeholders, this is a long-term process also to make things within the group. Obviously, I'm confident we will do games and games based on the properties in the future, but we just need to follow that process that this company have set up. You know, who wouldn't like to be working on such an iconic IP?
That's true. Johan, you know, I like cash flows. I think you do as well. What will the major changes in terms of free cash flow be, you know, this ongoing year versus the past, you would say?
I think so we have if you look at this current year we have communicated a guidance for what we believe our adjusted EBIT will arrive at and that's quite a step up if you compare it to where we have been which will also have a positive impact on cash flows. I think that's the main driver. We have commented a bit on seasonality.
It's I think, f rom a seasonality perspective, looking at the cash flow generation during this fiscal year, we believe that the second half of the year, so Q3, Q4, will be the main contributions. Between those, I think we'll see most of it in the beginning of Q4, cash flow-wise. Obviously, we have had the highly cash flow generated business in Asmodee. They are generating the majority of their profits in Q3. Of course, following that, they will generate the cash flow.
You don't have any kind of color to give on cash conversion, maybe longer term from your guided adjusted EBIT?
No. We haven't given that guidance. Of course, as we say, as long as we have investment opportunities to invest for profitable future organic growth, that's something that we will do. I think that also, despite investing into the organic growth opportunities, we will generate cash flow without giving you an exact number on the cash conversion.
Thanks. Before I open for the audience, can you walk through the steps before you can list on Nasdaq main list?
The 140. No. Obviously, I mean, ahead of us, there are a couple. We need to pass through a stock exchange audit, that's something. We need to convert or transition to IFRS, which we did in Q1. We have the stock exchange auditor, we have the prospectus that needs to be compiled, and there is a formal acceptance process, of course, that you need to adhere to from the stock exchange.
Got it. Do we have any questions from the audience here? I guess we have some kind of mic somewhere. Just raise your hand. We have the mic. Okay, raise your hand, please, if we have any questions. Otherwise, doesn't look like it.
We're running a bit over time, Simon, so I don't.
Yeah.
You know.
I will check the web instead. We have some questions here from the audience. We have one from Johan O. He says, "You give many of the acquired companies the opportunity to grow their workforce and multiply it by two or even three within few years from getting acquired by Embracer. How can you ensure that companies that have no experience in growing their headcounts and working on multiple projects simultaneously can handle that transition in a good way once they get Embracer funding?"
Yeah. Obviously, more or less all those companies being acquired are within the operating groups. Within the operating groups, there is, you know, very experienced management teams and processes. In general, our games development across the group are managed by our 20+ studios that manages the games development together with a games development studio, whether that is internal or external. You know, you need to be humble. Obviously, when you add a lot of new talents, there is sometimes growing pains. So far, I think, and I think this is shown by our employee survey, by the execution of the work they've done in many cases. I think overall I'm confident in that process. As you know, we are spread out.
Johan just said that we are more than 300 legal entities. Not all of them have employees, but there is a lot of companies and different workplaces and HR and processes. It's not like a centralized approach where we here in Karlstad, you know, managing this daily on a daily basis.
Thank you. Do we have some more time or?
Yes. Let's do two more questions, and then we need to head back to the AGM.
The audience, do we have something? Okay. I was wondering, you know, in recent couple quarters, the ROI on your game releases have been a bit lower for different reasons maybe. What do you see there, are there explanations behind this? Are you discussing this internally? What are you expecting yourselves?
Yeah. Well, obviously, I noticed that myself. We are discussing the outcomes of the releases, and especially it's something that are being evaluated within the operating groups and the publishing structures.
A few things, you know. We have a very wide pipeline of games, and from time to time, you would have more chunks of games with a higher return on investment coming through the market. I think it's a bit. Now we had, during the summer, for example, or earlier part of this year, we had a number of releases that had a lower return on investment profile coming through. I think that is kind of the main reason. It has not been a surprise to me, many of them, so it's kind of been in line with my expectations. Looking ahead, I'm very confident, even though without providing a guidance on this, I'm very confident in the pipeline and the return on investment.
We all know that Saints Row, for example, were one of the harder ones in terms of return on investment. Now that's in a way behind us and we will make money. Now there is tons of more titles which has significantly higher return on investment.
Interesting. Yes. The last one from me then. In Asmodee, that company has benefited quite handsomely from strong card segments recently. Do you think that's part of that business could be more sensitive for a weaker consumer versus, you know, the traditional board game segment, which has been quite recession-proof historically?
I think in general, board gaming provides a fantastic value of entertainment to, you know, people and families and, obviously we are following the market. We know when we entered into the transaction that we did not expect any growth in that market this year. Remains to be seen the outcome of it. Now, Asmodee and the beauty of Asmodee, they are engaged globally. They have so many IPs, and they have the balance of board gaming and trading cards. Now, trading cards so far this year have been having some strong momentum. You know, in the end of the day, I look at that business and the, you know, business they're doing and the cash flows out of it, and I'm sure over the coming decade, they will have years with stronger board games and some stronger trading card games.
I'm not overly concerned, but obviously I hope and I'm confident that they will have a strong holiday seasons and that will convert into cash flow.
Thank you. With that, I think we conclude the Q&A session.
Thank you, Simon.
Thank you. I'll leave over to Kicki.
Thank you very much. I hope you all get as excited as I when I listen to the execution of this transmedia strategy. I think, there are huge opportunities there. Now we have, we are running late, but we have the formal part still to go through, and that's something we get excited about as well, don't you, Ian? Yeah. We have now come to point number eight on the agenda, and that is, presentation of the accounting documents. Now, the annual report for financial year 2021, 2022 has been published on the company's website since the 8th of July. It is also been available at the company's offices, and it is available here today. May I then ask, our main responsible auditor, Johan Eklund at EY, to present the auditor's report.
Welcome, Johan.
Thank you, Kicki. Okay. My name is Johan Eklund, and I am, as Kicki said, the main responsible auditor for the EY audit engagement at Embracer Group. I will try to first give you a short briefing of our audit work performed for the year that we have been through. I will give you some highlights from our actual recommendation, which is in the formal audit report. We have performed the audit for Embracer Group according to ISA, International Standards on Auditing, and also of course according to Swedish standards. This is mainly based on risk and materiality.
The group audit has been coordinated by us here at EY in Karlstad, and that includes that we send out instructions to our different component teams around the world, and then of course also receive reporting back to us. After this, we have follow-up meetings and so on, and we have meetings both with, of course, the group management, but also with local audit teams and local management. In addition to this, we also have to attend two meetings with the audit committee and also selected meetings with the Board. As presented earlier by management here, you're seeing some highlights from the income statement and the balance sheet.
As you understand, there are some focus areas in our audit, mainly then related to acquisitions, PPAs. Of course, normal audit procedures as revenue streams and so on. We put a quite a lot of work also on the intangible asset side. I think the intangible asset side is about, it's absolutely the biggest part of the balance sheet. All the work on these areas includes, of course, testing and evaluating used accounting principles and so on. But we also focus a lot on internal control and also verification of supporting documents. Based on this, we have released our formal audit report, and you have probably seen it in the on Page 149. It's a lot of pages in annual report.
On Page 149, you can see the audit report. Just to summarize, we give there some recommendations to this AGM. Firstly, our first recommendation is that we recommend that the general meeting adopts the income statement and balance sheet for both the group and the parent company. Secondly, we recommend that the general meeting appropriate the profit in accordance with the suggested proposal, and also that the members of the Board and the mentioned director shall be discharged from liability for the financial year. This has been released in July this year. That was a short presentation. Is there any questions?
Okay. Thank you very much, Johan.
Thanks.
No questions. I then find that the annual report and the consolidated accounts, as well as the auditor's reports have been presented. Now we will move on to the item number nine on the agenda. As we heard, the auditor endorses that the Annual General Meeting approves the presented income statement and balance sheets, as well as the consolidated income statement and consolidated balance sheet. Can the Annual General Meeting approve the presented income statements and balance sheets?
Yes.
The Board of Directors' proposal regarding the allocation of the company's results is also included in the annual report and has been included in the notice for the meeting. The Board proposes that no dividend shall be paid for the financial year 2021-2022. The Board proposes that the funds available to the Annual General Meeting of approximately SEK 46.9 billion shall be carried forward. Does anyone have any comments on that or any questions about that? No. As we also heard, the auditors endorses that the Annual General Meeting resolves to allocate the company's profits in accordance with the Board's proposal. Can the Annual General Meeting resolve that approved results is allocated in accordance with the Board's proposal, which was also endorsed by the auditor?
Yes.
We have previously heard that the auditor also endorses discharge from liability. I would also like to inform the Annual General Meeting that the Board members and the CEO may not participate in the resolutions concerning each of themselves. Can the Annual General Meeting in accordance with the auditor's endorsement approve discharge from liability to the directors of the Board and the managing director for the past financial year?
Yes.
Considering the votes provided in advance, we can note that the resolution is passed with sufficient majority. We note that the directors of the Board and the managing director did not participate in the resolution as far as they were concerned as well. Now, we move then on to proposal for items 10 to 12. That is, we should now determine the number of directors and auditors, fees to the Board of Directors and the auditors, and the election of the Board of Directors and auditors. The proposals have been available since the 18th of August on the company's website in the notice, and also they have been available here today.
Now I would like to ask you, Ian, to present the proposals from the Board for all these items, and then we will manage to vote on all of them together. Is that okay?
Thank you, Kicki. We have p roposals regarding the Board coming from Lars Wingefors AB, the majority owner of the company, and then the proposals regarding the auditor come from the Board. To summarize quickly here, we start off with the determination of number of directors and auditors, where we have the proposal that is seven directors without deputies and one registered audit firm. As far as remuneration goes, remuneration fees, we have a total remuneration of SEK 5.475 million for the Board, which is divided into SEK 600,000 for each director and SEK 2.1 million for the Chair of the Board.
The proposal for the committees are as follows, where each member of the audit and sustainability committee shall receive SEK 175,000, and the Chair of that committee, SEK 275,000. As for the remuneration committee, the proposal is SEK 100,000 for each member and SEK 150,000 for the Chair. All of these amounts are in Swedish krona and nothing else. The proposal for the auditor's fee is that the fee shall be paid according to invoice. Finally, item number 12, which is election of the Board and the auditor. We have a proposal where David Gardner, Jacob Jonmyren, Matthew Karch, Erik Stenberg, Kicki Wallje-Lund, and Lars Wingefors are proposed to be reelected.
We have a proposal to elect Cecilia Driving as a new member of the board. Ulf Hjalmarsson has notified that he's not available for reelection. As Chair of the Board, Kicki Wallje-Lund is proposed to continue as well. EY is proposed to be reelected as auditors. Johan Eklund is also still appointed by EY to continue as main responsible auditor. That summarizes all the proposals, and I'll leave it over to you.
Thank you, Ian. Do we have any questions about the proposals? Okay. You may know that in a public limited liability company, the chair of the general meeting must, before the Board is elected, provide information to the general, I said that so many times, to the general meeting about which assignment the person to whom the election applies holds in other companies. In order to save some time here, I would like to refer to the information about the directors in the annual report as you probably have seen and in the notice and ask if you have any specific questions about that. If not, since we don't have Matt Karch here today, and you have actually noticed that David is here today.
It's the first Annual General Meeting you attend actually in person, I would say. We also have Jacob, as you saw earlier, and we have Erik and Lars, of course. Now, I think you should take the opportunity to actually grab them after here when we have some drinks, especially David, as you are not here that often. Of course, I would like to introduce to you Cecilia Driving that is proposed as a new member of the Board. Cecilia, you may want to say a few words.
Well, I'm Cecilia Driving, and currently I'm Executive Vice President and CFO.
Microphone. Great. Thank you. Sorry about that, Cecilia.
Do you hear me now? Great. I'm Cecilia Driving, and currently I'm Executive Vice President and CFO of Biovica International. That's a company within biotech and within monitoring of breast cancer, so it's in life science. I'm also a member of the Board of Ovzon. That's a satellite communication company, where I'm also the Chair of the Audit Committee. That's more in tech. Now I'm excited to join Embracer Group and the Embracer family. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Cecilia. We are as excited as you are. Thank you. Prior to today's general meeting, all but Ulf Hjalmarsson of the other current directors have announced that we were available for reelection as these directors. I would like to take the opportunity to turn to Ulf, even if he's not here, but I do know that he's watching. He's actually on a trip abroad, but he's listening in to this. Well, Ulf's been a member since 2018, and if I should describe Ulf, I would say he's been very thorough, thoughtful, and has a clear ethical compass. I really would like to express our great thanks for his contribution to the Board.
Now, Ulf actually asked me to send his regards and a big thank you for the years he has participated in Embracer's Board work. He's saying like this, I promise to read this. "It has been a fantastic, exciting time on the Board, and above all, inspiring to meet all the people who have contributed to Embracer's development. Rarely have I seen such commitment and belief in what Embracer has achieved and will be able to achieve, both in its own business and in its industry. I would like to thank everyone I have met and wish both the company and all the employees the best of luck in their continued work. Know that you will succeed well in the future." Thank you, Ulf. Now we can move on, and you have now heard the proposals for item 10 to 12.
I will ask the meeting to approve all these items together. Okay. Before we proceed to voting, are there any other proposals for item 10 to 11 from you? No. Can the meeting then resolve in accordance with the proposals?
Yes.
I therefore find that until the end of next Annual General Meeting, the following persons have been elected as Board of Directors. Cecilia Driving, once again, very much welcome. David Gardner, Jacob Jonmyren, Matthew Karch, Erik Stenberg, Kicki Wallje-Lund, and Lars Wingefors. I have also been reelected as the Chairman of the Board of Directors, and EY have been reelected as auditor. I also would like to take the opportunity to inform the meeting who our audit and sustainability committee and remuneration committee will be composed by. The audit and sustainability committee will be. Cecilia will actually be the chair of that committee, and Jacob and myself will be members of the committee. The remuneration committee, Jacob will chair this year. Last year, it was David.
David will still be in the committee, and together with myself. Next point, number 13. Lars Wingefors AB proposed that the Annual General Meeting resolves to adopt principles and instructions for the appointment of a nomination committee. We haven't had that before, so that's new to us. This proposal has also been included in the notice for the meeting, and it's been available on the company's website prior to this meeting, and it has also been distributed here today. Therefore, I do not intend to go through it in detail. Are there any questions regarding this proposal? Can the meeting then resolve in accordance with the proposal?
Yes.
Number 14, the Board of Directors has, after recommendation from the remuneration committee, proposed that the Annual General Meeting adopts the guidelines for remuneration to senior executives. The proposal has also been included in the notice for the meeting and has also been available on the company's website prior to this meeting, and it has also been distributed here today. Therefore, I don't intend to go through that proposal either. I am wondering, do we have any questions about that specific proposal? Can the Annual General Meeting resolve in accordance with the proposal?
Yes.
Sorry? You pressed the button. The Board of Directors has proposed that the Annual General Meeting shall resolve on authorization for the Board of Directors to issue shares, convertibles, and/or warrants. The proposal has been included in the notice, and it has been available on our website, and it's also been distributed here today. I will not intend to go through that proposal either. It can be noted that the authorization may comprise a maximum of 10% of the total number of shares in the company per day when the authorization is first used. Are there any questions about that specific proposal? Can the Annual General Meeting resolve in accordance with the proposal?
Yes.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, with this meeting now, we can put 2021 behind us, which has been another stable year for Embracer. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for coming to Karlstad and for participating in the dialogues that we have had here today. At the same time, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Lars and his entire team for a fantastic job. Thank you very much for coming, all of you, and I hope to see you here next week in sunny Karlstad. Thank you very much. Thank you. There are some drinks, but I have been told that we should go out that way, not this way. Was it? Yep. Yep. This way. Well done.