Yeah, just handing over to Evolution. Evolution has attacked the allegation of illegal activity, and as this is one of your favorite topics, as soon as the name of Evolution is dropped, I kind of leave the floor for you, Per.
Well, as a starting point, if you look at the share price of Evolution in the last six months, you could mistake it for an EKG graph. It looks like one of those heartbeat graphs, you know, which just goes up and down, up and down, up and down. Again, we've seen in the last couple of days, in the last week, the share price of Evolution have dropped 25%. Which is not so fun to say as a shareholder in the company, I must say. Nonetheless, it's interesting stuff that's coming from there. I don't think that it has escaped anyone in this room, but just to summarize why this drop has occurred.
It's because there was a short-seller report that was released about a week ago that has been commissioned by an anonymous competitor to Evolution, which supposedly is American-based. This short-seller report essentially accuses Evolution for offering games to black-market-based players, like players from the likes of Syria and Iran, which are sanctioned countries by the U.S. Of course, the moment a report mentions that you are doing business with countries like Iran and Syria from an American perspective, 15 red flags and red sirens goes off and shareholders get spooked, of course.
The knee-jerk reaction to this report has been a drop in 25% so far of the share price. Just this morning, the markets opened 1.5 hours ago, and the share price is down 6.5% today and falling. We still have possibly not reached the bottom of this bear run, let's say. Okay, then we look at the report. What does the accusation say? Well, in a nutshell, the report is about 100 pages long. I've skimmed through it, the 100 pages.
I haven't read every single word in the report, but essentially what the accusations are is that these short sellers have basically conducted interviews with current and former Evolution executives. They are anonymous, so obviously you don't know exactly to what extent they are telling the truth.
Nonetheless, the short seller report is claiming that current and former Evolution employees are talking openly about how they are well aware that Evolution is taking players from these black markets, and how they are very well aware, even though the traffic goes via the operator, and even though the players are using VPNs in order to access these operators, that Evolution is still aware that this foul play is happening through the operators, let's say.
What the operators—sorry, what Evolution has said themselves, they released a press release yesterday, which basically states that Evolution is basically putting the blame on the operators, saying that we are a supplier, we are a content supplier, we produce games, and we offer those games to our operator clients. Then what the operators do is kind of up to them. They are expected to follow local regulation, but it's not Evolution who decides who plays the games, it's the operators who decide if they take a player or not. Therefore, Evolution has no blame in the matter. Now, you could argue that Evolution potentially have some ethical responsibility to ensure that the operators are not being nefarious.
Like, I think we all know operators who are nefarious, who do operate on black market. Many crypto casinos, obviously. Even though that's general knowledge, Evolution has still taken the decision to supply these operators with their games. You could say that even if Evolution has not broken the law, they could potentially still have some ethical dilemmas in order to answer the question if they should provide these operators with their games in the first place. Nonetheless, the markets have reacted extremely negative to this, and I would be really excited to hear some opinions on this, from what you guys make of this in this chat.
I don't know, Carolina, if you have looked into this a bit further, if you have any thoughts here.
Yeah, I can share my thoughts. Definitely, you know, I've heard very different opinions. I've heard opinions that this competition you know commissioning these reports and also quite uncertainty around which competitor and because there are cases for you know some that are in progress of being bought, that maybe they should raise their valuation or completely other ones where the relationship has been problematic for a while. I also heard that this is hedge funds you know aiming to short basically with that goal in mind. On the actual statement of Evo, it's true.
When you work as an operator, it's very difficult from a game supplier to detect the country of a customer who is already KYC'd by an operator and is logging in via VPN. It's not impossible, but it's difficult, and I think there probably will be more measures in place from providers. Even in the past where, you know, Australia got shut down or Canada got shut down by some providers, they'd be blocking them not just using the game launcher from an operator, but they also had their own recognition on their side to block the markets. I guess that's bypassed by VPN.
With the cases of players in Iran and those markets, I mean, as long as the player has opened the account somewhere else in a different territory, has gone through KYC and has made a deposit with a card that is registered not in that country, then it's very difficult to detect that. I can say firsthand myself, because I'm sitting sometimes in Poland, where a lot of operators are not taking traffic, and I wanna test some stuff. It's enough that I use a Maltese account of someone and I can log in from Poland using the easiest GBP 10 a month VPN, you know?
I do think that there is something in defense of Evo that they are not the operator that have been accepting these players, and it is difficult on their side to detect that manipulation. It's not sophisticated, as they called it. I wouldn't call it sophisticated, but it's still difficult to detect. I would see more being done in the area from everyone because this is especially for listed companies. You know, you've seen how the market reacted. It's a massive risk. Regardless of their statement and whether they're right or not, they will look out on it. I hope it will recover, but it will be too risky for anyone else to afford not to have a mechanism that can somehow.
I don't know if it's gonna be done technologically, but someone pick up and those territories.
Interesting, Caroline. Brian, if you are read into the story, I would love to hear your thoughts as well, considering that you are running a game studio yourself. You know, like, do you have any two cents, something to chime in on the story?
Yeah. Hi. Hi, thanks for welcoming me to stage, Pierre. It's been a while. Yeah, I think I kind of echo what Caroline is saying in the fact that, you know, as a supplier, you generally don't really get much access to what's going on from the player's context. So you kind of get a currency code and a language, and that's pretty much where you're at. You know, with this world of VPNs and obfuscated servers and things like that, so it's reasonably easy for anyone who has any kind of technical knowledge to mess around and kinda cause problems for systems.
I mean, even in a more traditional sense, we've had things where we've had players kind of pinging and messing around with servers to try to force and exploit and take down games and stuff just to see if they could break them and things like that. That's just the nature of putting a product out on the internet, you know, for anyone to have a go at, essentially. Nothing's kind of foolproof. On the flip side, yes, you've got to be smart about who you're doing business with in general, right? It's not just this industry. You've got to be pretty clear about the intentions of those partners and what they're planning to do.
It all comes down to your risk appetite, which I think is a very, very common conversation in boardrooms these days about, you know, what is their risk appetites, where do they want to go, where do they not want to go? That's a very hard balance to walk as well when you're in the B2B space. It's not easy. I'll say that.
I get the feeling that many of the investors that have kind of jumped on board the Evolution train have done so with, let's say, a bit gullible eyes, where the expectation is that the revenue comes from legitimate and good sources, let's say. Even though we as an industry know that some of the major operators and players are active in playing black and gray markets, perhaps the investors are not that in the know of this.
They get spooked, of course, when they see a report like this, which maybe to us as an industry is not as but when you are a $30 billion company, the responsibility to do the due diligence on who your partners are becomes all of a sudden a lot higher. I guess that is a little bit where the question is. It's more an ESG question. It's more an ethical question rather than a legal one perhaps. That's the feeling that I'm getting. Is anyone in the room who'd like to chime in on this as well? Nico, I can see you're flashing in the back.
Yeah. Although Hölle Games, where we have the founder and CEO in the panel as well, is not yet valued EUR 30 billion or close to EUR 30 billion. I'm pretty sure, Robert, you're quite familiar, of course, with the German regulation and the German regulators. They also want to take the games providers into liability as well. What is your take or your risk appetite or what are your thoughts about the overall value chain and that this might be a paradigm shift as well? Give us your insights.
Hi, Nico. Thank you. I think there's two topics. It's also about market power and size. As Evolution, it's mostly about the live casino. Evolution obviously knows if they pull out of a certain market they should or should not be doing, then they know there's one or two other companies, you know, moving in. When you compare it to slots where you have 150 suppliers, you know, that doesn't, you know, move up your competitors a lot if you move out of that certain market. I'm sure that's also sort of that's an important consideration. Regarding Germany and Australia similar. Then what I'm hearing, and it's a rumor, meaning it's being discussed currently.
I was a little bit in shock at first when I heard it, but then I actually fell a little bit in love with the idea. When you talk about regulation, the first thing which comes to mind always is, you know, payment blocking and IP blocking. We just know as an industry, it's not very effective because IPs, you know, it can change all the time, and there's all kinds of subdomains being launched in that market. The payment company consists of, you know, two directors, three companies and five contracts, basically. Payment companies are quickly created for a certain market, but suppliers you can't just create on the spot. It takes a long time to build up games, build up, you know, the name, build up integrations and so on.
What's being discussed currently in Germany is that hopefully it's based on a blacklist, let's see, not on a whitelist. Would be charming if it's on a blacklist because then it's clear to everyone that there could be a list, blacklist or whitelist. Let's hope it's a blacklist, that you're not allowed to serve these types of customers. I think that could be extremely effective regulation because content is king. If the players don't get any of the content they are used to, two things happen. Number one, I think a lot of players will actually come to or are forced to play in the white market. Secondly, what I always felt about the black market is the sites look very professional.
The sites act very professional, if you know, like management and the teams behind them. Also the games look very professional because they come from all the renowned suppliers. If you know, like 150 game studios who adhere to all of these rules, which is likely in such a scenario, because game suppliers are easier to grab, let's say. I mean, you know, like it's harder to hide behind Curaçao entities, let's say, because the name is the name, and you shut down that supplier. The operators typically are, you know, would also adhere to this. I think that's a very interesting path forward.
If it happens in Germany, it happened in other countries, but in Germany it could be a case where, you know, it's black and white, where you have a blacklist and the suppliers are not allowed to serve these players. It could provide for. I'm interested in your opinions on this. If this, you know, I think there's one or two regulations where this is similar. At first I was in shock. I'm like, okay, because now I have to be the police to a degree, which is bad for supply. I have to understand who is illegal basically. Which is very hard in a, let's call it fluid regulation, like in Germany.
If there's a blacklist, that will be quite an interesting concept, I think.
Essentially, Robert, what you're saying is, this blacklist will be a blacklist of operators that you can't work with?
Yes, yes.
Exactly. You would just need to follow that list. Yeah, Caroline?
Maybe I'm going back to the subject of Evo quickly in those markets because someone sent me a message while we are on this chat saying, you know, logically, Evo must have the right mechanism in place to block certain markets. Because if you are in the U.S. and you have to go state by state, how else are you able to secure, you know, ensure the regulators that you take traffic just from specific states? This is just something I wanted to pass on someone who maybe didn't feel comfortable saying this themselves.
Well, Lisbeth, I saw you were flashing the mic a bit. Anything to chime in on?
Yes. Looking at it from an ESG sustainability point of view, I think this is a good thing for the industry, and it's because the market and the investors are telling us what they expect and what they expect us to do from an ESG point of view. They don't want companies that are in regulated markets to be operating in black markets, too. I think this is a change, a trend to more of ESG focus. We've seen it as well. We've discussed the Hindenburg Research with DraftKings and SBTech. It's very similar, and there will probably be more cases, and the U.S. seems to be much more focused on this than European investors.
I think it's a good thing sustainability-wise to separate the regulated, unregulated focus and also the whole supplier and partner due diligence. I see that this is something that is the responsibility of the companies and probably regulation on this will be hard. I mean, if you have to blacklist operators change every day, and regulation needs to keep up with that. They probably will opt for something more of protocol and have the responsibility at the companies, like, for example, how we are responsible for our affiliate marketing. We've seen it before in other industries as well, like the whole clothing industry.
What was it like nearly ten years ago when we had these factories collapsing in India and people were working under very bad labor circumstances for big brands like H&M. There was more and more focus on, like H&M said yes, but it's outsourced. It's the factory's problem. It isn't because it's now known that you need to know your supply chain. You need to know your supply chain before you and after you. If you wanna be an ethical company, then you need to work with suppliers that fit that, otherwise it will be seen like what we see now.
Yeah. That is the interesting question I think, Lisbeth. Exactly what responsibility do Evolution have to do due diligence on the operators that are supplying the games essentially? I think that's where the discussion will be held. Jake, I saw that you were flashing your mic here a bit. By the way, welcome, Jake, as well to the chat and welcome to iGaming NEXT today. Be really exciting to have you on here on the virtual start in the future. Would love to hear your thoughts on the-
Yeah. Thank you very much, Pierre. Great to be here, and nice to be in my first ever clubhouse. Yeah, I think Lisbeth made some good points there, and it also goes back to something that you said earlier on, Pierre, in that you know, we sort of live and breathe the gaming industry every day, and it's quite important to really sort of take a step back. Because a lot of these investors you know have super diverse portfolios and gaming isn't the be-all and end-all for them. They see a stock like Evolution that you know has gone up and up and up, and it's a sort of clear market leader.
Then all of a sudden a report comes out with some frightening words in it, like U.S. sanctions and some countries listed that you might not necessarily associate regulated gaming with. You know, it does scare them, and that sort of causes the sell-off and the drop-off. I think the same thing happened, like you said, with the Hindenburg report. I mean, that was, you know, common knowledge really throughout the industry if you've ever worked in it before. I remember at the time thinking, oh, yeah, people are actually taken by surprise at this because you know, it's the first time you learn that these companies that we're all familiar with might be operating in some different markets to what they showcase to investors.
Like Lisbeth said, it comes back to ESG now, and that is gonna be a, you know, a central pillar for how gaming stocks perform in the future.
Yeah. Really interesting, Jake. Maybe it is a correction that we are seeing here now in an industry. Lisbeth, perhaps you can chime in on this as well from an ESG perspective. Again, maybe it's a correction here where Evolution will be more or less forced to take action here and start doing due diligence on their operators, just like H&M, where back in the day when before the markets reacted to the supply chain, they didn't have to do anything because it was business as usual. Once their investors understood what was happening kind of behind the scenes, then H&M were more or less forced to take action in order to work with more ethical suppliers, let's say. What do you think here, Lisbeth?
We will see a shift in the industry as well where the industry needs to clean up its act, let's say?
I think so. I think there's more of when we talk about the boardrooms, more of talk about what is the level of risk indeed where we wanna take and what is the level of regulated versus gray versus black, and are these even compatible nowadays to work in symmetry? You wanna split your companies, but then again, they will look from whom are the owners, whom are the founders and everything under those. It goes quite strong back when it comes to new regulation where you wanna be involved. Yeah, overall, I think ESG has been taken off, and companies maybe have not always taken it serious.
That's why I say this is a good thing because if we wanna be companies that are regulated markets, we will focus on it, and it will be, in the end, a better thing for the industry because the stigma around the industry and the reputation will improve if we can prove like our ESG focus.
One step back in order to take two steps forward, in other words. Now the question is, the natural follow-up question from investors will be to ask Evolution just how much revenue comes from black markets. I mean, it's not exactly something, Evolution, would like to disclose in their quarterly reports. I would assume at least that investors are asking these questions because, if it is the case that Evolution will, kind of have to start taking a step back from these, black markets and potentially, have to take a step away from, certain nefarious operators, then again, the question becomes like, how much revenue will they actually lose? I would say that the expectation is that it could be a quite significant, portion of the entire revenue.
I don't know if anyone would like to chime in or have any kind of guesses or thoughts on what the revenue from Evolution's black markets could actually be, but I would assume that it's quite significant.
I want to just quickly point out one thing. If you go to reports of Evolution quarterly or yearly reports, there is a section that says Asia, and it's in the reports openly. I'm on the boat of investors in the market being completely dumb because Evolution is not hiding these things. They are publicly putting them out there.
Investors in the U.S. market really like jumped on it. It's a growing stock. Actions that have been taken right now, they're. I don't know who did them, but they are obviously motivated to create some damage. If you run such a huge operation as Evolution guys, then you cannot handle every single player that is trying to go around your systems that are set up as a macro system. For the U.S., I understand it's well regulated. You set up separate servers, separate systems, and you keep them in the state. How you do this for Europe or like, let's say, dot com, the rest of the world, gray market, it's nearly impossible from technical point of view, and it requires a lot of personnel investment.
I mean, like, from HR, a lot of people that needs to really sit there and do manual work. On the explanation that Evolution put out there, I'm definitely on their side on this one because it was just an exercise showing, okay, we can go around your systems if we want to and if we put enough resources to do so.
Great. Thanks. I'd like to jump over to Bernd Henning as well. It's nice to have you in the clubhouse chat here as well. Any comments, any thoughts from your end as well here on the Evolution topic?
Yeah. It's difficult to say because I've been on both sides. I know that in each contract you have as an operator with a game supplier, there is a list of restricted countries, and you have to sign markets. As the previous speaker said, it's easy for customers to go around, even if you declare that you don't allow them. If they have a credit card from another country. Even in Europe, we see at the moment that especially in Germany, it's going to gray market. It's difficult to control that. As long as there is not a system worldwide which controls money flow and other things, internet has no walls. There will be always a way around.
You can just, as a supplier, make sure that your systems are as good as possible, but you can't blame them, really. If they are not going openly to someone and say, "Okay, yeah, go for it, we don't mind." Which Evolution is not doing. It's difficult.
Difficult indeed. As we've had this conversation, I can now say that Evolution is down 10.5% on the market only today, and this is two hours after the markets has opened today. Some absolutely Nostradamus on the market today for Evolution. I would assume that there's a lot of discussions happening in the boardroom as we speak how to handle this conversation. Just to chime in so far, just to take a step back, Evolution released a statement, again, taking a step back from these accusations. Also, in an investor call, Martin Carlesund, the CEO, kind of reiterated what was stated in this press release, basically taking a step back from these accusations.
Obviously the investors are not pleased with this response. Since that statement, again, the shares keep falling. I'm sure that this is not the last that we have heard from this situation. If the shares keep falling, obviously Evolution will be kind of forced to communicate more publicly on this situation and so on. We'll follow this very closely, and I'm sure we'll follow up on this next week as well.