Welcome to Evolution's press conference this Wednesday, the 22nd of June, 2022. After this press conference, there will be a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw a question, please press zero two. Today, I am pleased to present CEO Martin Carlesund. Mr. Carlesund, please begin.
Good day. My name is Martin Carlesund. I'm the CEO of Evolution. The structure of this call will be that I start with presenting today's announcement, and then we'll move into a Q&A. We'll keep this call relatively brief, and I will not comment on anything besides today's announcement. As you know, we are presenting our interim report for the second quarter of 2022 in a couple of weeks. We'll speak again soon. Let's begin. Operator, let's go to the next slide, please. We're always evaluating the options we have to be better every single day. We are always evaluating how we can strengthen our position on the market, use the largest online casino network in the world to give even more value to our customers. Even with that, most important thing is the end user satisfaction.
We need to serve the users not only what they decide today, we need to be ahead of the game and serve them what they in the future want to have seamlessly, flawlessly. This is our core mission. This is what we are paranoid about and constantly want it to be better on. With that intro, I'm truly very, very happy to announce that Evolution has entered into an agreement to acquire Nolimit City. A leading creator and developer of online slot games, adding a missing type of games to the Evolution content network with a high user satisfaction and a preference. Operator, let's go to the next slide, please. Nolimit City is one of the truly innovative companies in online casino. Nolimit City is recognized in our industry for its cutting-edge technology and graphically rich player experience.
Nolimit City is a product developer with distinct content, both in terms of style and storyline, which particularly speaks to advanced slot players who are looking for a richer player experience and a plot with a twist. They're very excited to join forces with Nolimit City team to continue our journey to create a global market leader in online casino games. The company, based in Stockholm and Malta, as well as in India, has rocketed to prominence over the past years by carving out a unique style of slots. Sometimes dark themes, but definitely with a sense of humor, simply a great playing experience with high-end user preference. Every player playing a Nolimit City game will recognize the brand, and the loyalty to the brand is high.
Nolimit City games also feature a number of groundbreaking game mechanics which add excitement to the games and makes players recognize a Nolimit City game. With a high brand awareness and preference, Evolution will add a missing type of games which will move us another step forward towards a clear number one online casino provider. All in all, Nolimit City is an excellent addition to our leading portfolio of the best online casino content in the market. With the acquisition of NetEnt 18 months ago, we added both NetEnt and Red Tiger slots to our live casino offering. It was a significant step forward towards the ambition to become the world-leading provider. The acquisition of Big Time Gaming was as well very important step for us on that journey.
Now we're moving forward with an acquisition of Nolimit City, which has focus on innovation and development of a different type of games with a high-end user preference, which make them a perfect fit with Evolution. I'm very excited about the future development and distribution of Nolimit City through Evolution One Stop Shop, but I'm equally very excited about adding new brilliant minds to the Evolution team. Operator, let's go to the next slide, please. Let's look at a short summary of the transaction. Evolution acquires Nolimit City for a total consideration of up to maximum of EUR 340 million, payable all in cash. I would like to emphasize that Evolution is debt-free both before as well as after this acquisition, and we are financing this acquisition with 100% of existing cash flow without any changes to our dividend policy.
I see our financial strength with a strong cash flow and strong balance sheet as even more important today than only a year ago. Upfront consideration is EUR 200 million. In addition, an earn out will be paid in three tranches, 2023, 2024, and 2025. Maximum earn out is EUR 140 million, giving a total consideration of maximum EUR 340 million, which I already mentioned. The earn out consideration will be payable as well, in 100% cash. Nolimit City revenue for calendar year 2022 is expected around EUR 30 million, with an EBITDA of EUR 23 million. We expect the deal to be accretive to EPS 2022.
The transaction is conditional upon receipt of regulatory approvals, and completion is expected during Q3, but naturally, we put efforts towards as early as possible closure. That's the main points of our message today, and we'll now move into Q&A. Operator, next slide for some questions, please.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two. There will now be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Thank you. Our first question comes from the phone number ending with 5846. Please introduce yourself and ask your question. Your line is now open. Go ahead.
Hi. Morning, everyone. It's Monique Pollard here from Citi. Thanks for that update, Martin. I just had a few quick questions. Firstly, one on cost synergies. I mean, Nolimit just have a very high EBITDA margin already, so I'd assume no cost synergies, but just wanted to check. The second question I had was just on revenues with synergies and whether there's a material opportunity to cross-sell their content, obviously, to the Evolution client base. The third question was just on what we should expect for revenue and earnings growth for this business. Is it reasonable to assume, you know, the double-digit revenue growth that you've talked about for RNG by the end of 2022 into 2023 should be the run rate that we think of for Nolimit as well?
Okay. Thank you, and good morning. When it comes to cost synergies, you can see by the numbers that they have a high and good margin. Cost synergies is not something that you should expect. When it comes to cross-revenue synergies, it all comes down to we have a good structure in the earn-out mechanism, and we expect, of course, Nolimit City to grow fast. We want to contribute to that by adding them to our fantastic network and then, of course, to One Stop Shop and so on. That is sort of included in the mechanism. As referring to the double-digit growth, that has not changed. I try to be clear on that.
We have our double-digit growth target for the already existing stock business, and that remains 100% like it is. Nolimit is added on top of that. I would say that I have higher expectations on Nolimit's growth than on the double-digit that we have for the existing business.
Understood. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the phone number ending with 58588. Please introduce yourself, and go ahead.
Hello-
We will move on as there was no availability there. Our next question will come from Oscar Rönnkvis t from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, Martin. Couple of questions from me.
Good morning.
First of all, just briefly on the business. I assume this is a founder-led Swedish business. Could you mention something about the main owner? That's my first question, please.
It's a founder-led company and fantastic to Emil and Jonas who created the company, and they will of course then remain in the company and contribute to the new Evolution-Nolimit City combination.
Great. In terms of the growth rate historically, and also what the guidance implies here for 2022, what type of growth rates and margin expansion are we talking about would be important to know? Thank you.
It's a fast-growing company, and we look forward to continue doing that. As we move forward, we'll be a little bit clear on exact these numbers as there will be comparisons. During the coming period, we will show that separately so that you can track also the double-digit growth coming out of the already existing slots business.
Great. The regional sales mix, how does it compare to Evolution currently? What types of synergies you see in terms of that regional split, please?
The obvious answer to that is that they are not present, for example, in North America and limited presence in other parts. They are, of course, in Europe. We have to remember that it's a fairly small company and therefore quite limited and potential is there, but they also have some revenue and so on from Asia, but also other parts, but predominantly Europe.
Great. Just a final question from me. One Stop Shop, are you seeing an increased scalability and rationale for doing these types of acquisitions? Should this be seen as that the acquisitions so far have worked out really well and make sense or rather if you sort of need higher scale? Would be interested to hear your reasoning there.
We rebuilt the whole back end and created the One Stop Shop, which we then now, of course, are rolling out. It was with the intent to be able to launch slots faster from also other sources. So that is, and that worked out well. Of course, we're very happy to have that now when we are acquiring Nolimit City because that is already in place.
Perfect. Thank you, Martin. That's it from me.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the phone number ending with 5100. Please introduce yourself and ask the question. Go ahead. Your line is now open. Please ask your question. We will move on with the next question coming from the phone number of 8588. Please introduce yourself and ask the question.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yeah, can hear you.
Hi, it's Ed Young from Morgan Stanley. First question, I just wondered if you could talk a bit more about the characteristics of Nolimit. It's obviously known for being graphically very rich. You touched on that, but you also talked about sort of consumer satisfaction and that kind of thing. I just wondered if you could talk maybe a bit more in the round about what attracted you towards this business, and I guess, connect to that, how scarce is this type of asset? Are there many more things like out there that like this that you might want to acquire? Or is this kind of quite a rare find, do you think, in terms of lining up what you were looking for? Thanks.
Okay, let's start with the content and then move on a little bit to how we look at it. It is a very specific niche content, as you know. It's graphically rich. It's very fascinating, and it has good mechanics attached to it. Maybe then go for a little bit more advanced slot player. As anyone playing a NoLimit slot is attracted by that, they know they play NoLimit. It's very obvious. The preference towards them and the long tail of the games is very good. They build a solid brand, they work a lot with us, and they keep doing these slots which are known to the players. We see, of course, potential in spreading that to newer player groups.
The games are filling a gap that we didn't have before, clearly so. When it comes to acquisitions, it's a bit of a stochastic process, but there are, of course, a few companies that we looked upon. Now I would say that we're very happy. We acquired Big Time Gaming, we acquired NetEnt and Red Tiger, and now we added Nolimit City. In our world, we picked out the ones that we need. There might be others coming up, and we might look at it, but right now we're very happy with the position and the steps that we're taking towards the number one world-leading content provider. I'm very happy with the steps that we took today.
Great. One follow-up on that, if I may. Obviously-
Sure.
You did do DigiWheel as well, which isn't in this space, but most of the acquisitions you made have obviously been in the slot space over the last couple of years. Broadly speaking, is slots the obvious place for you to be making acquisitions, or do you think there are other parts of the business you could augment? Are there kind of, you know, genuine size targets out there that could augment live or other parts of the business in some kind of way? Just curious how you think about the opportunity set in that respect.
We're pushing, as you know. We're a company never really happy. We want to do better every day, and we are doing that with live, and we are increasing the gap to competition, and I don't see the potential in buying a company in live. Maybe it occurs, who knows? Right now we don't see that. Maybe there are parts of technology, just like you saw with DigiWheel, where, oh, we need this piece of hardware or software or a combination of both to build the new games. That could happen.
In the slots arena, I think that we are building that business, and we have a clear view on where we want to be, and we want to be a complete supplier, but above all, we want to hand over the best content in the world to the end user. There we need a couple of pieces, and I think that we found those ones now.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. At this time, there are no outstanding questions. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero-one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press zero-two. There will now be a brief pause on questions being registered. Thank you. Our first question comes from the phone number ending with 5100. Please introduce yourself and go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hello, 5,100. Can't hear you.
We will move on to the next question, posed by the number ending with 7639. Please introduce yourself and go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Simon Davies speaking from Deutsche Bank. Just a few from me, please. First, can you give us any more detail around the earn-out structure for the deal? You talked about it being a stretch target. Do you expect the earn-out to be paid in full? And what is the implied valuation for the business if you do that? And secondly, can you give us a feel for headcount within the business, and where that's come from, and the location of the studios? Is this a business that's been capital constrained? Is that one of the advantages you see acquiring the business, that you can apply more capital and expand it more rapidly?
The last question there, sorry, what was that? I didn't get it. I didn't catch it.
Just, is this a business that has been capital constrained, i.e., is one of the positives, in terms of your ability to grow the business, apply more capital and expanding the studio structure more aggressively?
Let's go from the back. No, I don't see that they have been strained by lack of capital. I think that the contribution Evolution can do is of course tech. We can help with the technology to some extent, but it's equally very important to state that they have a fantastic platform. They have fantastic slots, so they can equally contribute to Evolution. On top of that, I think that the other contribution is One Stop Shop and the delivery and the output of it. So, capital hasn't been a constraint.
The size of the company, we don't go into detail in that, but you can look at it as around 100, so to give you some kind of figure.
Where are they based?
That's what I said. It's like Stockholm, Malta, and in India to a certain extent.
Yeah.
They are a few off in others. The first question you had was on the earn-out structure. There we don't go into details in explaining exactly how that is set up, but of course we expect to pay in full. It's a. We're pushing and we're really looking forward to that. That's where we're going.
You can't indicate the implied valuation if they achieve that in full?
That is internal information. We don't disclose that, unfortunately.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. At this moment, there are no further questions. I will hand over to the CEO, Mr. Carlesund, for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I can add an additional remark on that on the earn-out structure. If fulfilled, it will be a better deal, looking better, so it's not a higher, so you know that. Now, that was all I had for today. I would also like to mention that this presentation is available on our website, so you can reach it there. By that, I want to thank you all for listening, and we'll speak again in just a couple of weeks for the Q2 report. Thank you very much.