Good morning, everyone. My name is Mia Nordlander. I am Senior Vice President, Investor Relations at Kambi Group. Today, I have with me Kristian Nylén, our CEO, and David Kenyon, our CFO, who will start today with presenting the quarter. Thereafter, we will have time for questions. You can either call in through the telephone conference or send them directly to me through the web chat. Once again, very welcome, and over to you, Kristian.
Thank you, Mia, and good morning. I will start with a brief overview of the first quarter, after which David will take over and go through the financial performance. I will come back and speak more about the quarter in a little bit more depth. I forgot to show agenda here. The quarter, I would say that overall, we are very pleased with the quarter, and I think we have a very strong financial performance yet again, with a 25% operator turnover growth if you exclude the DraftKings numbers from last year. Most of this turnover growth is coming from existing operators growing in new markets, and most notably maybe New York online and Connecticut. I think David will go through these numbers more later on.
As we communicated already during the Q4 report, we have extended the Kindred partnership until the end of 2026. That gives us financial security with the revenues from Kindred for yet another five years. At the same time, we announced the ability to repay the convertible bond, which means that we have much more flexibility with our strategic options going forward. During the quarter, we strengthened our position in North America with two new partnership signings. One is MaximBet, and the other is NorthStar, and I will talk more about them later. Just after the quarter, we launched in Ontario. There was a few really big events in the Q1.
Super Bowl, of course, the biggest event we have on a yearly basis, and March Madness, the playoffs in the college basketball in the U.S. I will go through our product performance later on, but I'm very happy to see that we managed both these events without any disturbance whatsoever. With that, I hand over to David. I will come back later. Thank you.
Thanks, Kristian. Overall, I'd say we saw a very strong financial performance this quarter. We continue to be profitable. We continue to be strongly cash flow generative, and we have a powerful balance sheet, which positions us well for continued growth. When you see the comparatives, of course, there will be some headwinds that we've mentioned previously, but just to reiterate, the DraftKings migration that took place in the second half of last year. That's obviously shows in the numbers in Q1 last year. The DraftKings numbers are present. There's nothing in here in the Q1 2022 numbers. Also in the Netherlands, where some of our operators are still to obtain a license, and of course, Q1 2021, again, there are figures included for Netherlands for those operators.
I'd say operator turnover was extremely strong this quarter, and combined with an 8.2% operator trading margin, gave us an overall revenue figure for the quarter of EUR 36.9 million. Costs of EUR 29.5 million were in line with our expectations. This gave us overall an operating profit of EUR 7.3 million. That's an operating margin of 19.9%. We also generated EUR 5.5 million in terms of cash flow from operating and investing activities, excluding working capital movements. This gave us a net cash position at the end of the quarter of EUR 72.4 million. This gives us firepower to continue using our balance sheet in the future, whether for M&A or for further share buybacks. This is the Kambi Turnover Index.
It's an aggregation of the results of all of our operators in the quarter, over time as well. The blue bars is an aggregation of the turnover generated, and that's on an index basis, which we set at 100 when we started the business. The orange line is an aggregate of the trading margin made by the operators. That trading margin was 8.2% this quarter. More on the turnover then, 757 there. It's consistent with Q4, and I think this is largely driven by the sporting calendar. There's some quite big factors here to explain. Firstly, American football. Q4 saw a full quarter of activity, whereas in Q1, we just saw the playoffs and the Super Bowl and the last few matches of the college football season.
However, in basketball, this offset the American football effect. We had a full quarter of college basketball, including the March Madness tournament. On the European football front, there were actually quite a lot fewer matches in Q1 than Q4 in the Champions League as it moved from the group stages to the knockout stages. Overall, 757, roughly in line with where we expected to come. Probably more explanation needed on the movement from last year on the 1,056 down to 757, and I've set these out on this slide. Firstly, the headwinds I mentioned previously. The DraftKings migration, which took place during the second half last year, that's actually contributed approximately 40% of last Q1's turnover. A huge part that's come out versus this year. Secondly, the Netherlands regulation.
As mentioned, a few operators are yet to obtain a license, and we look forward to that happening, which will be a tailwind to our business when that does happen. On to all the factors which have actually boosted our turnover versus Q1 last year. Firstly, new operators. We've signed quite a number since this time last year, and some of those include BetCity and JVH in the Dutch market and the Belgian National Lottery, and we're very pleased with the progress of these operators. We've also launched into various new states in the U.S., including Arizona, Connecticut, Louisiana, and most recently, New York Online, all contributing now to the Q1 2022 numbers. We've seen our existing operators grow both organically and expanding their geographical footprint. All in all, excluding that DraftKings number, 25% growth in operator turnover, a number we're very pleased with.
Finally, I just want to talk you through the Kambi revenue conversion. How that 28% decrease in operator turnover after FX ended up in just a 15% decrease in revenue. First thing to mention there, the operator margin, the 8.2%, that's against 8.5% Q1 last year. A small negative for us on the margin front. The biggest impact is in the other column there, which pushes up the deficit from 30% to just the 15% overall. The biggest factor here is the way we structure our contracts. We structure our contracts in many cases with tiers, with significantly lower commission rates on the highest parts of the operator activity.
You can understand when we lose a big operator such as DraftKings, overall, we end up with actually a higher effective revenue share across the network. Secondly, we have more live events here in Q1 2022, which is not linked to the operator turnover, but does drive revenue for us. We also have other fixed revenues, which again are not linked to the level of operator turnover and are pushing that other bar up. Finally, we had a full quarter of Abios revenues, the acquisition we made in the end of last year, which again is not showing in the Q1 2021. All of those contributed to overall a 15% deficit in revenue. Yeah, significantly lower deficit than the operator turnover would initially indicate. Yeah, very strong financial quarter.
With that, I'm gonna pass you back to Kristian.
Thank you, David. We have four key pillars that drives our strategy, and we usually try to update you on some of the progress here. This time we have a progress when it comes to our core platform and our differentiation and empowerment. First, I would like to talk a little bit about our modernization strategy. As I have communicated before, this is firstly developed, driven by increasing our efficiency in our own IT development. By modernizing the service more and more, we get higher efficiency in our development. Secondly, we believe that with this modernization, we will be able to give our existing partners a greater possibilities for differentiation.
Finally, where we hope to go by the beginning of next year, is to start launching modules as a standalone service and create new revenue streams. This quarter, we have done quite a lot of progress on what we're doing, especially when we talk about the data and pricing interface, where we, within a few weeks, we'll be able to start launching our first internal pricing unit through this interface. In the summer, we hope to be able to push all Abios new odds product through this interface.
On the front end, we have also started with an implementation of what's called GraphQL that enables more flexibility for data queries from our customers in their endeavor to create a stronger front end on our APIs. We are in the process of creating new standalone services. I will communicate more about that in future quarters. Another thing we have been working on and launched this quarter is automated offering filtering. With more and more complexity with more and more regulations across the world, it becomes very important for us to be able to automate some of the filtering for what we can offer in different regulations. I can take some examples.
In Sweden, you're not allowed to offer events on under 18 players. In New Jersey, you're not allowed to offer the college teams in the state or matches played in the state, and so on. In many different regulations, many different rule sets. You can solve this manually, but it opens up for a lot of mistakes. With this, I think we have tightened up the risk of making any mistakes, even though we have been very, very good at delivering a compliant product. It also makes it much, much more scalable and cost-effective. Finally, it creates much wanted speed to market with a very, very high quality product from day one.
Bet Builder, d uring the quarter, we have launched both ice hockey and baseball Bet Builder. As you can see, I showed this graph last time, so I won't go through it too much this time. As you can see, we are comparing very, very well to the two market leaders when it comes to this product. During Super Bowl and March Madness, we did some internal product benchmarking against the top three operators in the U.S. As you can see on this graph, in our perception at least, we hold up very, very well. I would say, especially on the live betting, we are a stronger supplier than any of the existing market leaders at the moment can deliver when it comes to a product.
I think there is one big gap for us at the moment, and that is a Bet Builder on basketball, which takes down our grade internally on basketball. This is intentional. We knew that we wouldn't be able to produce a Bet Builder to the start of this season, so we choose to do baseball first, and we will be ready with a Bet Builder for the basketball season next year. During the quarter, we did 11 partner launches in various states. Of course, maybe the most important of these launches was to be online on day one on the market opening in New York State. We have two partner signings as well. MaximBet, that we signed a multi-year sportsbook partnership with.
We are very soon to be launching in the first state with MaximBet. The NorthStar Gaming, which I hope will be a very strong local player in the Ontario market. I think we are very close to be able to launch with them as well. Talking about Canada, Kambi is now live in Ontario with Kindred, LeoVegas, and Rush Street. We became one of the first sportsbook providers to obtain a regulatory approval to launch in Ontario. There are still some of the big ones who haven't been able to launch in the state. As of now, since just, I think it was the third of April, we are up and running with three partners, as I said.
Ontario has every chance to become one of the largest sports betting markets in North America. Kambi has a very, very strong product with our Scandinavian heritage. We are great at ice hockey, and of course, that's also the most popular sport in Canada. I wanted to touch a little bit on the sales opportunity we see at the moment in the world, actually. If I start in the U.S., I mean, obviously there are still a few multi-state operators that are very interesting to win, and I think we have some decent chances of doing that. Also, I think there is many states that hasn't opened yet, and some of the largest states are still up for grabs, especially in California.
We believe that it will be very much a state that is dominated by local players. Of course, I think California is almost a third of GDP in the U.S. Texas, the second-largest state in the U.S., is also progressing well. In Latin America, Brazil is nearing regulation. It's a massive country, and I believe we have some great opportunities there as well. In Canada, there is still some big local brands yet to select their sportsbook partner, and I hope we have a great opportunity there.
In Europe, as I have communicated before, we definitely see that there are tier ones considering their strategy and may have been in-house before and looking at an outsourcing strategy now, or in some other cases, changing from existing third-party supplier. Finally, Asia. It's a more of a longer term prospect of course, but I mean, it's a huge market when it happens. We see that it's moving in Philippines already, but what we really are looking forward for is what we see tendencies of movements in both Japan and India. During the quarter, we have also been recognized by Global Gaming Awards as the best retail supplier and the best online sports betting supplier. This is awards, of course, that is voted by peers in the industry.
We're very proud of winning these awards yet again. In addition, I also wanted to point out that Eilers & Krejcik who is doing a report on sports betting apps in the U.S., pointed out that their testing during the quarter indicate that Kambi is definitely the third party supplier of choice in the U.S., and we are powering three of the top 10 apps in the U.S. Last night, actually, we won yet another award as the top sports betting supplier by EGR North America. I just want to remind you that we are just as last year, coming back to Kambi's Festival of Sportsbook this year. That will be held on. What's the date?
23rd-27th.
The 23rd-27th of May.
Yes.
You can register on www.kambi.com/slash festival. To summarize the quarter. The financial performance remains very strong. We're very happy with numbers we can produce. Very much as I pointed out on the sales slide, momentum continues to build across Americas, and we hope to see a lot more regulation going on. The proven product excellence we can show for is really driving success going forward. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Kristian and David. Now it's time for questions. If you want to ask a question, you can either call in or send them through the web. We will start with a telephone question. Over to you, operator.
Thank you. Our first question comes from Oscar Rönnkvist from ABG. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. A few ones from me. At first, I wonder if you had any comments on the convertible bond. If you could elaborate on the benefits that you see once you can repay it.
We don't really have more comments than last time. There are some benefits. I don't really want to elaborate very much about it. Obviously, we create more freedom for ourselves, if and when we decide to repay the bond.
Okay. Got it. Is there any specific reason why you haven't repaid it yet?
Again, I really don't want to comment on the specific reasons. There are some benefits of not repaying it. We can do it whenever we want to do it. I think that is the most important thing to know.
Okay, got it. Next one. Just roughly speaking, when do you expect it could be possible to see your first client signing for a modular offering, i.e. not taking your turnkey solution? Just to clarify, I mean, the timing when you could potentially start to negotiate deals, if that would be distinguished from the development.
Yes. As I have mentioned, I think realistically early next year is probably when you will see us starting taking deals on a modularized service.
Okay. Understood. How do you see the competitive landscape developing? For example, just I know that Pragmatic Play recently entered a sports betting market and signed what it seems to be quite an interesting client. Just do you have any comments on the competitive landscape?
I mean, in general, I would say the landscape is less competitive now than it was a few years ago. I think we've especially SBTech disappearing from the market as a B2B supplier. I think we have seen less of competition the last year. There will obviously come in new entrants to the market, but I feel we have a very unique position as a top-tier provider of sports betting services.
Okay. Got it. Just a final one. Is it possible to get a comment on current trading for the start of Q2? Like, anything on the sporting events? Is it like punter-friendly results? Anything on the start of Ontario? Any comments would be helpful.
Sorry. We have always refrained from comment on it, since many of our operators are listed as well. We let them comment on the start of the quarter.
All right. Understood. That was all for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
As a reminder to register for a question, please press zero followed by the one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Viktor Högberg from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, good morning. Could you help us with Abios, how much it contributed to revenues and results for OpEx in Q1?
Sure. Yeah. It was approximately EUR 500,000 on revenues and around EUR 150,000 on an EBIT level from Abios.
I think you said in Q4 that the Abios revenues were somewhere between EUR 500,000-EUR 1 million on a quarterly basis. Is that still true? What to expect going forward and just the momentum in that business now that you're part of it and can start to cross sell?
Yeah, I mean, typically, I mean, for this year, we're gonna be seeing between half and 1 million EUR, I'd say, maybe towards the lower end of that range of it. Yeah, that would typically be the quarterly revenue number. Hopefully at a profitable basis like we saw in Q1. Yeah, then in terms of the future, I think, you know, when they soon start selling their odds product, I think that will be the real kind of boost to that business from those numbers which are already profitable without it. You know, that could be the real boost.
Timing for that? Potential time.
I think second half of this year is best estimate.
Okay. What are you hearing on Brazil? You didn't mention it in the Q1 report, the regulatory status there. What's the latest? What are your thoughts on sports betting and potential timing for go live once regulated?
Yeah, I mean, it's impossible to speculate. I mean, we have seen it before. I mean, my favorite example is the Dutch market that took over a decade from when we started talking about it. We still hope very much and it's good indication that it could happen this year, but it's impossible to speculate about it.
Okay. On the Dutch licensing for your clients, you said that you're expecting the headwind to ease soon. That's more than some operators have said on the situation. What's the latest in terms of essential licensing in the Dutch market?
Again, I mean, we are not the ones who have a direct contact with regulators. I think it's probably better for you to ask that question to the operators than us.
Since you said it, I think I assume that you have indications that it might be soon and would soon be licensing during Q2, live in Q3.
We have hope. We haven't got indications, so.
I'm sorry?
We have hope. We don't have indications.
Okay. Have you seen anything change, if I would put it like that? Have you changed your outlook in either way in terms of timing?
As we said, I mean, we don't have a direct contact with the regulator. We can be up and running with a flick of a switch. You have to ask that question to operators.
One thing that you do control, the OpEx development and the OpEx guidance, given the Q1 level and also the guidance for Q2, it opens up for quite a wide range for the second half, given that the range is EUR 10 million, 125 to 135 in yearly OpEx this year. Could you help us with what's reasonable to expect, and why did you keep the range this big, given that you're guiding for half of the year?
Yeah, I mean, there's obviously a lot of uncertainty at the moment in the world with a lot of inflation around, be it through data costs or, you know, other parts of the business as well. You know, there are some uncertainties when we come to forecasting costs. I think we've always been quite accurate in the ranges we've given and the numbers we've hit. I can't tell you right now where we'll be, but that's why we've given quite a big range. It's really gonna be driven by head count, the number of new customers, by new regulations. There's still quite a few things that are out of our direct control. Yeah, hopefully just trust in that range and, you know, we're confident we'll hit it.
Okay. Speaking of inflation, can you do anything on pricing? Is that a part of the discussion? It's not really applicable to your service maybe, but have there been any discussions on pricing given what everyone are seeing on their input costs?
I think most of our pricing is based on revenue share, and that would be quite odd if we changed that due to inflation, I think. Of course, we have some fixed revenues that are just based on the data cost. If the data cost goes up, we will of course be covered for that in higher fixed revenues as well.
Okay. Final one for me on, in the CEO letter in the Q1 report, you had something on the maneuverability that the changed amendment or the amended terms with Kindred and the convertible bond gives you that will enable you to add value for all stakeholders, and I think you would. I mean, shareholders would want that one. So I think it's quite clear that investors in the market have quite a hard time understanding the bullish commentaries around the pipeline and this Kindred deal and also the buybacks last year. So maybe if you could help us a bit understanding.
On a previous question, you said you didn't want to comment on the flexibility with the deal, but I think you might have to add some color to it for people to really understand. 'Cause there are a lot of question marks on the path going forward. Whatever you could do to help with that would be good.
Yeah. I mean, what I can give is, I mean, I think and hope that most of the listeners are quite aware of what kind of covenants you have around a bond. I think that should give you quite a good indication of what kind of more flexibility we get by being able to repay the bond if we were to choose to do so. I can't really give you anything more on that at this point.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Walter Lindhagen from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. There was a question regarding the second quarter there, and you didn't want to comment on the start of the quarter. Could you say anything about kind of what year-on-year impact you expect of not having the Euro Football Championship this year that you had last year? If you could give any flavor on that impact.
Yeah. I think, I mean, it is a World Cup year, but it's a very, very strange World Cup year, with the World Cup not coming until November and December. So, the effect we normally see in a World Cup year will definitely not be here, in Q2. You should treat Q2 more as one of the years when we have no big tournament.
All right. Got it. A question regarding Kindred. I mean, it has passed a few months now since the news regarding the convertible bond. I was wondering if you could share anything regarding reactions from your existing clients on the ability that you now have to repay this bond.
It has not been that much reactions at all, I would say. I think they are. Most of our customers doesn't really. It doesn't impact them with that news at all. Not much of a reaction at all.
All right. Thank you. That was all for me.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Jack Cummings from Berenberg. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thanks for taking the question. Just one from me. You highlighted in the presentation that some of your Bet Builder capabilities, more specifically in the NHL and MLB, give you a competitive edge compared to some of your peers. You also, in the release, provided some stats on soccer, and the Bet Builder was responsible, I think it was for 15% of all pre-game bets. I was wondering if you could provide any additional color on these stats for NHL, given your competitive edge here. Thanks.
I would be happy to share them if I had them in front of me. I think what you can do is to go back to Mia later on, and she can provide it for you.
In general, it's a very popular product, and that's what we've seen in here as well. I think, at least, that's a key message, a very popular product and which we will see now launching in more sports and will be beneficial for Kambi and our market-leading position. If you want more stats, please reach out to me afterwards.
Okay, brilliant. Thanks very much.
Thank you. There appear to be no further questions. I'll return the conference back to you.
Okay, great. We have quite a few questions here on the chat as well. I think we start with the first one to you, Kristian. What's your view on the long-term market share in the U.S.? Do you expect it to be similar like today, or could it change? Yeah.
I mean, it is very hard to guess, to be honest. I mean, we have the big swings on some of the big operators, it is tough to have a good guess on it. I still believe very much that we will also see, especially in a state like California, much more of local operators getting a very large market share. I think, where we have been looking at lately after the Penn news, I think. 15% market share would be a great number to strive for.
Okay. Thank you. Another one for you, Kristian. Is the pipeline as strong as ever, or has anything changed? What do you see?
I very pleased with pipeline and I hope that we will be able to announce a few more deals during the year. As I showed on the picture earlier, I mean, it is all over the world at the moment that we have good prospects. Very pleased.
Okay. One question for you, David. Quite a few about buybacks. What's your view there, and the strategy going forward?
Yeah, I mean, I think we've clearly demonstrated a few months ago that we're happy to use our balance sheet both for buybacks, but also acquisitions when we made an acquisition end of Q3 last year. I wouldn't rule it out, but equally, you know, I think more importantly, I think we've got that strong balance sheet now that gives us the firepower either to use it for buybacks or M&A as we see fit. You know, we will do something with the balance sheet as well as maintaining a strong core, which our customers rely on as well that we do have that strong balance sheet. Definitely wouldn't rule it out, and we're actively monitoring it, I would say.
Okay. Thank you. Another one for, yeah, both of you actually. When do you expect to see year-on-year revenue growth again? Is there anything you can comment on?
I'll leave it for you, David.
We can't do forecasts. I mean, we've gotta make the most of the tailwinds. I talked about new customers, new states, and organic growth. I mean, those are the three things that are really gonna drive revenues for us. I'm not gonna put a date on it, when we get growth, but you know, those three things plus the seasonality we always seen in Q4, Q1, you know, those are the real tailwinds in our business. We've just gotta keep selling, delivering the best product and, yeah, the revenue will come.
Yeah. We won two awards, but four prizes. Kristian, could you expand on the Tier 1 considering outsourcing strategy?
Yes. I mean, can't obviously give you any names, but what we see in Europe now is that, I mean, there are quite a few operators who are looking at what they have in-house. They struggle to keep up with competition when it comes to product and they need to do something to be able to be competitive in their markets. I can't give you any names, but it's definitely something we are very, very positive about for the future.
Okay. Thank you. Quite a few regarding the modularization strategy. Is there a risk that the current customers are trading down with this strategy?
I think that is one of the pieces that we are still not finished with when it comes to developing the services. Obviously we are not really keen on modularized in a way that cannibalize on our existing fully managed services. That's something we are very tightly looking at.
Okay. Thank you. Here's one for you, David. Can you please comment on how flexible your operating expenses are?
Yeah. I mean, relatively inflexible insofar as, you know, a lot of it's fixed and the variable part that we see that flexes up or down with new states or new customers is quite small. You know, they're probably 10%-20% of the cost base is that kind of variable part. I'd say as long as we're delivering revenue growth and, you know, keep doing the right things that I talked about previously, then that scalability that's inherent in the business model will lead to increased profits ultimately.
Yes. We have a question regarding Asia. You haven't really explored Asia before, and today you released some comments on it. Can you elaborate a little bit more about the markets and the possibilities? You said it was a bit longer, further ahead, but
Yeah.
Certainly.
The reason we have not really explored Asia is that we are trying to stay in regulated markets. We see some things happening in Asia that is looking very positive. I think closest to it is Philippines that is looking at having some sports betting licenses, as it looks like. For India and Japan, it's further away. I said before when we commented on it that it's probably on the horizon three to five years, and I still believe that is the case.
Here is one question about operator margin. We raised it a few quarters ago, and now with the Bet Builder, do we expect to raise that or?
Uh-
The guidance, I mean.
Yeah. We have raised it several times during the last couple of years. We are always monitoring it, and it's not impossible that we are raising it. But there is also possibility that we are pushing for slightly improved paybacks to the customers as well, especially on the Bet Builder where we have very high margin at the moment.
Okay, great. I think we have the last question. Are Penn using Kambi Sportsbook in Canada?
They are not. It's under theScore brand, and they're using the same provider that they had at theScore in the U.S.
Okay. Thank you very much, and thank you for your questions and for listening to our Q1 report. We will present our Q2 report 27th of July, so I really hope I will see you then again. Thank you very much and have a good day.
Thank you.
Thank you.