Good morning, everyone, and Welcome to Kambi's Q2 2022 Report Presentation. My name is Mia Nordlander. I am Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Today, I have our Chief Executive Officer, Kristian Nylén, and Chief Financial Officer, David Kenyon, with me. They will present the quarter for you, and thereafter, we will have time for questions. If you have any questions, I suggest that you either call in or that you write them in the web here on the page. Over to you, Kristian. Please present the quarter for us. Thank you.
Thank you, Mia, and good morning. Today, I'm planning to go through the highlights first, and then hand over to David to run through all the numbers, and then I come back and talk more about the Q2 in detail. The highlights, I would say we had a very robust financial performance against a very demanding 2021 comparatives. The tough comps, I think first of all last year it was a European Championship, and normally we would have expected a World Cup this year, but that is moved to December. The sporting calendar is quite slow this summer. We also don't have the same kind of revenues from Netherlands, since our operators re-regulation in Netherlands is still not operating.
Of course, we have, as I will talk about later, Kindred coming back into the market early in Q3. The largest factor of course, is that all numbers were still excluding DraftKings last year. Our operator turnover this year is up 16% if we exclude the DraftKings number. During the quarter, we also achieved a key milestone with the first phase completed of separating our pricing from a core platform in what we call the Trading Gateway, which I will talk more about later. We strengthened our partner network by extending our relationship with betPARX with a longer contract, and we also signed Mohegan Gaming in Ontario.
Finally, we expanded our reach in the Americas with day one launches in Ontario, Canada, with four partners and then one more later on. We also have done quite a few launches in other countries, mainly in the U.S. and Mexico. With that, over to you, David.
Thanks, Khristian. Good morning, everyone. Overall, this quarter, we saw a very strong financial performance. We continue to be profitable. We see underlying operator turnover growth, and we have a powerful balance sheet. As Khristian mentioned, we saw a 16% growth in that operator turnover, excluding DraftKings, and that's despite the impact of the Netherlands regulation and the Euro Soccer tournament last Q2. Very strong numbers there. That strong turnover, allied with a margin of 8.6%, led to revenue of EUR 34.7 million. Costs pre-FX of EUR 32 million were in the forecast range, and they were offset to the tune of just over EUR 2 million on foreign exchange gains relating to the revaluation of our US dollar assets. This gave an operating profit of EUR 4.9 million at a margin of 14.1%.
Our net cash position of EUR 74.2 million gives us firepower to continue using our balance sheet to drive our strategic growth. The next slide here is the Kambi turnover index. It's an aggregation of the entire Kambi network's results quarter by quarter. The blue columns are an aggregation of the operator turnover indexed set, originally set at 100 when we spun off the business. The orange line is an aggregation of the operator trading margin every quarter. This quarter, the margin was 8.6%. When we look at the comparatives, that was pretty high this time last year at 9.3%. The operator turnover on the index is 656. As Kristian mentioned, it's a very quiet Q2. It's typically quiet from a sporting calendar perspective for many of our key sports.
Of course, this year, there will be a World Cup taking place in Q4 and a condensed football calendar before and after that World Cup. You know, some strong months ahead. In more detail then on the operator turnover versus last year. The turnover went from 911 on that index to 656. Firstly there were some big headwinds we should talk about. Firstly, and by far the biggest in terms of financial impact, was the DraftKings migration, which we saw after Q2 last year. That DraftKings accounted for 20%-30% of our revenue Q2 last year. In the Netherlands, of course, there was no activity with Kindred here in Q2 this year, but we are delighted to see them obtain a license and launch in early July.
Euro 2020 was delayed to 2021, and the majority of the matches took place in Q2 last year. Again, we are very much looking forward to the World Cup taking place in Q4 this year. Those headwinds have been offset, though. There have been some growth factors here. We have new operators since this time last year. They include BetCity, JVH, and Rush Street Interactive. We've moved into new markets, including Arizona, Connecticut, Louisiana, and most recently, Ontario. We've seen growth from some of our existing operators, both in their organic growth but also in their geographical expansion into new markets. This then feeds into the waterfall of the Kambi revenue conversion, which sets out how our operator turnover movement resulted in our revenue movement versus last year.
At constant exchange rates, operator turnover was down 32% on Q2 2021 for the reasons I've outlined. Due to the dollar being stronger than last year versus the euro, this decrease was reduced to 28%. The operator trading margin of 8.6% compares to the very high 9.3% last year. There in the other column, you see a big, kind of positive impact on our revenues. There's quite a few drivers behind this one. Firstly, and most importantly, our customer contracts often include tiers which charge significantly less on the upper bands of activity. The lack of DraftKings and other factors impacting the NGR result in a relatively higher effective revenue share across the network overall.
Secondly, we have more live events income this quarter and other fixed revenues which are not driven by the levels of operator turnover. We also have revenues from our settlement with Mohegan Sun, which is a fixed revenue each quarter, and we have revenues from the Abios business which we acquired at the end of last year. The net effect of all these factors is a 19% decrease in our revenue in total to EUR 34.7 million. Lastly, I'm gonna talk about the cash flow. There's a few particular points to note this quarter. Firstly, the CapEx is slightly higher than we usually see. We've had some fit-out costs in a couple of our offices. The tax impact you see on the right-hand side there is higher than normal.
We're due a tax refund as part of our year-end tax position, and that's expected to be received in Q3. That magnifies the effect of the tax outflows here in Q2. In terms of inflows, we received EUR 2.6 million in relation to the option price on share options settled earlier in the year. The net effect of all these various cash flows is an increase in our cash position to EUR 81.6 million. With that, I hand you back to Kristian.
Thank you, David. Okay, as I mentioned earlier we have, of course kept on working on our strategic work with modernization. We have done one key milestone that was achieved during the quarter, and that is the Trading Gateway interface where we have completed the first phase. For the first time, we have some standalone pricing for lower league soccer that are not done through the normal way that we have done for many years, where pricing and trading and technology was heavily intertwined. It has served us well for many years. With a new setup, it will give us a lot of new benefits and also our customers, that I will talk a little bit more about.
With the creation of this standalone pricing functionality, we now have a setup where we can much faster develop new algorithms for different sports and tweak them and change them much quicker. We will have much faster pace on our internal development. It also gives us the opportunity to package and sell products outside of the normal fully managed service. That's a very positive modernization effect. Also it gives us another crucial element, and that is that our existing partners or future partners can now in the future be able to trade some of the sports themselves if they would like to.
We can also give opportunity to other third parties that we ourselves or our partners want to add to the pricing. Very crucial step for us. We're very pleased to see that it worked very well. It's still a lot more work to do on this gateway, but a very crucial and important first step. Another thing that we have managed during the year during this quarter is a new betting market where we can bet on if a server in tennis is making an ace within a game. This is unique for our network, we believe.
It gives our operators a great differentiation from the rest of the market in a very popular sport in tennis. This feature, we update the odds after every single point up until, of course, if an ace is being served within the game. With that, we would like to show you a promo of this. Thank you. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed that little promo. Now I would like to talk a little bit about some commercial updates. During the quarter, we strengthened our presence more in Ontario with the signing an agreement with Mohegan and its Fallsview Casino Resort. The Fallsview Casino Resort is the largest gaming resort in Canada with a very nice brand.
I think and hope that will strengthen our presence with a great local partner in Ontario. During the quarter, we have also extended the Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment agreement and its betPARX brand. They're currently operating in three states, and we hope and are quite positive about us being able to support them in their expansion into new additional markets. As every quarter, we have been very active with a lot of new launches. I think the total number this quarter was 18 new launches. The major ones here we went live in Ontario on day one with four of our partners, and after that, we have added a fifth during the quarter. On the final day of the quarter, we relaunched in Mexico with Rush Street entering the market.
Rush Street Interactive has built a very prominent position in the Colombian market, and we hope they will be able to do the same in Mexico. Online launches in U.S., we have done with Rush Street Interactive in West Virginia and with Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort in Michigan. On the U.S. retail side, we have done several launches, I think three in total with Kindred Group in Arizona and also with Churchill Downs in Louisiana. Yet another busy quarter, and we hope there is plenty more to come. At the moment, we are preparing for Kansas for the start of a new football season in September, and we hope Ohio is next in turn. We are still hopeful for sports betting regulation to get green light in Brazil very soon.
That would be an absolute major market for us, of course. A lot of attention for us will be on California in November when two sports betting bills will go to the ballot. In June, it was great to see us winning another three awards at the EGR Awards. We won the Sportsbook Platform of the Year for the third consecutive year, so I think we just cementing our position as the premium supplier of sports betting in the industry. We're also especially proud of winning the Sports Betting Software Innovation of the Year with our BetBuilder product. We have been speaking a lot about our BetBuilder product in the last quarterly reports and about the possibility to combine across games and sports, which is fairly unique with Kambi.
It's very pleasing to see the recognition it deserves from our peers and also recognition for all our people internally who is continuously improving the product. After Q2, or in July, I would say, Kindred has reentered Netherlands with its Unibet brand. We hope that that will be very positive for us going forward in Q3 and Q4. With that, I think we have strengthened our position significantly in Netherlands, where we already have BetCity and JVH active since the market re-regulated. We also expect additional partners that formerly was in Netherlands will reenter the market in the coming quarters.
To summarize the Q2, as I started with, it was a quieter than normal quarter from a sporting calendar perspective. I think we have made some great progress on our strategic plans. We have achieved a key milestone with a successful completion of phase one of our Trading Gateway. When it's all finalized, it will deliver multiple benefits for both Kambi and for our partners. We have during the quarter expanded to support more partner launches in several different markets. Looking ahead, we expect things to happen in Ohio and Brazil. As I mentioned, we're really looking ahead for November and the ballots in California. These three markets would definitely increase our TAM.
We are a very profitable business, with a strong financial performance, and we have a very strong balance sheet, so I believe we are very well-positioned for the future. With that, I think it's time for questions. Thank you very much.
Yes. Thank you, Kristian and David. We will start with the questions on the telephone. Over to you, operator.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question over the phone, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Again, to ask a question over the phone, press star then one. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Oscar Rönnkvist with ABG. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning all, and thanks for taking my questions. I have four, if that's okay. Starting on the recruitment pace, I notice you only hired 10 people net in the quarter at quite a steep decrease comparing to the six previous quarters. I was just wondering if you had any comments on the recruitment pace and what we can expect going forward.
Yeah, sure. I think we are recruiting quite well. I think we, as many other companies after COVID, has had a much higher staff turnover than we are used to see. Net, it's looking a little bit tougher at the moment. Having said all of that, I think we also see that there is quite a few of the larger competitors when it comes to tech people here in Stockholm who are decreasing their staff. I think it looks very positive going forward.
All right. Can I interpret that pace should increase a bit in Q3, Q4?
Yeah, definitely hope so.
Okay. Thanks. I had a question next on your OpEx and OpEx guidance. First, David, could you explain you had a positive FX impact on the OpEx, is that correct?
Correct. Yeah. As you can imagine, with the majority of our business now coming from the U.S., we do have a lot of cash inflows in US dollars, and the dollar has strengthened significantly, both versus Q1, but more and equally against Q2 last year. Yeah, that's a kind of a one-off unrealized revaluation on those in the books on those US dollar accounts.
All right. On your OpEx guidance, we have seen both Q1 and Q2 coming in well below your guided midpoint. Yet your new OpEx guidance midpoint is raised slightly. Just looking at the midpoint of your Q3 guidance and then the implied Q4 OpEx, that would be a quarter-over-quarter increase of 12% and 14% respectively. Can you just share your explanation of what is driving the low costs in H1 and why H2 increases massively?
Yeah. I think a lot of this is actually FX related, back to your first question. Actually when you add back the FX, the real underlying OpEx this time is actually towards the top end of the range, probably EUR 32 million, pre-FX. When we set that full year guidance, we tried to strip out all FX because we don't want to kind of speculate what's going to happen there. Actually, you know, we've probably done adding back that FX EUR 62 million first half of the year, and then the midpoint of the guidance is probably EUR 68 million for the second half. It's probably lower percentage growth quarter-over-quarter than it looks.
Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Next one on your net cash position, it remains quite large. Can you say anything about your M&A pipeline? Like, is that the main explanation behind keeping EUR 80 million in cash?
We are definitely looking at M&A as we always are. Can't, of course, comment if we are close with anything, but we are definitely open to do M&A. If we can't do that, at some point, I think we will look at other ways of distributing the cash.
Okay. Understood. Kristian, just a final one. The last sentence in your Chief Executive Officer word explains your excitement for H2, for instance, mentioning partner signings. Just given your previous communication of a strong pipeline, if it has, like, how has that changed over the last few months? And should we expect the signings to be tier one operators solely?
I don't want to comment about the signings before they happen, but I am still very excited about the pipeline and I definitely hope we will see some signings happening. As I said many times before, signings are often very tied to new regulations. It's hard to know when timings will be, but I feel very good about our opportunities going forward.
Okay. Just a follow-up. Can you share if it's more in Europe or more in rest of world or in the U.S. that you see the strong pipeline?
I think in Europe, I mean it's so many fewer opportunities out there, because the market is much more settled. The opportunities definitely more of them in U.S., and in other parts of the world. Yeah, we have some opportunities in Europe as well.
Okay. Got it. That was all for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Viktor Högberg with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Just another question on the OpEx guidance . If you would put it this way, is the underlying OpEx guidance the same for the top end? It's EUR 133 million now, it was EUR 135 million before. The difference being the positive EUR 2 million affecting Q2. Is that how we should read this?
No, not really. I think we've narrowed.
Okay.
We've narrowed the range, so we've taken it down to a EUR 5 million range. Obviously, as we get closer toward that full year position. Yeah, that guidance again is completely excluding FX. We've had EUR 2.7 million in the first half of the year. You know, that's. The guidance is excluding that. You know, that EUR 2.7 million in our world will reduce that number. Again, we're trying to guide without FX. We've narrowed the range down into the middle.
Without the effects we have seen in H1 already. Is that how we should read it as well, or is it only that you won't speculate on FX movements in the second half?
No, it's without the effects we've seen in H1. Yeah, the 128-133 would be completely out excluding that EUR 2.7 million that we've seen in the first half. That would actually reduce that 128-133 on the books.
Okay. Yeah, yeah. Just so that we get it.
Yeah.
If it were to come in at 133 then reported, what would that mean if FX were you wouldn't see any FX movements in the second half, just the ones we've seen in the first half. If we see a reported FX number of 133 for the full year, what does that mean?
You would see EUR 133 less 2.7 in the books. EUR 130.3 in that case. If there's no other FX movements in the year.
Okay, thank you. On the customer signings, on the previous question, this is for Kristian maybe. On the CMD last year, you talked a bit about the potential to sign a mid-size, a decently sized European operator that might have come to [uncertain] when it comes to their technical development today, might be looking at outsourcing. You talked a bit about that. We haven't seen it. Is that opportunity still there? Has that potential signing decided to do something else, or is that opportunity still there?
It's still multiple. It's not only one, but there is the same ones I was talking about then is still there.
Okay. Would you say that the potential or the prospect to sign them is better or worse or the same as last year?
I will not comment on that.
Okay. Did you say, and maybe for David, did you say anything about Abios, how much that contributed in revenues in Q2?
I didn't, but yeah, they contributed around EUR half a million this quarter. Small net profit for them. I think they're looking forward into H2 when they launch the odds product, which could be hopefully in Q4 now. That's probably when that profitability is forecast to increase for them.
Okay. Q3, maybe revenues at the same level?
Yeah, you can expect that. I mean, it shouldn't be lower, at least.
Okay. On the modularization strategy, we previously said that it's reasonable to expect the first potential signing on this one in the first half or the early parts of 2023. Is that still the same timeline you would say, or any revisions to that potential timeline for adding customers on this one?
I mean, as usual, it's hard to know when we do signings, but we still believe that there is an opportunity for us to be able to market and sell it in Q1 next year.
Okay. Speaking of sports schedule, it was really slow now, in the latter parts of the second quarter. It's still slow now during the summer, but it's going to ramp up, and then we have Kindred Live in the Netherlands as well. What do you expect in terms of sequential movement in revenues, potential to see revenues having crossed now in Q2?
I think we can't give a sales forecast, but I mean you can say that the football season is starting a little bit earlier than normal. You know, with Kindred as well as you mentioned in Netherlands at Q3, yeah, we're looking forward to a busier sporting schedule and hopefully that comes through into the revenues in Q3. Yeah, can't give you a number.
Okay. Last question from me. On the regulatory movement side, would you say on a net basis that it has improved or is it at same level, as when you did the Q1 call?
I don't think it has become long-term better or worse, but I am a little bit disappointed about, especially the pace in Brazil, which I definitely thought would happen during the year when we talked last time. I'm starting to doubt that it will happen in 2022 now.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. As there are no further audio questions, I would like to turn the conference back over to the speakers for any written questions.
Thank you very much. I think we start with one for you, Kristian. We said we've seen competitors seeing major growth in Latin America. What's Kambi's position in LatAm, and are we seeing any possibilities in the region?
Absolutely. I mean, that is a region we look at very positively. I mean, we have a very strong position in Colombia. We have partners in Peru and in Argentina already. We keep on looking at more and more partners in Latin America. I think the big thing that is a big focus for us now is to find the suitable partners for opening of Brazil.
Thank you. One for you, David. Are we considering buybacks or what will we do with the big cash position and low valuation of the stock? This one question.
Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, in the last 12 months you've seen that we've done both M&A and share buybacks, so they're absolutely on the radar on the agenda. In terms of M&A, there's some key areas that we've talked about before where we think which could really strategically drive the business. I think M&A is absolutely on the agenda, but also buybacks. We've done it recently and, you know, it could well be that we do it again.
Okay. Thank you. One question for you, Kristian. With our new modernization strategy, we're saying that offering operators greater control over pricing will drive broader operator appeal, particularly among those that wish to trade one or more sports in-house. Have you had any specific interest from operators regarding this?
I think that has been something we have had interest for many, many years. We have not felt that has been something we have been able to prioritize until now. There are definitely a few opportunities out there already now. It will certainly increase our addressable market going forward.
Okay. I think that was the last question from the web as well. Thank you very much, Kristian and David, and thank you everyone for listening in to us. We will be back with our Q3 report 26th of October, so I look forward to see you then again. If you have any questions, always feel free to reach out to the IR department. Thank you very much and have a good day.