Hello! Good morning.
Good morning, good morning.
Indeed. It's Jussi Tähtinen, CEO, co-founder here, together with...
Antti Villanen, CSO, co-founder, board member.
Yes.
Hopefully everybody had a great summer.
Indeed, indeed.
We definitely had.
Yes, we have.
Busy summer, beautiful holidays.
Yeah, beautiful holidays, a lot of activity on many fronts. Some of which you already saw in the brief teaser trailer thing we showed in the beginning. We don't usually show stuff that we haven't announced, but this time we thought that we would tease you guys a little bit with some stuff that we have been working on just to make it more visual.
As we are heading to Gamescom, the largest trade show in a year.
Yes, in Germany.
Utilizing the same materials there, so it was...
Yeah.
Good timing to show the new stuff to you guys also.
Yeah, Gamescom is always one of the biggest events also for us every year because it's so huge, and pretty much everyone's there.
A little like a start for the second half, and then things that are starting to negotiations there are something that materialize on late, late, late on the year or early next.
Yeah, indeed. Cool. Let's go forward with the webcast today. Today we're going to be discussing the first half of the year and also, of course, you know, what's about to happen or what are we doing during the second half of the year. For those of you who are potentially new to Nitro Games, I think every time there's always some new people checking out our webcast. We are the Finnish powerhouse for action and shooter brands.
Across all platforms.
Yeah.
We've been expanding quite heavily this year to the new platforms, as it was one of the targets for the year.
That's one of the big goals we have.
Yeah. All games are now played in more and more platforms, and looking forward to new ones.
Yeah.
All the old ones that we already have been at some point, but the new.
Yeah. Throughout the project, we also covered the sort of console platforms. Moving forward, we intend to go there more and more with our own offering as well. As a company, we're one of the oldest game companies here in Finland. Almost 20 years now we've been doing this.
Yeah.
Since 2007, at the end, sorry, not Q1, but H1, overall was very much what we call a transitional period for Nitro . While the performance in terms of numbers leaves a lot of room for improvement, especially if you compare it against the previous year, I think operatively we considered it very much a success because we were able to do so many things. I think this is a prime demonstration of the type of volatility that's part of the games business where we operate, where when you transition from one big project to new ones, it has an impact on the financial performance, shorter term, of course.
It is also a prime example of how we have built our setup so we can adjust quite fast on those changes, whether they're coming from the projects or market or anywhere outside. We have tools and processes and ways of working that we are quite fastly adapting into.
Yeah.
Whether we are scaling up or scaling down, or toning up or toning down.
Yeah.
We are very fast on that.
Yeah, I'm super proud of our team that since they are so versatile with the talent, not just with being able to work on different platforms, but also versatile in terms of adapting to new team structures and stuff. We were able to pretty much instantly shift our focus on some new things that we didn't have the bandwidth to work on previously. I think we were pretty successful in navigating through all of that.
Yeah.
More about that later and especially what it means for the second half of the year. Still about the numbers and the overview, the cash position we have at the end of the first half of the year is actually a little bit better compared to what it was after the first quarter. This is a result of basically two things. Part of the revenues we had during the first quarter landed in the cash flow during the second quarter, and we have continued the activities to improve our balance sheet. We're now happily in a position where we have completely paid off the debt that we had to do these games, while at the same time making sure that we keep our focus on protecting our cash in the long run and keep our eyes laser-focused on the long-term profitability that we are.
Exactly.
is maybe still worth noting that some of the events that we've listed there, those new agreements with Void Interactive and Starbreeze, happened after the period.
After the period, it will be visible later.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's move forward. We spoke that we had some goals for this year. This slide here is a reminder. You've seen this earlier, that what are those goals? We have three. First one is basically expanding our game portfolio. With expanding, we mean we want to build new games, new platforms, partnerships, and those three.
I think we have been quite efficient on this area in the first half. Now, even after the period, there have been activities on new partnerships and new platforms areas. New games are something that they're approving. Maybe we talk a little bit later about the game portfolio. I think on the game portfolio target point of view, we've been successful.
This is an area where I think we are slightly ahead of schedule compared to what we initially thought that how the year would go. That's definitely a thumbs up.
Second one being the global team.
Yeah, taking, you know, from the scalability of that, maximizing the potential there.
On that area, we've been working with the global team and this structure now for 18 years, 17 years. Especially on times like this, the model and the process space.
Definitely.
When scaling up, you know, it goes in two ways. We've been improving the efficiency on our production, internally and externally. The kind of constant improvement is part of the DNA, and there are lots of initiatives where we are improving our ways of working with the global team.
Yeah. I think how these things translate in financials, of course, everything is always actions first, and then you see the results in the numbers later on, like with anything. These things that we've now done, especially towards the summer, many of those are going to be more visible in the numbers after the summer, obviously. I think it's safe to say that we have been successful so far in taking advantage of the scalability of our global team while still improving things and developing things further. Also, in the middle of all of this, we've been able to do some new key hires in the team and optimize it for our updated portfolio that we have. Really happy about that.
Creating new revenue streams through the new platform expansions.
Yes, yes. Financial stability, that's something which we want to maintain because that's something we gained already earlier. At the same time, we want to grow through new revenue streams and focus on long-term profitability and also take careful investments in new products. Many of those things we have already done, but I think the thing that we're still working on this year is to, of course, build those new revenue streams bigger. That's not something that we can say that we would have yet accomplished this year. That's why you have annual goals that you have to live up to those. Overall, we very much maintained the course that we set in the beginning of the year. Let's talk through this course one by one and start with the game portfolio.
Autogun Heroes is a brand that's now available on mobile, it's on Discord, it's on web, and it's on PC with a game known as Autogun Heroes Supercharged. Where it is not available yet is console platforms. That's something that, like we said earlier, that's one of the next steps that we're looking into. Okay, how do we go about that? Autogun Heroes, we've discussed a lot about how it's a game where we've, in the previous years, invested so much. Thanks to our way of developing these games, we can now use those previously invested efforts and use those to bring it both time and cost-efficient to other new platforms.
I feel that the Autogun Heroes is no more just a game. As it's like several versions in several platforms, it's starting to be a small franchise.
Yeah.
Out of that franchise, there are kind of several iterations and versions in a different platform, a little bit different monetization models. I think that's something that will create value for the company in the long run.
Yeah.
On these kinds of franchises.
Yeah. Speaking of that value creation, during the first half of the year, we concluded our collaboration with Supersonic from Unity. As a result, the game kind of returned back to Nitro , so that's now fully in our hands. The reason why we concluded the collaboration is that we weren't able, together with Supersonic, to scale up the game to those types of levels that they are expecting. Their expectations were even larger than what we had. The main sort of challenges there were related to the user acquisition and marketing, which obviously is on the publisher side if you have a publishing deal. They're increasing in what we call CPIs, so cost per install figures.
Something that we're now doing with Autogun Heroes brand, also including something new that we're playing around with that you might have seen in the trailer in the beginning, is to find ways to bring down the CPI. Especially, find ways to bring down the CPI in the type of scales that Nitro can operate through self-publishing.
It can happen through the changes into the gameplay, changes into the marketing, or even the kind of core game.
Yeah.
Those iterations are ongoing and some tests.
Yeah, indeed. We've already started. Actually, we already started, I think, before the summer with some of the tests, and some will still continue now after the summer. Then we have a Nerf Super Blast.
Exactly.
Yeah. This is one of our FPS, so first-person blaster game on mobile. This is something that we've done obviously in collaboration with Hasbro. We've discussed about Nerf quite a few times earlier. We've been actively looking into different opportunities. We're currently, again, in discussions about a few ones. We're busy trying to figure out how in the longer run, how the Nerf brand and anything we can potentially do with that fits into the project portfolio. We don't have anything in terms of news from the first half on that one, but it's definitely not forgotten.
Yeah. First, fourth one, Pistolo.
Yeah, that's new.
That's new and based on our old game, Lootland.
Yeah.
Somebody might remember that one. It's interesting in the sense that we are touching not only the new kind of gameplay, but also the new audience and the new platforms.
Yeah.
With this one and with the great partnerships taking the game into the world of iGaming.
Indeed, indeed. This is something that we are pretty excited about at the moment, not just because it's new and everything new and shiny is always interesting, but also for the reasons that the dynamics in iGaming, where we don't claim to be experts in that field because we're only scratching the surface and getting started. What we have seen so far, there seems to be a really interesting match where we can take something that we have developed for free-to-play mobile and then do a couple of conversions, but essentially then take it into the iGaming space. This is some area where I think moving forward, we definitely want to explore more and learn more and see how these things go.
It's not only the old games or anything like that.
Yeah, also with some new product.
We are gaining the expertise on a domain. There are opportunities to create totally new games into the mix. We have a Warframe with Digital Extremes.
This is currently our longest B2B partnership. We've been working together with Digital Extremes for many years now.
Yeah.
This is a project that I'm not sure if you guys there remember, but this one we started pretty small. I think we had a very small prototype in the beginning, like many, many years ago.
Something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where we showed that we can actually bring it on mobile. Since then, it's been a big partnership for us in many ways.
It seems that this kind of model is something that applies to many of the cases, as also Void Interactive, the project with them, starting with the small. There are expectations that when we prove ourselves and what we are doing, there might be an opportunity for some bigger stake on that whole, whole, whole project that we are working on.
I think I'm super happy that since we're starting two new partnerships now in Q3 with Void Interactive and also with Starbreeze, where we signed an agreement also now during the third quarter. I think this concept of sort of starting small and testing out things on both sides of the.
Proving ourselves and trying out the collaboration, it seems to be working for us.
Yeah.
For our part.
At least it has worked historically.
Yeah.
Yeah, very well. Last, but I would say definitely not least, we're a games company. It's all about games and all about new games because, like we said in the beginning, our focus is on the long-term profitability. The plan here is basically that we want to take all the learnings from our previous projects and ongoing projects, like we always do, and adapt those into new product development. We also want to make sure that we continue this platform expansion because it widens our audience reach, widens our revenue streams, and, you know, builds our portfolio bigger. As a result of the first half of the year, we now have a total of four games in the early MVP process. We haven't announced this yet, but again, you might have seen a little bit of those in the video clip, VIP stuff. Two of these are mobile free-to-play.
We definitely want to continue exploring that domain as we are with every game, every release. We're always getting better and better and better at the potential in free-to-play mobile once you finally hit the scalability.
Two of them are PC/console premium, and exploring that old world for us.
Yeah.
Again.
Yeah.
Gaining new expertise and new kind of ways of working in that category.
A lot has changed since the last time we were active on PC. I think Autogun Heroes Supercharged is a good sort of learning tool for how the whole Steam dynamics have changed. Basically, the store still looks the same, but everything behind it has changed.
It's totally different. As you can see, how we start with our partnerships, starting with something small and then with the success, scaling bigger. The same method works in our internal new games process.
Yeah.
Calling it the MVP process, it still follows pretty much the same kind of model internally.
Yeah, yeah.
Minimize the risk for the investment risk in the early days. When there are enough proven results, invest more.
Indeed, indeed. I think that's well in line with the other goals we have for this year, especially the financial stability and the long-term profitability. If you compare this year to some years behind us in Nitro , we're making a little bit more investments in new product, but a little bit smaller in terms of money. Why we can do that is because we have obviously learned, but we have so much more efficiency in the team.
Exactly.
Speaking of which, let's move to our second goal for the year to further develop our global scalable team and take advantage of the nature of the structure we have, because this is something unique in Nitro that we always want to repeat. It's one of the big USPs.
It's okay to say the most valuable asset anyway, the team.
Yeah.
Internal and our global partners.
Yeah.
This is the model that we've been working now for 18 years.
Yeah, always further developing it.
Further developing, improving it. It's not only scaling up, it's toning down.
Yeah.
It's scaling down, scaling up. I think the flexibility that the model brings, that when there are different kinds of projects, we always have suitable skill sets and the people suited for the different projects. This also gives us a benefit of adjusting fast.
Yeah. In addition to having those benefits, or I think not in addition to, but I think that's the sort of key secret behind those is that our core team is so experienced and so professional that they have worked on so many different types of games, not just in Nitro , but wherever the previous careers might have been.
Different platforms, agents.
Yeah, different platforms.
Styles.
Yeah. That's where it really shines that as a company, especially when we talk about our in-house staff, we always seek super seasoned talent in connection with, we have very active programs for junior talent training and trying to nurture people into this business as well. About the longevity, if we then move to the third goal we had, which is financial stability, if you look historically or zoom out, we now have five years of consecutive growth under our belt. Last year was therefore clearly the best year of those five, which is exactly as it's supposed to be. If you look at the first half of this year, it's a transitional period, which doesn't look as good as our first half of last year. That said, our focus and mindset is still very much in this long-term plan and long-term profitability.
If we then transform into H1 numbers a little bit, basically what happened here is that we concluded our big, big, big project with Netflix. We transitioned from that, shifted the teams to focus on some of our new games, which we didn't have the bandwidth to work on those earlier because everybody was busy with other stuff. This also allowed us to kind of like return Autogun Heroes back to us and look at it a little bit differently moving forward. It allowed our business development to adapt to the situation and work on some new partnerships in the B2B. All of those things that had to happen, we were able to do. Obviously, actions come first and results follow.
Exactly.
Actions have kind of happened, most of them already during the H1 or pretty much soon after that. The results will then follow later.
Exactly. It seems also that the sentiment on the market is brightening up.
Yeah.
There is a sentiment that the games industry has been trying to start healing up twice, and now maybe a third time. Maybe it's the third time says the truth.
Yeah, it's been a little bit tough in the industry around us for three years now, maybe.
After the pandemic, I think.
Yeah, yeah. I saw a good LinkedIn post from one of our industry friends saying that there have been, like you said, two sort of false starts that maybe now the third is the one where it actually, you know, goes. Of course, you never know. From Nitro's perspective, it's not like we don't care because, of course, we care and we care a lot. We love this business, so we want it to go well. We also know that thanks to our almost 20 years of doing this business, we know how to navigate through these things. We're not super concerned about that because we have been able to figure things out regardless of what's happening in the world around us.
Looking at the numbers in a little bit more detail, what we can see is that the first half of the year, our revenues slightly declined compared to last year. This is a direct result of moving from previous big projects and then securing new ones after the reporting period. This then again translates to basically everything below that. There are some changes in the staffing costs, which for us are basically in the materials and services, but also in the employee costs and personal costs. It's a combination of those two. Basically, in the long run, our main focus in these transitional periods is usually to protect our cash.
Exactly.
That's again what we have done here. Our cash position is slightly better than what it was at the end of Q1. We want to make sure that whenever we go through short-term transitions, we always have that long-term mindset. Hence, we wanted to make sure that we continue improving our balance sheet, paying off debts. We wanted to make sure that we invest in new product development, but do all of this in a very mindful manner.
Protecting the cash while doing it.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Therefore, I think if we conclude the first half of the year, I think it's safe to say that we have successfully navigated through this transitional period. We now have a new portfolio, very much refreshed.
New opportunities.
New opportunities. We have a great team setup at the moment that we're built for these new opportunities. We have that financial stability thanks to some of our previous actions that we can now leverage moving forward as we continue and push forward towards a better H2.
Exactly.
Yes. That concludes our webcast presentation part. Now it's time to see if there's any questions. Let me check here quickly if there's anything in the inbox or anything. It pretty much seems like maybe not. Perhaps we have been.
Everything was clear.
We have been very preemptive in our presentation this time, it seems. Coolness. Thank you, everybody, for.
Thank you so much.
Tuning in. Very much look forward to meeting you again in October when we deliver our third quarter report and the webcast. We are now going to go and pack and have more games coming. Yes, a lot of business development this week. Thank you all.
Tusen tack.
Have a great week. Bye bye.
Bye.