Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Here we go again.
Yes, yes. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Yeah.
Even though spring is coming, at least here.
Yeah
S outhern Finland.
Yeah.
Sun is shining, the blue skies.
Indeed. Welcome to our webcast for the year-end report 2022. Today, we're gonna go through all things last year, especially the fourth quarter.
Bit of the latest.
Yeah, yeah.
Other things also.
Yeah. I think we'll also kind of do pretty good effort in trying to paint the picture about what to expect from Nitro moving forward. Last year as a whole, it was pretty crazy year in the world around us and pretty sort of polarized because inside Nitro we often called it as, you know, the best year ever.
The contrast.
I n so many ways. Yeah.
Contrast was really big about what happened in the world in general and also in our industry.
Yeah, a nd comparing our best year and how we were capable of handling all .
Ripples and reflections for outside world into the Nitro's operations and.
Yeah.
it was well-handled internally.
Yeah. I think so. I think so as well. If there's one word to kinda like conclude last year in general, like around Nitro, it's maybe uncertainty, and I think we got impacted by the uncertainty in the world, a little bit by slowing us down towards the end of the year. Overall, still, I think, we managed to keep growing and increasing our revenues and go forward with our roadmap. I think what's the most important thing is that we're in super solid position now going into 2023.
Exactly. I t was also a good period of evaluating our own processes and ways of working.
Yeah.
And even the projects and focusing for the winners and putting the focus where the future is.
Yeah. Today we're gonna talk about what exactly happened last year, how it looks like, and especially where we stand now at the beginning of the new year, 2023, because this year looks really amazing moving forward and I think a lot of the good stuff we worked on last year is gonna help us materialize even greater stuff this year.
Exactly.
For those of you who might be here for the first time, Nitro Games, we're your Finnish mobile games powerhouse, but we like to call ourselves as global company in a way because we have operations here and there and everywhere in practice, and what we do is mobile games.
Especially the action and shooter games f or the mobile, and this is something that we already done for quite a few years.
Yeah.
We celebrated our 15-year anniversary last year with the great party and l ots of industrial people joining the celebration with us.
Indeed. Indeed. It was a great night, great milestone. There's not too many companies who can say that they've been around for 15 years in this business. That's of course, something that I personally feel super proud about. Especially the fact that the older we get, the better we are. It's like whenever we reach a new milestone or a new sort of birthday, we're always better than before. That's, I think the most important thing.
Exactly. There has been kind of easier times and harder times and w e've been managing of going through all of those and now stronger for this year than ever.
Definitely. Definitely.
There is a word in Finnish, sisu.
Yeah. Indeed, indeed. It's good because now we're on a sort of riding a nice wave at the moment, so it's good to be working Nitro when things are going smoothly. Recent highlights, especially from the fourth quarter, but also last year. Overall, our revenues grew a whopping 175%, which is of course a, you know, big number. Still, for us, what that means is that we're progressing pretty much as planned.
We saw little bit slowing down towards the end of the year when we wanted to make sure that we played safe with the uncertainty around us and wanted to make sure that we don't go too much into risk-taking, but basically try to balance the risk and reward because in the long run, we don't really pay attention to one quarter and optimizing anything for one quarter specifically, but we're playing the game for the long run and making sure that we do the right thing with the long-term strategy in mind. In that sense, I'm pretty happy with how the last year turned out to be, even though we wanted to control our spending, especially on marketing towards the end of last year.
The long-term kind of thinking is, same with our partner projects.
Yeah.
A good side of that was the late last year when we signed the new continuous deal with the Digital Extremes, the good friends and client of ours. We visited the guys and then we agreed that we will continue the collaboration that has already been going for some time and, going into the exciting times also with that project and that partner.
Mm-hmm.
Same long-term thinking with the collaboration as with the business, I would say that it has the same phase.
Yeah.
On top of that, some significant events after the period. I'm quite sure that everybody already seen that we announced the Autogun Heroes.
Yeah.
T he new take.
Yeah.
T he shooters and w e'll talk more about that soon. Very, very exciting times with that one. Fast with the soft launch. Great collaboration with the guys.
Doomsday guys. Yeah.
Yeah, Doomsday guys from Denmark, the studio that we know for years. Now together with the guys, we are going through the exciting times in the soft launch. We are collecting the data and validating a ll the good that there is in the game. Also, the sign of the long-term partnership and long-term collaboration was the deal with the Supermassive Games game.
Yeah, yeah, th at one we did end of last year.
Yeah.
Sorry, end of last week.
End of last week.
Yeah, yeah.
It just shows that, there is a trust in between the parties and, also looking forwards to that game to be in the market.
Yeah. I think overall, if you look at the sort of, what we saw in the industry around us last year is that, almost every company, big or small, they went into sort of, controlling the risk and sort of, starting to, avoid, you know, investments in this and that and the next thing, and a lot of things like that. I think what's beautiful about our strategy is that even in a world where basically nobody made any deals, we still managed to do it because we have been believers in building these long-term partnerships and making sure that we have continuation of the business in that way, because we have already proven that what we can deliver.
Also with the games is we operate with free-to-play games on mobile, it's always Software as a Service i n a way. Any free-to-play game is a game of many years on the market in the live operation. It's not a case where you have one specific launch window and then that's that, but it's more like you can start to build it gradually.
Lifetime.
F ree-to-play games can expand into ten years in the best cases. That's beautiful for us because now it means that even if the world around us has been a little bit shaking and uncertain, we can still go forward with our strategy and adapt and navigate through that in a positive way.
Exactly.
All right. Let's have a look at Nitro in 2023, who we are and how things look like right now. Where we're as a result of last year, and as mentioned in the beginning, we are a mobile games powerhouse based in Finland, but very much a company with a global mindset. We have two studios in Finland and quite a few people who work with the sort of freelance basis in different locations in Finland. Overall, we're roughly 60 people now in Finland in total, counting our employees and the ones we contract with, and then quite a few places on top of that around the world.
Yeah. It's not like, not only that we are thinking we are global, but we are global. As you can see from the map, there are Nitro people all around the world working for our products, even though in our partner studios. This is the model also which shows the long-term opportunities and long-term building up this network of great studios in the different fields of business. There are art production and programming and a ll aspects of the game development, publishing, and also the business development that we are utilizing the partners here, there and eve rywhere. It has been proven to be very good model also in stages of scaling and growing the company.
Yeah. Yeah.
We don't have to book all the costs internally, but, we can utilize our partners.
Yeah. Yeah. I think the fact that we have what we call frame agreements with a lot of these partner studios in place, we kinda order workloads from time to time depending on what the need is, it definitely helps when we're scaling up because then we can get more stuff to work on the projects quicker. It also helps if times are turbulent when we wanna scale down, that is also something that we can do quickly simply by not ordering more stuff. I think the fact that we've been building long-term partnerships with the key studios we work with is something that helps us to navigate again through uncertain times in the world because we can rely on those partners still being there. We vetted them over and over and again.
Then again, in the long run, those are still potential, you know, targets for acquisition or deeper collaboration when things go that direction.
Exactly.
For example, like with Doomsday, we ended up acquiring the game from t hem and working with the core team.
Talking about the partnerships, I think the strongest one that we have is our main one on N ordisk Games. That has been developing now for some year and deeper and deeper in a operative level. We are working very closely. There are lots of synergies between the companies in a Nordisk Games family. We are sharing the marketing intelligence. We are sharing lots of different, kind of, information and best practices on how to handle the difficult situation if the world is shaking around us.
Yeah.
We couldn't be more happy of this partnership.
Yeah, a nd owner. Yeah. I think it gives us really good leverage also, in terms of being part of a larger group of companies where if somebody hasn't maybe heard of Nitro in some case, they definitely have heard about some of the other companies or Nordisk Games themselves. I think the fact that they are very much gaming people without, with not directly being a games company means that the whole world is open for us to explore in terms of, especially with our B2B service business, but still we get the leverage and support from those people who are very connected, in the industry.
Exactly. I think you said the kind of magic keyword, people.
Yeah. Yeah.
E ven though there are business between the companies, but the people in this group, they are really great.
Yeah.
And sharing the same mindset.
Yeah, definitely. Together with our team and obviously with Nordisk Games, who very much shares our vision, and that's the reason why they are on board supporting Nitro so much, is that we want to be your global powerhouse and household name in the category of shooter games and action games in mobile. Shooter games on mobile are something that is already very big. There's been great successes in the category, but also something where there's still very much room to grow and different type of approaches to the category. We will soon talk about the games that we have and explain a little bit about why we're going a little bit different directions with each and so on. That's definitely something that we focus on, so we wanna be laser sharp with that.
How we measure the success is that, there is a kind of long-term play with our games. They are not just the blockbusters of one week. T hey are kind of years and years of live operation, and further developing the game and optimizing the marketing funnels, t he LTVs and all that. We wanna create that sort of experiences where people are spending time and money fo r the longer run.
Yeah. I think, sort of defining success by how much your players want to spend money in your game is a great way in free-to-play because no one's obliged to spend anything. I think it's good to see that both with NERF: Superblast and with Autogun Heroes, which is only in soft launch, but still, in both games players are definitely happy to spend their money in the game, and that's really good, and especially considering the long life cycle of the games.
Exactly.
Yeah. From people point of view, again, we definitely want to be the best employer there is in this business. There's no question about that. There's bigger companies than Nitro, there's smaller companies than Nitro, and everything in between. We want to be the best place to work in this business, and we want to be the best people as well, whether it's about the level of professionalism or the culture that we are actively developing here.
No, that is w here we are investing a lot, and especially investing a lot about thought.
Yeah.
O f course, there are some resources required, but mostly kind of thought. It is the team i s something that we are discussing all the time with the leadership forums, and how we can improve as leaders and how we can improve the conditions within our team here in Finland. Al so with our partners.
Yeah. I think, from story point of view, what sets us apart maybe from some other companies, not necessarily from all of them, but at least some, is that we're definitely here to make huge things happen. Even though, like for example, last year our revenue is 175% increase, some might consider that, like, big and so on, but for us it's just a stepping stone on our way moving forward. We're definitely in this business to make, you know, huge things happen, and we will not be satisfied until we get there, no matter the growth that we get on the way. Of course, we're happy for that as well.
Exactly.
How are we exactly getting there? That's why we have our strategy, in our strategy we have two legs. We have our games business and our B2B service business. Our games business is the business that is there to generate the hockey sticks. That's our sort of risk part of the business where we're seeking those big successes seeking to get this thing into the category of being huge. Moving to 2023, we have two games that made it as a result of 2022. In 2022, we measured several titles, either in soft launch or in our MVP process, some of which were developed within Nitro, some of which were developed outside the company, and simply put, selected the best.
NERF: Superblast we nt into the launch phase in September last year. In here in Nitro, we have roughly six months launch phase, now the game is approaching the end of the launch phase, and we have been measuring the KPIs and trying out different things. I wanna know what we're seeking to do next is to move forward to the live operations phase. With NERF: Superblast, the focus at the moment is very much in profitability. That game is now going through this type of steering where we prioritize profitability over revenue growth. We are in position where we could grow the game a lot bigger, by investing.
By investing.
Y eah, by investing more into the user acquisition. Since the times in the world are not the most certain, and especially the markets being what they are, we don't wanna end up in a position where we take too big of a risk with that one. Instead, we're taking it slow and optimizing profits first, and then growing the game afterwards. We believe that with the long-term mindset, this is definitely the right strategy to take in this point. Autogun Heroes, which is also a great game, is something completely different. If NERF: Superblast is a multiplayer team-based shooter where we are doing like a lot of different type of events with a lot of players involved, Autogun Heroes then again is a single player experience, which is much more controlled in a way.
Players go through in a different funnel. It's definitely not cannibalizing NERF in any way because it's a completely different type of experience, but still a shooter game very much.
There is a kind of sub-genre of this kind of game i n the market with the very successful games in the genre.
Definitely.
Market is there, and early feedback that we have gotten from the market is very encouraging.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think, with Autogun Heroes, even though we're just kinda like in the very first days and weeks of the soft launch phase, of course, we measured the game already, you know, last year and last summer before we decided to go into acquiring it. We're super happy with what we've seen so far and very much looking forward to how things go with that one this year.
As on the games business, we are focusing on the winners, s o to speak. A nd it's good to remember that, at the same time, there are bubbling under some new stuff.
Yep. Yep.
The same we did with, our B2B service business.
Yeah.
A lso f ocusing for the big impactful cases.
Yeah.
Focusing for the cases where we have a clear view on the project. We have some sort of elements of potential success. Also, we believe that those cases are something that could break through o n a market. Digital Extremes being a very good example with the game on that one. Very exciting times w orking towards the times that we can, w hat we've been working for quite a long time. Same applies with the Supermassive Games and, game with them.
Yeah.
N ow going through the steps on a development that it won't be too long when we can come out with w hat we've been working.
That's of course, one of the highlights of this year in particular, if you ask me, is the fact that the sort of our maturity of our projects has increased a lot.
Yeah.
If with our games business, we are now at a point where NERF is already generating revenue and it's already on the market and we are, you know, growing and moving forward with that one. Then we have Autogun Heroes where we already seeing that that game can make revenue from the data that we've seen so far and we are looking forward to getting that rolled out with the full launch and everything. While overall we can expect our games business to increase in its size and role for Nitro overall this year, the same applies.
Same applies.
Yeah. In the B2B service business.
Definitely growing there.
Yeah.
Both of the projects are growing, but then there are naturally our B2B is busy.
Yeah.
L ooking for new opportunities for Nitro all the time.
Yeah. Cool. Then if we put our strategy into the context of our roadmap, we started with the current strategy from the beginning of 2017. What we've been now doing the last few years is that in 2021 we expanded our project portfolio. That was the theme of the year, to expand in a lot of horizons to make sure that we can go forward with our process where we measure everything and then focus on the winners. Last year was exactly that year when we measured a lot of things and started to focus on the winners. We did tons of launches in MVP, soft launch, and so on and so on, and concluded with NERF: Superblast and also Autogun Heroes as the games.
We even explored some new areas like instant gaming.
Yeah, yeah.
HTML5 gaming.
Yeah, yeah.
A ll of those, n ow we feel that the portfolio fit is very good for w hat we have in-house.
Yeah. This meant that also a lot of the things that we thought were super good, but not good enough c ompared to the other stuff, we also decided to either let go completely or put on hold. Some of these things were influenced by external factors as well. Like for example, Snapchat decided to close down t heir whole games business.
Yeah.
That meant that we had four titles that are now off the market in a way. We decided to put Lootland on hold and figure out an alternative approach with that one. That's something people ask us every now and then, that what's going on with that game? Absolutely nothing at the moment. We might do something with it one day, but as of now, we don't have any specific plans.
This year now then again, with those four projects that got selected during last year, those are now the cornerstones of our roadmap for 2023. If NERF is now going through a phase where we, based on the data and everything we've learned, optimize that title towards profitability as it goes into live operations, we're looking forward to getting Autogun Heroes to launch, move forward with the B2B projects. We are driving whole Nitro t owards profitability. Naturally, as a disclaimer, in games business, anything can happen. Waters can be volatile, so it's not necessarily going to be super systematic, every quarter beating the previous type of approach, but overall that's the direction where we're now definitely very much going because we're starting to approach the end of our strategy period.
Exactly.
We don't have a specific date there, we've used 2025 as the kinda like end date and 2023 as the year when we start to materialize the shareholder value and have the portfolio of live games and so on. If you look at what we're doing, one can say that we would have delivered shareholder value because, you know, the share prices and so on, how they have developed in recent months. Definitely in our business, we are now have the portfolio of live games. There's gonna be new launches, those are generating revenue, and we're growing them. At the same time we're seeking to grow the B2B service business as well. We believe that we're definitely getting there .
Well on our way. Yeah.
Well on our way to becoming a household name in this category and getting to reach those huge things.
Exactly.
If we look at some numbers, because this wouldn't be a year-end report if there weren't any numbers in play, here's our income statement. As we can see, the revenues increased a lot compared to the previous year. Also, for the fourth quarter, we saw a very notable increase compared to the previous year. Our EBITDA decreased slightly as a result of these planned investments into the game launches, game acquisitions, and marketing, and that's also the front where we a little bit controlled the spending towards the end of the year.
We started to decrease our spending on marketing because in free-to-play things go in a way that when you invest in user acquisition, for example, you quite often do a projection of 365 days or one year when you expect to make the funding back.
Super back. Yeah.
A nd you get certain amount in the first 30 days and so on and so on. That's a game that you sort of play when it comes to the marketing and growing the game. We wanna make sure that we don't take any risks that we don't have to take at the moment, as long as the times around us are uncertain, and focus on making sure that we can go forward with our own strategy without minding too much about the world around us. I think we've succeeded pretty well with that so far.
If we look at the longer term development towards profitability, which is our main theme this year, we can see that this is exactly what we mean when we say that things can be a little bit volatile from one quarter to another, but the overall trend line is very much valuable and clear there.
The direction is towards the profitability.
Yeah. If there's something to expect from Nitro moving forward is that we will do, you know, what we have to do to make sure that things get to that direction moving forward as well. Now we are done with the presenting.
That concludes the presentation.
Yes. Let's see if we have any questions. There is actually quite a few. Someone asks that, where is shareholder value? That's something that we're definitely very much building on. For governance reasons, we've been always told not to comment on the share price. I think that's a big no-no, so we won't be commenting on that. Definitely we're very much determined to deliver that this year and next year and the year after.
I probably believe that going towards the profitability and scalable growth.
Yeah.
T hat will be the shareholder value.
When will you be profitable, is the next question. We don't do financial guidance, so we don't know exactly when we will be profitable, but that's something we're very much working towards and something that's very much in our focus this year.
There's a question that Snap deals was something that excited some investors in 2021. Are we planning new deals with existing companies like Snap or any others? That's something that we might come up with something on that front, but no guarantees on that. Why we say that we might is that we wanna make sure that the business opportunities are relevant, big enough to make sense for Nitro still in 2023 and moving forward. When we first signed with Snap, that was in 2020 earlier.
Yeah. Very small-ish cases.
Yeah. Sorry, in 2021, but st ill.
Yeah.
Y eah. At that point, those were still opportunities that were good for us to take. I think, we probably wouldn't take those anymore. I think we're way beyond that point. Parallel to that, what we have learned from this instant gaming field overall is that the trends that were visible beginning of 2021 and moving forward to the end of the year, those haven't really continued in a way.
Yeah.
It's not the type of a business opportunity that we would seek anymore.
It seems that there was a bit of a hype around the segment and.
Yeah.
Then world changed.
Yeah. There's a question about, for one year, no real game deals have materialized, w hy is that? I think there's few different reasons for that. One, we want to very much self-publish when it comes to, for example, with NERF: Superblast and Autogun Heroes. When you have something as good as those, you don't really wanna go shopping around too much. That's definitely one thing.
I think second thing is something that is true in the whole industry, is that if you look at any industry news or stuff like that, there really isn't any deals made too much. There's been some sort of funding things going on r elated to companies n eeding funding, and then, quite a lot of activity on M&A and consolidation because obviously when, you know, companies tend to be cheap, but when the world goes crazy, t hen it's a good opportunity for a lot of players to snatch good purchases in a way. There wasn't too many, you know, business development deals announced overall in the business. I think that's where our long-term partnerships come into very crucial play, that, we can move forward by h aving returning customers in a way.
Now it seems that, starting this year, you know, the market has somehow been awakening, wakening up on a BD side also.
Yeah.
T here will be lots of big conferences around the springtime. Let's see what is the kind of result of those if market is actually wakening up on a B2B side.
Yeah. There's questions about our runway, and is there any instant risk of a rights issue? Well, there is no instant risk of a rights issue. We have never done a preferential rights issue. We have typically wanted to make sure that the way we operate is that we always maintain at least one year horizon moving forward with our cash and stuff. That's something that also comes by the stock market rules and so on to some extent, that we need to make sure that we have funds to operate. That's exactly why we are now taking, or have already taken the stance that we have limited some spending and made sure that we