Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Greetings from-
[Non-English content ]
Finland.
Indeed. It's your boys, Jussi and Antti here, and we are here to deliver you the latest and greatest on Nitro Games.
Nice to see you all.
Likewise. It's been busy third quarter.
Yeah.
Busy first nine months. We've done a lot on many fronts, and we still have a lot to do this year as we move forward.
Yeah.
Cool. If you're new to Nitro Games, then as a quick introduction, we are one of the oldest game companies in Finland. We have a big celebration next year when we celebrate 20 years.
I think we are best known from our action and shooter games.
Yes.
And the projects and the partner projects.
Yeah, in recent years especially.
Yeah.
Yes.
In a long history, starting from where we started.
Yeah.
From strategy and action games, and.
Yeah.
That's something that we've been carrying on.
Indeed.
For years.
Indeed. Stuff that we do lately, we operate a lot on multi-platform, also cross-platform. We do a lot of mobile, we do a lot of PC these days, and also cross-platform games that are basically PC, console, sometimes even on mobile. One thing that describes Nitro well is that we have a habit of taking pretty advanced, technically challenging.
Yeah.
Projects and our sort of big USP, and if you ask me, maybe the secret sauce why we have been around for such a long time is that we deliver uncompromised quality.
Quality, quality.
To our partners and players.
Yeah. Quality and technical know-how.
Yeah.
Is quite often the things where both of our original projects are starting and.
Yeah.
Also when our partners are approaching us.
Indeed.
That is what they are after.
Yes.
Nowadays, more and more multi-platform, cross-platform-
Yeah.
Adaptations of the existing or new IPs.
Bingo. If we look at the third quarter and the highlights from the report that we just published this morning, the third quarter overall is pretty well in line with our goals for this year and what we have discussed earlier, how we are, this year, taking careful investments in building new products, new partnerships, new collaborations.
Increasing our games revenue.
Yes.
Step by step, going forward.
Yeah.
First investing and then collecting the fruits.
Yes, indeed. This game revenue for us means basically that we want to see increased skin in the game from Nitro, also in our partner projects, and then we expect to see revenue share and other forms of compensation moving forward, and that's how we build during this strategy period that we're going through now.
investing into the Nitro Originals games.
Yes.
Those always means first investments, then recouping and profits.
If we look at the happenings during the third quarter, most of the stuff is going behind the scenes in a way, because this is a year when we build a lot of new stuff, so these things will surface one by one. We started the quarter by signing a follow-up agreement with a European games developer and publisher. This is a great project for us, great collaboration. Then we launched Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Boom on mobile.
Quite a good kind of start for the new business area.
Yeah.
Free-to-try mobile.
Yeah.
Mobile business and pre-registrations and first indications of the launch for the games were really great.
Yeah, I am really happy with the results of the pre-registration phase when we scored 1 million pre-registrations. That is essentially double our target.
Yeah.
That we had for the phase. When we started to go in towards the launch, we started to see prominent placements by Apple and Google instantly, and that is super good because not only it makes us proud of what we just delivered, but it also means that the cornerstone of this type of premium game release, if you will, it relies on the continued support from the platforms as we go forward in the launch. So very good. Also fresh news, end of last week, we signed with Team17, so cool new stuff.
Cool new stuff. Cool new partner.
Yes.
Following the strategy that we have and.
Yeah.
Skin in the game revenues.
Yeah.
But still something to.
Yeah.
Build for.
Yeah, indeed. This is a deal where out of the total project value, which we put into the press release, that it's approximately EUR 0.7 million, they bring in some of the funding, we bring in some of the funding, and then we have a revenue share when the game goes live. So, fully in line with our strategy.
Fully in line with the strategy and.
Yes.
Increasing the share of the game revenue.
Yeah.
In our business.
Yeah. If we look at the numbers a little bit closer, I think the pillars on the left side of the screen, they pretty well describe what we are after this year. As a reminder, we started with our new strategy period that runs for five years, and this year it is all about investing carefully in new growth. With new growth, we mean new games, new partnerships, new collaborations, and especially, like Antti mentioned earlier, increasing the game revenue by putting more and more skin in the game.
As you can see from the charts, also paying heavy attention to the bottom line.
Yes. That is one of the cornerstones of this strategy period that we pay attention to the sort of sound business, as we call it, and prioritize bottom line over the top line growth.
Yeah.
At least, in the beginning phase.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yes.
Now that we have been doing those investments, then going forward, we are, of course.
Yes.
Try to collect the fruits on the game revenue side.
Indeed. On the balance sheet side, if we look at the assets, those numbers are pretty close to what they were one year ago, so, no huge changes on that side. On the liability side, then again, that's where we have some concrete progress compared to last year. Since end of September last year we have essentially halved our debts. This is mostly due to Business Finland forgiving the R&D loan that we had from them. That helps to clean up the balance sheet.
Yeah.
If you will. If we look at Nitro all the way since the beginning.
We've always been working with great partners.
Yes.
The slide explains a few of them.
Yeah.
I think the key thing going forward is that even working with the partner projects, we are steering all of the partner projects towards having skin in the game, doing the controlled investments, and increasing our share on our game revenues.
100%. I think that's the biggest change in Nitro today if you compare that against anything we've done in the past.
Yeah.
Historically, we've been doing a lot of pretty close to work-for-hire type of models. But now this year and moving forward, we seek to put some more skin in the game against what you just described. That's a big difference. I think thanks to our history, we are in a position that we can actually do it.
Exactly.
We wouldn't be able to do it if we were fresh.
Yeah.
In this business.
Also this lineup of the partners tells about the quality, tells about the.
Yeah.
Technical capabilities that we have.
Yeah.
Quite often why they are coming to us is either of those, then some innovative game elements that.
Indeed.
We are one of the few that can deliver.
Yeah. This gives good synergies against our own portfolio, of course, as well. When we put this all into context of our almost 20 years of history now, we're now.
Next year you can say that.
Next year we can finally say that. Yes. We need to throw a big party then. This year is in many ways about new beginnings. It's super exciting here inside Nitro because we're building a lot of new stuff. There's a lot of cool new things going on. All that financial stability that we built during that previous few years, we're now putting all that into good use, making sure that we do careful investments in building new growth for the remaining part of the strategy period.
Exactly. Going forward, I think what can be expected is more new games coming out from Nitro and.
Yeah.
New partner projects.
Yeah. While at the same time also increasing the ambition level as we go. We want to make sure that every game that we do, we try to make it a category leading product in that specific niche wherever it's placed. The team, this is one of our secret sauces in a way, and I think the word partnerships applies here as well. We are roughly 50 people in total in Finland in two studios when you count all the employees and the freelancers we have.
With very senior kind of leadership team.
Yeah.
Controlling all of that multi-talented and multi-location hybrid teams.
Yeah.
Here and there. I think not only the having ability to attract the best talent on each project, it is also a risk management tool for us.
Yeah.
That we do not carry that big of the labor cost structure inside of Nitro, but then we can scale up and scale down when the.
Yeah.
Time needs.
Yeah. Basically working with our partner studios who we worked with for so many years now already, gives us the ability to do exactly that. So, we can invest when the projects require it and balance everything so that things go smoothly with our financials as well.
And it seems that this is more and more accepted also in our partner projects. Even though some years ago it was seen a bit of a risk to have externals in the project, but now more and more industry is going into the direction where this kind of hybrid team models are accepted and sometimes even favored because there might be somebody in the same time zone as a client that is part of our partner project and.
100%.
These kind of things is starting to play in our benefit even though w e started already 20 years ago. But now it seems to be becoming more and more standard in the game development.
Yes, definitely. Especially with the turbulence in the industry overall during the previous few years, there's a lot of big teams that unfortunately are not justified anymore and so on. So this way of working seems to become maybe even the new industry standard if you will.
Yeah.
Game portfolio. This, of course, always the most important and juicy part.
Yeah. As already referred, we have two sections or categories.
Yeah.
Nitro Originals, where we are operating with our own IPs.
Yes.
And Nitro Partners, where we are operating with somebody else's IPs. But both of these are now the areas where we are growing the game revenues.
Yes.
So Nitro Partners games are not only the work-for-hire kind of business models, but also in there we are building structures where we are getting into the long earnings from the hopefully successful games.
Indeed, 100%. Also on the Nitro Originals side, we are also working more and more with different partners.
Exactly.
Who are investing into something. We are not taking full risk on that side either. If we quickly talk through what is happening in the game portfolio this year. Wolf Commando is the first one of hopefully many PC games coming out from us in this strategy period. With this one, earlier this year during the summer, we did the first public tests. This game is currently in production phase aimed towards a launch, which we have not announced yet. With this one, we are also looking into potential partnerships moving forward. Autogun Heroes, we announced it during the summer that we have signed that with Hyperkani.
Great partner too.
Great partner, yes.
To leverage everything that we have done and adding their know-how on optimizing the stores.
Yeah.
Optimizing the marketing funnel.
Yeah.
It seems that the guys are getting some results.
Yes. Indeed.
That they have been doing.
Indeed. I am really looking forward to how they can help us to make Autogun Heroes go to the next phase of the game and what comes out of that. Autogun Heroes: Supercharged, so same IP, same brand, but on PC. That is something that we have been more silent recently, and for a good reason. There is stuff going on that we have not announced yet, so happy to see what comes out of that moving forward. We have Pistolo which is our first ever iGaming game, which we released at the beginning of 2025.
Yeah.
So end of 2025.
That was opening of a new category for us as the Boltgun Boom is another category for us.
Yeah.
It is free to try.
Yeah.
With opening this iGaming category, we have been very happy with the opening to category. In that category, in that segment, we have another partner that we are working with our own games.
Indeed. We work with Ethereal Gaming. The first game that we did is called Cowboy Hop, which was released during the quarter. Now we have a second one, and we are pretty much done with that and looking forward to releasing that, and then hopefully many more to come.
Yeah.
Interested in exploring those things forward as well.
Then about the Nitro Partners.
Yes.
Still a reminder that these two categories are not divided by the business models, but by who is owning the IP.
Yeah.
Boltgun Boom, we already discussed quite a lot.
I think what to say about that is that it is a great way to start this whole mobile premium free to try before you buy, whatever you want to call it, approach. In that space, we seek to work with existing IPs. We seek to work with great partners because finding that audience and getting the support from the storefronts is essential. This is not your typical user acquisition game like in free-to-play mobile.
Yeah.
It is completely different in that sense, so that is a great way to start.
It seems that there are quite a lot of traction on that area. We have several discussions going on.
Yeah.
And that it's new for many, so it's a little bit slow to get the project started.
Yeah.
Interest is definitely there, and there are quite a few discussions in the various steps on our BD funnel.
Yeah, definitely. Speaking of which, I think the opportunity to collaborate with Team17, that also feels good because if you know Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are brands that we've all gotten exposed as kids back in the day, Team17 is also like.
Exactly.
Everybody remembers
Yeah.
So many classic games that they've done. This is something that's super cool for us as well.
Yeah. To be honest, all of our partner partners are like.
Yeah.
In a such category, applying the VOID Interactive, applying to Warframe and Payday as well.
Yeah, through that. Maybe to note about Payday, because during the quarter, they announced that they finally released the Unreal Engine 5 version of the game. That's something that was super cool thing for us to be part of, because as far as we know, it is the first ever time somebody has done something like that.
Live update.
For a live game, like upgrade.
Live update
The engine.
Yeah.
That was interesting challenge, but.
Again, proving the quality and technical know-how that.
Yeah.
We have in Nitro, and great partners of us are coming to us with this kind of.
Yeah.
Challenges when they really need the quality, when they really need the technical capabilities
Yeah.
Of doing something as challenging as updating the live game engine.
Indeed. If we look things forward, this year, our focus is on new growth. With that, we mean that we lay down the groundwork for the strategy period, that we have ongoing new games, new partnerships, new collaborations. We invest, we put skin in the game. That how much we invest, how much the partner invest, that is case by case. All of this we do to increase the game revenues moving forward.
And come next year, then I think we can start expecting to hear and see something that has been brewing during this year, whether that's them revealing something or releasing something, but I think both of those will be happening during the next year.
Yeah. Definitely, because this year is far from done. There's still so much to work on. But also, when we start to look at the next year and stuff, it looks super exciting for us now because it's been a good start so far.
Yeah. Exactly.
Yes. Okay. Let's then start to conclude this webcast. Hope you enjoyed it.
Too short.
Hope you found the answers to whatever questions you might have had. Let me just check if we have gotten any new ones. Before the webcast, we got some asking about the new deal that we just signed, and so on. We already commented on those. There were some questions about the Boltgun launch. I think we spoke about that.
Yeah.
I think we probably covered pretty much all of those. I think, where is my mouse? I need to find my mouse. Okay. Let us see. Come on. Now we are losing our mouse. But hey, do not worry about it. We will conclude this webcast now, and until next time, see you. Thanks for joining.
Too short.
Do not hesitate to reach out.
Yeah.
If you have any questions. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.