Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the East Side Games Group fourth quarter 2022 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session for analysts only. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Jason Bailey, Board Chair, CEO, and Founder of East Side Games Group. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to East Side Games Group's fourth quarter 2022 results call. On the call with me today is Jim MacCallum, our Chief Financial Officer, and also I'd like to introduce you to Lisa Shek and Jim Wagner, who I'll speak about more later in the call. I will begin by sharing highlights from the fourth quarter and December 31, 2022.
I will also be giving you an update on our business strategy and key events that have taken place since we last spoke on November 9, 2022. Jim will go into greater detail on our financial results commentary for the period before turning it back to myself for some final remarks before we open it up to analyst questions.
I'd like to remind you that certain statements made on this call are forward-looking within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This call includes references to non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our second quarter press release in MD&A for the cautionary statements relating to forward-looking information and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP results.
References to all figures are in Canadian dollars on an IFRS basis, unless otherwise noted. Additional materials can be found on our investor section of our website at www.eastsidegamesgroup.com under the financial information section, and an audio replay of this call will also be available on our website. Q4 was a solid quarter, and I'm pleased with our strong finish to 2022. Q4 was CAD 25.9 million in revenue and Adjusted EBITDA of CAD 2.5 million.
This is a strong rebound from Q3 as we continued our shift away from aggressive growth at a break-even target and towards a more focused approach. We canceled projects that were not meeting core metrics and shuffled talent to the projects with the greatest chance of success.
The launch of Star Trek: Lower Decks – The Badgey Directive in September 2022, Milk Farm Tycoon in February 2023, and Doctor Who: Lost In Time in March 2023, as well as a strong slate of titles yet to be released, sets us up for a very strong 2023 and beyond. We finished 2022 with total revenue of CAD 116.3 million in top line and with CAD 7.5 million in Adjusted EBITDA. This is a 25% year-over-year top-line growth despite the market headwinds and challenges.
We have a strong, growing, profitable business with an enviable IP portfolio and a broadly diversified base of games driving revenue. We have seven titles that make up almost 95% of our title, and no single title accounting for more than 25% of revenue. For 2023 and 2024, we will have a tighter focus on large IP-driven games with cult-like followings.
This is where we have had the most success and believe we will continue to in the future. We will be investing in our winners as well as betting smart about what is working in the new market dynamics. We have signed deals for new IPs and games for the next year with some of the strongest names in movies, television, toys, music, and sports entertainment. We have also signed numerous development partnership deals with leading studios all over the world.
The strength of our GameKit platform continues to fuel our growth as we launch more successful titles using this tool set. Four of the seven unique titles which generate more than CAD 20K per day have been launched in the last 18 months using this tech. As the GameKit product gets more and more extensive, we are able to embrace more and more of these partnerships.
Daily active users were 277,000, down slightly from 298,000 in Q3. However, ARPDAU, average revenue per daily active user, increased to $1.04 from $0.94 in Q3. Our mission at East Side Games is to not just build games and delight players. We aim to fundamentally change the way games are built and published.
We are investing heavily in our software platform. We are building a publishing infrastructure. We are building a best practices playbook, and we are building deep relationships and trust with every major IP holder. We are building talent density across all of our teams. We are building a multi-billion dollar business with a concrete foundation. We are leading the 200 billion dollar a year game industry on an innovative new path. Over to Jim for some comments.
Thank you, Jason. Hello, everyone. Before I get into the financial highlights, I'd like to touch on accounting adjustments we made to our financial statements, which impacted the prior years and continued into 2022. The adjustments were advised by our auditors and are fully explained in note two of our financial statements.
The adjustments have required us to capitalize our guaranteed payments for intellectual property contracts and capitalize our outsourced R&D as prepaid amounts or as, excuse me, as intangible assets. These costs were largely expensed previously, except where we had prepaid amounts that were recoverable. We also adjusted our accounting for our investment in Truly Social Games. The restatements caused net and comprehensive loss for 2021 to be restated to CAD 2.8 million from the previously reported loss of CAD 1.9 million.
The restatements had no effect on the company's cash or revenue and in fact improved the company's EBITDA. The 8-quarter table in our MD&A presents both our as reported numbers and our as adjusted numbers for comparability purposes.
As Jason noted, we reported a strong Q4. Decisive cost cuts made during the quarter allowed us to return to profitability. For the quarter, we generated CAD 2.5 million in Adjusted EBITDA, compared to CAD 1.3 million in the prior year quarter. Cash on hand at December 31st was CAD 5.7 million. We recorded strong operating cash flow of CAD 10 million for the year. We have minimal debt with additional access to financing if required.
We have purchased 386,000 shares under our NCIB through March 29th at an average cost of CAD 1.12 per share. We continue to be active in this program. Thank you for your continued support. With that, I will pass it back to Jason.
Thanks, Jim. I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce some key members of our team. First, I would like to introduce Jim Wagner. Jim has been with East Side Games for over 10 years and has been instrumental in every title we have launched at this studio. He is currently acting as head of product for the GameKit team, starting tomorrow, he will be the Chief Product Officer of the East Side Games Group. Congrats, Jim.
Well deserved. In a moment, we will pass it to you to make a few comments. First, I'd like to also introduce Lisa Shek. Lisa has been with East Side Games for almost two years and is an unquestionable star of our industry. With deep knowledge of our products, operations, partnerships, and the game development cycle, she is the ideal candidate for her new role of Chief Operating Officer. Jim, you say a few things and then pass it to Lisa.
Thank you, Jason, for that introduction. As Jason mentioned, I have been with East Side Games for over 11 years now, and during that time, I've been intimately involved with the success of our products, and my knowledge of their inner workings is second to none.
Moving into the chief product officer role, I will be focused on improving the revenue of our 7 profitable games, setting the framework for our next big IP hits, and exploring new genres of gameplay to expand our portfolio. By sharing wins across the game portfolio under one cohesive product vision, we can maximize the efficiency and success of GameKit. Thank you, and over to you, Lisa.
Thanks, Jim. I want to start by thanking the leadership team and board of directors for their confidence in me and the opportunity to continue contributing to the success of this company. As the new COO, I'm focused on driving operational excellence across the organization.
This includes ensuring we have the right talent in the right roles, streamlining our operations and processes, and maximizing our efficiency and productivity. Together, we will build a stronger, more successful organization that will thrive in today's competitive business landscape. Back to you, Jason.
Thank you very much. Sorry, I lost where I'm on this page. That's about all we have to say about that. I'm super excited to, you know, have these people beside me as, you know, directors and officers of this company.
We have an incredibly deep bench of people around them that we've built, and we will continue to, you know, right-size that group of people, make sure we have absolutely stellar talent in place, as well as the tools and, systems in place to make sure we're getting the best out of everybody, especially in this, you know, remote working modern world of the post-pandemic, whatever you wanna call it.
It's a quickly changing business landscape everywhere, and we intend to be at the, you know, the leading edge of that and be the best of the best. Let's move now to some analyst questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star followed by 1 on your touch tone phone. You will hear a 1-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Your first question comes from the line of Neal Gilmer from Haywood Securities. Your line is now open.
Yeah, good afternoon, and thanks for the questions. I guess two from me. First one would be on the ARPDAU. Just looking through the MD&A here and so forth, and you got that over a dollar in Q4, which I think, if my memory serves, is sort of one of the sort of key milestones that you were, you were working towards.
So what do you sort of attribute your ability to accomplish that in Q4? Was there a particular game that contributed to that? Sort of how do you see that evolving as we move through 2023 here?
A few things happened there. One is, like as we talked about, taking our talent and having them focus on existing titles. We were able to raise the water-Pretty much across the board. You know, our newest titles, particularly, The Office: Somehow We Manage, and the Star Trek: Lower Decks games both have exceptional ARPDAUs. We were able to lift the boats across the entire way. You know, Jim Wagner on the call now is in charge directly and has been in managing that live ops team to maximize for that. Jim, you want to add anything to that?
Yeah. Definitely on the... It was a concerted effort from all games. It wasn't any one game. We definitely saw an increase over Christmas, especially around the live ops games, and that was from really me stepping in there, working with that team and coordinating them to focus on the right things, moving away from big features and focusing on small wins and transferring all the learnings from our IdleKit or our GameKit external games into our internal games. As I said, across the board, all games were up.
Neal Gilmer, you said you have two questions?
Yeah. Yeah. My, my other question is, I guess goes back to obviously you did that game for Netflix and just sort of curious as to sort of where you see the landscape there. You know, recently, actually yesterday I saw an article just about talking about Netflix is looking like there's some stuff in their code to allow it to be, you know, play games on the TV and using like a smartphone or tablet as the controller and so forth.
Just sort of curious on whether that's something you're still, you know, have your eyes on, you're still in, you know, discussions to have, you know, further development for a platform like that, or just sort of your thoughts on that sort of aspect of the industry?
You know, we know the mobile games landscape has continued to change and evolve. Both Google and Apple, you know, are under tremendous pressure from regulators and from mobile game developers themselves to switch up how they're deploying their platform. They very much operated as a walled garden, with that 30% fee, and making discovery within that ecosystem very much controlled and curated by themselves.
This has opened up opportunities for other platforms to come in and give better pricing as well as solve for discovery in other ways. Netflix is one of these platforms. You know, one of the great things about Apple is that they know your credit card number. One of the great things about Netflix is they also know your credit card number. Netflix is investing CAD billions in building out their gaming platform.
You know, arguably, they have been unsuccessful to date. None of their games have been exceptional. You know, don't even get me off started on the reasons why. You know, we all think we can screw in a better light bulb. In talking to others across the industry, I can't give any specifics, but I can tell you that many, many others are considering that same platform play, moving in on Apple and Google's duopoly.
We are talking to all of those people about, you know, various ways we can work together, leverage the GameKit platform, and help them become, the next great player in the mobile gaming space. That's something that's gonna play out over the next 1-5 years. It's nothing that's gonna change this quarter, that's for sure. It is definitely a very important part of our relationship building over the next years.
Okay. Thanks for that. I might squeeze in a small one for Jim. Just obviously we haven't updated our model for all the restatements you have in prior quarters, but did notice a dip in operating expenses in Q4. I'm assuming that that's based on, you know, what you said in the restatement comments in your prepared remarks is that you're now capitalizing some of those costs instead of they were going through the expense item before. Sort of the OPEX rate that we see in Q4 is what we should be considering going forward for sort of a baseline.
Yeah. I think that's accurate, Neal. We have capitalized some costs, as I mentioned. We did also reduce costs in Q4, so the run rate is lower in Q4 and going forward into 2023.
Okay. Okay. Thanks for your time, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Neal.
Thanks, Neal.
Your next question comes from the line of Adhir Kadve from Eight Capital. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions here. You know, Jason, last call you kind of talked about this kind of new normal post Apple's App Tracking Transparency services just on user acquisition spending. Can you just kind of give us a sense on how you guys are kind of operating in this new normal? Kind of what learnings you've had over the last 3 months, and how you kind of are gonna look to apply those as you kind of go forward into 2023 with your more focused approach?
Sure. Over the last couple of quarters, we've significantly reduced our ad spend. As you can see through the numbers, it hasn't had a significantly adverse effect on revenue. It's slowed our growth, but it's also increased our profitability.
You know, we're looking at relatively short payback windows to make sure that all of our advertising spend, and I mean all of it, is positive return. We're not building brand or awareness or those types of campaigns. We track everything back to results. We are much more focused today than we ever have been on how we can measure those things. In a post IDFA world, it's very challenging.
We've, you know, come up with a number of strategies that we're comfortable with. We have a great user acquisition team currently being led by Nancy Huang, who's been with us for a very long time and, you know, is doing an absolutely stellar job of making sure that every CAD 1 we spend turns into more than CAD 1, and taking into account every possible cost and fee to make sure that we're profitable as, you know, the days of grow at all costs are long gone. We are very much focused on profitability.
Understood. Thank you very much for that. You know, maybe just, you know, to what you noted that in 2023, you know, it's gonna be mostly about the quality of games and quality of the titles, and really kind of digging into the marquee titles that have given you success. Can you kind of just give us a sense of the development pipeline and how you guys are actually thinking about those titles? I know you're probably not gonna give any in terms of number of titles, but just kind of how you're high level thinking about those titles as we move into 2023.
Sure, sure. I'm gonna let Jim Wagner and Lisa take that a little bit, and as they're the ones that are deep in the day-to-day. Go ahead. Jim.
Just waiting to see who's gonna speak first.
Who's gonna speak first? Lisa.
All right. The way we're thinking about these titles is definitely with a focus on IP partnerships and having the IP partnerships really drive some of that organic traffic. As we're thinking about the new deals that we've signed, the new deals that are coming online late this year, early next year, we are really incorporating kind of a new go-to-market strategy that extends outside of just paid user acquisition. That will include, you know, anything from, you know, physical spaces, physical items, and really getting a lot more of that support to drive traffic into our titles.
A specific example of that being, you know, we have a deal with a toy-making company, that's, you know, a huge brand, very popular toy, and they will be putting QR codes onto all of their products as they go to the stores, you know, promoting the game and linking directly to the game. We're hopeful that that will help boost that organic traffic.
There's a lot of initiatives like that as we again, trying to grow in this, you know, competitive landscape, this is one of the, you know, how we can further leverage IPs to make sure that we win. Jim, you can talk a little bit about how we, how we look at those IP partners in general and, you know, the types of games and partnerships that we're looking for.
Yep. I think it's, you know, the same philosophy we've had, but even more doubling down on that, which is, you know, very strong IPs that have a cult status and deep affinity within their fan base. You know, looking back at IPs we've recently launched, like The Office, Star Trek, Doctor Who, those are IPs that have a deep fan base.
We're able to reach those fans in other ways. Really about going forward, it's doubling down on that. We've seen the success with that, we're going to go deeper into that. From the very upstream on the negotiations is negotiating those additional points of contact to the fans like Jason and Lisa alluded to.
Looking at a very concerted eye with IPs that have a strong fan base. Even better if they're underserved, there's not currently projects or products in the marketplace that target them. Working closely with the IP holders to bring a experience and onboarding to their fans in a way that offsets the risks in the UA ecosystem right now.
Excellent. Thank you, guys. Maybe if I could just squeeze one last one in and then I'll pass the line. Just maybe on some of the newer IP titles like Star Trek and Doctor Who, which was launch called a couple of weeks back here. What are you kind of finding? What are you seeing with those titles? Anything to kind of call out, early days here?
We can't go into too many specifics as these are, you know, confidential and, you know, with our agreements with these IP holders, you know, we can't release a lot of that information. I can tell you that we're very happy with these. Honestly, and a lot of this is, you know, very much thanks to Lisa and Jim and their teams, is, you know, the launch of The Office, as we mentioned last year, wasn't quite perfect.
You know, we learned a lot from that process. Star Trek was a much, much better launch, and we, you know, applied those learnings. The launch a couple weeks ago of Doctor Who was unquestionably our best yet, you know? We knew what we had to do, had it prepared well in advance.
Technologically, you know, the product was sound, which again plays into the GameKit product and the history and then not only the technical framework of the product, but the playbook of the product.
The best practices around the product that we continue to build out are a huge advantage for us. We expect launches to get smoother, faster, and more furious in the future. Jim, do you want to talk a little bit too or Lisa about Blood Match ? I think that's a really interesting move that we're making.
I can speak to that.
Go ahead.
I can quickly speak to that goes along with what I mentioned in my comments about new genres. Blood Match is our first foray into a match three game. Very crowded marketplace, but at the same time, we're approaching it with the same vision as we have for our idle games of serving, you know, niche cult, underserved audiences.
Early results, but very promising early results in the highest retention we have in any of our games at the studio. We're definitely looking at that as a successful foray into a new genre and looking to continue that and expand on it in Q2. If you want me to go on further.
We've already been able to leverage that, core gameplay, those early metrics, sharing it with partners, and have 2 other games in development already with great IPs to build a match-3 game, which, you know, to be fair, won't launch until next year. You know, again, building on those learnings that we're making now and being able to rinse, lather, repeat. All right. Thanks for your call.
Appreciate all your color, guys. Thank Thank you very much.
No problem.
Your next question comes from the line of Scott Buck from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is now open.
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from me. Jason, can you talk a little bit about the conversations you're having with some of the IP holders? Is the current, you know, kind of uncertain environment causing any hesitation for them to move forward with anything?
Yeah. The you know, hesitation and worry is deep within all industries right now. you know, nobody knows what's going to happen next, right? Just when you think the market's coming back, the banks start to fail, you know. Like, there's, you know, an election year and all this kind of stuff. It is worrisome to say the least about the amount of unknowns that are out there.
What I can tell you is the phone in your pocket is not going anywhere. The video games sure as hell aren't going anywhere. you know, this industry is changing and evolving and growing, but it's not going anywhere.
The IP partners know that it's important, but with the maturing of the market, there is less competition for those IPs as IP holders kind of know now who the competent developers are, and obviously we're one of them.
Also the models are changing. You know, five years ago, eight years ago, the model was very clear, you know, upfront MG, revenue share on the background, nothing's deductible, you know, IP makes money no matter what. Those days are gone. When we go to IP partners now, we're very clear to them, like, "Look, we don't just... you can't just sign deals like that anymore. Nobody's signing deals like that anymore." So it is very much evolved.
The people in that industry, in the licensing industry, who really understand it and get it and know the value of games, which I can tell you are many of the large Hollywood studios, the structure of these deals are changing dramatically and moving much more of the risk towards them instead of all of the developers. So yeah, we're really excited, and it's unquestionably going in a positive direction for us.
Great. That's helpful. Then my second one, if you could talk a little bit about capital allocation for 2023. You know, how are you weighing buybacks with reinvesting in, you know, game development?
Oh, God, I could buy back every... Like, the NCIB rules are very strict around when we can buy, what we can buy, what conditions we can buy. You know, the number of shares, whatever it is, Jim mentioned it earlier in the call, seems relatively small. That is pretty much all we could buy. You know, the stock price today is, you know, you can all see it.
I can tell you that I would buy back every single share we could get at that price, no question in my mind. There is no better value out there for the company than its own shares right now. We have cash available. You know, we're still sitting on lots of cash, if blocks become available, we can buy up big blocks.
Otherwise, yeah, we're being as aggressive as we can with that NCIB. I wish we could buy more because it's good value for the company, good value for shareholders.
Thanks.
You know, eat those out.
I appreciate the additional color, guys. Thanks a lot.
No problem.
Your next question comes from the line of Neehal Upadhyaya from Industrial Alliance. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Just a few questions from my end. Can you provide us with a little bit more color on the decrease, I mean, the slight decrease in Daily Active Users in the Q4? Are those mostly from legacy games and I guess non-IP games? Would that be a fair assumption?
Actually, that is, partly a, you know, a residue effect from the launch of Star Trek: Lower Decks. You know, the first day you launch a game, you get a big spike. You know, the first couple of weeks, there's always a big spike in the new game launches.
Okay.
Of course, you know, the retention of that is low. Almost all of that is attributable to, you know, just the timing of the launch date.
Okay, perfect. Thank you. I guess, my other question is in terms of the GameKits. I mean, look, I think you're getting, you know, solid traction in, with other studio partners and whatnot. What do you think the timeline is to scale, you know, the GameKits that you've developed, especially the ones, you know, that were introduced this year?
The timeline to scale it into what?
To, you know, scale those partnerships so you can, you know, increase that gaming portfolio.
Right. The product is getting there more and more and more. It's really a matter now of proving, you know, the product market fit around through results, you know. Developers love it, developers see it. We feel like it's proven, but, you know, we still need to prove that to the industry to get to a point where people are like, "Okay, we have to use this program going forward in order to do it." It's gonna be...
I would say it's a year to 3 years before it's really a true product that we could, you know, somebody could sign up for and your niece or nephew might be able to come in and make use of it. Yeah, the, as the market evolves and grows, we'll see how it plays out.
Gotcha.
In the meantime, it's pretty revenue for us. As we say, it's, you know, these partnerships and these games, we would not have been able to build Doctor Who internally with our own, you know, time frames and team and focus. You know, it's a huge success because, I mean, that product wouldn't exist otherwise.
Gotcha. Okay, perfect. Then maybe one last one from my end. Look, tough macro backdrop, but, you know, a solid bounce back quarter from Q3. Would it be fair to say maybe some of the underlying economics have kind of bottomed and you're seeing light at the end of the tunnel here in terms of, you know, like your DAU and ARPDAU metrics, especially given that ARPDAU metrics were kind of strong, albeit, on the base of a couple of launches?
Yeah. We're, you know, we're very excited about what's coming down the pipe. There's a ton of great games coming this year and next year. As we, you know, get better and better at launches, as we understand the nuances of all of these different genres, we're gonna get stronger and stronger and stronger.
I would say, you know, unquestionably the outlook for the business has never been stronger. The balance sheet has never been stronger. You know, everything that we need to be successful is there, and not even to be successful. We are successful. We're extremely successful. We're a profitable, growing mobile games company. You know, there's, you know, some big ones out there, but it's not a massive group of people and, you know, we're proud of what we got and excited about what's coming down the pipe.
Perfect. Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from the line of David McFadgen from Cormark. Your line is now open.
Oh, yeah. Thank you. just a couple of questions. I was looking at the daily active users in Q4. They were down sequentially and then down year-over-year. I was just wondering what happened there? What was driving that? Can you give us an update on how the various properties are doing, like RuPaul, Office and Star Trek? Thanks.
As I was just saying earlier, most of that fall is product launches. When you launch a new product, you'll get a big spike. 100,000 people install the game on a day, for example. Of course, the retention rates, which are everything in the mobile games industry, you see that number fall off over time.
There's always a big spike in DAU when a new game launches, but it inevitably comes down as time goes on. You continue to build on that base. Star Trek got us that bump at the end of September that then came down a little bit. It all evens out.
You know, it's just a matter of, you know, as games get older and more and more people churn out. Our job is to just keep launching new games. You know, we're off to a pretty strong start here with 3 games in the last 2 quarters.
Okay. Could you comment specifically how RuPaul, The Office and Star Trek are doing relative to your expectations anyways so far?
I mean, like I said earlier as well, I can't comment specifically about specific games because of the confidentiality agreements we have with all of these major IP holders. I can tell you that, you know, we're happy with where all of those coins and games are going. These are three of our most solid games in our portfolio.
You know, they continue to have lots of potential and I know continue to grow, sequentially have been better and better and better launches. Doctor Who in particular, you know, this was honestly an IP that I was somewhat nervous about as it's, you know, very niche.
It's, you know, weird British people that will only watch this show, but apparently it's popular all over the world, and we're seeing the evidence of that. So though the user base isn't massive, it is cult-like. People who love Doctor Who love it a lot. So we're seeing that reflected in the numbers of strong monetization, strong retention, and decent installs per day coming in for it too.
Okay. On the last conference call, you indicated more of a balanced approach, shall we say, to revenue and EBITDA. You know, we saw the EBITDA come through this quarter. It was pretty good EBITDA. I know you don't like to give guidance, but I was just wondering, can you give us sort of an outlook on what we should expect for EBITDA going forward? Anything at all? Ranges would be helpful.
Some estimates?
maybe not some estimates, but, like, do you think it would make sense that you're gonna keep EBITDA margin 10% or something like that or no?
Last year I was really clear, this time last year, that, you know, we're going to aggressively grow this company over the next year. My goal was to have near 0 EBITDA, to essentially take all of the revenue we're making and fork it into growth. You know, shit hit the fan. The world became what it is.
You know, markets went sideways. It became more important than ever to make sure that we had, you know, good, strong cash flow, money in the bank, and we're default alive no matter what, and could survive any condition that the macro market throws upon us. You've very much seen that in the last quarter. As I've said all along, you know, you wanna crank it back. We can print money with this company.
You know, last year we spent... Jim has it drawn out in the financial disclosure. I think it's in the press release. You know that we spent whatever it was, CAD 9.6 million on, you know, the GameKit platform and new game growth last year... No, development. You know, that comes straight out of EBITDA.
If we weren't working so aggressively building this platform and this, you know, pipeline for the future, we could easily be throwing off, you know, 30% margins. You know, it's smart to have a balance of growth and profitability. I think you saw that really clearly in Q4. You should continue to see something similar going forward.
As always, I'm always going to make the right choice of this business. I'm never going to make the choice that's best for the share price today, tomorrow or next week. I'm gonna make the choice that's best for shareholder value over the next years in building a long-term strong business.
If that means investing heavily in opportunities that cause negative EBITDA, then that's what I'll do. If it means, you know, slowing it all down and maximizing for EBITDA and pushing more towards those 30% margins, then that's what I'll do.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call over to Jason Bailey. Please continue.
All right. Well, thanks for coming out, everybody. We'll have some catch-up calls with various people. As always, you know how to get a hold of me, jason@eastsidegames.com. Happy to talk further and, you know, really proud of what this team has put together, how the team continues to grow and evolve.
Like I say, I couldn't be more excited about the outlook for this company. I know all of you are dealing with the realities of the market, so my heart goes out to you in the chaos that you're going through. We're just gonna sit over here and build ourselves a solid little business. Thanks, everyone.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.