Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Pollard Banknote Limited, third quarter 2025 results conference call. Listeners are reminded that certain matters discussed in today's conference call or answers that may be given to questions asked could constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties related to Pollard's future financial or business performance. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. The risk factors that may affect the results are detailed in Pollard's Annual Information Form and other periodic filings and registration statements. You can access these documents at SEDAR + database found at sedarplus.ca. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded today, Thursday, November 13, 2025. I would like to introduce Mr. Doug Pollard, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Pollard Banknote Limited. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, Operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. As Jaden said, I'm Doug Pollard. I'm joined on the call today by John Pollard, the other Co-CEO, and also Rob Rose, the Chief Financial Officer. We released our third quarter 2025 results yesterday. Reminder, you can access our news releases as well as our financial statements and MD&A on our website at pollardbanknote.com and also on SEDAR + . Today, we'll start out with prepared remarks from me, highlighting our 2025 third quarter operating achievements and overall business update. John will then follow- up discussing our, I think, quite strong third quarter results. As usual, we'll open it up to questions.
The third quarter was truly a transformational quarter for Pollard Banknote, with a number of very noteworthy contract wins in a highly competitive marketplace, covering a number of our different product offerings and product and solution offerings. I'll address each of these in detail shortly. At the same time, we did generate very strong financial results, which reflect the strength of our business across a number of different business lines. On September 12, the Loterie Nationale, the National Lottery of Belgium, announced the intent to award a contract to us to deliver and operate a next-generation gaming platform. That contract was officially awarded on October 8. You know, this is really a monumental achievement for our team on a number of levels.
It shows our commitment to provide an innovative omnichannel approach to the lottery industry, and it shows that that is being recognized as, in fact, the future of the industry, where lotteries are going to want to go. The Belgian Lottery is a large, recognized, and respected leader in the international lottery space, and this contract covers all of their technology ecosystem, including an omnichannel central gaming system, which covers both retail and iLottery sales, the player account management, or PAM, including the wallet, the game aggregation bridge to deliver diverse game content from leading game providers in one unified player experience, an instant ticket management system to optimize warehousing, inventory control, and instant ticket distribution for that important category, and an integrated marketing engagement platform to deliver personalized, data-driven experiences at every player touchpoint to help that lottery responsibly drive their sales.
It's important to note that this is a 12-year contract, and it was won in a competitive RFP process, and the contract's valued at approximately CAD 289 million. It is not insignificant that we replaced a long-time incumbent provider. Our teams between the lottery and us are already working extensively together as we begin this long-term collaboration with the lottery. So far, it's going very well. I'm very pleased with the way we've kicked it off. I just highlight this is really a game-changing win for our organization. We are truly honored for the trust that the Belgian Lottery has placed with Pollard. As we have done with other accounts, we look forward to delivering this on time and delivering on everything we've promised.
In addition, on September 25, the California State Lottery named Pollard Banknote as their new primary contractor for their instant ticket products and related services, which they call Scratchers. This new primary contract starts December 1, 2025. It has a six-year term followed by an option to renew for up to an additional six years and has an estimated value over the entire 12 years of CAD 375 million. Now, we had already been a long-time secondary provider of Scratchers tickets to the California Lottery, and with this new primary relationship, we'll now be increasing that to providing approximately 70% of the lottery's instant ticket games. Now, replacing a long-time incumbent ticket supplier for one of the largest sellers of instant tickets in the world, those kinds of changes do not happen frequently in our industry.
We are very proud of that change because it really reflects the value of the long-time existing relationship that we've developed, and it shows the importance of the innovative and creative solutions that we've been offering to lotteries that they want to work with us. Truly a massive win for our team. We look forward to helping California Lottery continue to be a leader in this space. Speaking of instant tickets, you know, which is a core part of our portfolio, it's nice to see that overall demand for instant tickets remains positive. Retail sales growth has come back to the low single-digit range, still driven by higher selling price points, but also some other getting into new retail channels. Higher selling price points, I should note, also mean a much greater likelihood for us of higher value features being added.
As a result, that delivers higher average selling prices for Pollard Banknote. In that space, one of our most important is Scratch FX, and 2025 is on pace to record record annual sales of this very popular proprietary holographic ticket process. Scratch FX jumps out at retail, and it has historically generated significant sales increases for the lotteries that far outweigh the incremental cost of the product in the future. Demand for our other products and solutions remains solid, including charitable gaming, printed products, and, of course, digital e-tabs. Ancillary products and solutions such as retail point-of-sales and dispensers, demand for those products also remains robust as lotteries and charitable gaming operators look for new ways to grow revenue.
Our Kansas iLottery solution continues to meet all of our expectations, including it was quite notable that during the quarter in August and September, we had the large billion-dollar-plus Powerball jackpot run, and our solution handled that without any issues. In conjunction with the lotteries, we're now starting to institute a number, sorry, in conjunction with the Kansas Lottery, we are now starting to institute a number of our planned roadmap initiatives that are going to move towards the phase of accelerating revenue growth and doing things like improving the website access, some improved targeted digital marketing and player acquisition tactics, and enhancing some of the game features that we offer that will make the games more attractive.
I remind you that Kansas does remain a critical calling card and reference point for our state-of-the-art Catalyst Platform, and it is absolutely serving that with anyone who checks into the Kansas Lottery. Hand in hand with our platform solution is our expanding e-instant game content, which we're developing in our in-house game studio. It's not enough just to have a great platform. You also need exciting game content for success in the digital world. We provide that through our own platform in Kansas, but also through other third-party iLottery operations. Our games are now live in nine jurisdictions around the world, and that is growing rapidly.
You should note that Pollard Banknote has always been a strong creator of lottery game content, and so it's a very small step for us to now be bringing our decades of experience to more digital media in addition to our print and other channels. I always like to remind people that lotteries remain very engaged in discussions with us about adding to or updating their iLottery technology and offerings. We remind you that the RFP and sales process for the iLottery process, and really all lottery products, but especially iLottery, that that is a very long cycle. I can assure you we are highly engaged in that cycle and at the forefront of those discussions in a number of jurisdictions.
During the quarter, from an MDI perspective, our NeoPollard Interactive joint venture announced the award of a two-year extension to continue to operate the iLottery for the North Carolina Lottery. That extends that contract to June 2028, and it highlights the confidence that the North Carolina Lottery has in our joint venture operation. NPI continues to generate meaningful results in cash flow, and with a number of long-term contracts and extensions already on the books, NPI will be doing so for a number of years. It's been autumn in the lottery world, and that means conferences. I wanted to highlight how excited we were about our recent involvement in two of the more prominent conferences. September saw both the European Lottery Congress and Trade Show held in Bern, Switzerland, and the big North American conference is NASPL, or North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.
That took place Ontario Lottery hosted that in Niagara Falls. We were very present in those conferences. We showcased a number of exciting new innovative products and solutions, such as our successful Easy Pack Pouches for print and instant tickets. One of the products that generated the most buzz was our unique Easy Serve self-service lottery product, which dovetails seamlessly with the overall retailer's move towards self-service, which we know is coming, and we want to find a way to get instant tickets really seamlessly into those self-service lanes. We enjoyed significant engagement with lotteries in both of those conferences. Their enthusiasm with our roadmap and our creativity was clearly evident, and it really shows, in my opinion, the high regard that lotteries have for Pollard Banknote.
It's where we really enhance and build those relationships that lead to the significant wins that we had this quarter with lotteries like Belgium and California. You know, an exciting quarter for us, and I'm going to now turn it over to my brother John Pollard to highlight the first quarter results.
Thank you, Doug. During our third quarter, we achieved traditional GAAP sales of $156.3 million. This is a new quarterly record compared to $153.2 million for the quarter ended September 30, last year, 2024. We'd like to talk about our combined sales, which then also includes our proportionate share of our NeoPollard Interactive joint venture revenue. When we look at combined sales, we reached $187.3 million in the quarter, also a new record, and that compares to $180.4 million in the same quarter last year.
Higher charitable gaming volumes increased sales by $2.8 million in the third quarter compared to 2024. This was predominantly the result of the acquisition of CJ Venn and Pacific Gaming. In addition, the higher average selling price of charitable game printed products increased sales by a further $0.6 million. These increases were partially offset by a decrease in charitable e-tab revenue of $1.1 million compared to 2024, which is primarily due to the impact from regulatory changes in our Minnesota market that began on January 1, 2025. I should say that, you know, we did have a decline due to those regulatory changes, but we've been steadily improving those results throughout the year since that time.
Lower instant ticket average selling price in 2025 decreased sales by $2.1 million as compared to 2024, mainly results of customer mix, and in addition, a slight decrease in instant ticket sales volume for the third quarter of 2025 further decreased sales by $0.3 million. Higher sales of ancillary lottery products and services increased revenue in the third quarter of 2025 by $0.5 million compared to 2024. This growth was primarily due to increased digital sales, including, of course, our iLottery startup in Kansas and higher distribution-related sales. This was partially offset, sorry, partial offset in these increases was a decrease in sales of licensed products in the quarter, which is a product category which can be kind of lumpy.
The weakening of the Canadian dollar compared to the US dollar and the euro compared to the same period in 2024 resulted in an increase in sales of approximately $2.2 million as well. Our gross profit decreased to $28.1 million, which would be 18.0% of sales in the third quarter of 2025, from $31.4 million, which would be 20.5% of sales in the third quarter of 2024. This decreased to $3.3 million in gross profit. The decrease in gross profit percentage primarily resulted in the startup losses on our Kansas iLottery operation and also slightly lower e-tab sales margins due to the previously mentioned regulatory changes in Minnesota. These two factors pretty much exactly account for the shortfall in the margin from last year. Administration expenses were $19.2 million in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the $17.0 million in the third quarter of 2024.
The increase of $2.2 million was largely the result of our ERP implementation-related costs and the addition of Pacific Gaming administration costs in the quarter. During the quarter, we also initiated the implementation phase of our new ERP system for our lottery and corporate operations. Selling expenses increased to $6.5 million in the third quarter of 2025 from $5.9 million in the third quarter of last year. This increase of $0.6 million was primarily due to the addition of Venn and Pacific Gaming and their selling expenses. Sequentially, the $6.5 million is consistent with the same $6.5 million of selling expenses that we had in the second quarter of this year. Pollard share of income from our NeoPollard Interactive iLottery joint venture increased to $15.3 million in the third quarter of this year compared to $13.6 million in the third quarter of last year.
This $1.7 million increase was primarily due to just continued strong e-instant sales growth in both North Carolina and Virginia, two jurisdictions that continue to perform really strongly for us. We also saw some increased draw game sales in the quarter because of the impact of the Powerball jackpot run that we saw in later August and early September. Those gains that I just mentioned there now were partly offset by the expiry of the New Hampshire contract, which expired right at the end of last quarter at the beginning of this quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA decreased slightly to $32.0 million in the third quarter of this year compared to $33.3 million in the third quarter of last year. The primary reasons for this $1.3 million decrease were our decrease in gross profit, net of amortization depreciation, which was $1.4 million.
That was largely due to the result of our iLottery startup costs that I just mentioned on Kansas and the lower e-tab margins that I just talked about as well. Further reducing our adjusted EBITDA were the increase in administrative expenses, net of our ERP implementation costs of $1.1 million, and increase in selling expenses of $0.6 million. Partially offsetting those decreases, of course, was the increase in our Neo Pollard Interactive joint venture income of $1.7 million and an increase in realized foreign exchange gain of $0.2 million. Interest expense increased slightly to $2.9 million in this quarter compared to $2.7 million in the third quarter of last year as a result of an increase in our average long-term debt outstanding compared to last year due to the acquisitions that we completed and a higher investment in non-cash working capital.
This was partly offset by lower interest rates in the third quarter of this year. Net income, finally, getting to it, decreased by $10.3 million in this quarter compared to $18.2 million in the third quarter of last year. The primary reasons for this $7.9 million decrease was the decrease in gross profit of $3.3 million, again, principally the result of the Kansas Lottery startup costs and the lower e-tab margins. Further reducing net income were the decrease in net foreign exchange gain of $2.3 million, the increase in administration expense of $2.2 million, primarily the result of our ERP implementation costs, increase in income tax expense of $0.7 million, increase in selling expenses of $0.6 million, the decrease in other income of $0.3 million, and an increase in interest expense of $0.2 million.
Partially offsetting those decreases in income was the Neo Pollard Interactive joint venture increase in income of $1.7 million. Net income per share, basic and diluted, decreased to $0.38 and $0.37 per share respectively in the third quarter of this year from $0.67 and $0.66 per share respectively in the third quarter of 2024. In regard to the international trade environment, obviously there remains uncertainty regarding the nature, extent, and duration of various protectionist trade measures, including tariffs that may have been and may be enacted within North America. We continue to believe that the current structure of our business, including extensive manufacturing facilities located in both Canada and the U.S., will ensure there is no material impact on our operations and financial results.
We have the ability to produce almost all of our products that we sell in our U.S. market, in our U.S. manufacturing facilities, and similarly, we have capacity to service almost all of our Canadian customers from our domestic Canadian capacity. We will be continuing to monitor those developments and assess any additional short and long-term measures that might need to be taken to mitigate any other negative impacts, but we continue to be pleased with how that's working out for us. It has been a good year generally for our instant ticket business, as we've seen strong volumes and higher average selling prices that Doug talked about. We are looking for this trend to continue as we move into 2026, particularly, of course, as we bring on the additional volumes from our new California instant ticket contract that we're very excited about.
At the same time, we're investing in new initiatives to improve our manufacturing efficiencies in instant tickets. The other things that we're really looking forward to coming up in the new year, of course, are Belgian contract, super exciting to us. We'll see a positive result from that in 2026 as we bring on revenues from that contract beginning right away next year. Of course, with our Kansas iLottery operations, we continue to have sales growth there, and we'll continue to see improvements in our margins on the Kansas iLottery business as well. We haven't talked too much about charitable gaming, but we made a lot of investments in charitable gaming last year to improve our product offering with our new Icon Cabinets and lots of investment in new game content.
We're starting to see the fruits of that, and we've got lots of also new jurisdictions that are looking at expanding into e-tabs in 2026 that we're working with, and we expect to see some of those go live as well. The outlook for our charitable gaming market, in particular e-tabs, looks strong as well. That's the end of the prepared part of our discussions, and operator, we'd be happy to entertain any questions at this time.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Your first question comes from Jim Byrne from Acumen Capital. Please go ahead.
Pardon me. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just looking at gross margins, I guess we heard a lot about repricing the contracts over the last couple of years. I guess I would have expected to see more of a positive impact on the gross margin side. Actually, 2025 has been down from 2024, and I understand Kansas has been a drag on that. Have there been other kind of moving parts that you have not seen improve that profitability on the instant side? Should we expect that improvement to happen in 2026?
Hi, Tim. It's Rob Rose here. As we pointed out, there are some new headwinds on our gross margin that we have not really had in the past. All of the repricing that we have done has been baked in. There is not new repricing coming on board. We have got that all in our numbers sort of in this year. You always sort of look at the mix and the propriety of stuff that we can sell. If you really account for the Kansas iLottery and the e-tabs, our margin did increase on a year-over-year basis. Particularly when you think of last year, of course, was Q3, which is always a very strong quarter as well. Certainly when you look at it sequentially, we continue to see improved margins in the underlying instant ticket.
It gets a little bit hidden with some of these new ventures that we're starting up and investing in. For certain, as we go through 2026, particularly as John mentioned in terms of bringing on the California volume, we'll continue to see that margin improve. We'll just have to make sure we highlight sort of the other things that are impacting our overall gross margin. Of course, those negative headwinds will also be improving because the Kansas iLottery will continue to improve and reduce their loss as we move toward profitability. We continue, as John pointed out, to really work on that e-tab game content. John mentioned that the regulatory changes in Minnesota impacted us negatively. Of course, they impacted the whole market. It wasn't just us. It was our competitors as well. They really changed the market.
We are adapting to that and bringing on the game content that works within the regulatory structure that will really help to regain that gross margin. Really, we have three positive trends that are underway as we speak. Going forward to 2026, you will see that margin improve.
Okay. That's helpful. Then just on the G&A side, you mentioned the ERP implementation. Those costs were a little higher than we expected. Is that all done? Should G&A kind of trend back to more normal levels?
I like your comment, Jim. Is the ERP all done? ERP implementations do take a long period of time. We have literally just started that really at the end of June. We have been planning for it for a while, but it has really kicked in. No, it is not done. You will see that impact our numbers through 2026. It is fairly compressed because we want to do this quickly and get into the new system. You will continue to see that over the next couple of quarters. More of it will be done in the first half of the year. You will see that trail off a little bit in terms of the expenditures as we start to implement it and actually go live towards the end of 2026 and beginning of 2027.
Okay. That's perfect. And then maybe just lastly on NPI, you mentioned the big jackpot run for Powerball into September. Mega Millions kind of picked that up here lately, approaching a billion dollars. Are you seeing that momentum from the Mega Millions here into the fourth quarter?
Hi, Jim. It's Doug here. We haven't seen as much of what they traditionally call jackpot fever yet from that Mega Millions jackpot. I would say there's kind of two things that we're monitoring. You never know exactly why, right? The first is it came, the previous Powerball jackpot that happened at the end of October, beginning of September, was the first billion-dollar jackpot that we'd had in a while. In fact, that was one of the drags on Kansas. You need those large jackpots to recruit players. We were counting on getting one much earlier in our tenure of Kansas iLottery. It was welcome when it finally did come. To now have this Mega Millions jackpot coming a couple of months later, it's a little harder. It doesn't generate as much traction. People talk about there being jackpot fatigue.
It's really not as much jackpot fatigue as it is media fatigue, right? It's just not as much of a story in the media. That is hurting it. The other thing I would say is there have been some changes made to the matrix of Mega Millions and the price point where they moved that up to a $5 price point and made some changes to it. I don't know that those have been universally received positively by players. How much of that is affecting some of their uptake of it? We are very close to a threshold level of $1 billion, and you may well see a little more activity. I hope that we'll see that now start to pick up. It's interesting. Powerball is such a strong brand. It's just chugging along right behind them.
It's now already up to nearly $500 million, I think. The short answer to your question, I hope that gives you a little more context. The shorter answer is it hasn't generated as much momentum as the last jackpot, nor would I have expected it to do so. I think we're going to start to see some of that impact as we cross that billion-dollar threshold.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Jim.
Next question comes from Robert Young from Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one, the California win, congratulations obviously there, but does that competitive takeaway shake up the space meaningfully enough that Pollard moves up a level and is thought more as a primary vendor? Or would you say that that's the way that Pollard has been viewed for a long time? How do you think about capacity given California is quite large and this may open up other opportunities?
Do you want me to start with the first half of that? Look, there's no question. The California Lottery is 40 years old, and they have had one primary provider for that whole 40-year term. For us to take that away, that generated a lot of notice in the lottery industry, no question. That was really nice momentum to have going into what I called the conference season. People definitely took notice of that. Now, did it change people's perceptions? I think you have to see that as an ongoing contribution to changing that perception. I hate the expression, but I did use it anyway. I think Pollard has been punching above our weight for a number of years.
When you go to these large conferences where everyone's together, they really, for a while, we've gotten profile there that's roughly equivalent to Scientific Games and now BrightStar, what was IGT. I think that we've kind of been seen at that level for a while, but wins in California and Belgium, I might add, kind of helped cement that, that we really are at that top level. We've invested in that for a number of years, right? We've been a top-level platinum sponsor of the World Lottery Association, for example. That was a tough bite for us a few years back. You can see it's now starting to pay dividends. When we've been saying we've got this stuff, but when we back it up with wins, I think that really has been helping. California in and of itself does not change things dramatically, but it contributes to that long-term trend that we are really excited about. The second half of your question was about the capacity. I do not know, John, do you want to address your perspective on that?
Yeah. Capacity-wise, it will be no problem for us. As people noted in our results the last year or two, our instant ticket volumes have been a little bit lower than they had been prior because we'd been turning away lower margin work as we've talked about for a couple of years now that we weren't able to make margin on. A lot of that was the French National Lottery work, which was a major customer of ours that we hadn't been able to reprice at a level that we were happy with. So our actual physical volumes have been a little bit lower. These new California volumes will fundamentally only replace some of that lower French volume. We will easily be able to handle those volumes within our current capacity, which is why we are also hopeful that it will have a very positive financial impact, obviously, because our incremental costs to produce them should be quite controlled.
Okay. That's very helpful. Just a couple more on the Belgian win. As you noted, it's an online and offline hybrid contract. I was curious if you could help us understand the competitive space around iLottery vendors. How many of your competitors can offer a platform that can span those two worlds? How important is that when you're going into RFI and RFP with that relative to the competitors?
Let me just say that some of the traditional competitors like BrightStar and Scientific Games and Interlock can do both. Some of the sort of newer offerings like Aristocrat Interactive, which was Neo Games, they are iLottery only. Others like Allwyn and others, I'm not sure exactly where they would say they'd be there and where they are. It's a little more of a continuum as opposed to a black and white. The competitive landscape in that space, however, is what Belgium showed was I think Belgium has deep technical expertise. They could really engage with us and really understand what we had. What they wanted to have was the responsiveness that newer agile technology gives them. With some of the more legacy offerings, if I could say that, it's just slower.
It is harder to do some of the things they wanted to do. For example, one of the things they'd really like to have is the ability to, going forward, plug in any terminals they want at retail and not be stuck with one terminal, the same terminal at every retailer. Our solution can accommodate that. I always say to lotteries, I am not speaking to Belgium, but in general, that I could envision a high-volume gas station and C-store is going to have a traditional lottery retail terminal for a while. There might be some other locations that are more of a pop-up location, and they want to be able to just plug in an iPad and take orders. Our system has that kind of flexibility. For lotteries that really see how technology is going to support their future, our technology does that.
Now, that comes with some degree of risk, right? I mean, they've been working, this is similar to California. The Belgian lottery has been working with the incumbent technology for a long time. It is a change. That is still not easy to accommodate and accomplish. It was a lot of work to do. I would not suggest that there is a whole bunch of lotteries that are about to flip. Those who dig into it and are really thinking about their future and their technology, they do appreciate the agility that comes with our solution. We are quite excited to put this in place and make it a calling card. Frankly, so is the Belgian lottery. They want to show this off and show that this is the way to go. It is a nice formula.
I cannot help adding as John Pollard here. The reason we're pretty excited about the last few months and this past quarter is not so much our financial results, which were good, but these kind of somewhat transformative wins. In our space, we've for decades had two major competitors, what used to be called GTEC, then became IGT, and now BrightStar. BrightStar forever have been the dominant player in central gaming systems and draw games with a 70% likely world market share. Our other main competitor was Scientific Games, who for decades has been the dominant supplier of instant ticket systems with a 70% world market share of instant tickets. What we've seen in the last few months is we've won contracts from both of those major competitors in Belgium and California of some of their biggest, longest-standing customers. That is a big step that doesn't happen very often.
We've obviously always been in the instant ticket business for a long time, but BrightStar is in a multi-billion dollar part of our lottery industry and central systems that because of the omnichannel nature of our Catalyst system puts us in there. We're not just an iLottery competitor. We're a full central system competitor. Those are both very significant wins for Pollard Banknote.
Thanks a lot for all that. I mean, just a couple more. I think earlier, Rob, I think you said that the biggest impact on gross margins was the Kansas ramp and the e-tabs had wind in Minnesota. I wanted to make sure I heard that correct. In the release, it suggested that profitability in Kansas could turn positive in the next few quarters because of some initiatives underway. I was just trying to get maybe a little more precision around your thoughts on where Kansas, that headwind dissipates.
Sure. Rob, you did hear me correctly. Those are the two main factors on the gross margin headwinds. Certainly, we talked specifically about moving towards profitability in Kansas iLottery. We've got a number of initiatives, as we had anticipated, now in our roadmap to really generate some additional sales. The Kansas Lottery, correctly so, went off to sort of what we would call a soft launch or a conservative launch, right? These are new things for these states, and they want to be careful of how it's perceived by the people in their jurisdiction. We agree with that. We've been going very slowly. All along, we knew there were levers to pull to get back up to sort of more standard or more traditional gameplay and different factors that you see in a more mature iLottery. We're undertaking those initiatives now.
We will certainly start to move towards the profitability. I'm not going to specify in terms of exactly when we're going to turn into profitability, but you'll see the losses decrease over the next number of quarters. It just comes down to, as Doug said, a little bit more in terms of the jackpot play and the other factors. It will take a little while, but we're certainly going to be moving in the right direction.
It's John. I will say in that September jackpot run in Powerball, we did see a significant increase in our play in Kansas and signed-up players, and we've maintained a big chunk of that play going in post-September. We saw exactly what we'd expect to see with that jackpot in September and moved to a higher level for sure based on that.
Thank you. Last question would just be on the ASP and the quarter you just reported. I normally would have thought of ASP being strong for holiday sell-in. Sorry if I missed it, but if you could just help me understand why ASP was a headwind, not a tailwind in the quarter, and then I'll pass the line.
Sorry, Rob. It's Rob again. Again, we had a very strong average selling price in this quarter, as expected, for exactly the reason you've talked about. We do do a higher level of proprietary work, and we've obviously baked in all of our repricings now. The challenge is, and I hate to say this, last year, of course, Q3, we had that same factor. We had a very strong Q3 last year as well. When you look at the ASP year- over- year, it's down a little bit, but really just a change in the mix component. When you look sequentially, obviously, our average selling price was significantly higher this quarter compared to Q1 and Q2. That trend is going to continue, and we're going to keep some of that trend going forward that we wouldn't have seen before in things like the fourth quarter or even in the earlier part of the year next year.
Okay. Great. Thanks. I'll pass the line.
Thanks, Rob.
Next question comes from David McFadden from Cormark. Please go ahead.
Okay. Yeah. So a couple of questions. When I look at the revenue, it was up slightly, but when you back out Michigan, it was still up slightly. The instant ticket volumes were flat. Selling prices down. I think, at least relative to my expectations and I think other people, they were expecting more revenue out of the instant ticket side of the business because charitable gaming was up as well. I don't know. What's your kind of outlook on volumes for the year and average selling prices to get to higher revenues on the instant ticket side?
That's John. I mean, looking at the instant ticket market takes a bit of a sort of historical perspective. We saw a big jump in instant ticket volumes back to COVID. I hate to go back there. Now that's going back three years ago now. We saw a really big jump. Then volumes were flat coming out of that for a year or two. Instant ticket volumes have been flat the last couple of years. Again, glass half full, we've maintained that COVID jump. We're just seeing now in the last few months a return, as Doug noted in his comments, to some modest growth and sort of low single digits. I think we're getting back on a long-term trend of seeing instant ticket growth.
If you sort of look at the trend of instant ticket sales for the industry over the last number of years and you sort of flatten out the COVID bump, you'll really see a long-term trend returning to that hopefully low to medium single digits growth in instant tickets. It has been a little bit flat-ish the last couple of years. We had a bit of a tough comparison to our Q3 last year. Of course, our volumes, because we were more selective last year or so in turning away lower margin work, no doubt our own volumes have been a little bit under pressure on instant tickets.
We've more than made up for that in increase in average selling price coming from our repricing and our, as Doug talked about, the move to the higher price points in the industry where there's more $10 and $20 tickets versus $2 and $5 tickets has meant we're selling more premium offering options like Scratch FX. The good part of our instant ticket business last couple of years, the really good part has been that average selling price increase. The volume part has been a little more challenged. We were, however, sequentially quite a bit stronger in the third quarter of this year versus the first two quarters. I think there's a good trend within the year. Particularly with California coming on, we expect to see that volume trend going up.
It's a kind of a nuanced area of our scratch ticket business to try to look at the last couple of years for sure. The bottom line is it's still a really strong part of the lottery business. Sales are growing again in instant tickets in the industry. We've just won the biggest contract in our lives. We're pretty bullish about that outlook. We expect our average selling price to continue growing slightly even going forward, even though the repricing cycle is mostly done because we're going to continue selling more options. One of the reasons California chose us is because they love our physical products and the options and the interesting things we offer. They specifically call that out in instant tickets. We have a variety of cool options, our flip scratch tickets. We get into all kinds of examples that our competitors do not offer. We are going to be selling those options to California. It is still a really important good part of our business that we expect growing revenues from. It has been a little nuanced the last couple of years for sure. Sorry for that long answer.
Yeah. No, that's helpful. Thank you. I was just wondering, do you think that the instant ticket side of the business is being negatively impacted at all by the growth of iLottery? It could result in some sort of structural change in the industry or no?
No. Doug, you can probably talk to that better than me.
I would definitively say no. There has been no evidence of that in any lottery. If you look over the last 12 years, we've been doing this in the U.S. Let's focus on that, where the biggest market is for instant tickets. The lotteries that have introduced iLottery have had faster growth of retail sales than non-iLottery states, okay? There just isn't that evidence of it. In fact, if you look at some of the kind of analytical data that you see out there, you see we know that omnichannel players, i.e., those players that play both retail and online, are the most valuable, all right? No surprise there. A lot of that is you are taking retail players, and they are incrementally buying some tickets online. The key is the flip side of that.
There are still players that when you survey them, their first purchase of lottery was made online, and then they have become an omnichannel player that buys at retail as well. That is what is behind the numbers. The last thing I would say on that, David, is it is just a fundamentally different purchase. iLottery is just so easy, right? That is in a different context. Think about it, that you are going to look up and you are going to say, "Okay. Mega Millions is drawing on, I forget, Friday night, and the jackpot is $980 million. I forgot to buy it. Oh, yeah. I can just go onto my phone and I can buy that. That is really easy," okay? Also, buying a scratch ticket at retail is really easy.
You go in, put down your $10, they hand you a ticket, you get it back, you scratch it, you win, you hand it back to them, they give you $50 cash. Real nice, easy transaction. In fact, it's easier to buy scratch at retail than it is online, arguably. It is just a very different transaction. For that reason, we haven't seen the kind of cannibalization that you're talking about in your question. I'm confident that it is still good for the business overall and our strategy of focusing on this new digital space while at the same time not falling out of love with our core retail business is the right one for us as Pollard Banknote and, frankly, is the right one for the lottery industry.
Okay. All right. Just a question on margin. You talked about this on the call. If you look at the EBITDA margin, you back out NPI, you back out Michigan, just focus on the rest of the business, the margin's down. You called out a couple of things that are driving that. I guess Kansas would be the biggest factor in that, that it's running an EBITDA loss right now because you say instant ticket margins, EBITDA margins are up, charitable's up, right? It would be primarily Kansas then, I guess?
If you're talking about EBITDA margin, which is distinct from gross margin, obviously, a different measure. When we were talking on the call about gross margin, the two factors that entirely account for that in gross margin were primarily the Kansas iLottery startup costs and secondarily the lower e-tab margins due to the regulatory change in Minnesota, which we're steadily addressing and is getting better every quarter throughout this year. On an EBITDA margin level, you do have a third sort of factor coming in there, which is our selling and admin expenses are up as well from last year, which obviously would impact our EBITDA margins because we're aggressively growing our business. We're investing a lot of time and energy and money in our digital space, not just iLottery platforms, but iLottery content and our e-tabs.
We put a lot of effort in the e-tabs market, even though we're not really seeing the benefit of that yet in 2025 because we're doing a lot of lead work on new jurisdictions and new products that'll be hopefully launching in 2026. Our selling and admin costs are up, not insignificantly, year- over- year. That's just because we're growing the scope of our business a lot and investing a lot in the future. We expect to see the significant payoffs of those, but we're not yet, right? 2025 is being dragged down by all that investment.
Look, the Belgium thing, the Belgium win, that's why it's so huge because it really says, "Yeah, what we're doing here has not just been validated by the Kansas win, but our second major win." As well, we'll expect to see that investment in SG&A get the payoff for that as we start to get profits from these investments we made. As well, we did two acquisitions over the last year with Pacific Gaming and CJ Venn. That's added somewhat to our selling and admin costs as well, which, by the way, both those investments have gone really nicely. We didn't really talk about them because they're smaller, but fitted in really seamlessly well to our charitable gaming group. That's my fuller answer on this sort of EBITDA margin question.
Okay. No, that's helpful. When do you expect Kansas to be EBITDA positive?
I think Rob Rose just tried to stickhandle that question a little bit. It's hard to say for sure. As I said, we made significant improvement in the September jackpot run. We've moved to a significantly higher level of revenue in Kansas. We talked about some of the initiatives that we're taking with improved game content, website, and that. It's hard to say for sure. We should see meaningful progress in the next couple of quarters as we get through on that, but it's hard to say for sure. It's steadily improving, and there's no reason we won't bring it up to the levels that we're seeing in some of our joint venture customers. It just mattered how many quarters it takes, but we're seeing steady progress.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Doug Pollard. Please continue.
Okay. Thank you very much, Operator. We talked about some of the game-changing milestones that we achieved during the third quarter, which confirms to us that our strategy is the correct strategy for our organization. Full credit goes to the 2,600 team members of Pollard Banknote working around the world. I can just tell you that John and I are immensely proud of what our team is achieving every day. We talked about some of those specific projects like California and Belgium and Kansas, but those are just a sampling. We got all kinds of examples of that from around the world in the lottery space, in our charitable gaming space, in e-tabs, in lots of areas. Those folks that we've got on our team are out there tirelessly providing the innovative solutions that lotteries and charities require to be successful and putting us in a great position.
Thank you to our team. The recent achievements that we've made are just the beginning of us reaping the benefits from the substantial investments we've made in recent years across our businesses, including innovative game technologies, exciting game content, and of course, creative retail solutions. We are extremely excited about the opportunities that lie before us, and we look forward to more successes in future quarters. Thank you for joining us this morning. We look forward to updating you after year-end in March of next year. In the meantime, have a great rest of your day.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.