Good day, everyone, and welcome to OverActive Media's first quarter conference call. At this time, participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow management's remarks. This conference call is being recorded, and a replay for today's call will be available on the investor relations sections of OverActive Media's website. It will remain posted there for the next 30 days. I will now hand the call over to Mr. Babak Pedram, investor relations for OverActive Media, for introductions and the reading of the safe harbor statement. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to OverActive Media's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. A copy of the company's earnings press release is available on the investor relations section of our website at overactivemedia.com. With us on today's call are Adam Adamou, OverActive Media's Interim Chief Executive Officer, Alyson Walker, Chief Commercial Officer, and Rakesh Shah, Chief Financial Officer. Today, we'll review the highlights and the financial results for the first quarter 2023, as well as recent developments. Please note that unless otherwise specified, all amounts mentioned on today's call are in Canadian dollars. Before we begin, I will read our cautionary note regarding forward-looking information.
Certain information to be discussed during this call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable security laws, including, among others, statements concerning the company's 2023 objectives, the company's strategy to achieve those objectives, as well as statements with respect to management's beliefs, plans, estimates, and intentions, and similar statements concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances, performance, or expectations that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management and are subject to several significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Also, our commentary today will include adjusted financial measures, which are non-GAAP measures. These should be considered a supplement to and not a substitute for GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between the two can be found in our MD&A, which is available on SEDAR.com and our website.
At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce Adam Adamou, Interim CEO of OverActive Media. Adam, please go ahead.
Thanks, Babak. Greetings, everyone, and welcome to today's conference call. I would like to start off by expressing my confidence in our business and strategy for 2023. We have been executing against a well-thought-out plan that will lead us toward building a successful, scalable, and sustainable business model. I would like to first address the challenging macro environment within the esports industry. While some face unprecedented pressure due to decreased sponsorship budgets and a lackluster equity market, we feel optimistic about our prospects. That said, we must acknowledge that these headwinds have impacted our short-term performance, but we remain focused on addressing them effectively. Our cash at the end of the first quarter was over CAD 10 million, and I'm proud to report that our financial position is strong and getting stronger.
In the second quarter, due to league-related inflows, player transfers, new revenues, and advancements, we generated an additional CAD 1.2 million in cash to date. As of May 23rd, our cash is CAD 11.6 million, which provides a solid foundation to grow and pursue new opportunities. Having a solid balance sheet with sufficient working capital puts us in a unique position compared to many of our peers facing significant challenges due to the current market conditions. We fully understand the importance of being prudent when managing our finances. While we remain committed to investing in growth initiatives, we are monitoring our expenses carefully.
Moving into our operational highlights, I am pleased to share that we made great strides in reducing costs in Q1. By implementing cost-cutting measures, we saved approximately CAD 700,000 relative to the same period in 2022. Moreover, we identified further areas where we could reduce costs without impacting the quality of our overall experience for fans or sponsors. These changes should yield incremental benefit throughout the rest of the year. Regarding our teams business, our coach-led, talent-first system continues to pay rewards for team performance. In Europe, our MAD Lions League of Legends team won the LEC Championship in the spring after placing as a finalist in the winter. Along with this, came a qualification for the Mid-Season Invitational Championship in London.
MAD Lions continues to exceed expectations for viewership through its success, and it ranks at the top of peak and aggregate viewership hours across North America and Europe. At the Mid-Season Invitational last week, MAD Lions emerged with the highest peak viewership across all Western teams of the tournament. That is a remarkable achievement for a brand that was relaunched just three years ago. Our Call of Duty team, the Toronto Ultra, won the Major 3 Championship in Arlington, Texas, securing the highest peak viewership in Call of Duty League history, a tournament that saw five and a half million hours watched over four days.
Unlike other North American leagues, the Call of Duty League has seen a surge in viewership and growth in its fifth season. Our Overwatch League team, the Toronto Defiant, finished in fourth place at the Pro-Am Tournament in March and is now in its fifth season of play in the Overwatch League. The exclusive to YouTube viewership is stronger than we anticipated, and we are building momentum across our channels as the season builds. Across our franchised and non-franchised teams, we see growth in engagement and viewership. We see market weakness as an opportunity to expand our reach and broaden our fan base, which is what we are doing. I will now turn it over to Alyson Walker, our Chief Commercial Officer, who will speak about our commercial and business highlights from Q1 and to date.
Thank you, Adam. Good morning. As Adam highlighted, we remain laser-focused on generating high-margin revenues, driving audience growth and engagement, and managing expenses strategically. Through Q1, we worked to finalize a number of new partnerships and renewals, which we announced in early May with AMD, LG UltraGear, TUF Gaming, and Nielsen Sports. Marketing partners continue to be attracted to the opportunity to engage directly and authentically with Gen Z fans in the esports ecosystem. In terms of audience growth and engagement, high-quality content and strong team performance led to significant milestones. Both MAD Lions and Toronto Ultra topped their respective leagues for peak viewership, as Adam mentioned, driving more than 13.5 million viewership hours in the first quarter. Subsequent to Q1, the just over three-year-old Toronto Ultra brand surpassed 1 million followers across its channels, an achievement to celebrate for our Call of Duty team brand.
OAM is hosting the Call of Duty Toronto Ultra Major V Tournament, powered by Bell, starting today through Sunday. The event saw tremendous engagement when announced and is expected to be sold out for all 4 tournament days. We are excited to showcase peak esports again in Canada to our fans and partners and hope to see you all at the event at Mattamy Athletic Center this weekend. Finally, our focus on fiscal responsibility keeps us on budget operationally, while continuing to grow and engage our community, develop best-in-class activations, and produce high-quality live events for thousands of today's generation of fans. Our teams are performing, our business is delivering against brand and partner objectives, and our organization remains motivated and diligent about achieving our corporate objectives for the remainder of the year.
I will now turn it over to Rakesh Shah, our Chief Financial Officer, to review our first quarter results.
Thank you, Adam and Alyson. Good morning, everyone. Today, I'll review our first quarter financial results. Please note that the financial information we discussed today is prepared in accordance with international financial reporting standards and is in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise indicated. For the three months ending March 31st, 2023, we reported a total revenue of CAD 1.6 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of CAD 3.7 million, versus a loss of CAD 2.1 million in the comparative period. The difference being a non-recurring player sale for CAD 1.9 million in Q1 of 2022. That said, our Q1 results are strengthened by the decisive actions that have reduced operating costs for the quarter by CAD 0.7 million and expect the savings trend to continue in the remaining quarters.
As Adam noted, our cash position as of May twenty-third, twenty twenty-three, is CAD 11.6 million, and that provides us with a strong balance sheet to pursue our strategy prudently and with fiscal discipline top of mind. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'd like to open the call for questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press the star followed by the number one on the touchtone, the touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. First question we have Wakito Jima with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I just want to start out with sponsorship revenues, down year-over-year. I just wanted to see whether that's more of a timing and revenue recognition-related thing based on the number of games that have been played to date, or are you seeing a kind of a bleed-out of your non-long-term sponsorship partners that are kinda canceling sponsorships?
Let me start, and I think Alyson can also assist in answering here. I don't think, you know, we're not seeing a bleed-out of non-long-term sponsors, and we continue to see strong engagement. But, you know, we do see, you know, kind of some reduced spending per transaction. In other words, where somebody might have had a budget to spend a certain amount, they might have a budget in the current environment to spend a lesser amount. We think that that is transient. That's not a long-term trend. It's kind of a shorter macro trend that really relates to particularly kind of greater weakness at the, in, you know, kind of at the end of last year as we were kind of going into the first quarter.
I think those are the macro trends for the sponsorships. I think, Alyson can kind of, comment on some of the specific trends.
I think Adam answered it well. I would say we're having to certainly work hard like every property is for dollars and to prove ROI. There's no question about that, which means why we're focused on fiscal responsibility on the activation side. I would say that the way we look at things is pipeline conversion. We have a full pipeline of engaging discussions, some further along than others. We're still focused on hitting our partnerships target based on pipeline, and the key will be converting what's in the pipeline to finalize deals. I think that's probably good enough for today.
... If I could just dig into those budgets coming down that you mentioned. I'm assuming these longer term agreements have a minimum spend, and then these sponsor partners can up their spend if they so choose to?
Yeah, exactly. We have different opportunities that come along, whether they're live events or different programs, that they could also opt into if they weren't part of that as part of the partnership. We are not reducing spend against our sponsorships, I want to be clear. What we're doing is being responsible about how we spend. Each of our sponsors is certainly receiving the same deep engagement with our fans that they always have.
Gotcha! Makes sense. Moving on to league share revenue. If I recall correctly, last year, CDL league share hit Q3. Based on when the finals of CDL championships end, I think it's mid-June, I'm guessing that it'll hit in Q3 again this year. Just wanted to double, make sure that none of it kind of comes in a surprise in Q2.
I won't speak to revenue recognition because you know how we recognize the revenues. Maybe Rick can kind of comment on that. I do expect earlier payments for revenue share across some of the leagues. You know, as of right now, I can't comment, but I wouldn't necessarily, at this point, commit to the same cadence as previous years. I would say, you know, kind of the league teams across all the leagues, not just the leagues that we're in, but other leagues. You know, teams are suggesting earlier payment would be better, and I think there is some interest in the publisher partners to accommodate that.
Gotcha. One higher level question. I think in your press release, you mentioned that you signed an all-female team in VALORANT. Could you just outline your strategy when it comes to signing and developing players? I think there's a difference in how the economics look relative to, say, buying, you know, a seasoned team or a seasoned player, as opposed to signing, developing, and then seeing where that goes.
Yeah, that's actually at the core of our of our team strategy, what I refer to as coach-led player first. If you look at the at, you know, our teams in general, we focus on very strong coaching and then a very strong player development environment for generally younger players that are high on the prospect list, that come into our system, and then we can develop them through our discipline system, which includes, you know, holistically, not only the game itself, but health and mental fitness. You know, and just a deeper understanding of the game strategy.
When we look across our teams, for example, the Toronto Ultra team that won a major and is one of the favorites to win this year and playing this week in Toronto. Every player on that team came through our system. You know, these are not free agents that we signed. We, you know, I'm not, I haven't seen evidence to support, you know, the success of super teams. There are teams out there that are spending considerably more than we are spending by acquiring players, in some cases, that have gone through our system. You could see the other income for the same quarter last year, where somebody decided to pay substantially for one of our players.
you know, buying really expensive, good players does not make for a good team, and I think we've proven that over and over again. Frankly, it's also more conducive to sustainable spend on our player salaries.
Just to clarify on that, when you say purchase a player, that is different from signing a player, correct? Like when you purchase a player, there's a cash outlay up front, while when you sign a player-
Yeah.
You just, it flows through OpEx. That kind of helps out in managing your cash as well.
It's kind of similar to, you know, Premier League football than it is to kind of North American sports in a sense that, you know, you have players through your systems that are on contract. Typically, for most of our games, I would say we have 3-year contracts with the players. If you can sell a contract or transfer the player to another organization, and typically that is done in exchange for a cash spend. You negotiate a price, and then you sell that player's contract to another team. We throughout our kind of course of our career in OverActive Media, we have generated significantly more from inflows of people buying players from us than we have bought from them.
That's largely a function of the fact that we're very good at developing players. In terms of the female team, which you mentioned in particular, we think that there is very, very strong potential for female and potentially even mixed gender teams down the road. Women in gaming have challenges. It's a very young, very male dominated competitive scene, and women need to feel safe, let's say, in terms of building their strengths and building their talents in a structured system with the same types of resources that we apply to men. Our MAD Lions LAURË is our first female team. I would say, it, you know, it's very early on, but we see that as a tremendous success.
It's wonderful to work with these women. They are very focused on improving themselves. You know, sponsors and fans have, you know, have really taken to them. You know, as we can see with the recent WNBA match here in Toronto, there is very, very strong demand, I believe, for women in gaming, and that is a demographic that we are looking at very closely at expanding.
Makes sense. Good luck at the majors, guys. Thank you.
Take care.
Thanks.
Thank you again. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1. There are no further questions. I will now turn the call over to Adam.
Okay. Thanks again for joining us on today's call and for your continued interest in OverActive Media. We look forward to having follow-up conversations with many of you and providing updates regarding our progress. As we mentioned, the Call of Duty League Major V kicks off today, May 25th. Toronto Ultra is on stage at around 3:00 P.M. Eastern Time, going up against the New York Subliners. The event runs through the 28th at the Mattamy Athletic Center, and I look forward to connecting with many of you there. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.