Welcome to first quarter results. My name is Marek Tymiński, I'm the founder and the CEO. Together with me is David Broderick, who is the CFO for the group.
Good morning.
Just quickly to summarize, CI Games is an experienced global AAA and AA game developer and publisher with popular IP franchises. Obviously, our two main franchises that we are known for are Sniper Ghost Warrior and Lords of the Fallen. We started to work on the third IP that was a year and a half, and it's a working title, Project Survive. We self-publish original IPs on all the major platforms, including Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo. We are listed on Warsaw Stock Exchange, and we are absolutely having a strong back catalog that is supporting ourselves when we have no new releases. Experienced global team with distributed development and marketing. Currently, we have almost 140 game developers fully operating remotely.
It's international development team led by seasoned management teams and globally experienced board. Strong relationship with third-party outsourcing companies across the globe, strategy confirmed by the success of the latest internal developed game that was over 90% developed remotely. That's our strength. Again, we are hiring the best talent where the talent is available. We are not focused on any given location for as long this is a similar time zone. Quality and efficiency, we're absolutely committed to deliver the best games we can, and obviously, on one part is the latest Unreal Engine 5, that we have been building all the major releases.
Looking into a track record in the last five years, there is a strong performance, both from the standpoint of critics and players around the globe in terms of our key releases and smaller releases from United Label as well. Very well-received games and highly rated. In brief, that's our management team. Obviously, it's starting from the left, it's me, David, Darren, who is the head of United Label, Kirsty, that is the HR director, Saul, that is leading studio Hexworks, that is responsible for Lords of the Fallen. Heitor, that is leading Underdog, currently with Project Scorpio and further on Sniper Ghost Warrior. Ryan, who is our brand director.
Mich, who joined middle last year, she is currently our global marketing director. John is leading the sales globally for both digital and physical. Just a quick summary again, 20 years in developing video games, AAA, AA, and publishing three main IPs, 60 million copies sold. Five main locations across Europe, but those locations mostly serve operationally to hire and maintain our staff across Europe and in the U.S. Currently a bit more than 170 people internally, full-time, working for CI Games as a group. At this moment, we are engaging over 300 people full-time, and that is coming from our partners, from our outsourcing partners, from third-party developers working on our projects.
The average is 18 years of experience of our management team and directors. Again, this is a brief summary on Soulslike dark fantasy action RPG in terms of the genre. It became very popular with Elden Ring release last year. Elden Ring was one of the best-selling games in the U.S., and that brought, a genre that wasn't yet fully mainstream genre to become basically another mainstream genre, post-Elden Ring. We see a strong appetite and interest from gaming communities globally, looking for the next big game. We have Lords of the Fallen that hopefully will reach that broad audience and be the next big game in that action RPG, Soulslike genre. The game is fully developed by Hexworks. That's our internal studio.
Obviously, currently, the studio is around 90 people. We have been working and we'll continue working with another around 90 people full-time, externally. Currently, the team that is behind Lords of the Fallen is around 180 people full-time. Strong production values, AAA production values. We have strong combat system. Visually, the game looks absolutely great, and we absolutely committed to delivering the game at the right performance from the start, from the day one. The game is running on Unreal Engine 5, that on its own, will allow us to bring some of the features that will differentiate us from previously released games in that space.
The game on its own has its also unique aspects and strong, unique features that will make that being relevant to that audience who want to have a fresh experience from, in, in that genre. Strong global marketing campaign, we've said that many times. We started the campaign in August 2022 with a strong release of the trailer. We continue through December, The Game Awards, and recently we launched a bigger gameplay trailer two weeks ago, and we very, very pleased with the outcomes from both the players, media influencers, and reactions to that trailer. Just briefly, modernizing, IP, what we had done with Lords of the Fallen back in 2024 when the game was launched.
Obviously, it was more of a high fantasy and it was medieval power fantasy, versus now it's more dark fantasy, immersive, epic journey. It's a faster combat, it's more integrated, melee and spells, and spells became more important this time than previously. The systems are bigger and broader in terms of, in terms of the whole RPG experience, and the world itself is way more interconnected, more vertical, and it's 5 times bigger than on the previous game. What's more important here is the online aspect, so we have a strong co-op experience and PVP that was missing in the previous game, and we believe that that multiplayer experience will expand the audience and will keep the audience engaged in the game for longer.
This goes back to the popularity of that genre, and that genre becoming a mainstream genre, not just in the U.S., but globally. We see a strong sales of Elden Ring across the globe. U.S. is obviously probably the largest market, definitely the largest market, but we see a strong performance in Western Europe, Central Eastern Europe. We see strong performance in Asia, so that genre is popular pretty much everywhere. I think couple of important points here. What makes the next game, Lords of the Fallen, successful, is definitely compelling thematic and expansive game world to explore. Exploration itself is very important for gamers. Enhancement innovations that we are bringing, and the key innovation, key enhancement here, apart from slightly different take on combat, is definitely Umbral, the dual world system that we are bringing with Lords of the Fallen.
A strong level of challenge, the game has to be challenging. The game has to challenge the players. That's what players expect. They expect to get that challenge, and the game will deliver that, but at the same time, we absolutely stay fair. That's, again, what the players want. They want to have the challenge, and they want to have the fairness in terms of that experience. Strong lore meta story, that's a very strong reason why people are going potentially to get engaged in the next RPG game. We think that our world, our narrative, our meta story, and lore itself it will be really interesting and very exciting for the gamers around the world. All of that, obviously, has to be brought with the effective marketing campaign, and we're very serious on that.
Our marketing campaign will be at the scale of AAA marketing campaign. In terms of the budget, we think we can absolutely reach the audiences in all the key countries and beyond that. Currently, where the project is, we are pleased with the pace of production, and we are pleased with what we are with this game now. We are at the testing, the QA of that project, and polishing the game, and making sure that we are ready to release that game with the already announced release date of the thirteenth of October. At the same time, we are looking how we can maximize the publishing, the sales, marketing around that game, and I think that's very important.
We are coming up in a fourth quarter that statistically, historically, is the strongest quarter in terms of the sales. At the same time, we are also aware of competitive landscape, not just in RPG, I think it's in general. Big games are coming obviously, as usual, in the fourth quarter. We absolutely are aware of that, and we'll be looking into how we can maximize the opportunity, releasing the game in that period. Answering potential questions, if there is a strong argument to move the release a bit, and one week this way or two weeks the other way, we absolutely will consider that. No decision has been yet made around that.
I think multi-sales channels, including obviously the physical part, we are planning to ship over half a million units on the physical format. The digital is absolutely the most important. That is around 70%-75% of the sales we expect the game will perform over the digital stores. Pre-orders, we're pleased with the start. This is still early. That's a start. Deluxe is performing much better than the standard, so we see over 70% of pre-orders coming from the Deluxe Edition, and we are very pleased with the performance of the Collector's Edition.
We have a clear pricing strategy, and currently, the game is priced at $69.99 as a standard edition and $79.99 as a Deluxe Edition, which is very much in line across the AAA category. We're definitely staying there. David, the financial report is to you. I just, before you go into the numbers, I would like to summarize that and say it again, like, with everything, what we have been working on, it's been a major transformation for the company in the last years. I think the outcomes of those, of that transformational period will be seen very shortly. David, I think you're muted.
Thank you, Marek. Obviously, I'll jump straight into the numbers in the interest of time, so we can get to the Q&A. These are obviously the kind of traditional headline numbers that we put up around revenue, EBITDA, margin, and our cash debt position. I'll talk to those in more detail as we go through the P&L and balance sheet in detail. Starting with the income statement, obviously revenue is down year-on-year, but again, as Marek pointed out, that's in a year where, you know, absent releases, we've seen the decline. Again, still a reasonably strong performance, just under PLN 10 million slots in light of that, with the large contribution coming from Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2.
Also, United Label giving a strong contribution of 15%, and combined, giving just under 70% of sales coming from those two sources for the company. SG&A, again, up significantly on last year, to PLN 3.1 versus PLN 1.3. Again, I think what people have to appreciate is we are building the infrastructures, we are building the model, the business, to support the demand and the interest that we see coming down the track. You know, in light and in advance of the demand for Lords, we're building out our sales and marketing team. We're professionalizing that. We're also incurring additional marketing expenses ahead of release. There's over PLN 1.2 million of costs in there relating to us scaling up and also taking costs in advance of the release of Lords.
Again, as you can see, we've increased our numbers in terms of our development team, our overall cost structures. We're building out for the other games outside of Lords, our general kind of G&A costs have increased as a result of that, as we increase our recruitment costs, we build out our HR teams and our legal costs to support all the kind of infrastructure and the larger organization that we're slowly but surely becoming. The net impact on that is just shy of break-even for the year. Again, I think a strong performance when you consider the costs and overheads that we've been taking in, and also the absence of a release in the kind of current year.
Again, it's all built towards our expansion, our growth, and building a bigger CI Games, you know, can stand up for the release of Lords and games beyond that. In terms of balance sheet, again, as you can appreciate, we have three projects under build at the moment, kind of Sniper, stroke Scorpio, Lords of the Fallen, and Survive. Consequently, our total assets increased 12% in that period. That's all driven by the investment into those games. You can see how the intangible assets have increased in the quarter by 21.3%. You also can see that our group debt at the end of the period is 34.2, with a portion of that relating to IFRS 16 and the accounting that takes place under there.
I think what's important to highlight as well is, you know, certainly from the cash and debt perspective, there's a number of events that took place post the quarter end. We signed our PlayWay agreements towards the end of April this year, with more agreements lined up and ready to sign and at a signature stage in terms of our distribution. We announced the additional loan agreement with PKO BP on the 29th of April. Again, which saw another additional PLN 20 million available to the company in the form of debt. And like I said, we continue to work with our suppliers, we continue to work with our distributors, we continue to work with our existing lenders, all to fund the business over the next while.
You know, we will also probably look at additional debt coming into the business that of a non-dilutive form. Again, that leaves us at the 31st of March with a cash balance of just under PLN 8 million, comparable to the same period last year. Here's just a rough breakdown, again, just illustrating the revenue mix, the strength of the back catalog, and the stream of revenues coming into the business over the next while. Again, this is probably a trend that we expect to continue up to, and including the release of Lords of the Fallen later on in this year. I don't think there's much need to go through the appendices.
This is just reiterating our overall strategy, the various pillars that we announced earlier in the year or last year, and just some background detail that people can kind of read at their own leisure. Marek, I don't know if you want to sum up or we jump into the Q&A?
I think we can jump into the Q&A directly.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think, David, I think this question is to you: How much more debt you can get from banks according to your current loan lines agreements?
Again, at the end of the quarter, we obviously have the additional PLN 20 million available to us that's there. Again, that's what, under the existing signed contracted facilities, that is what is available to us. above and beyond what we've reported at the quarter.
Plenty of questions in regards of launch. When will the advertising campaign start? When will the numbers, the first numbers, being known in terms of the sales, and how often will you report those numbers? I mean, let me answer that here. In terms of the advertising campaign, the major advertising campaign will be in a few weeks before the launch and at the launch. In principle, answering that question, that's when we plan to spend a big part of the budget, at the launch, basically. In terms of the numbers, we will be sharing the sales results with investors.
I think more often than not, we want to make sure that when we share the numbers, we have a complete picture of what are those numbers in terms of the sales after the release of the game. As soon as we have it, we will be sharing those informations. As you have seen, we're trying to share more information than less as a company with investors in general. Do you feel confident about the preparations to the release of Lords of the Fallen? As I said previously, yes, we are absolutely confident in regards to the preparation to the release. The question around that was also, What's left to finish the game? That's the question is in the same topic.
We are currently. The game we have the full game, right? The game is working well in terms of the performance. It's still about polish, it's still about back fixing, and that's typical in any software product. It's not just games. You just fix bugs. You have usually at that stage, the company has a lot of bugs to fix. I mean, every project has a lot of bugs to fix, and those bugs are being fixed on a daily basis. We work with the external QA company. We work with QLOC. They are reporting to us pretty much on a daily basis, and that's an ongoing process. That's what's.
The simple answer, what's left, it's just fixing all the bugs, all the issues that the game has. That's a typical process before launching any software product. That's a question to you, David. Potential strategic investor next year, are there any talks going on?
I think we've obviously been quite open about the process historically, that we've run, and where we've talked to strategics, probably over the last 18 months, two years. With the release of Lords, with the other exciting titles that we have, you know, I think people will get a real appreciation of what has been taking place and the transformation that has taken place within CI Games. You know, the change in technology, with the game engine, the change in the teams and the caliber and experience of the teams that are behind the games now, and the professionalization of the various support structures through marketing, et cetera, with people who are bringing a lot of experience with them.
At the moment, there's no live discussion. I think, you know, it would be a, what I would call a high-class problem, if we do our job well. That's what we're focused on. We're focused on delivering the best game we can. We're focused on producing and making the company the best company it can be. Lords will be our first real reveal of what transformation has taken place to the general public and to people out there. I think that will really not re-rate, but reshow, you know, the progress that has been made and the type of organization that we are. You know, our focus at the moment is running this company, doing the best we can, and delivering on that.
That's where our attention is at the moment. Marek, I don't know if you have anything?
I think that is answering that question really well. I've nothing to add, nothing else to add at this moment on that one. Another question is. There are several questions around the same, expectations in regards to the sales of Lords of the Fallen. Obviously, it's a good question. It's a very good question. It's a million-dollar question. We think it's absolutely not correct for us yet to share our internal expectations, and we still don't have enough data points to be able to share that. We prefer to wait. We think that there's a very strong potential that the game has, and Elden Ring proved that that market segment became mainstream and is large. Obviously, Elden Ring has great numbers.
We're not saying that we are looking to repeat those numbers. That's absolutely not what we are saying. The segment is large enough that this should allow us to be really successful with Lords of the Fallen. We're very confident, but we don't want to share this yet, our sales expectations, we prefer to wait. The question is around when is the certification? When the game may go gold, when we should expect console certification to happen. We are expecting the game to be certified with the major platform holders in August. In order for the game to be, to pass the certifications, the game has to be...
The process of certification has to start within the next month and a half, that's our plans, we're absolutely working according to that plan, and we're confident about that plan. The question, couple of questions around what events we'll be part of. Absolutely, there are several very important events coming in the next five months, we don't want to answer that question yet. When, I mean, we absolutely inviting people to follow our social media channels. We will be speaking about when people may expect to see us, investors, gamers, on any given show. N othing yet for us to confirm on that. We are absolutely looking forward to at least some of the key shows in the next four or five months to be part of. There's a question, David, do you hear me? I'm not sure
Yep.
Do you hear me well? Okay. Thank you. In the SP, you mentioned five big events promoting Lords of the Fallen. Can you elaborate if there will be longer, 10-15 minutes gameplay as one of them? Yes, absolutely. We are planning a longer gameplay, call it uninterrupted gameplay, with several different segments, to be public in the next few months, and definitely way ahead of the release of the game. Yes, that's one of the bits we are planning.
There's a few questions, Marek, just how we see the game evolving, you know, post-release and, you know, if we get a positive reception to that and our view on DLCs.
Right. We have nothing yet to say about the DLCs, but we absolutely can confirm we have plans for that franchise in broad terms, post-launching the game in October, but nothing yet for us to really publicly say at this moment. We will be absolutely supporting, and obviously, what's important here, I think from the investment standpoint, there's a very important sales to be generated in the first weeks from the launch. At the same time, we will be doing our best to maximize the revenues and profits from that game in the years to come, right? This is a franchise, that's the product that will generate important revenues and important contribution to our results in the next years, not just in the next year, but in the next years, obviously.
There's a question: What are the current sales expectations for the game Lords of the Fallen based on the pre-order sales data? To us, it's too early to really build a meaningful model, and expectations just based on the pre-orders. It's definitely too early for us. We see that we're pleased with the numbers, and we're even more pleased with the wish lists that has been increasing in the last weeks and has been increasing since the start. There's a lot to like about that, but it's absolutely too early to really build a meaningful model based on this first week or week and a half of pre-orders, neither the wish lists.
There are a number of questions in regards to what will be the sales in the next year. I think that those questions are, they are just too early for us to answer. I mean, we are absolutely fully focused on Lords of the Fallen. Meanwhile, the other projects are being further developed. We have separate teams working on Project Survive, on Project Scorpio. Those teams have been also growing. There was a question on Project Survive. The size of the team currently is around 40 people. That team has been also growing and further grow. That will be a bigger team. The same with Project Scorpio, that will also become a bigger team. Those games are very important to our future revenues and profits, but it's too early for us to give any comment.
The only thing apart from that, I can say again, like, we've been happy from the progress of those projects, and they've been developed by separate teams. We have a separate team working on Lords of the Fallen, Hexworks, outsourcing partners. We have a separate team working on Project Scorpio, and we have a separate team working on our Project Survive. There is definitely there are definitely synergies between those projects, and one of, I mean, Unreal Engine 5. All of those games are based on the same technology, so that allows for certain synergies and some of the systems that can be used across those projects.
Yeah, but we, but there are separate teams working on that. David, do you see any other important question we should touch upon?
No, I'm just sorry, I'm just looking through. I think you've touched on most of it. Most of the interest seems to be about, you know, the release of the game, the life after the game, and what we're doing up to that. You've obviously just touched on the other ongoing projects with Survive and Scorpio as well, which are obviously for life after Lords, and are another big kind of component in terms of what we've been investing into the business in order to deliver growth and build a sustainable model going forward.
Right. I'm just looking at. There are questions around marketing, I think, right? How are we gonna finance the marketing? I'll just briefly here, and I think, David, you can follow up if there's more you wanna say. I think we will be financing the marketing mostly through our partners. It's a broad term, mostly through our partners, and that's a very typical, right? Typical way of financing the marketing. David, you can add anything if you feel there's something more to add here.
I think, like I said earlier, when we're going through the presentation, I think it's important to remember, you know, obviously, we've reported our numbers at the end of Q1. There's been quite an amount of activity. You know, we talked previously as to the means of how the business is financed and, you know, the ongoing business and the back catalog is one element that still continues to hold up. We talked about that, you know, we would be signing agreements with our distributors. W e've executed on the first of those with PlayWay. We have others lined up that will see close on 90% of the coverage of our entire sales network covered very, very soon, and a lot of the other smaller contracts are at an advanced stage.
You know, we've also talked about what we've done with PKO BP. There was more activity in that, post the Q1 results at the end of April. As Marek has pointed out there, you know, working with our suppliers and working with our partners is another key aspect in terms of cashflow and funding, in terms of how we bring the game ultimately to market. I think additional debt is probably a logical path for us, given what we're seeing in terms of the potential for the game, to really maximize, I suppose, the opportunity that we see ahead. You know, I think we've been pretty transparent, very open about the means that we've seen, we've equally demonstrated clear conversion and execution on those different means of financing.
That's what we will continue to do and close out as we work towards the release of Lords.
Thank you, David. Plenty of questions around game. I think that a lot of that we cannot really answer yet. That's not yet public. You know, how long the game will take to beat? I mean, longer than shorter, for sure, but that's all we can say now. I mean, we know exactly what we expect, but we cannot share that with it's not yet public public knowledge. We cannot share that yet, unfortunately, with investors, but it's definitely a bigger game, a meaningful and a longer experience. Question, David, on whether we're planning capital increase. It's been a common question, I think, are we planning any capital increase?
No, like I said, I think, what I touched on there is that we would look at. If we took more debt, we would look at a non-dilutive form of bringing money into the business, and hence, no capital increase in that regard.
Dual listing is completely stopped or just postponed in time? That's another question, David, I found here.
Yeah, I mean, again, I suppose nothing's changed from our position. You know, we paused it previously. The sentiment to a lot of the game stocks in the U.K. had changed, and also general kind of global market conditions. I think the Polish market, the knowledge of the investor base, both from public and institutional investors, is very strong. We currently, you know, have a very strong peer group of well-respected gaming stocks in Warsaw. At the moment, you know, with a lot of our focus on Lords, the sensible thing continues probably to pause that. You know, we thankfully have seen strong support from the investor base in Poland in recent weeks and months, looking at the story. You know, long may that continue.
Thank you, David. I mean, that's. Yeah, I mean, we don't want to say, we don't want to speak yet about what may happen after Lords launch, right? I mean, first, we want to get to the launch, maximize the launch, make sure that we do our best across the whole team to make the most out of that opportunity, and then, obviously, we will be making further decisions together on what's next for the company and what's next for us in general. As you said, are you prepared for a large number of online players on release date? Won't game have problems with operation of servers of first week? If the numbers of players exceeds your expectations in positive manner, will you be testing stability? I think just to answer that question, in general, yes, we are.
We have a very senior team and very competent team on that project, and we have a senior competent team on the QA side as well, so we know what we are doing, and we are. Yes, we are testing, as I said previously, we're testing this game with external partners mostly. We have a QA team, internal, smaller, but it's mostly tested with external partners, so we want to make sure that the game has all the functionality and is ready to launch when it's launched. We are aware of any potential issues, and we are ahead of them in terms of our work around the release. Just trying to look if there's anything more. I mean, there are questions in regards to more details on publishing of the game and more details of the game.
We are not able to share answers on them yet, we have to apologize to investors. Again, I would like to ask everyone to stay and basically follow our social media channels, there is a lot to come from us. We have at least five major marketing bits coming before the launch of the game, I think within every month, there will be way more presented, the investors can understand better details on the game itself, on marketing, on publishing, and everything around that. Just to follow our social media channels, I think that's definitely what we would like to ask investors to do. Yes, I think that's, I'm not sure, David, you see anything else there to answer?
No, I.
Which part?
Yeah. As you said, most of the questions have been kind of promotion up to the release of the game, support of the game, post-release. You know, that seems to be the general theme. I think we've touched on most of those, if not all of those kind of questions that have come through.
Yeah. Thank you very much, everyone, for taking part in our first quarter investor call. Again, we look forward to seeing you soon. Stay in touch over social media channels. Thank you very much. Thank you.