Good morning, and welcome everyone to the Flutter Entertainment Q1 investor update call hosted by CEO Peter Jackson and CFO Jonathan Hill. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. If you require assistance at any time, please press star zero on your telephone, and the coordinator will be happy to assist you. There will be a chance to ask questions later in the call, but for now I will hand you over to Peter. Peter, please go ahead.
Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q1 trading update call. With me this morning is Jonathan Hill, our CFO. Hopefully you'll have had a chance to review our statement at this point, so I'll just touch on a few key performance points. The group had a positive first quarter of 2022, with revenue growth of 6% driven by AMPs, which are up 15% or 10% if you account for Tombola on a pro forma basis. In the US, we delivered a record quarter with revenue of $574 million, up 45% year-on-year, despite some significant customer friendly results in February and during March Madness, which cost us around $130 million in revenue.
We acquired over 1.3 million customers in the quarter, which represents over 70% of our entire acquisition during 2021 alone, and the strength of the customer economics we're seeing continues to give us conviction of our path to 2023 profitability. For example, our cumulative CPA remains around the $290 mark we previously shared with you, and average paybacks also remain very strong within the 12-18-month window. Our group ex-US business had some challenging comps, meaning that year-on-year revenue declined 3%. However, when you remove the volatility that can occur in shorter time periods due to regulatory changes or sports results, the GBP 1.1 billion in revenue that the ex-US business delivered in Q1 represents a three year CAGR of 11%, demonstrating the scale and diversification of our business.
In UK and Ireland Online, we grew average monthly players by 15% with a revenue decline of 20%. On an underlying pro forma basis, revenues were down 19%, adjusting for the expected impact of safer gambling initiatives, sports results, and Oddschecker. This is in line with the market, reflecting normalization of engagement from the COVID-related peak in Q1 last year, as well as a less condensed sports calendar. We hope to see some clarity on the outlook for UK regulatory change later this month and feel confident that we are very well placed ahead of that review, given our scale and the work we've been doing to improve the recreational and sustainable nature of our business. In Australia, we delivered a very strong quarter with revenue up 8% and AMPs increasing 10% to 915,000.
We've been really pleased with how well that business has been retaining its enlarged customer base in the second half of last year when we saw migration of retail punters during the strict COVID lockdowns. We stepped up investments in generosity in Q1 ahead of the AFL and NRL season start, and will continue to focus on customer retention in the coming months. In international, as expected, revenue declined given the guided headwinds which impacted the quarter. Excluding these impacts, revenue would have been up 6%, demonstrating good growth in our key focus markets against elevated period of engagement during the prior year. We hope to complete our acquisition of Sisal in Q3 and look forward to the increased diversification and larger footprint in the key regulated market it will bring to the group.
As we look to the remainder of 2022, growth of our group ex-US business will be weighted more towards H2 when you factor in the Q2 comps we face. We're also excited about the ballot initiative in California. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you the GDP is bigger than the U.K. With that, we'll be happy to take any questions. As usual, I kindly ask you to limit yourself to two questions each to start with, and then if we have time, we'll be happy to circle around again. Matt, over to you.
Thank you so much. Everyone on the line, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone. If you then decide to withdraw the question, simply press star two. Thank you. The first question is coming from Mike Hickey . Mike, please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Thank you. Good morning, Peter. Good morning, Jonathan. Two, if I could. Firstly, just to go back to competitive dynamics in the US, if I could, I think a lot of people will find that the cadence of U.S. losses reported by one of your peers overnight through the quarter, both in terms of the losses in January, February, but then also the moderation in March, quite interesting. I just wonder, could you comment in terms of what you're seeing in the U.S. market today, and how customer acquisition and customer economics are faring post the Super Bowl. That's the question number one. And then secondly, if you could help us a little bit just with your UK online bridge, obviously down 26% pro forma for Tombola. I think you mentioned underlying growth more like 19%.
I'd be interested in any color you could provide in terms of how you're assessing the underlying performance of that division and how you think it compares to the broader market. Thank you.
Thanks, Mike. Jonathan will pick up the UK point in a moment. With regards to the U.S., look, I'm not gonna comment on what our competitors posted overnight. What I would say is, you know, we're very pleased with what we're seeing in America at the moment. We have, you know, I think we've got sort of two market dynamics we're seeing in the U.S. at the moment. There's what's going on in New York, and there's what we're seeing happening across the rest of the U.S.
If I talk about the rest of the U.S. first, you know, we are continuing to push hard on driving sort of customer acquisitions, and we're very, very pleased with the acquisition costs that we're seeing, and the lifetime value dynamics that we're also seeing. You know, it's giving us real conviction, and we're leaning in very heavily to acquire as much business as we can. You know, there have been some state launches that we had anticipated would have happened by now that have slipped back a bit, but we're continuing to push really hard around acquisition. Other people seem to be stepping back because I think they're finding the dynamics difficult, but we are seeing continued big opportunities and are really leaning very hard into it.
Interesting, if you look at it on a supposed Super Bowl basis, we believe that the marketing intensity we're seeing and the generosity levels have stepped back more significant this year than we've seen them in previous years among our competitors. You know, I don't know if that's because people are trying to sort of prepare themselves, you know, on their own path to profitability. We have not stepped back to the same degree as our competitors have because we you know we have very, very good capped LTV dynamics, and we're leaning in as hard as we can to take advantage of that at the moment.
I think the other piece that I referenced was New York, and you know, clearly, you know, in that market with the level of taxation, we've seen a sort of more exaggerated version of that with you know, competitors pulling back their level of generosity in the market. You know, to some extent we've done something similar. The one thing I'd highlight in New York is that we have seen a much faster penetration of our DFS base in that state than we've seen in any other state. Basically, that's given us an even bigger acquisition cost advantage than we've seen anywhere else. We think that's, you know, going to set us up very well in that state if there are no subsequent tax changes.
Clearly people are gonna have to learn in that state to live with much lower levels of generosity, for our operators to have any chance of making any sort of contribution.
Hi, Mike. Just on your second question, obviously we have in the release, you can add on 20% on a pro forma basis, including Tombola in both periods we're down 26%. You then adjust for the safer gambling year-on-year of GBP 30 million, sports results of about GBP 16 million, and then take out Oddschecker for GBP 7 million gets you to underlying on a pro forma basis -19%. Within that, we've got two impacts we can see very clearly. One is the average player days, and the second is the sort of spend per customer, either staking or gaming spend per customer. We see a sort of continuation of the trends we saw in Q4.
Obviously, we're against some very tough comps a year ago in terms of both APDs and spend per customer, but we would at this point see ourselves trending, you know, more in line with that pre-COVID sort of level of activity, both in terms of APDs and spend. You know, we see a sort of a more normalized level of activity coming through, and we think, you know, what we've seen is probably reflective more broadly of the sort of aggregate of what's been announced by our competitors in the recent Q1 statements. You know, very much APD and spend driven, consistent with pre-COVID times.
Great. That's helpful, Jonathan Hill. Thanks so much. The next question is coming from Ed Young. Ed, please go ahead.
Thank you. Two questions. First of all, I wonder if you could give a bit more color on California. You mentioned it there. How do you assess the prospects should the signatures be validated, but the prospects are there competing ballots in terms of getting the right one through as you would see it. The second, just on international growth, you know, you mentioned it's growing year on year, but actually, you know, still up decently actually quarter on quarter. Can you perhaps help split out some of the geographic mix? I understand this has been driven by Brazil, you know, Canada, India, et cetera.
Can you give us an idea of how big they are now within the divisions, so we can think about, you know, what kind of growth we're seeing there to offset some of the slower declining products like poker? Thanks.
Morning, Ed. Look, we're very excited about the Californian situation. Clearly getting to this stage was not straightforward, and you know, we're very happy to be on the ballot. We've got a best-in-class campaign team that's had significant levels of funding. You know, I'd flag that ours is the only ballot that will bring $hundreds of millions in tax revenue targeted at mental health and homelessness solutions, which are real critical imperatives in the state. It's not impossible that our ballot could be passed and, for example, the tribal retail-only sports betting issue could also be passed. You know, they're not mutually exclusive.
We're doing everything we can to ensure that ours will be successful. If the referendum is successful and California adheres to our sort of the expected sort of timetable, we'd anticipate that the state would launch in time for the 2023 NFL season.
Ed, in terms of your question on international, if I look at the sort of growth markets, our key sort of focus growth markets, we've got, you know, some really strong double-digit contributions from Canada, Georgia, Armenia, Italy, Brazil. One of our other key growth markets is Italy, but obviously we've got the Sisal deal coming through. While that didn't exhibit growth in the quarter, that's obviously for recognizable reasons given the changes in the
The marketing legislation over the last year. Those sort of six markets would make up just under half of the sort of revenue of the international division. You know, most of those are growing strongly, or the Italian one where we've got the Sisal deal upcoming. We feel pretty good about the spread there in terms of what's coming through. You know, obviously we get to the point through this year when we start to lap the comps, and we get, you know, are feeling pretty good in terms of, you know, Germany and Netherlands will come out in H2.
We're certainly hopeful that what we'll see is, you know, the international growth translating into positive growth on a sort of quarter-over-quarter equivalent basis as we get through the year in international. I think the guys are doing a great job there of growing in these key focus markets.
Thanks, Pet. Thanks, both.
Thanks, Ed.
The next question is coming from Clark Lampen. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. I wanted to follow up maybe really quickly on Ed's point. You know, the point about these ballot initiatives, it's not necessarily being mutually exclusive. How might that actually work, you know, if both did pass? Would it impact your ability to sort of launch in an optimal or maybe, you know, sort of most competitive capacity? Second question I have is on customer economics and products. Your payback period improved to 12-18 months in the US, and I wanted to see if you could help us understand, you know, what's driving that, and maybe with regard to player engagement as a component. You know, are you seeing any changes or maybe evolution of usage or bet mix between things like, you know, Single Game Parlay and in-game? Thanks a lot.
Morning, Clark. I suspect it's very early wherever you are. It's almost a good evening. In terms of the ballot initiatives in California, it's quite hard to be too hypothetical about it. You know, ours is obviously an online-focused initiative. You know, there's a tribal one which is focused around retail. You know, you could see how that both of those could be passed. You know, clearly we need to just see what happens in the next steps as that goes through legislation. You know, we're very excited about the opportunity in California.
In terms of, you know, what we're seeing around those sort of customer economics and, you know, you're, you know, we've shared with you know, where the CPAs are and you know, where we're seeing our sort of paybacks, but, you know, what is it that's driving that? I think first and foremost, it's because of the quality of our product, you know. If we, if we look at the, you know, the feedback we get from our customers, if we look at the sort of levels that we reach from a download perspective, you know, we know that, you know, we are ranked, you know, as one of the, sort of best products by people like Eilers & Krejcik. You know, that's really, really important, to make sure that the product meets our customer needs.
More than that, we get the benefits of, you know, a lot of our own proprietary risk and trading capability and tech. Things like this, you know, the Same Game Parlay product means that we're able to better monetize our revenues than our competitors. That makes a big difference in terms of the lifetime value that we see. You know, compounding that benefit is the fact that we see very high levels of retention. Look, it's really hard to look at the year-over-year sort of, you know, revenue profile of the customers because COVID adds a lot of noise.
You know, if we look at other markets like, you know, the, like, you know, Sportsbet or Sky Bet, we'd anticipate that as the years go by, the sort of the cohorts of customers we've acquired would increase in value. We don't see any reason why that wouldn't be the case in the U.S. as well. You know, that's because of the great products and the retention that we get from customers using our products. Look, we're seeing that in, you know, you can look at weekly data in New York, and you see that, you know, customers may have taken advantage of free money from some of our competitors. You know, they're now, they've now migrated to the best product, which is FanDuel.
Copy. Thank you.
The next one is coming from James Rowland Clark. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. I just wanna first ask on Australia, where you're seeing really, you know, really good momentum in staking so far this year. You also point out the structural improvement to the win margin there. Could you just talk a little bit about the drivers of that win margin improvement? And also should we be penciling in potentially sort of 11% or north of 11% into our models? Secondly, on Australia again, could you just help us a little bit with marketing trends year to date and how that compares to the market in general? Thank you.
James, in terms of win margins, I mean, what we're seeing is, you know, we thought the sort of multis mix was probably going to continue to sort of slow at a certain point, but we aren't seeing that. We're seeing a continued trend in terms of the growth in multis. Actually, we've had a really successful start to the NRL and AFL season. You know, we continue to see the penetration improving there. That's one of the things that really drives. It pulls staking back a little bit, but it drives up the margin.
You know, we over the last couple of years, we've delivered a sort of net rev margin of 11, just around 11%. We'll see where we end up this year, depending on the competitive dynamics, particularly, you know, we all know that the Spring Racing Carnival is the big time which can drive some margin movements depending on the aggression in terms of generosity, et cetera. Look, we'll see where we get to at the end of the year. We've obviously got in the next two quarters some really tough comps coming in Aus because we've got the sports results in Q2 and the prior year were very positive. Then in Q3, we had 60% of the population in Aus locked on.
You know, we had a very positive sort of activity level in Q3 last year from those locked on. While we're, you know, really, you know, really pleased with the performance of Aus in Q1, it does have a couple of tougher quarters coming in terms of the comparatives, but we think we're, you know, well set for the year at this point.
Yeah. James, in terms of your sort of question around the marketing trends and stuff like that. You know, I think there's been a lot of benefits that the sports background has had in the market. You know, we know that we carry very high sort of top of funnel awareness among customers and non-customers. I think that's been a very important component in the strength of that business in targeting the recreational customer base. Getting the mix right between above the line generosity offers, the strength of the brand, highlighting the continued depth of product innovation.
You know, things like the Bet with Mates product which we've got out there, the continued involvement we've had of the multi-products, which, you know, we should remind us of something that was launched years ago and, you know, we're still sort of iterating and benefiting from it. I think there's lots of very positive things that the team are executing on really well in that market.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question is coming from David Jennings. David, please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Just one question for me. Just in terms of the Netherlands, can you provide an update on your licensing efforts there, and what the kind of current thinking is around timing? Thanks.
Yeah. Morning, David. Look, you know, we are obviously in the process of going through our license application, and we expect probably to come to slightly later than anticipated, you know, back end of this year to early 2023.
Perfect. Thanks.
Just a quick reminder, everyone. Please press star then one for questions. The next one is coming from Richard Stuber. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, guys. Just two quick ones from me, please. First of all, could you give any color on how DFS has performed in the U.S. in the first quarter, particularly in New York, given the launch of that market and whether it's cannibalizing online sports betting? Secondly, could you just tell us why Sisal slipped in the quarter? Looks like it was Q2 guidance before announced Q3, and how confident are you it will be closed in Q3? Thank you.
Yeah. Look, morning, Richard. So, you know, look, in terms of sort of DFS performance, there has been some cannibalization. You know, we have seen, for example, in New York, the fastest level of penetration we've seen in any state of the DFS space, which inevitably has some impact on the performance of that business. COVID had also had quite a material impact on DFS as well, because if you picked players for your, you know, for your lineup and then, you know, they're out through COVID, which happened a lot, and at quite sort of late withdrawal, that also impacted people's sort of lineup.
Yeah, but you know, I think the important thing for us is the very strong performance that we've seen, you know, across our sports business. You know, DFS is clearly giving us a very material advantage around our customer acquisition costs in the States. With regards to your second question around Sisal, well, it's always very difficult trying to sort of put a pin on a precise point when the antitrust authorities are going to approve a transaction, particularly, you know, business in Italy where, you know, we were not entirely sure whether the European or Italian authorities would claim the jurisdiction for the approval. You know, we hope that the transaction will be approved, you know, in early Q3, which is obviously not far from Q2.
You know, the extent to which those things sort of move around, you know, a few weeks and switch it between quarters.
Great. Very helpful. Thank you.
The next question is coming from Estelle Weingrod . Please go ahead.
Hey, morning. Just two questions for me. Firstly, just following up on the Italian acquisition, are you able to comment on the recent developments in the Italian regulation at all and what you think could be coming in the upcoming reform? The second question is more around win rates in the US. Are you expecting an improvement through the year as, you know, the states mature and there's further growth in the mix of parlay products on in-play? Thank you.
I'm gonna take the second first. Obviously, look, we obviously had some pretty negative results in Q1. Actually, you know, we had about 175 bets of negative results and we have some, you know, some pretty punter-friendly results coming through in NBA. We had some big Same Game Parlays which clicked that actually we gave a bit of money to, you know, a lot of punters and some of those clicks. In a way that was a good thing. We certainly are seeing the, you know, the penetration rates continue to be really strong in terms of the parlay product. You know, particularly, you know, NBA has been really strong. We'll see how that develops through the year.
I mean, what we've seen in other markets is positive developments over time in terms of the parlay product and the U.S. punters seem to really love it. You know, we'll see where we go. We're not promising anything at this point. But you know, we feel that, you know, we're continuing to make good improvements in the product, in our pricing, and that actually we've priced all of our college basketball for the first time in-house 100% this time. Again, the pricing accuracy and retaining all of that margin in-house is another thing that just helps us. You know, we'll continue to take more and more of our pricing in-house. Hopefully, you know, we'll see that product mix improve over time.
Then the other thing is also of course important to think about from a certain margin perspective, and people sometimes forget about this, is the impact of the Super Bowl on the very considerable volumes we have. You know, with the way in which we, you know, use that as a customer acquisition platform does impact the sort of perceived margin in February and sort of, you know, distorts market shares, but.
Yeah, I mean.
I'm sure you all get that.
As an example, we obviously had 28% of GGR in New York in February and 51% in March, and you'll have seen Arizona, like maybe overnight with a low GGR share, I think around 6%. But again, that's a February share and, you know, we're very comfortable with that given the offer we have in the market. You'll see, you know, that's a historic trend that we've had for the last couple of years of Q1 being marginally pulled backwards from that February offer we put out around Super Bowl.
With respect to any potential changes in the, you know, the Italian, you know, regulatory position, I mean, you know, clearly there's always a lot of sort of conjecture around how things could evolve and tax changes and things. You know, we're staying very close to that. There's nothing that we are aware of that's concrete at this stage.
All right. Thanks a lot. The next question is from Simon Davies. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning. two from me, please. Firstly, can you say anything about the impact of your introduction of deposit limits on under 25s? Is that been in line with your expectations, more or less? Secondly, can you just talk a bit about customer churn in the US, any evidence of a pickup in churn rates given some of the promotional activity going on there?
Look, I think if I take the sort of under 25 deposits limit, you know, I think you've got to remember that the number of under 25s we have in our base is quite small. Any impact is going to be pretty immaterial for the UK as a whole. Look, while we've done the right thing and it is having an impact among that group of customers, it's immaterial for our UK numbers, albeit I think it is still a very important measure that we're.
I mean, it's one of the least impactful in terms of, the SG year-over-year impacts of the ones that we've made.
With regards to sort of customer churn, yeah, I think I alluded to this earlier, when I was talking about the year-on-year growth in revenues that we see from cohorts in the States. You know, we're seeing very good levels of retention. In fact, I think it's one of the things that's really helping to contribute to the very strong lifetime values that we're seeing from customers. You know, that we're seeing really good engagement and repeat engagement with our customers.
I think while there are quite high levels of churn in the market as people avail themselves of some of these sort of free offers among our, you know, our customer base, we're seeing people sort of, you know, on our platform, even if they're sometimes, you know, then taking advantage of other people's free money. That's, you know, the reason for that is the strength and quality of our product.
Do you have any data on the average number of accounts customers are having in the U.S.?
I don't have anything to hand, I'm afraid.
Thanks. Sorry for that.
I mean, obviously when you look at the early adopters who are taking up these offers, and if you know, back to the point on New York, clearly people are taking advantage of the several offers they can get their hands on, and there have been some very generous ones as evidenced overnight by some of the costs to some of the players. Basically, we are all buying the right to get the consumer to try our product, and then the consumer is going to, when the market settles down, determine which product they really like and who gives them a suitable level of generosity, and that's what we're seeing playing out.
I think the early adopters may end up with more of the products because they wanna avail themselves of these great offers while they're available. We'll see how that transpires as the market, you know, moves into the fast followers and then at some point into recreational.
You know, ultimately, this is the fact we've shared with you in the past in terms of the impact of incremental, you know, year two compared with year one appear to be sort of being, you know, maintained a bit. You know, it's quite hard to get a clear read on that because of some of the COVID impacts.
Great. Thank you.
Okay. Well, look, thank you very much, everybody. I think there's no further questions. I appreciate your time this morning, and particularly those of you who got up very early in the States. Thank you very much indeed.
Thanks, all.
Thank you so much, Peter. Thank you, everyone. That marks the end of the conference call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining, and enjoy the rest of your day.