The market missed from the Q2 results, or any message that you'd like to start with to reinforce coming out of earnings about the position that Flutter holds right now?
I thought we delivered a very strong set of earnings for Q2. We're very pleased with our performance across the board. That's in the United States where it was brilliant to see the business make $400 million, nearly a 22.5% EBITDA margin in June, more than 16% hold. The business is performing very strongly and a number of important strategic initiatives for us were delivered in our international division. It was a strong set of results. I think it shows the compelling fundamentals of the business. Market reaction was not quite what we anticipated, certainly. Rob and I lost the sweepstakes that we had internally. I think we've seen a number of businesses react in a similar way off the results, even if they were strong, over the last few weeks.
Okay, great. Maybe if we just take a little step back for a second. It's clearly been a busy time if we think about it over the past 12 months- 18 months. You guys have achieved some big milestones with the U.S. primary listing, moving the headquarters to the U.S., and a successful Investor Day in New York. Is there any change in the company philosophy that investors should continue to expect compared to when you were more internationally based and focused?
I think we're more than a year on. I think our philosophy remains broadly consistent. I'm very pleased with the sort of corporate steps we've taken. I think it's delivered what we anticipated from a liquidity perspective. I think that's been important. We've been delighted in the progress we've made from an index inclusion standpoint. I mean, still a little bit more to go. I think the investment thesis remains very strong for us. We've obviously gone through the point of profitability in the U.S. and we're seeing strong operating momentum coming into the business. I think the diversification across our international business helps us. There's obviously a very compelling time to go after internationally. I think the second quarter is a really good example of us being an "and" business, right? Continually investing organically across, frankly, the world, whether that's in India or Turkey or America or the U.K.
Being able to pursue M&A, right? I think you look at what we've done in the acquisition in Italy, the business in Brazil, actually buying in a piece of FanDuel and resetting those market access deals, which is going to be important. Also continuing to provide the share buyback that we talked about as well. I think it's a good opportunity to step back and reflect on some tremendous progress we've made over the last year.
Awesome. That's a good summary. We're going to jump into all of those things. Let's start with the United States. Maybe if you can just discuss the sustainability of the faster growth in some of your more mature and existing states and compare that to where you see the market growth in some of the newer states that you've launched. Just help us kind of contextualize where you are in the process. Obviously, all of this is still relatively new, but you do have some proof points in terms of some older existing states.
You took the words out of my mouth, Robert, because it is all relatively new. I think to even use the mature word, even with any caveat around it, in reference to what we're doing in America, it feels a little bit wrong. It's really fascinating seeing what's happening with gaming at the moment, with iGaming. I can remember when, back in the day, Betfair launched our casino business in New Jersey. Here we are all those years later, and penetration rates are still growing very steeply. There's a long way to go. We think that there's more, arguably penetration rates have got further to go in gaming than even in sports. I think trying to find the right way of characterizing any of these states is difficult.
I think we've got lots of momentum in the business, and we're excited to see where we can get to over the next few years. I think when we try and benchmark where America will get to, it's difficult. When you spend time in the States when football launches, it's truly the sport that stops the nation. I suspect in the long run, we'll see greater penetration levels amongst the American population than we do in some of the sports mad places around the world that we think about benchmarking, whether that's Australia or the U.K.
Okay, Rob, maybe for you. Obviously you're still in the relatively new stage of the CFO role, even with all the time that you already have under your belt. You presented at the Investor Day. Just kind of curious, as you prepared for that, what were your biggest surprises ahead of your bullish expectations from a couple of years ago, looking at where the company laid it out for both OSB and iGaming?
I think at the time, you know, we talked about the fact that the U.S. TAM was increasing substantially. Actually, as Peter just mentioned, in terms of our iGaming performance since then, it continues to surprise and delight us on the upside. I think, you know, we've put a number of different initiatives in play that have facilitated that. That's definitely one standout upside. I think, you know, there's a number of other things in the U.S. that we're looking at from a diversification perspective. I think the continued growth in the sportsbook as well. One of the things that we've always talked to is one of our favorite charts, the cohort chart, and how that compounds over time. I think the fact that we continue to see growth, even in the oldest states from a sportsbook perspective, and the pre-2022 states is definitely encouraging.
I think the one other thing which, you know, is one of the things that I specifically talked about when investing, it's not specific to the sportsbook and gaming, but it's the broader operational discipline that I think we're demonstrating as an organization. We talked about this $300 million envelope of cost savings that we would deliver over time. The progress that we're making on that and demonstrating and validating as an organization has been really significant in the last nine months. We've really demonstrated that the PokerStars transformation can work for us in terms of moving to local heroes and local liquidity. We've already delivered the first element of that in Italy with PokerStars shared liquidity with Sisal. We've delivered the UKI platform migration, which was a very significant milestone for us where we've moved 9 million customers over. We're making brilliant progress with the Snaitech integration in Italy.
I'm really pleased with how that's delivering, and we're probably slightly ahead of my expectations there as well.
Okay, awesome. Peter, you mentioned the upcoming NFL season. There's been a lot of focus on handle growth over this past year, even going back into the fourth quarter last year. When you think about the handle or overall revenue growth, however you want to talk about it, how are you thinking about this driving the go forward NFL season in terms of the higher per cap spending? Are we going to get just continued increases in the bet mix from the current users? Maybe help us understand where the incremental growth is going to be coming from for the NFL season.
First of all, we're very excited about the forthcoming football season. It's almost started. We've seen some trend moves already, so we'll start to see that in our daily updates on margin and performance. It's always a roller coaster ride when the football season gets going. We've got some exciting products for customers. I think we would anticipate that we will continue to grow our parlay product, our parlay penetration off the back of the product changes we're making. If I look at what we've done for years now, it's been a core tenet of our product internationally, and what we do in live betting is really fundamental. I think some exciting stuff we do with our product there should be incremental for us in terms of some of the improvements that we're making.
If I look at tennis, we launched the same game parlay product for tennis this past year, and we saw a very successful French Open and incredible Wimbledon performance. I'm excited to see what we'll do with the forthcoming US Open. I think really it's a combination of those factors where we'll see improvements in hold, improvements in performance from existing customers. We've got a massive reactivation campaign to go for the start of the new football season. I'm sure you've all seen the teasers for our new Futures Day that we've created in the market in Spain to get people excited about the forthcoming season. There's lots to go for.
Okay, great. We've gotten this far without talking about the prediction market opportunity. Let's go there. I know you already shared your latest thoughts on evaluating the landscape and monitoring the stakeholders to determine whether or not you will launch your own product. Maybe can you talk about whether the growth in prediction markets is having any competitive impact on your existing business today? If you can kind of frame that for us. Maybe the follow-up would be how quickly could you enter the U.S. market as soon as you make the decision to go forward or not?
In terms of the states that we are already operating in, Robert, we're not seeing any impact from prediction markets in those states. You know, and that shouldn't be a surprise. We operate the world's largest exchange, and we know that when you can offer parlay products, they're much more exciting and engaging for consumers. You just can't have the huge set of permutations and combinations that come out of having a proper parlay product available on a prediction market. It's not happening, and we wouldn't expect it to have any bearing on the states we're already offering sports betting. Ultimately, our goal is to have as many states offering regulated sports betting as they can. In terms of what's getting between us and launching if that's something we wanted to do, technically, this is not complicated. The complexity here is managing regulatory relationships and stakeholders.
That's something we've often talked about. I think when you think about what our primary goal is, which is about getting to as many states passing regulatory sports betting as possible, that's our focus. We've just got to be very thoughtful about how we make sure that nothing that would happen in the prediction markets could upset that.
Okay, thank you. Maybe the other side of the regulatory market is the tax increases that we've seen in the U.S. There's been obviously a lot of potential bills. When you take a step back of what actually happened this year, aside from Illinois, it seems like it probably came in a lot better than expectations initially. Can you help us think about Illinois and the surcharge? Do you expect that to continue to be an outlier, or is there a risk that other states will follow? Maybe just your broader thoughts on taxes going forward.
I think it's fair to say in the first instance, we were quite disappointed.
Very disappointed.
Illinois decided to do. We do very much feel that it's an outlier in terms of their approach. That doesn't really align with what the rest of the regulated states are doing and the conversations that we're having. It's also worth mentioning that we've made quite a significant investment behind our regulatory affairs team. It's no coincidence that some of the tax bills that were moderated and went away, and even the ones that we've seen come through in New Jersey and Louisiana, were at kind of lower rates than they were initially billed, which we have seats around this having some influence in those conversations.
I think the tax increases are going to be a continued theme over time, but we've demonstrated in our model internationally around the rest of the world that we're actually very well placed to work and navigate through these and actually grow our margins at the same time. We've got a well-versed playbook, and as a scaled player, we've always said that we're very well placed to manage through these, whereas others won't be. You quite often see a second order impact as these increases come through. I think one of the things that we're working hard with our regulatory team with is actually educating some of the lawmakers in the U.S. around reinforcing the dangers around the ineffective tax policies and some of the harm that that can cause.
I've been talking to a number of investors this week about some of the changes that have been made in European markets such as the Netherlands and also in Australia where tax increases have been pushed beyond a certain threshold. What it ultimately ends up in is lower tax takes for the regulators and governments and more customers moving to the black market. There is a sustainable level at which tax rates can be set, which works for the regulators and also allows operators such as ourselves to operate sustainably. I think we're very well versed to navigate the space. We'll continue to see changes, but we're quite comfortable with our position.
Okay, good. Thank you. Let's shift to iGaming. You touched on it already earlier, Peter. A month ago, you published a really interesting summary of the story behind how FanDuel became the number one iGaming brand in the U.S. This is what you called out, you know, led by the strategic vision focused on improving customer experience, obtaining the exclusive content, and developing a distinct brand that allowed FanDuel to quickly pull ahead of the longer established rivals. Now where we are with FanDuel and the success that you've achieved, I'm just wondering how you think you're positioned to drive additional iGaming growth from here and continue to improve the economics and keep expanding the market share beyond the number one position where you're at.
First of all, the economics we're seeing remain very compelling. Payback periods, which are frankly not more than a year. Rob and I are pushing hard to step up the level of investment that we're making. I think we're able to do that because we've, and the team have done a fantastic job of executing against the strategy that we laid out. They had real clarity around what was needed to win in the direct-to-casino or solar gaming, or however you want to characterize it, size of the market. I think that relentless execution against that strategy has stood us in good stead. There have been a few occasions where, frankly, because we've started a little bit behind the pack on some of these things, we've been able to cut through with a very compelling, clear solution for consumers.
I think one example of that would be around what we're doing from a jackpot perspective. I think some people had assumed you needed to have very large, infrequent jackpots to attract consumers. Actually, it's the reverse. To drive the health of the ecosystem, you want to have high frequency, low jackpots paid out. We've paid out 200,000 jackpots. I think it's hard to make a change if you were starting off in the infrequent and large world. We went straight to what the answer is. The work we're doing around reciprocity and reward is very powerful. The deals we've been able to do to bring exclusive content to our customers. I think we've got a very, I think the team has done a very good job executing. I think we see very compelling economics.
I think there's a lot of hedging and penetration still to come, and further growth for us.
Okay, cool. Maybe switching back to the OSB side, and just thinking about the product overall. Clearly, you mentioned the higher parlay penetration versus a lot of your competitors. How do you ensure that your product stays one step ahead of the competition? Obviously, you can discuss Your Way as part of that, in terms of reinforcing the lead that you already have established there.
I remember being in Australia in November 2016 when we launched the multi-revolution, which is what the Australians call the parlay. Here we are, so effectively, 10 years later, and the team in Australia are still innovating the product. We just developed a new feature, which is driving increased adoption in the AFL, which is very exciting. Look, I remain very excited about the prospects for us to continue to drive innovation in the United States where we're much earlier on in the journey and there's a lot more potential. Yeah, as you say, what we're doing with Your Way, I think, is going to be really transformational. It is a fundamental sort of rewiring of the core infrastructure for our business from a sports perspective. If you look at the way that almost every provider in the world operates today, it's through a sort of event market selection hierarchy.
We've broken that down and created our own arrays for every game, which have basically every single outcome that could happen. We've had to develop our own pricing capability and technical language to interrogate that array. We've done some very complex work to resolve this. Working out how we then package that huge new set of choices for consumers and make that available is something which is not straightforward, but we started to deliver through Your Way and the sliders and some of the individual optionality we give to people. I'm excited about it. I think there's a lot of progress that we can make in terms of driving further parlay penetration. That is relevant for pre-live as it is for live, right now. The great thing about sport is it's inherently unpredictable.
When you're watching a game and suddenly a game follows a particularly unusual outcome, you'll be wanting to reach for the parlay that you haven't anticipated you may have wanted at the beginning of the game. We'll have that available. Making sure that consumers can find it very quickly and then can track it and see what's happening to the outcomes against what they predicted is really important. I think we're very well placed to continue to make progress in all of those areas.
Peter, you just talked about live and you touched on that earlier. Maybe if you can take a step back and explain how important live is to FanDuel's overall proposition and where you see yourself compared to the competition on live betting.
It's strange for me to try and distinguish between pre-live and live because it's just betting, right? I mean, when I think about it from a European context, we've never really distinguished between it. Live has always been a core and fundamental part of what we do. Let's not forget, of course, we're the business that invented cash app, right? Which has facilitated a lot of this. We've been driving innovation for a long time in this space. I think we have the best live product for consumers in America because of the expertise we have worldwide and the ability to lead on the same parlays to improve the user experience, to make sure that people can select the products as quickly as possible. Frankly, to make sure that people can track and follow their bets as well. It's all the ancillary stuff as well.
Very fast settlement times that if people are winning, you get the money back to them within seconds so they can recycle and get their next bet on in the game and stuff like that, which is really important. There's a lot of capabilities to which we have deep pattern recognition on from operating around the world. We're applying that with real focus in America.
Okay. Let's shift to the international story, you know, something that often gets overlooked from people like me and focused on the U.S. side here. You touched on this earlier, but again, you guys put together these really interesting articles and ways of thinking about it. The Flutter International CEO, Dan Taylor, authored this report comparing the Snaitech acquisition in Italy and NSX in Brazil with the different styles of football or soccer for each country. How should investors think about these deals in terms of the excitement that you guys have, Rob, in terms of driving higher returns on that investment? Is there one that you would characterize as a good template going forward? There are clearly two different types of deals. Maybe just talk a little bit more about the integration program so far.
Yeah, I think the two deals are very different, but, you know, equally exciting. The Snaitech deal is more of a synergistic deal in terms of consolidating our gold medal position in Italy. When we look at that, on top of the assets that we've already got in Italy with Sisal and the PokerStars business there, we're incredibly pleased to bring it into the portfolio. We're making really good progress with the integration. I was with the team in Milan a couple of weeks ago, and I've got a very high level of confidence around the synergy delivery, both from a cost and revenue perspective. Actually, on the revenue side of things, they seem to be identifying more by the day, which is great.
I think we've got the best team in the market there, and they're already successfully executing on improving the underlying performance in Snaitech, which is great to see. We've got a world-record blueprint in the Italian market, and we're bringing that to bear already, which is nice. Great deal for us, highly synergistic, and that will work very well for us in the Italian market. The NSX deal was very different. Brazil was a much more nascent market, transitioning from being a kind of gray market to a regulated market. We're extremely excited about the opportunity there. You've got a couple of hundred million people who are obsessed about soccer, and they like to bet on it as well. I think what we're seeing so far is consistent with our expectations when we went into the deal. It's a great entry point deal for us into the Brazilian market.
We were struggling to get traction with our bet brand. We had an offshore operator, and actually having an onshore business is definitely the right play for us. As we think about the investment envelope for NSX and Betnacional, it's in line with how we talked about it when we made the acquisition. It's a very crowded market this year, and we're working closely with the business how to best make the investment work hardest for us and that lay down of the marketing spend this year. I think ultimately, we're building towards the World Cup next year. The Brazilian soccer season runs to December this year. I think with the progress that we're making on the inspiration already, we're gearing up very nicely for the World Cup next year, and we should be in a very good place to take advantage in the Brazilian market.
With regards to that as an archetype for future deals, we love these high growth markets, but we look at each one on its individual merits, and I think the Brazilian market remains very exciting for us.
Going back to one of my earlier questions, I see the answer to the change in philosophy is you guys already call it soccer. That's it.
That is really hard for him as well.
I see that. Maybe, Rob, just the follow-up is, are there many more of these additional new markets that you want to continue to try to conquer, or do you see it more as the consolidation and getting the better podiums in existing markets where you expect to see future potential deals?
I mean, we've always talked about inorganic add-ons being a part of our core strategy, and where we see the accretive M&A opportunities, we will take advantage of those. I think if you look at our track record up to this point, we've got a great track record in terms of acquiring and bringing into the Flutter family or portfolio, if you like, some very good brands, and we've moved into new markets. We've consolidated in other markets. The answer is it kind of depends. As we always said, there's not really anything that happens in this sector without it coming across our desk first, and we'll continue to evaluate these opportunities on their merits. I think from an underlying balance sheet position, we're in a very strong position where we're able to continue to invest behind the business organically.
We're able to look at these types of opportunities, and as Peter mentioned earlier, we're also able to return cash to our shareholders through the ongoing share buyback program. We'll continue to look at opportunities as they come along based on their individual merits.
Okay. Italy is clearly already grown to a very important market for Flutter overall. Maybe just talk us through the recent performance in Italy and other areas of international performance that you want to highlight coming out of the quarter.
Yeah, so we've obviously got a great leadership position in Italy. If you look at the organic growth that we're delivering there, it's very healthy. Online is definitely the driver of that. We've reflected on a number of occasions, you know, the progress the Sisal team have made. When we bought that business, it was doing 400,000 AMPs on an online basis. It's now doing over a million consistently, which demonstrates the incredible kind of trajectory that they've had with the online business. As with a number of our other European businesses, the sports performance in Q2 was impacted a bit by the Euro comparatives last year, but you always get that in a kind of a fallow big tournament year. What's really exciting is there's still a number of things that the team are working on in terms of innovation and moving the product forward and raising the bar.
We're going to have our same game parlay product live in Italy for the new Serie A season called My Combo, which we think will be a differentiated advantage for us versus the rest of the competition. We think there's lots of headroom still to grow into in iGaming in the Italian market as well. Of course, the way that we've now recut the operating model, our Italian team, looking after the kind of Southern Europe and African markets, and Turkey is an incredibly exciting market for us as well. If you look at percentage growth rates, I think Turkey grew almost 125% on a cost and currency basis in Q2, and that's driven by a number of things.
A, we've signed a new deal with our partners in Turkey, the Turkish Wealth Fund, which is enabling us to offer new products to our customers, but also we're now able to offer three different channels, and they have these electronic platform dealers in Turkey. Previously, we were only able to operate through the horse betting EPDs. Now we can operate through the broader sports EPDs, and again, that will expand the online market. Italy's fantastic, Turkey's great, and then in terms of the other international markets, I mentioned earlier, it was continued to see double-digit growth in India, which is very exciting, and we had batch growth in Australia in the quarter, part that sports results driven and double-digit growth in CEE as well. A lot of strength across the international portfolio.
Maybe if we could just talk U.K. and I for one more. There has been some noise on taxes in the U.K. It seems like it kind of comes up every year now. What's your view on this and maybe how that might impact Flutter or just the wider market overall?
I'm mostly relatively sanguine about the fact that we get this sort of noise. I mean, I think there was speculation in, I think it was May, actually from the same sort of think tank about this. I mean, the facts here are pretty clear. The government have said they're going to run a consultation to, you know, the original intention was to sort of effectively amalgamate the different tax rates in the U.K. between sports and gaming, and the intention was to do this in a fiscally neutral way. I think our view is that there is a likelihood that there could be a sort of modest increase to this sort of aggregate tax rate. From our perspective, we've got quite a lot of levers to pull from a cost perspective that our competitors don't.
What we've seen time and time again is that in these markets, when there are tax changes, the winner ends up capturing a sort of disproportionate share of the economics again. I think about some of the competitors in the U.K. market, they've got very stretched balance sheets. If there is a tax increase to them, they'll have to react with reductions in marketing, reductions in generosity, pushing prices up to try and compensate. Of course, what we end up seeing in those scenarios is that customers will come to us because our proposition becomes even more compelling. We're working hard to make sure that the government understands the implications of any potential changes in taxes, and there's a big lobbying effort going on, but we are the market leader.
If there are to be changes, we've got a load of cost levers that we can pull, and we are pulling it. Rob's talked about some of those in that $300 million cost-saving program. There's further to go. Even past that, I think it'll hurt our competitors much more than it will hurt us. I think that then puts us in a good position.
Okay. Maybe just kind of trying to bring it together, Rob, you touched on the confidence you had in the $300 million cost savings earlier. Maybe if you could just take a step back and talk to us about your confidence in reaching or even exceeding your international market margin target that you gave as part of that cost-cutting initiative.
I think in the round, we'll need to see how some of these regulatory changes pan out and play through. I think we're in the advantaged position of being able to pull some of these levers that others won't be able to pull. Either way, whether we see some tax increases or not, I think ultimately we're going to have an advantage in this situation. I think that the piece that actually pleases me the most is having been very close to a number of these programs, having sat in the international business previously, is the validation of some of these strategic plans that we've made. You look at the PokerStars integration plan. It is an incredibly complex plan, multi-year plan. Actually, we've got a brilliant proof point already in the fact that we've already delivered it in Italy. The UKI migration was an incredibly complex migration, 9 million customers.
That's gone quite seamlessly and now sets us up really well for Sky Bet to really drive on with product improvements as well as the cost efficiencies that we get. We'll see how the broader landscape pans out. I think it puts us in a really advantageous position.
Okay. Maybe a similar question, but thinking about the FanDuel side, clearly the confidence that I'm hearing in the iGaming should translate for at least some potential upside. When you think about where FanDuel is positioned today, maybe if you could just talk about the potential for exceeding the margin targets of what you laid out.
I think there's a number of things to bear in mind when you think about this, including kind of seasonality of the sports calendar phasing. Very simplistically, if you step back and look at the headline numbers, the fact that we've delivered $400 million adjusted EBITDA in the U.S. in the quarter, and we've delivered, you know, 22.3%, I think the U.S. EBITDA margin was, and our long-term targets are 25%- 30%. We are really demonstrating kind of tangible progress towards that. I think we're also demonstrating that we can really deliver kind of operating leverage at scale as well. There's a number of different kind of moving parts, but I think we've got really high conviction over the targets that we set out.
I think what we've delivered in the quarter and in the last year is kind of a good kind of watermarks to follow in terms of how we progress towards that.
Okay. You talk about moving parts, and another thing that came up from the quarter is the cash flows. There are clearly a lot of moving parts that are going on within that. Maybe just help us understand the key components that investors should try to look forward to, removing the quarterly noise and thinking about where the long-term cash flow trajectory is.
Yeah, so I mean, cash in the quarter was free cash flow of about $156 million. The main reason it was depressed in the quarter was essentially phasing, and there were a couple of items within that, but tax was the main one. Essentially, the tax cash charge in the quarter was approximately 50% of what we're paying tax for the year. There are a couple of reasons for that. A, we had to pay Italy in arrears, and B, we paid the U.S. in advance. We've ended up paying about half of our overall tax charge for the year in the quarter, and the phasing tends to be quite a lot of it. We'll see that play out over the rest of the year. The second is there's just some working capital phasing movements. The main one is around customer funds.
If you think about the seasonality of the sports season, at the end of March, we had quite high customer balances because, you know, we were still coming towards the end of the NBA season. We had higher customer balances, and they were slightly lower due to the seasonality of the sports season at the end of Q2. That's something that we'll just kind of phase out as we go through the year. We also get that noise from quarter- to- quarter based on our derivative phasing. Obviously, we're a global business, and there's a lot we're doing around currencies and moving them around and kind of derivatives and matching our currencies. There's a $50 million settlement in the quarter on derivatives. That had a slight impact. We're really pleased with our overall cash conversion.
I think, you know, judge us at the end of the year when you see the free cash flow that we delivered for the 12 months.
Okay. As we start to wrap up here, Peter, I can't let you go without talking about a favorite topic that we've talked about in the past, near and dear to my coverage on the FOX side. Clearly, after the Boyd deal, it seems like this is the next big thing in terms of cleaning up outstanding stakes and options. Any updated thoughts that we or investors should be thinking about after the Boyd deal with FOX's 18.6% option and just figuring out a potential different solution, even with the FOX One app and how that's soon to be launched, like different ways that you guys could work together going forward?
We've got a good relationship with FOX on the ground. I think, you know, if you look at some of the ways in which FanDuel has been integrated with the business, we're very pleased with the sort of on-the-ground relationship. At a corporate level, you know, they do have this option. It's not straightforward to exercise, though. They need to be licensed in every state. Having gone through that procedural process, they then get to invest in the business and have a stake which they, you know, there's no obvious way to get out of. A number of people have exited that position at a discount. It's not a straightforward determination for them to take. If they do want to deploy a lot of capital into sports, they're free to buy a big stake in Flutter's headstock, which would give them more flexibility and optionality, arguably. We'll see what happens.
I think it's important that we maintain our strong operational relationship on the ground, something that we do. We were really pleased to get the Boyd position sort of cleaned up. I think it's, you know, we talked about how important it was to be able to sort of offset some of the sort of inevitable tax changes with some of these other cost of sales lines. We were able to demonstrate that through the resale of the market access deals that we did with Boyd. I think it was great to get that done. Not many investors have talked to me about the FOX thing. I think, you know, I suspect FOX will know why they're in it and why they want to stay in it, but it's probably about an optionality.
I think this is something that we'll see, we'll still be talking about in a number of years' time.
Okay, as we wrap up here, thank you for all your time. Maybe just last comments that you want to leave investors with, not just thinking about the end to 2025, any short-term data points and confidence on the NFL season, but maybe really how you are positioned to continue the number one position that you guys hold.
You've almost said it all, Robert. I think you've made the cases, right? I think we are very well positioned for this forthcoming football season in the States. I think, as Rob was saying earlier, we've demonstrated with real credibility that the targets we've got for 2027 are achievable. When we get to nearly a 22.5% EBITDA margin in the second quarter of this year, great momentum in the business. I think we've got some really exciting products that we'll continue to invest in to stay ahead of the competitors and sort of move further ahead, and that will compound our advantages. For our international business, I think we really benefit from the diversification. The Flutter edge is real. It's very important. It supports our U.S. business and it supports the components that sit within our international business as well.
You take all of that sort of organic opportunity which we're investing in. I think we've been very successful at pursuing M&A and people continue to see us do that. We're in a fortunate position. There's nothing we need to buy. We're not forced buyers, but we can buy things that make sense for us to buy that we can add value to, as we just did with Sisal and with NSX. We are generating a lot of capital. We have obviously been pursuing our share repurchases through the course of this year. We're not just doing it mindlessly, with a dollar cost averaging. We have a side pocket. We're dipping into the market when there's dislocations, so around the tariff day on Friday. That means it's a very effective deployment of capital from a shareholder perspective. We'll keep doing that, right?
There's a big program we'll deliver over the next several years. You just look at where the cash flows in this business get to, and we really can keep executing against that and the strategy. It's an exciting place to be.
Great. Thank you both, and look forward to talking again soon.
Thanks, Rob.
Thanks, Rob.
Take care.