Greetings and welcome to the Gambling.com Group third quarter 2022 earnings results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Peter McGough, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, Mr. McGough. You may begin.
Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Gambling.com Group's third quarter 2022 earnings results call. I'm Peter McGough, Vice President of Investor Relations. I am joined by Charles Gillespie, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, and Elias Mark, Chief Financial Officer. The call is being webcast live through the Investor Relations section of our website at gambling.com/corporate/investors. A downloadable version of the presentation is available there as well. A webcast replay will be available on the website after the conclusion of this call. You may also contact Investor Relations support by emailing investors@gdcgroup.com. I would like to remind you that the information contained in this conference call, including any financial and related guidance to be provided, consists of forward-looking statements as defined by securities laws.
These statements are based on information currently available to us and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual future results, performance, business prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these statements. Some important factors that could cause such differences are discussed in the Risk Factors section of Gambling.com Group's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date the statements are made, and the company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting forward-looking information, except to the extent required by applicable securities laws. During the call there will also be a discussion of non-IFRS financial measures.
A description of these non-IFRS financial measures is included in the press release issued earlier this afternoon and reconciliations of these non-IFRS financial measures to their most directly comparable IFRS measures are included in the appendix to the presentation and press release, both of which are available in the Investors tab of our website. I'll now turn the call over to Charles.
Thanks, Peter and welcome everyone. This afternoon we report our third quarter results with all-time record revenue and free cash flow of $4.9 million. Our results clearly highlight the continued strength of our core business and the benefit of our Q1 acquisitions. What's also clear is that we are delivering record operating results now based on the unique moat we have built in performance marketing, that macroeconomic headwinds are not stopping us from delivering on our forecast for revenue growth, and that our prospects for continued high growth over the near and long term remain unchanged. I'm now on slide four for those following the presentation. Revenue grew 94% to $19.6 million, with almost 300% growth in North American revenue.
With this revenue growth, we generated $6.4 million Adjusted EBITDA and $4.9 million in free cash flow. Our strong profitability continues to differentiate us from most other online sports betting, media, and iGaming companies that the investment community follows closely. We delivered over $68,000 new depositing customers, an increase of 152% over Q3 2021 when we delivered $27,000 . The increase in NDCs continues to be driven by our expanded portfolio of websites as well as ongoing growth in existing websites. Slide five. Progress with our strategic objective to grow our North American presence was again evident in Q3. After growing more than 500% year over year last quarter, North American revenue grew nearly 300% year over year to $9.1 million In the third quarter.
The increase includes our strong first month of performance in Kansas following the successful launch of online sports betting on September 1st and the broad uptake of sports betting in the month of September at the start of the NFL season. With our continued momentum and positive outlook, there is no change to our prior expectation that the North American sports calendar will drive growth for the balance of the fall and winter season. And the launch of new regulated markets in the U.S. will continue to be a key driver of our growth in future years. Our McClatchy Media partnership performed well in the quarter, boosted by the start of the NFL season and its in-market properties in Kansas. Similarly, BonusFinder.com continued to perform ahead of plan in the quarter, providing a great platform to expand in the Canadian market and beyond.
Our performance marketing efforts on RotoWire are also gaining momentum, yielding results and positioning us for key upcoming state launches. The increase in RotoWire's performance marketing revenue this quarter has validated our investment thesis for the acquisition. Our digital teams have also optimized RotoWire subscription business, which has driven substantial revenue growth. Business in the U.K. and Ireland continued to be strong in the quarter and increased 58% compared to last year, despite material currency headwinds. Despite over 15 years of regulated online gambling in the U.K., we delivered an all-time record revenue performance. On to slide six. Our growth in North America, along with strong revenue in our more mature markets, continues to demonstrate the breadth, quality, and effectiveness of our portfolio of websites and technology platform.
We will continue to invest in our portfolio to strengthen our cash-generating websites and to ensure that we are well-positioned with additional websites to win new markets as they launch. In addition to our established cash-generating websites, we own and operate a number of additional websites which are ready to be monetized as soon as the respective states launch, including BetMaryland.com, BetOhio.com, and BetMassachusetts.com. These sites on these premium domains have been developed in-house on our technology platform, which will maximize our return on those investments. On to slide seven. Kansas is a great case study for our strategy to invest in premium domains ahead of the launch of sports betting in a new state. We had a very successful launch in Kansas, driven by our property, BetKansas.com, which led the way among our assets in terms of delivering new depositing customers to our partners in Kansas.
In-market media outlets, our McClatchy partnership also helped to deliver great initial contributions from Kansas. The timeline for Maryland has now come into focus, and we expect multiple operators to go live next week. Ohio remains on track for a January 1st market launch, and we are well-positioned there with BetOhio.com. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO, Elias Mark, to discuss our third quarter and year-to-date financial performance in greater detail.
Thank you, Charles, and welcome, everyone. As Charles mentioned, we saw another strong quarter of financial results during the third quarter. On a constant currency basis, revenue of EUR 19.6 million increased 128% compared to the prior year, or 94% inclusive of currency headwinds that impacted reported revenue by EUR 1.5 million. The increase in revenue was driven by strong growth in NDCs in both North America and the U.K. and Ireland. The strength in the U.K. and Ireland was partly offset by the weakening pound in Europe against the U.S. dollar. New depositing customers in the quarter grew 152% to more than 68,000, compared to 27,000 in Q3 of last year. The increase was led by strong growth in North America and the U.K. and Ireland.
As a reminder, we began recognizing cost of sales during the first quarter as a result of our new media partnerships and the subscription business of RotoWire.com. In the third quarter, this amounted to EUR 0.6 million. Our total operating expenses were EUR 18.9 million, which was an increase of EUR 11.2 million. Total operating expenses were inclusive of EUR 3.7 million of fair value movements in contingent consideration related to the BonusFinder.com acquisition. Adjusted for fair value movements, adjusted operating expenses were EUR 15.2 million. On a constant currency basis, adjusted operating expenses increased by EUR 8.6 million. This increase was driven primarily by additional headcounts across marketing, product, sales, and technology functions, public company expenses, as well as increased amortization related to our Q1 acquisitions.
During 2022, we expect to incur amortization of approximately EUR 4.7 million related to these Q1 acquisitions, with EUR 3.6 million of that incurred through the first nine months of 2022. We continue to prudently invest and hire to help build out our growing organization. Our pace of recruitment moderated in the third quarter as we're nearing the staffing levels necessary to support our near- and long-term growth objectives. Our profitability and free cash flow will continue to organically support our investment needs going forward. Net income totaled EUR 2.3 million or EUR 0.06 per diluted share, compared to net income of EUR 4.7 million or EUR 0.13 per diluted share in the prior year.
Adjusted for fair value movements in contingent and deferred consideration, adjusted net income in the quarter was EUR 6 million, and adjusted earnings per share was EUR 0.16 per diluted share. Net income and adjusted net income benefited from EUR 2.8 million of net Forex gains in the quarter. We will continue to adjust operating profit and net income in this manner until the end of the earn-out period for BonusFinder.com at the end of 2023. We generated third quarter adjusted EBITDA of EUR 6.4 million compared to EUR 4.9 million in the prior year. This 32% growth represents the benefit of the top-line growth, partially offset by higher operating expenses.
Adjusted EBITDA margin was 33% compared to 48% in 2021, reflecting the increased operating expenses from our investment in the organization to drive organic growth, as well as the inclusion in our revenue mix of the lower margin profile of RotoWire.com and the McClatchy partnership. Total cash generated from operations of EUR 5.6 million increased from EUR 1.4 million in Q3 2021, driven by strong year-over-year revenue growth. We generated third quarter free cash flow of EUR 4.9 million as capital expenses were scaled back as planned after having invested in our portfolio of U.S.-focused domains. I will reiterate that we remain able to entirely fund our organic growth initiatives from operating cash flow while continuing to generate positive free cash flow.
With respect to capital allocation, in addition to investing to grow our business, today we announced a share repurchase program that's authorized to buy back up to 10 million of our outstanding shares. That's $10 million worth of our outstanding shares. Cash as of September 30th, 2022, totaled EUR 35.1 million, a EUR 4 million quarter-on-quarter increase. Turning to the financial results for the first nine months of the year, revenue grew 94% on a constant currency basis to EUR 65.2 million, or 72% inclusive of a EUR 3.7 million impact from currency headwinds. We delivered over 191,000 new depositing customers, representing growth of 115% compared to the first nine months of 2021.
We recorded net income of EUR 6.8 million or EUR 0.18 per diluted share, compared to EUR 11.6 million or EUR 0.34 per diluted share in 2021. Adjusted net income was EUR 13.6 million, and adjusted earnings per diluted share was EUR 0.37. Net income and adjusted net income benefited from EUR 6.4 million on net foreign exchange. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 7% to EUR 17.2 million, reflecting an adjusted EBITDA margin of 31%. Free cash flow in the first nine months of the year was EUR 9.1 million, compared to EUR 10.3 million in 2021. The decrease was primarily a result of a higher capital investment. Turning to our outlook. We are now in the heart of the seasonally stronger period of the fall and winter sports calendar, which is expected to continue through Q1 of next year.
It is worth noting that Q3 benefited from a particularly strong performance of the business during the Kansas state launch. We expect the first operators in Maryland to go live next week, which has the potential to be another great sports betting market over the next two quarters. The weakening of the pound and euro against the U.S. dollar negatively affected reported revenue by EUR 3.7 million , and positively affected operating expenses by EUR 2.4 million in constant currency terms in the first nine months. Our guidance assumes a euro to USD parity for the full quarter of 2020 . We continue to see no deterioration of consumer demand for online gambling year to date. We continue to monitor consumer behavior closely in Europe and North America.
From our perspective, demand for performance marketing services for the online gambling industry remains strong and is even more valuable to operators as they come under pressure to deliver tangible ROI on their marketing spend. As we continue to gain additional scale, particularly through increased delivery of NDC to our customers, that scale gives us additional pricing power. Given these factors and notwithstanding adverse currency movements, we are reiterating our 2022 guidance for revenue in the range of EUR 71 million-EUR 76 million, representing growth of 68%-80%, and adjusted EBITDA between EUR 22 million and EUR 27 million, representing growth of 20%-47%. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Charles.
Thanks, Elias. Before we wrap up for questions, I would like to provide some additional perspective on the market today and going forward. The business continues to be well positioned for the remainder of the fall and winter sports seasons. We are looking forward to the expected start of regulated sports betting in Maryland when the first operators go live next week, as well as the scheduled Ohio launch on January first. The 2023 legislative season kicks off in January, and we believe that sports betting legislation could be considered in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. We also believe that iGaming could come up for a vote in the legislatures of New York, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Our long-term outlook on broad-based expansion of regulated online gambling in North America remains unchanged.
We continue to expect states to regulate online sports betting where retail sports betting exists, and states that have online sports betting to move towards regulated iGaming. To continue to best position ourselves for the future of iGaming around the world, we recently completed the acquisition of a superstar marquee domain, which in our view, is the single most desirable and valuable domain name for companies in our line of business, Casinos.com. The addition of Casinos.com to our already best-in-class domain portfolio enables us to build another powerhouse global brand alongside Gambling.com using our existing teams, technology, and know-how. We look forward to sharing more details on this exciting project with this irreplicable domain name as we get closer to formally launching a new, fully featured website. With this addition, we have largely completed our portfolio of premium domain names for the North American market.
We continue to strengthen our ability to deliver performance marketing services to online operators by growing our traffic and expanding our portfolio of brands. Our low risk, high ROI value proposition for operators is more relevant to U.S. operators than ever before as they continue to drive toward EBITDA positive results. I will end by once again thanking the brilliant team at Gambling.com Group for their exemplary efforts in delivering yet another record quarter. With that, we'd be happy to open up the line for questions.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. Participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question is from Barry Jonas with Truist. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, guys, just a couple of questions. I wanted to start on the European business. Was hoping to drill down into some of the underlying trends you're seeing there. Is it possible to get the constant currency growth in Q3 for U.K. and Ireland and other Europe?
We haven't broken it out exactly, but the quarterly effect on FX was about EUR 1.5 million, and that naturally relates to our European business.
Got it. Maybe just talk about some underlying trends you're seeing across Europe.
Yeah, I think the strength in this quarter was largely driven by U.K. and Ireland. We've seen incredibly strong trading that's driven by us taking market share predominantly. We've just had very good execution in that market. Across other markets in Europe, we've been doing okay in places like Germany and Sweden, but the predominant growth driver outside of North America has been U.K. and Ireland.
Got it. Curious if you could talk about the M&A environment, and if you could kinda bucket it between Europe and the U.S. would be helpful. Thanks.
Hey, Barry. We're still very focused on M&A, but you know, the bars you need to hurdle to make a deal worthwhile are kind of higher than they've been in a while. Cost of capital is up, macroeconomic risks are up. You know, being prudent, we're continuing to have lots of conversations, some of which are fairly interesting, but for us to really pull the trigger on something, we're gonna need to be extremely comfortable. You know, historically, we've been very picky with our acquisitions even in a kind of normal market. Conversation's definitely ongoing.
Still have a preference for U.S. or North American assets, but we don't feel like we're under any pressure to do the next deal, and we're being quite cautious with how we run the business, given some of the, you know, larger uncertainties out there.
Understood. If I could sneak one more in. You know, wanted to talk a little bit more about margins, specifically as we think about 2023 and beyond. You know, how should we think about the long-term margin profile here? Do we get back to 40%+, or is some of the M&A just compositionally changed we're to think about where you wind up? Thanks.
Yeah. I think our revenue mix has changed with the acquisition of RotoWire and with the addition of media partnerships. For that reason, the midterm, at least margin profile, would be under the 40% mark. It's still a high margin business, but it's not as high margin as you see in our organic traffic-driven business. We also see, like everyone else, their cost inflation that puts a little bit of pressure on operating margins.
All right, guys, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Jeff Stantial with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, great. Thanks. Afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the questions and congrats on a nice quarter here. You know, I just wanted to start, if possible, on guidance. It looks like the midpoint implies about EUR 18 million of revenues versus close to EUR 20 million just reported for Q3. Can you just frame some of the puts and takes there as it seems a bit conservative when you consider tailwinds from the North American sports calendar, plus we've got the World Cup kicking off soon, which should support the European business.
Conversely on the margin side, if you take the midpoint of both revenues and EBITDA, it implies about 40% margins, which, you know, based on Elias Mark's comments to Barry's third question, you know, seems a bit ahead of kind of where you see margins stabilizing out longer term. Can you just help us kind of marry those two? Thanks.
Sure. I think if we look on at the third quarter, we had a very strong start in the Kansas market, which drove the outperformance on our revenue. As I touched upon before, we have seen a little bit of pressure on the cost side. We're operating on slightly lower margins than what the analyst forecasts were suggesting. If you look into the fourth quarter, we're in a seasonally stronger quarter overall, but we don't have the big bang state launch that we saw in Q3. Maryland is launching, and this was confirmed, I think this morning. It's a little bit difficult to know how that will play out. We're currently being cautious in our assumptions on Maryland for the fourth quarter, but we expect the biggest impact to come in the first quarter.
Great. That's helpful. Thank you.
On operating expenses, I think Q3 adjusted operating expenses is a good ballpark number. You will see some, possibly a small increase on that, but we have scaled down the pace of hiring as we don't grow operating expenses in the same way that we did in the first half of the year.
Okay. Understood. Great. That's helpful. Thank you. For my follow-up, could you just frame how you're thinking about the repurchases here, you know, a little bit more? I think you kind of answered this in the prepared remarks, but, you know, is this gonna be more opportunistic versus programmatic? Kind of how do you marry kind of, you know, spotting dislocations and valuation and leaning into the repurchase program to exploit that versus, you know, making sure there's enough liquidity in the stock for shareholders? Thanks.
Yeah. We, you know, we do see some risks on the horizon in terms of economy, geopolitical markets. You know, if the shares come under pressure and there's an opportunity to opportunistically buy back our shares, then we wanna be able to do that to the benefit of all of our shareholders. I think that's the thinking behind it.
Okay, great. Understood. Thanks. That's helpful, Charles. If I could just squeeze in one more. One of your competitors, you know, talked today in their earnings release about making much more of kind of a marked push to switch to more of a RevShare model here in the U.S. Can you just talk about how you think about pricing strategy in the near term, and if you think it could make sense to start to push more RevShare or hybrid models versus, you know, predominantly CPAs as the market stands? Thanks.
Yeah. We run the same calculations that they do, and we are increasingly interested in monetizing with RevShare in the United States, but we are not pushing as hard as they are.
Perfect. That makes sense. That's all I had. I'll pass it on. Thank you both.
Thank you. Our next question is from David Katz with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Afternoon, everyone. Charles, if you could just talk a little bit about, you know, what we've seen from operators with the narrowing losses and, you know, the degree to which that is, you know, good for you or neutral for you, or is it, you know, in some way, you know, does it make them, you know, less inclined to ramp up their affiliate business? If we could just talk about the puts and takes and issues around that, please.
I think it's great for us. You know, the more focused on ROI they are, the more they will invest into the affiliate channel, the performance marketing channel, because it's just basically guaranteed ROI. You know, to the extent the overall U.S. landscape improves its profitability, then, you know, it creates kind of warmer waters for more operators to enter the U.S. You know, there's been some kind of high-profile exits, and I think that's in part due to this, you know, the incredible amount of non-performance marketing that these operators were doing for the last couple of years, and everyone felt like they had to do that to compete.
I think, you know, the market will, dare I say, move in a slightly more European direction, where the marketing and advertising will be more performance-driven, and thus everybody's bottom lines will improve. The attractiveness of the entire endeavor will improve, and that, you know, would potentially see more people entering the space, which is a good thing for us.
Understood. If I can just go back to the repurchase, which, you know, is a nice surprise. If you could talk about that decision in comparison to other acquisition opportunities that may be out there. You know, whether this, you know, implies anything about the lack thereof. You know, is this an and rather than or? Just help us think that through.
Yeah, it's definitely an and situation. Look, obviously a company called Gambling.com Group likes the name games, right? You know, we've built an absolutely brilliant business off of Gambling.com. You know, for the listeners that may not know the whole story there, we bought that domain in 2011 for two and a half million dollars. You know, the business behind that website now is, you know, just incredible. We see an opportunity to not only do the same thing with Casinos.com, but do it faster with all the lessons we've learned in the past 11 years. Do it, frankly, with more laser focus because, you know, Gambling.com covers everything, right? Gambling.com touches anything related to gambling, poker, bingo, sports betting, casino. Whereas Casinos.com, it's just casinos.
Casino is, you know, as I'm sure everyone on the call knows, the most lucrative gaming product. You know, the slots and the casino games are simply where the money's made in this industry. By having Casinos.com, I mean, we just couldn't think of a better domain name than that. When the opportunity came up to buy it, we didn't hesitate. You know, it's a very exciting project and, you know, it has the potential to play well with M&A in the future also. You know, it honestly opens up even more options for us as we look at, you know, what we're going to do with Casinos.com and how we achieve its full potential.
Thank you very much.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. We look forward to finishing the year strong and updating you with our full-year results next year. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.