Aristocrat Leisure Limited (ALL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Aristocrat Full Year 2024 Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to the first speaker, Mr. Trevor Croker, Chief Executive Director and Managing Director. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Aristocrat's financial results presentation for the full year to 30 September 2024. My name is Trevor Croker, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Aristocrat. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Burramattagal clan of the Eora people, traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, and I pay my respects to elders, past and present. I'm here in Sydney with Sally Denby, our Chief Financial Officer; and with other executives joining us on the line. Today, I'll step through the highlights of the results and provide an update on our strategy. Sally will then discuss our group financial results and balance sheet, after which I'll run through the operational performance and outlook. Please note the usual disclaimer statement on the back of the deck. This was an outstanding group result, delivering EPS growth of 20% and illustrating Aristocrat's ability to grow through mixed operating environments and control a range of levers. It was also a year of significant strategic progress as we integrated Roxor and completed the NeoGames transaction. Our revenues grew 5% over the period, while our segment profits grew 12% with positive operating leverage exhibited across all segments as we grew the top line and also focus on effective cost management. Aristocrat Gaming delivered another strong top line performance driven by market share gains and installed base growth in gaming operations, which exceeded our May guidance, providing strong momentum into FY '25. Margins benefited from a higher contribution from gaming operations in North America and a robust performance from our Rest of World operations. Lower profits in ANZ were more than offset by strength in other global markets. Pixel United finished the year with stable revenue with our social casino business exceeding USD 1 billion of bookings and increasing share. The result was also driven by margin expansion, successful IP partnerships, creative content in RAID and ongoing cost efficiency. We established Aristocrat Interactive during the year and are well progressed in integrating NeoGames, which was included for 5 months of the year. This was a significant strategic milestone, and we are seeing increasing momentum across all areas of Interactive with excitement about its future prospects. The group achieved strong NPATA growth of 17% over the period and continued to generate strong operating cash flows. Looking forward to 2025, we continue to see strong momentum in our business into the new financial year. As such, Aristocrat plans to deliver NPATA growth over the full year to 30 September 2025 on a constant currency basis. I'll comment on the outlook at the end of this presentation. Sally will share more detail on the numbers shortly. I'll now turn to our strategy. Turning to Slide 4, where we provide a short update on the strategic review into our casual and mid-core gaming assets that we announced in May this year. We were pleased to announce yesterday that Aristocrat entered into a binding agreement for the sale of Plarium to Modern Times Group, an international mobile-first gaming group that offers a wide range of popular game franchises. This is an important milestone for Aristocrat as we focus our growth across our regulated gaming strength in core land-based gaming, real money gaming and social casino opportunities. The total consideration comprises a fixed consideration of USD 620 million, comprising USD 600 million payable upon closing and a deferred payment of USD 20 million payable in April 2026. We also have the opportunity to earn a contingent consideration of up to USD 200 million, subject to the achievement of certain financial targets out to 2028. The price based on these fixed and contingent consideration represents a range of 5.6 to 7.4x EBITDA. Aristocrat has incorporated a range of Plarium's strategic capabilities and mobile content know-how into its core gaming operations over the past 7 years, benefiting from digital marketing and UA management capability, enhanced live operations and scaling and growing our combined social casino business. We are pleased also to have achieved an internal rate of return from the acquisition in excess of our targets. The transaction is expected to enhance Aristocrat's revenue growth rate and margins going forward, and we expect the sale to be mid- to high single-digit percentage points dilutive to NPATA in FY '25 on an annualized basis. The strategic review of the remaining casual gaming assets comprising Big Fish Games remains ongoing. We continue to actively engage with third parties and assess all options to maximize shareholder value. In the FY '24 result, we have taken an impairment charge to goodwill of approximately USD 110 million in relation to Big Fish Games, including the Big Fish social casino assets in Product Madness, which continue to perform well. Slide 5 lays out 3 established core elements of our growth strategy for delivering superior long-term sustainable profit growth. We start by investing and innovating to create the world's greatest gaming content at scale. Our commitment to leading levels of D&D and CapEx to support content development is unwavering. This is alongside investments in creative talent and technology that are improving both the speed and efficiency with which we can deploy content and leverage it across multiple markets, cabinets and channels. Defending our intellectual property in all markets is critical, and Aristocrat will continue to take a proactive and robust approach to this. Next, we focus on growing and distributing our leading content, taking share wherever we compete and reaching players wherever and whenever they play, including in existing and new adjacent markets. With the addition of NeoGames, Aristocrat Interactive has become a full solution provider for online RMG with an expanded portfolio across iLottery content and platforms. We're on the path to becoming a scale global player in this important growth adjacency. We also invest in differentiating enablers that help us achieve and accelerate our strategy. These include nurturing outstanding talent and customer partnerships, our superior commercialization capabilities and a compliance culture that is underpinned by a commitment to a sustainable and vibrant industry. The result of effective execution of this strategy is evident in these charts. Over the 5-year period since 2019, group revenues have grown at a CAGR of 8%, increasing roughly 50% from $4.4 billion in 2019 to $6.6 billion in 2024 as we've continued to gain share across all key segments. Segment profits have grown at 10% CAGR, increasing from $1.9 billion to over $3.1 billion over the same time frame. This strong financial performance has been delivered through diverse economic conditions and some challenging global events, demonstrating the resilience of the group. It's also allowed us to continue to invest back in the business and fully fund our growth priorities. At the same time, we've returned over $3 billion of capital to shareholders through dividends and on market share buybacks. Turning to Slide 7. We progressed our sustainability agenda over the year, driving improvements and further lifting maturity across our most important priorities. Following on our successful ESG Day last December, we'll be hosting an ESG call on December 4 to discuss our progress and highlights of the past year. We hope many of you will be able to join us. Aristocrat recently adapted a fresh medium-term sustainability strategy underpinned by our first double materiality assessment. The strategy reflects a significant step-up in the sophistication of our efforts and the detail of our disclosures as we work towards mandatory reporting on climate and other issues. Our commitment to decarbonizing our business was crystallized with the science-based targets initiative validating our near-term and net zero targets earlier this year. Since then, we've accelerated foundational work to underpin our abatement activities and expect to see this reflected through reduced emissions in the years ahead. Responsible Gameplay or RG remains our single most important sustainability matter, directly supporting our ability to deliver sustainable results over the long term and benefiting our people, customers and shareholders. During the year, we elevated the significance of RG in our strategy by creating a stand-alone pillar under the new name of empowering Safer Play. The safety of our people is also a high priority. And throughout FY '24, we focused on ensuring that our employees in Israel and Ukraine were well supported. We also took steps to begin to integrate NeoGames into our sustainability program with some good early progress made. I'm proud of what we've achieved to advance our sustainability program over the year. Our aspiration to lead our industry, contribute to its long-term vibrancy and express our values through our sustainability effort will continue to guide us at Aristocrat. Before I hand over to Sally, I would like to recap the compelling proposition Aristocrat offers investors. We have a track record of delivering high-quality and sustainable NPATA growth over the long term and over the past 5 years have grown at 12% CAGR. Aristocrat offers exposure to these 3 exciting segments of gaming and entertainment with all large addressable markets and at different stages of growth and maturity and stability. We are focused on our most attractive and addressable growth opportunities in each vertical to grow and take share. These opportunities start with great content that we know resonates across each of these verticals, further enabled by technology and hardware. We are focused on connecting effectively across these verticals to optimize our strategy. Our leading content, combined with leveraging competitive advantage such as our relationships with our customers and superior commercialization capabilities has allowed us to achieve leading positions and scale. And we see continued attractive opportunities for growth, both from organic and inorganic perspectives across all 3 businesses as we execute on our strategy. We're at an exciting juncture in our transformation and are confident that our successful approach will continue delivering for shareholders and other stakeholders for many years to come. I'll now hand over to Sally, who will take us through the summary of the group results.

Thanks, Trevor, and good morning, everyone. Turning to Slide 10, our group results summary. Over the year to the 30th of September 2024, Aristocrat delivered NPATA of $1.6 billion, an increase of 17%, reflecting an outstanding operational performance. Taking into account the accretion from our share buyback program, fully diluted EPS increased by 20%. Revenue increased 5% to $6.6 billion, reflecting exceptional performance in North America gaming operations, strong sales in Asia and EMEA and encouraging growth in Interactive. Pixel United continued to demonstrate resilience with share gains in the key social slot segment and improved player engagement in core apps like Grid. EBITDA was 19% higher in reported currency, reflecting margin expansion from positive mix, operating leverage and cost optimization efforts across the group. We exceeded our goal of generating net annualized run rate savings of $60 million announced at the first half, achieving in excess of $90 million for FY '24, and we expect to see continued benefits come through in FY '25. Effective cost management, along with strong operating cash flows provides capacity for strategic reinvestment across the group and reflects effective leveraging of our scale. The directors have authorized a final dividend of $0.42 per share for the half year period ended 30th of September 2024, bringing total dividends for the financial year to $0.78 per share, an increase of 22% compared to the prior year. The final dividend is unfranked, reflecting continued strong growth of our operations outside Australia. This reflects a dividend payout ratio of 34%. Slide 11 provides a snapshot of the drivers of NPATA growth over the reporting period. All 3 divisions contributed to this result. Gaming's significant contribution was driven by exceptional growth in the gaming operations installed base as previously flagged. UAN cost optimization at Pixel United were also contributors as was the addition of NeoGames and positive ForEx gains benefited corporate costs and other. This was partially offset by increased D&D to support Interactive and core strategic product technology capabilities and lower interest income resulting from the acquisition of NeoGames. Turning now to cash flow on Slide 12. Aristocrat's high-quality result is also evident in our strong cash flow generation over the period. The small decrease in operating cash flow reflects increased taxes paid, which was partly offset by continued strong business performance and underlying cash flow generation. CapEx was largely driven by investment to support continued growth in the North America gaming operations installed base and the new Las Vegas integration center. Acquisitions and divestments include the $1.5 billion acquisition of NeoGames, net of cash acquired. Aristocrat returned $1.3 billion to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends during the year. We expect to complete the remainder of the $350 million program extension by February 2025. Aristocrat continues to focus capital allocation on supporting our long-term growth strategy and maximizing shareholder returns. In particular, the business drives organic growth through consistent, strong and disciplined D&D, user acquisition and CapEx investment, while also pursuing strategic M&A opportunities. Over the reporting period, Aristocrat invested $848 million in D&D to further strengthen our product portfolios, technology investments and support our efforts to scale in online RMG. This represents 12.8% of our revenues within our 12% to 13% annual guidance range, and I will touch on this more shortly. Capital management remains a focus as we continue to manage our balance sheet through cycles of investment in inorganic growth. We returned to a geared position following the completion of the NeoGames acquisition in April, and we continue to target a leverage ratio of 1 to 2x net debt to EBITDA over the medium term. Taking into account the group's strong operating cash flow generation and current levels of liquidity that influence our buyback program, it is unlikely that our leverage will increase to that range without material strategic M&A. I would now like to focus on our investment in organic growth. The chart on the left tracks investment over the past 5 years, and the right shows changes over the past 6 reporting periods. We actively make investment choices across our business as we prioritize growth opportunities with a focus on optimizing long-term returns. This total investment has tracked around 30% of group revenues over the past few years. In 2023, we saw a planned uptick in the spend that reflected the growth of our gaming business and investments in core technologies, and this subsequently moderated in 2024. Additionally, increased CapEx investment in 2024 reflects the exceptional growth of our gaming operations installed base as well as investment in our recently opened integration center in Las Vegas. While we continue to prioritize our investment in D&D, it has reduced sequentially throughout 2024, both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of revenue from second half '23 levels despite the inclusion of NeoGames from April '24. UA spend at Pixel United also continued to reduce as efficiency and return on advertising spend remain an ongoing focus. Turning now to Slide 15, where we provide a more detailed review of our investment in D&D. In Interactive, we have continued to invest a significant proportion of revenues as we establish and scale our presence in online RMG. Our disciplined approach has also enabled ongoing leading levels of investment in gaming and in Pixel United, where we have continued to deliver successful new features and live ops whilst maintaining investment in creative capabilities. Additionally, we continue to make investments in technology that will enable us to quickly and efficiently move content across channels. We expect D&D investment to return to 11% to 12% of revenue over the medium term. However, we anticipate that D&D is likely to fluctuate as a percentage of revenue as we move through different investing cycles. As discussed at our Investor Day in June, we are also increasingly managing our D&D spend across the entire portfolio instead of divisionally, which we anticipate will yield efficiencies and greater coordination over time. This evolving approach to managing D&D may also require a different way of measuring performance and guiding expectations, and we will consider different options through FY '25. I will now hand back to Trevor, who will step through the operational performance.

Thank you, Sally. Turning first to the Aristocrat Gaming business on Slide 17. Aristocrat Gaming revenue and profit grew 5% and 8%, respectively, reflecting continued penetration of our high-performing games and cabinets and another strong share-taking performance in North America. North America revenues increased 6% and profits 9%. Gaming operations grew 11%, driven by growth in the installed base over the year with strength across both Class III and Class II units. Fee per day increased 1%. We exceeded our guidance of around 6,000 units, adding over 7,100 units for the full year and extending our leading market share. This was the highest annual addition of hit units in our history. The launches of NFL theme slots Bank Buster, Buffalo Ultimate Stampede and Where’s the Gold Jackpots along with continued demand for Dragon Link, Lightning Dollar Link, Dollar Storm and Jackpot Carnival drove momentum in the year. Looking to 2025, we're excited about our lineup of new content, including Phoenix Link and the Baron Upright cabinet. They were both showcased at last month's G2E, receiving very positive customer responses and released to the market in late October. Together with our existing portfolio of high-performing games and cabinets, this provides strong momentum as we move into the new year. North America outright sales units decreased 5% against the prior corresponding period. The decline was driven by adjacencies, which given purchasing patterns are inherently variable from year-to-year, while core game sales were down 1%, reflecting the timing of casino openings and expansions. During the year, successful expansion continued in attractive adjacencies, including expansion in the VLT segment in Illinois, entry into the Quebec VLT market in June and entry into the Georgia COAM market in March. We also benefit from new top-performing games such as Whisker Wheels Karma Kat and Kismet Kat, achieving revenue and unit sales leadership. While ASPs were down 2%, this was a solid outcome considering the contribution from lower-priced adjacencies. North America's margins increased by 130 basis points to 58.9%, reflecting operating leverage, lower supply chain costs and positive mix from strong growth in higher-margin gaming operations. This was partially offset by investment in refurbishing our Class II installed base. Rest of World revenues decreased 2%, driven by weaker sales in ANZ, partially offset by strong replacement units in Asia. Profits increased 6% as our focus on cost management and positive operating leverage and product mix in Asia more than offset declines in Australia. Pixel United delivered improved results with revenue relatively stable and cost optimization efforts leading to strong profit growth. Revenue declined 1% as gains in social casino and stability in strategy and RPG was offset by softness in casual games. Product Madness ranked #1 in overall social casino for the first time and achieved in excess of USD 1 billion for bookings in FY '24, representing 58% of total Pixel United bookings. Margin performance was another highlight, improving more than 400 basis points, driven by disciplined UA spending, cost management and positive mix for social casino growth. Pixel United retained its leading position in social slots and is now also the market leader in the overall social casino genre, outperforming the market with bookings growth of 4% compared to the market decline of 3%. This was driven by strong growth across key franchises, Lightning Link and Cashman Casino and reflected effective player engagement supported by successful investment in live ops, features and new slot content and effective UA spend. RPG strategy and action bookings declined 2% for the full year but turned positive in the second half. This was a strong year for RAID, which benefited from a successful IP partnerships, new creative content and promotional activity surrounding its fifth anniversary. Casual bookings continued to decline, down 14% for the year as growth in Merge Gardens was more than offset by declines in EverMerge. Plarium Play revenues represented 11% of total Pixel United revenue in the period and roughly 7% of Product Madness revenues were for off-platform channels. Pixel United continues to focus on long-term value and maximizing portfolio profitability. We undertook a thorough review of our portfolio and pipeline during the year to ensure we are optimizing not just our cost base, but focusing on our core strengths and largest opportunities. The strategic review is an important part of this process. Turning to Slide 19. We continue to adapt our UA investment to the evolving mobile market environment with a focus on ensuring appropriate returns on advertising spend. UA spend was 21.6% for the full year, in line with our 21% to 24% full year guidance. The lower level of spend in the second half was driven by the strong organic performance by RAID. We saw improved returns across evergreen titles without any meaningful top line impact. This was driven by our efforts to grow off-platform revenues in response to IDFA changes, active investments in features and live ops to increase player engagement and our focus on alternative forms of engagement and integrated marketing to drive retention. And finally, turning to Slide 20 and our third reporting segment, Aristocrat Interactive. With the completion of NeoGames, we've moved to reporting 3 business lines: iLottery, Content and Platforms. We previously referred to the third business as Gaming Systems, so please note the change. All 3 divisions have large addressable markets, and we see significant opportunities for growth across the broader Aristocrat Group through leveraging our combined strengths and capabilities. Since completion, we've wasted no time in going after these significant revenue opportunities, and I'm pleased to share some early wins. In iLottery, we recently won competitive contract bids in New Hampshire and Michigan. While we were incumbent in both markets through our NeoPollard JV, Interactive will become the sole provider. Additional wins were achieved in the U.S., Canada and Europe and 2 contracts were extended. In content, we signed 15 new operators in 2 new markets in Canada and Mexico. This includes going live with our iGaming content with Hard Rock Digital in New Jersey and with Play Alberta, where Interactive was already the online RMG technology solutions provider, demonstrating our ability to be a full-service provider to customers. We also focused on winning player account management and managed services contracts. We have had early successes in the U.K. and Ontario. CSX installed casino management systems with 15 new customers, solidifying our position as a preferred provider. And finally, Interactive's platform business recently launched with Play Live in Pennsylvania, an existing Aristocrat customer, demonstrating our ability to partner to provide customer solutions across Aristocrat. So in summary, while significant work lies ahead to fully integrate NeoGames and realize Interactive's full potential, these early successes provide us with increased confidence, and we're excited about the next chapter of Aristocrat's growth. Now turning to Interactive's full year reported results on Slide 21. Revenues and profits reflect the inclusion of NeoGames for 5 months in 2024. We also achieved solid organic growth in iGaming and platforms and consolidated Roxor for a full year. iLottery had a strong performance with new contract wins and improving metrics across current contracts. Grossing up second half '24 revenues for 6 months of NeoGames ownership and comparing it to second half '23 pro forma revenues, iLottery delivered revenue growth of 16%, including the NeoPollard JV revenue with strong contributions from North Carolina, Virginia and Alberta. The increase in content revenue reflects the consolidation of NeoGames. Excluding NeoGames, content revenues more than doubled, reflecting both a full period of Roxor and numerous content launches with major operators in the U.S., Canada and U.K., including the release of top Aristocrat titles such as Buffalo and Buffalo Gold Collection. On a pro forma basis, second half revenue increased by close to 50%. We launched 44 new games and had well over 1,000 game deployments over the year and now have contracts with 92% of the market in the U.S. Additionally, at period end, we were aggregating over 14,000 games for third parties, providing our customers with a full suite of gaming options. For FY '25, we have a strong portfolio of Aristocrat game content and features scheduled. Platforms continue to take share across the U.S. and ANZ market. Platforms revenue was lower in second half '24, mainly due to fluctuations in new customer installations and hardware sales in our CX business. As previously indicated, these were weighted towards the first half of financial year '24. Moving now to outlook. Aristocrat expects to deliver NPATA growth over the full year to 30 September 2025 on a constant currency basis, reflecting continued strong market share, revenue and profit growth from Aristocrat Gaming, disciplined execution in Pixel United with a focus on market share and investment efficiency as the outcomes of the strategic review were implemented, accelerating performance at Aristocrat Interactive towards our FY '29 USD 1 billion revenue target through further scaling of content to support broader market access in North America and Europe. In summary, the group delivered an outstanding result in financial year 2024, demonstrating excellent growth fundamentals with strong operational momentum across the business in terms of market share gains and early performance in Interactive. Going forward, we maintain our commitment to our capital management strategy and our ongoing share buyback program and implementing the outcomes of the strategic review of the group's casual and mid-core gaming assets. Aristocrat has around 8,500 people around the world, and I want to thank each and every one of them for their dedication and hard work throughout the year. With that, I'll conclude the formal presentation and hand back to the moderator to open up the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Andre Fromyhr from UBS.

First, I just wanted to ask about the gaming ops net installs of over 7,000. Just trying to understand sort of the commercial effort that sits behind that volume, the pushing and pulling of deals that you're able to do in the period and whether or not there are -- just given the scale and the timing of those installs, how should we think about the implications for revenue contribution in the period or whether or not that's going to be more sort of deferred into future periods?

Yes. Thanks, Andre. I appreciate the question. We've got Hector Fernandez on the line who can give you the context for that. But overall, we're very pleased with the performance and the sales execution. Hector?

Yes. Thank you, Andre. I mean, if you look at kind of the performance of over 7,000 units, it's really behind the power of the scale of the portfolio. There's no unusual items relative to special deals or any of those things. We really leveraged performance, scale and then commercial models that we've talked a lot about relative to offering our customers flexibility. We were very, very pleased with that number. And if you think about how we've installed that installed base in the second half, it was pretty uniform. And so there's no irregular element that's going to run over into the next fiscal year. What will run over into the next fiscal year is that full scale of that over 7,000 units installed into fiscal '25. And then as we think about kind of going forward, obviously, without giving any abnormal -- or any guidance, we were very excited by the portfolio we've developed and some of the early feedback we've gotten from G2E behind both Phoenix Link as the #1 most anticipated product and the new launch of a cabinet Baron.

I was perhaps also wondering if you could connect to the sort of the CapEx of those installs. I guess, if you compare it year-on-year, you've done more than double the volume, but overall, the CapEx didn't go up by that much, and that includes the integration center. So I'm curious, is there something -- is there work that you've done on the supply chain? Or is there anything about the mix of those installs that means that you're just getting a better price per unit at the moment?

Hector, I'll maybe kick off. I think there's a couple of things in there, Andre. First of all, it comes down to mix of the different products that we've got going out. And I think your comment on supply chain is correct. As we spoke to at the half, we've now pretty much circled through some of the higher-priced inventory. So there are some benefits, which is why you see that CapEx not escalating significantly with the volume. Hector, have you got anything to add?

Yes. I mean I think the other piece of it, too, is you can see how we've scaled the business, right, from obviously, installed base, but also operational efficiencies. Just to remind everyone on the call, we opened the new Las Vegas integration center in July of this fiscal year. And we were able to do that without any disruptions to the business and really took advantage of the scale benefits behind it.

Just one more, if you don't mind. I guess, this is the first time we've seen -- on Interactive, the first time we've seen the consolidated numbers following NeoGames, and I can see a profit margin of 27%. What is the outlook like for that margin over the next few years as you approach that target? Should we expect operating leverage benefits? Or are you going to have to invest a lot in your operations in order to support that growth?

Yes. Thanks, Andre. My comments on that would be we won't be achieving gaming type margins, but we'll be above where we saw Pixel United margin percentages. We are still in an investment phase, and we'll continue to invest, but we do believe we can expand margins as we grow that business and get scale out of it. So we do expect operating leverage over time. But it is still at an early stage when you look at our penetration rate. So we'll continue to drive for top line growth, and we'll continue to expand margin over time.

Next question comes from Adrian Lemme from Citi.

Congratulations on the results. I just wanted to delve further into that gaming ops increase, which was quite remarkable. The second half looks like Class II units increased about 2,200 versus 430 in the first half. So I'm just interested in delving deeper into that, what drove that kind of increase? Should we see that as a lumpy or one-off in nature? Or is there an element to that that's sustainable, please?

Adrian, thank you for the question. it's interesting, too, if you look at the performance of the 7,100 units, we are actually very pleased by the split between Class III and Class II. And as you would have looked over the last few fiscal years, Class II, like you pointed out, tends to be a very lumpy business and has been relatively flat from an installed base standpoint. But as we've made several investments into the Class II D&D development, we've seen performance of that fleet continue to improve. I mean, if you look at just some of the performance metrics from an Eilers perspective, we had 16 of the top 25 Class II mechanical reel games. And so as our customers are looking at their floors and trying to make sure they're maximizing profitability, they're rewarding us with incremental share. But just to remind everyone, Class II tends to be lumpy because of just the longevity of those deals. And so as those deals come up, we have used the performance of the portfolio to increment share there.

That's very helpful. And can I ask one more question? The feedback we've heard from some casinos is that a number of them are looking to increase their floor mix that's leased because the outright games just don't seem to have the long life anymore given for whatever reason, reduced player retention spends or -- and they also think that the economics of the leased titles are looking attractive. So is this a trend you're seeing? And does that factor into your outlook for net adds next year, even if you're not giving a number, please?

Yes. Thanks, Adrian. Look, I do think that is a trend we've seen over the last 3 years around customers being willing to allocate more of this recurring revenue product on their floor. But like all things, it will always be based on performance. And so like Trevor talked about in the opening remarks, we wake up every single day, and we make sure that we're listening to the customer needs, that we have the right hardware technology, game content. And as you would have seen from the second half performance, we kind of hit all of those along with commercial execution. And so I do think it's a trend customers will -- are starting to become a lot more savvy relative to return on invested capital on their floors. And like Trevor talked about in the opening remarks, our strategy is to take share in all of those opportunities.

Next question comes from the line of Matt Ryan from Barrenjoey.

I had a question on the Pixel United margins. Obviously, they went up quite a lot in the second half, and part of that was the UA disclosure that you've talked about, but it also looks like operating costs were down quite a lot year-on-year. Just wanted to know whether the restructuring to the cost base was largely complete by the end of the period? Or is that sort of like an ongoing initiative?

Yes. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate the question. You're right, there was a balance of UA and cost base and the cost base has been adjusted. We made that adjustment in the first half of -- through the first half, and most of that has been completed in the first half, but [indiscernible] actually finished in FY '24. So that cost base is the new cost base from Pixel United business.

And the Plarium business in the end, was that sort of largely siloed. So I guess the question is whether you have sort of dis-synergies from that sale?

No, it was relatively unique in the way it operated in the fact that it had different skill sets and different capabilities, which some of them we've onboarded into Aristocrat, but it is largely siloed now, and it's an easy separation, and there are no incremental costs of separation.

Our next question comes from Justin Barratt from CLSA.

My question was just on gaming margins. Margins there were particularly impressive in the second half. And you've pointed to, I guess, the cost optimization and supply chain helping potentially as well. But can you further clarify what really drove those improved margins and make any further comments on whether those margins can be maintained or even grow further going forward?

I'll kick that one off, Justin, and thanks for the question. The two key elements of this that you raised, the focus on cost optimization and really leveraging the cost base as we continue to scale in the business. And then obviously, cycling through those higher supply chain costs and actually trying to drive leverage our supply chain going forward as well. We anticipate that this is largely sustainable. So the savings that we've made or targeted this year will get benefits from as we work forward into FY '25. I would probably temper expectations that they're going to move significantly, but we do believe that this is not a sustainable level to run the business at.

Fantastic. And then I think the other one that I just wanted to ask, you've noted in your presentation that you think you're now at 40% market share in gaming operations in North America. I mean just wanted to talk about where you see your position there and whether you believe that you can continue to take market share going forward and whether there's a threshold on that level of market share that you can obtain?

I'll just leave in a second for you, Justin. I mean from my perspective on this one, market share is not a constraining issue for Aristocrat. It's a case of where we choose to compete and which markets we compete in and we compete to take share. We invest to do that in hardware technology licenses. And so I don't see that there's a ceiling in market share for our organization in the segments we're participating in, and we see the ability to continue to take that. But Hector can talk more about how he sees the gaming ops piece. But just as a general comment, there's still a lot of market opportunity for Aristocrat out there in the sectors in which we want to choose to compete in, and we continue to take share in those sectors.

Yes. Thank you, Trevor. I reiterate everything Trevor said. I mean, there's still just in segments where we believe we're under shared. But for gaming ops specifically in the recurring revenue part of the business, we still feel very bullish about our ability to continue to penetrate that segment. We've kind of been looking at that over the last 3 years, and we've gotten a lot of questions on where is the ceiling. And we've continued to prove that over the last 3 years, we've been successful in incrementing that share because customers are looking at their floors and they're trying to maximize the return on their floors. And so that is why our D&D investment, our investment in hardware is such a critical component of it. I mean, there's examples of customer floors in North America that have a far greater share than 40%. And so we feel bullish about our ability to continue to gain share there because we have proof points out there of a floor being greater than 40% and customers being happy with that result.

Next question comes from David Fabris from Macquarie.

I've got a couple of questions on Interactive. Firstly, with the iGaming piece, can you just talk about where your current market share is in the U.S. states where you're participating? And maybe provide some guardrails around your framework for what level of fair share might be appropriate in the future? And then secondly, just on iLottery. Can you maybe talk about how well penetrated you are in current contracts, so we can kind of understand where the growth may be coming from? And then second to that, just any thoughts around the Massachusetts RFP for the iLottery piece over there?

Yes. Thanks, David. Two questions, but I think you've asked about 5. So I'm going to try and answer most of them for you. And so first of all, from the iGaming perspective, we're now live in New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania. We're going live in -- with the Roxor platform in DQ. And then in Pennsylvania, we're going -- we went live in MQ. We've also received licenses in West Virginia, Connecticut and British Columbia, and we'll continue to work through certification and release into those markets as well. As I said in the opening comments, we have 92% access to the North American customer base for iGaming. And now it's about building out our portfolio of games, which you'll see starting to come through. We started with games like Mo Mummy, [indiscernible], Cash Express Luxury Line and Jackpot Carnival will start to come through, plus more extensive jackpots and broader features to go with that. I think from an aspiration point of view, you've seen the Eilers online game and gaming database. We are undershared there for where we can be. And it's fair to say that we should be a much higher share of that, certainly heading up towards at least a 20% share as a minimum from my perspective and continue to aspire to do that, and that will come as we continue to get penetration into more markets and also get more games into the portfolio. And we've already seen the performance of Aristocrat games if you look at Buffalo and how well they perform in that sector. So does that answer the question on AI -- Aristocrat Interactive, sorry?

Yes, that's the iGaming piece. I would appreciate that one.

And then on lotteries, we're currently about 67% of the North American lottery market from an iLottery perspective point of view. We have obviously had a couple of wins in the year or in the second half. which were contracts that were already existing as part of the JV, which are now actually direct with Interactive. And so we will continue to progress winning those contracts. We do see that there's around 15 states in North America that are progressing iLottery or lottery type licensing. And so we want to be able to participate in those as they come up. But those can take some time, but there are about 15 states currently on the agenda. I think the second part to your question about Massachusetts, we're obviously excited about Massachusetts. That process is underway, and we will be participating in that. That will be concluded through the FY '25 period at this point in time. And we expect to see more movement on that early in the new calendar year.

Great. And just one last question on a different topic. I think you made a comment earlier about possible future M&A given the balance sheet capacity. Are there any glaring gaps in the business across products or geographies that might make sense?

Look, David, it's a great question. Right at the moment, we're focusing on integrating and scaling NeoGames. And there are some elements within the iGaming business that we would look at, things like iTables and other aspects would be things we would look at, but more on a tuck-in basis. If I think about where we've got -- as to my earlier comment, there's still a lot of market share out there for us to take organically, and that's our core focus is to go organically and then look opportunistically at the right M&A that is the right strategic fit to our company and then apply the discipline that we've traditionally applied to M&A transactions. So we continue to monitor it. We're active in the market and have clear targets on what we want to achieve, which is consistent with our strategy, and we'll work on those as we finish integrating Neo.

Next question comes from Paul Mason from E&P.

Just two from me. The first one was just if we could get some comments on sort of why some of your better land-based titles sort of haven't arrived in iGaming yet, like what the strategy behind that is, if there's any actually purposeful thinking there? And then the second one is just on social casino. Maybe you can make some comments on like whether you've thought about getting into sort of like in-app advertising or things like that in order to look at increasing revenues further. I believe you're currently largely just in-app consumer spend in terms of your revenue model there.

Yes. Thanks, Paul. Appreciate the questions. On the iGaming piece, first of all, there's a couple of things there. We are live in those markets with our traditional technology. And what we've done -- what we're doing now is translating that to the new technology we bought from Roxor and NeoGames. So there's a transition to that new technology, which creates greater functionality for us. That requires relicensing or licensing approvals. So what we are moving forward with is that new technology as we enter more markets with our content on it. There's also an element of building the pipeline of games, and we've got a strong pipeline of games. As I said, we've launched 44 in the year, but we'll continue to accelerate the launch of games in FY '24 -- '25, sorry, and years out to be able to publish more games on a consistent basis in those markets. So it's a technology transition, which we're going through in some markets and in new markets, we're launching with the new technology being the RGS and then building games to operate on top of that. The second question around social casino, I think that we do have a small advertising or in-app advertising revenue. It's not very big. What we focused on is in-app purchases. We see the ability to continue to take share. We've gone from about a 21.2% share to a 22.9% share of social casino in social casino as a company. We see the opportunity to continue to grow that. Our most important initiative this year will be the launch of the NFL app, which will be happening later in the year, and that's progressed well with initial testing. So yes, we can consider in-app advertising, but we're also seeing opportunity to continue to grow with our current portfolio and execute better with the games in that portfolio and the new features in NFL.

The only other thing I'd add, Trevor, is the direct-to-consumer that we are going to roll out. So we've got 7% of the Product Madness revenues coming from direct-to-consumer, which obviously helps increase the margins of that business.

Our next question comes from Rohan Gallagher from Jarden Group.

Firstly, congratulations on a high-quality result. With respect -- two questions, if I may. With respect to the cost-out program, you touched on it earlier, sporadically, I think, Matt's question. From a holistic perspective, with the cost-out announcement you made in May, can you just sort of articulate where you're at with respect to that? And will there be any sort of follow-on into FY '25, just in terms of establishing the cost base across the respective divisions, please?

So I think, Rohan -- thank you, first of all, for the question. I think cost optimization is an ongoing focus of any business, and we've been much more deliberate this year during FY '24. As Trevor spoke to a little bit before, there was a number of actions taken in Pixel in the first half that we've obviously seen benefits from in the second half that will continue to roll through. But we did look across the broader business, including gaming, Interactive and Corporate. And we feel like we established a cost base during the year that's more sustainable going forward and obviously is beneficial for the organization. And that was a mix of headcount and the discretionary spend savings. We'll obviously continue to focus that on an ongoing basis. So it's not a one-and-done exercise, but it's about how you actually continue to drive that forward. So I think we get those benefits rolling into FY '25. And then just as good ongoing housekeeping management, we will continue to drive cost efficiency across the business.

Fantastic. And my follow-up question is in relation to capital management. Leverage is at 0.4x, comfortably below your 1 to 2x targeted range, which many of us would consider conservative. You've got, call it, USD 600 million coming in the bank associated with the Plarium sale, you're focused on integrating Interactive. Should we, therefore, see more focus around capital management post the completion of the current buyback? Or does that lend itself more towards larger scale acquisitions going forward, recognizing a good problem to have, particularly given the strong operating cash flow coming through?

Thanks, Rohan. I think as you can appreciate, capital management is an ongoing focus of the organization. We have executed on a significant portion of buybacks this year, just under $840 million, and we've got $260 million of the existing program left, which we are targeting to complete by the end of February. Buybacks will remain an important part of our capital management process going forward. And obviously, we will still concentrate on the organic investment, which you can see remains a key focus for us across UA, D&D and CapEx. M&A is always on the radar. There's always options and things that we'll look like. But at the minute, the focus is on obviously integrating NEO and the announcement yesterday around Plarium on an ongoing basis.

So no step change in terms of capital returns or anything planned following the divestments of Plarium and potentially Big Fish? Is that...

Not at this point in time. We'll reflect on that as we get nearer to a closing date, Rohan.

Next question comes from Annabel Li from Goldman Sachs.

I've just got two questions. So first one on North American Gaming. Are you able to talk to the early take-up of Phoenix Link? Are you seeing it replacing existing Aristocrat titles or potentially displacing competitors?

Yes. Thanks. Hector is right in the middle of this, Annabel. So over to you, Hector.

Thank you, Annabel. I mean, I think based on the showing, we launched Phoenix Link really in October, so it's -- late October. So it's been very early days. The response from customers has been very strong. Very early days on performance, but we're very pleased with what those numbers look like. And so obviously, we'll share a bit, Annabel, a little bit more in the first half results once we have solid numbers. But based on initial customer feedback, initial player feedback, we -- like Trevor said, we feel good about continuing to gain share in this part of the segment.

Perfect. And just the comments on gaming outlook for continued strong revenue and profit growth. Any comments you can make around the relative performance of North America versus Rest of the world on this?

Yes. I think, first of all, Annabel, just in the context for that, we have had a record installed base in gaming operations, and we see that as a baseline to continue to grow from. So we're expecting to see further penetration of gaming operations in FY '25. We continue to take share there. The volatility in the for-sale market, particularly around the adjacencies is something that's a little bit harder to predict, but we feel confident in our ability to take share in for-sale. And I think Hector referred to it earlier. We see the for-sale or the overall for-sale market about the same size as what we did this year. So our ability to take share there. The rest of world sectors were very strong outside Australia and rest of world continues to show opportunities. If you look at the Eilers reports, you're seeing better game performance in the European market. So -- and then great showing for us in Asia. And so we continue to remain focused on that. So from our perspective, we have lots of different choices. We acknowledge that ANZ is something a work in progress, but we're already seeing some green shoots in our portfolio post the release of gains at AGE and feel that we're going to be able to rebuild and take share in Australia over time as well.

Next question comes from the line of Rohan Sundram from MST Financial.

Just one question for me. Most of my questions have been answered. But Hector, how would you describe slot demand at the moment, especially in North America? And how would you describe the forward visibility that you have at the moment? And I'll just leave it at that.

Yes. Thank you, Rohan, for the question. I think, look, when we look at the North American market, the U.S. consumer has remained resilient. I mean, we've talked about a potential slowdown, but we've really seen that resiliency continue to happen. I think some of you that were here at G2E, we talked about just the visitation and just the occupancy rates in the local Vegas market. And so we feel good around that visibility. As we've talked about in other forums and other calls, we've also taken some of the transactional element out of the business by introducing kind of longer-term deals. And so our visibility going forward is strong. And so we feel good about the momentum of the business going into fiscal '25.

I think the only comment I'd add to that, Rohan, would be the high percentage of recurring revenue that we have in our gaming business and across the business as a whole.

Understood. So overall, would you say that the forward visibility has improved over, say, the last 12, 24 months because of taking out the transactional nature of things, the changes in discussions that you're having?

Yes, definitely, Rohan, it definitely has improved. And it's one of the key tenets of our commercial execution.

[Operator Instructions] We have our last question from the line of Kai Erman from Jefferies.

Congratulations on the strong result. Just a follow-up to Annabel's question in regards to Phoenix Link. Could you please give us some color on the rollout timing for that? And in addition to that, how should we think about the direction of fee per day in gaming operations given some of the new premium product launches over FY '25?

Hector?

Sure. Thank you, Trevor. So look, I think it's early days on Phoenix Link, like we talked about, we really launched it in a major California property at the end of October. We have visibility into the funnel and the funnel is strong. And so we'll continue to commercialize that while gaining regulatory approvals around North America. So we really do feel bullish about that product and the performance of that product going forward. And Kai, you had a second part to your question?

Yes, that was just about the direction in fee per day over FY '25, given some of the premium content that's coming to market.

That's right. Thank you, Kai. So on fee per day, look, I think it's -- you've seen kind of stability in the fee per day, and we're very proud of that result because it's industry-leading fee per day. Just to remind everyone, fee per day is kind of a weighted average mix of the entire portfolio, and there are certain parts of the portfolio that are variable with GGR, some are fixed. Our intention is to continue to price with innovation and our customers have rewarded us for building innovation, driving innovation and then the ability to price with innovation.

We have no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back to Trevor for closing.

Thank you, operator. Aristocrat continues to execute well against its strategy of offering a diversified gaming portfolio that leverages our leading content and capabilities. Our consistently strong investment in talent, technology and innovation leads us confident that we can capture the numerous opportunities that lie ahead of us. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to Investor Relations team. I'll now call the formal proceedings to a close. On behalf of the broader Aristocrat team, we thank you for your ongoing interest in the company and wish you a good day. Thank you.

That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.