Asmodee Holding SAS (EMBRACB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome. It's board games for Christmas. Welcome to this presentation of Embracer's acquisition of leading company, Asmodee. We have a full agenda today. We have the entire management team of Asmodee here. We have Embracer Group's management CEO and Founder, Lars Wingefors; and CFO, Johan Ekstrom, to also help us get through this presentation. Then I will come back for a Q&A later. A lot of things to discuss. I also believe we have some guests from the U.S., New York and Texas. So without further ado, I'll leave it over to you, Lars, for the presentation.

Thank you so much, Oskar, and hello and welcome. I'm super excited to be standing here after a very, very long week in Paris. Sorry if you didn't hear that. But -- and we all came back here to Stockholm and Sweden last night, standing on this stage with you, my friends, new friends from Paris, it's super exciting. So I hope it will be a few good hours of information about board gaming business and why we believe and you believe this transaction absolutely makes sense. So before saying that, I would like to say that this is a proposed acquisition of Asmodee, and it's subject to completion of legal and local social obligations. So with that said, I would like to introduce you to the presenters of today. So with me from Velan, I have Johan, our Group CFO. And my new French family is the CEO, Stephane; the Founder and entrepreneur, Marc; Thomas, Head of Strategy; and Gel, that I got to know over the past month, which has been a fantastic owner of Asmodee the past years. And looking at what we should be talking about today, I would like to give a bit of background here of the presentation. Obviously, the big part will be the Asmodee company presentation. But before going into the company presentation, I will take you through the transaction, the strategic rationale, the financial rationale, the financing structure and share issue. And finally, Oscar, I'm sure we'll have a few questions. So background to the transaction is, I think, it's a lot of passion for what Asmodee is doing. I always been following the board gaming market and the industry. I'm -- when I was very young, I was very passionate about playing some board games. And I remember 3 years ago when Gel at PAI got the opportunity to acquire it. I noticed that, and I just felt for myself, and then it's too late. And I didn't have the money 3 years ago. And that's why I was super excited when I was contacted with my French friends at HSBC about this opportunity, and I've been working with this since the summer with my colleagues and my advisers. And it's been a very interesting process because it's been a competitive process. It's a fantastic company, very financial KPIs, very cash flow generative. So the interest from other financial buyers has been, I think, quite strong. And that's why I'm even more excited able to beat them finally. And also to get the old owners as shareholders of Embracer, I think, also honors me a lot. And with that said, Gel, perhaps why can't you give us a little bit of rationale and why are we standing here. Gel, our team or Gel online here now? Okay.

Good morning, everyone. Very nice to be here today. My name is Gel Danamon. I'm a partner at PAI. I'm heading the consumer sector at PAI. I've been an investor for many, many years. Maybe quickly on PAI. We are a European leading private equity firm. We invest in market-leading companies across the globe. We have a strong focus on transformation and growth. That's really what we look for when we buy companies. We buy sector leaders, and we focus on making them bigger but, more importantly, better companies. So it's been a great journey, I must say, with Stephane and the team. I love boardgames, so that's a good start, I guess. But also the company is exceptional with an exceptional team of passionate people. And I think that really was what I discovered when I met Lars is also passionate about gaming. So I guess bringing passionate people always brings good things, and hence, we are super happy about this transaction. We've had a great journey with Asmodee, a bit too short, only 3 years. But during that time, we doubled sales, we tripled EBITDA, so I can't say I'm unhappy. I'm happy that we've had this journey. I'm a bit unhappy that I'm -- I have to pass, let's say, that to Embracer in a way, but I'm also happy that we are coming into Embracer. And so I must say, on behalf of PAI. We are totally embracing this partnership. I'm super happy about this. Thank you, Lars.

Thank you, Gel. Is it okay now? Okay. Great. So thank you so much. I think it was honor to have you in Varmland a few weeks ago, and it's honor to have you on stage here. And I think it's been very important for me that you actually are taking an equity stake now in Embracer. That, I think, for me, was very important to bridge the last kind of gap needed in this transaction. Also, aside of this transaction or because of this transaction, we have issued a direct share issue that was completed a few hours ago. And you can find a press release that has been published over the night. But I was -- I'm really happy to see a book of very strong demands of institutional shareholders across the world. Especially, I would like to send a very strong thank you to all our long-term Swedish institutions that had been very supportive of this transaction with a very limited time period. They got this information very late yesterday and were able to assume that information and support us as a company, and that's super valuable. Then the demand came very strong last night. And I think it's the first time that we have an order book with a lot of institutional investors that has been nil getting new shares, especially hedge funds and the likes of the financial metropolis of the world. So without further ado, Embracer plus Asmodee and my friends here on the stage will take you through the whole group. But why I'm excited, I'm excited about many things this morning. But I think the shared DNA of the companies is critical to make this deal happen. There is a very strong cultural fit between Asmodee and Embracer. I think the passion for board games and gaming is across the Embracer Group. When I walk into a game development studio, I see a lot of board games. My employees, they play board games at lunchtime, at parties. And I've been surprised of the strong growth of board game in the past year, and I could see that around me in my -- with my companies and family. And I can see that in Asmodee. Then the decentralized operation model of Asmodee really very similar to Embracer. But with the integrated model, and that's one of the beauties, and you will understand after listening to this team, the integrated model to watch IPs, studios, publishing and distribution creates a lot of value. And then on top of that, the track record of organic growth and M&A, it's unparalleled in -- well, I would say, in many industries but especially in the board gaming industry. Then going to the joint opportunity. Again, the passion, I think, is a super strong foundation. And we will hear -- we have Randy at Gearbox, we have Matt from Saber online, and they will come in, in a session a little bit later in the presentation and explain why they are also very excited about this. But the cross-fertilization of IPs across gaming categories, I think it has a lot of potential. And that's really the -- on the long term, there is a strong value creation opportunity. Then on the financials, again, very attractive financials. It enhances the overall group financial profile. It adds diversity, predictability, resilience. And it creates immediate accretion to adjusted earnings per share and free cash flow per share. So before going into the company presentation, I just want to take you through the actual transaction. So the day 1 consideration is approximately estimated to be EUR 2.75 billion, where EUR 350 million has been raised with new Embracer B shares on the VWAP 20 set price, which is roughly SEK 90. And the approximately balance of EUR 2.4 billion is cash or debt. Then there is here defined as other minority shareholders, that is a group of shareholders quite sizable. A few very important ones are Stephane and Marc and a lot of other founders and entrepreneurs, management and other key stakeholders that might be working or not be working within the company and has been critical for the company's success over the years. They are getting a portion or a sizable portion of their consideration cash. For various tax reasons, there is a lot of cash. But more importantly, they retain a minority interest of approximately 4% of Asmodee Group. And then we have a put and call option structure. That is exercisable year 2, 5 and 6, which in maximum, that group could receive little bit over 40 million Embracer B shares raised at the SEK 90 or SEK 89.8. And that put especially has a lot of conditions. That is quite similar to a normal Embracer-style transaction. So there is targets that the company should have a significant growth organically over the coming 5 years on a cumulated EBITDA basis, for example. And then year 6 is a call at our side. So we will end with 100% ownership. The construction of this transaction is a put option, and that's how similar transactions are made in France and, again, subject to work counsel and local social obligations and antitrust authorities filings across the globe. And we expect this transaction to be closed in the first calendar half of next year, 2022. With the assumption of the transaction financial year ending that the transaction will close in March, but that's out of our control and in the control of these authorities. All management of Asmodee will stay, and I hope you're excited. And there is no planned reorganization, restructuring of the business. So the business stays the same. And hopefully, we get into the next year, I hope you're not getting jealous now, Gel, to take the next phase and speed. You're a shareholder, so okay. So this is a fantastic company, making a lot of money. But unfortunately, it was not for free. So we paid a lot of money for this. And I'm humbled by the support of the Swedish credit institutions to support this transaction, led with -- or with Nordea, SEB and Swedbank, giving us SEK 18 billion in loans at well above 1% interest rate. There is a SEK 6 billion term loan, a normal bank loan, so to say; and then there is a SEK 12 billion bridge loan, and the bridge loan should be paid back within a year. And we started last night with the capital increase that became really successful of SEK 6 billion. So now we have SEK 6 billion to be refinanced over the coming 12 months. And I think there is all options to have debt, bonds, convertibles or equity. I'm sure we'll sort that out. And very important to say that we are -- when closing this transaction or as of today, because we have promised Gel not to that cash, we can't use for anything else, so that is kind of set aside for them very strictly legally from today. But still, we have more than $1 billion to go, to be potentially used for bolt-on M&As. So we are still in a very strong situation to continue our journey on M&A. Perhaps not tomorrow such sizable. Well, let's wait for Friday, but -- just kidding. But we will have a little bit of bolt-ons coming through all the time. That's the ambition. So at time of closing, Embracer, we're expecting to have a pro forma net debt of approximately SEK 17 billion. So in line with embraces targets, financial leverage could temporarily exceed onetime net debt to operational EBIT but should at least return to below 1x over the medium term. The financial rationale of the transaction, I think it's very strong. It's very accretive to shareholders. It adds approximately 30% in forecasted operational EBIT with approximately 7.5% dilution, not taking into account the SEK 12 billion bridge part that might be into equity as of last night. The combined group, and this is based on the financial operational EBIT forecast that we gave at the quarterly plus the new forecast we're giving on the Asmodee projections, will be on the next financial year in the range of SEK 9 billion to SEK 11 billion with the financial year starting in April. And in the following year, we are expecting the combined group to have between SEK 9.8 billion and SEK 12.9 billion in profitability of our operational dividend. This forecast excludes any further planned M&A. And I know you have a few plans, Stephane, and I have a few plans, Marc has a few plans, so hopefully, we can do a bit of value creation on M&A. The pro forma net sales of Asmodee, including some recent acquisitions that Asmodee has done, for this calendar year ending December is estimated to be a little bit above EUR 1.1 billion. And the pro forma adjusted EBITDA is EUR 240 million. And the pro forma adjusted operational EBIT is preliminary EUR 206 million. There is a very solid free cash flow generation, and Stephane and the team will explain why, but it's a very CapEx-light business model with efficient working capital management. And historically, Asmodee has yielded a pretax free cash flow conversion of approximately 70% to 80%. Looking ahead, the management of Asmodee expects to have a double-digit organic profit growth over the coming 5 years period, year-over-year. With that, Stephane. So without further ado, I hand over to my French new family here.

So [Foreign Language]. I've just been starting learning Swedish during the night, such a short night for me. But probably next time have other words. But once again, on behalf of the Asmodee team, [Foreign Language] for the nice welcome, the nice words. Yes, we do share the same excitement and the passion. So in fact, you said everything about us, so maybe we have to play games now and have some time. But more seriously, throughout this video, first of all, I'm Stephane, Asmodee CEO. Today with me Marc, who is the Asmodee Founder, and today, Marc is running our board game platform; and Thomas Koegler, our Head of Strategy. So we are super happy to be here today in the context, as you said, of subject to local and social obligation. We really look forward to be joining the Embracer family. So family is a world that resonated a lot in our mind. You mentioned that we grow Victa organically but as well also from an M&A standpoint. And for us, every time we do M&A, the first thing we said to the new guys is welcome to the family, it means a lot to us. So once again, [Foreign Language]. Today, we're going to spend some time on hopefully taking you through our great business. You will see that board games, I'm so about something that videogames, a lot of way to do business but in a very fun way with a lot of people. You will see that as Embracer, I mean it's -- we work in a very diversified business. It is centralized business. It's an entrepreneur business as well. So we have a lot of -- the first time we met, I have a list and say, wow, we have so many things in common. So we need to do something together, and so very happy. And once again, it's an honor for us to be joining the family, so thanks for that. So in the short video that we just seen, it was a way for us to welcome you in our words. I'm sure that a lot of our players, as also your players, there's a lot of common things. And as you will see, the diversity, I mean the people, it's board games today are appealing to the vast majority of people. And Thomas will later on take us through who are our consumers. And you will see that basically, there's a lot of points in common. Maybe we can move to the next slide. All right. So let me take you through our story and journey. Yes, we are growing company, as you can see on the numbers, but I think so -- and we'll come back to that. But I think that Asmodee, I mean, before the numbers, it's a fantastic story. And Asmodee is an entrepreneur story. It's the story of people that are sharing the same passion, the same will of moving forward, the same will of building something long term, something big, something that help people spend more time together, help people to socialize, help people to have fun in a very moving environment. So let me take you through our journey, our story. And so it started -- so you did found Asmodee in 1995. At that time, you were a little bit younger than today, right? But you still have the passion and energy and...

Yes, of course.

So 1995, I remember, so you tell me the story, you have your friends or you got 3 friends.

We were 3.

3 friends in a garage.

Kind of, yes.

Kind of car garage because you also like driving cars. In a garage. And you started by doing a kind of a very niche...

Yes, we were a sort of role-playing company.

So role-playing company, very niche, board gaming experts. And this is how it started, basically. So that's the passion of 3 guys together. They wanted -- they did not want to go to -- they say school is interesting, but let's play games, okay? Let's have the passion and the rigs per games. And then the good thing is with entrepreneurs is that once they've published their first game, they say, "Oh, it's a great game. We have a great fun. What about we sell the game? Why do that we try to do business with the game?" Okay. And this is how basically what -- so you go to enter to the first shops trying to get your -- I assume -- I'm sure that wasn't easy at the beginning, yes?

I know it was not easy. We are very young. We are -- we go shop by shop to try to sell our game. It was difficult, but it was fun.

But then very -- what's happened at this time, in France, in Europe, you had this new movement about the gig culture. People are starting to start playing games. We're interesting about that, with Dungeons & Dragons, this kind of stuff. And then what happened is that in this French board game communities, some of the guys such as Marc and his friend, they started also to publish their own games. And since they were able to have their games being sold in shops, they came to you and say, why don't you try to sell also our games.

Yes, at this moment, we see we want to create a kind of distribution company for all the small publisher in France. It was the beginning of our journey in distribution.

Exactly. So this is how we started. And then obviously, from time to time, when you start to do a business and you are entrepreneur, you want to develop your business, you want to understand the market. You try to better shape what is the retail networks. And then, okay, you've -- after -- year-after-year, started to open up the depth of the game catalog and try to move from doing very niche expert games to open up to a kind of a wider audience. And this is, I think, one of the key milestones for us in France is one. In fact it was maybe the first acquisition of the...

First acquisition, yes.

The first acquisition, a fantastic game, very fun game called Jungle Speed, which has been, in fact, the catalyst that has helped Asmodee be listed to, let's say, the multi-specialists, the toy shops. And this is when basically Asmodee started to deliver, I mean, growing revenues. And also, I think it was in 2003.

Yes.

This is when you -- I mean, Asmodee France started this fantastic long-term relationship with one of the best license ever, which is Pokemon. And Asmodee France became at that time the distributor of Pokemon in France. Obviously, it has helped accelerate the business.

Yes, and we can increase the level of our customer because Pokemon are very -- it's a seller in France. So a new kind of shop come to us, and we can open our shop for customers.

Exactly. So it's a lot about capillarity, how about and what I think is great with Asmodee, you'll see that even now is that we take our time. It's a business once again of entrepreneur. I mean we try to do our business through a lot of humility. I mean we have the feet down to Earth. And even from the beginning, the passion, step-by-step, take the time, making sure that we can install stuff, as you will expect. So this is basically how it has started. And then because we see the kind of a potential, we started to expand outside France. We first type of acquisitions in Germany, in Spain and Belgium. And basically, this is when I had the chance to come across you and the former investors. And I mean, I say, for me, it was super happy to be joining the company in 2009, so 12 years ago. I must say that I remember this story, I hope you remember too, is the first time we had lunch together. And so we were discussing and about -- I mean, later in 20 minutes, we say, okay, there's no doubt, we have to work together. And this is how it start. I had not come from the game business. I used to play games, and I was playing Juggle Speed. That was playing up again, which is Times Up. I think it's one of your game, Times Up. It's a mind games and so on. And I didn't know it was Asmodee games. And then I realized, then I had a chat with Marc, and then I say, wow, this is not only games. This is a company, but its business. And then we discuss and we say, wow, I mean there is a huge potential to develop the business in terms of internationally. There's a huge potential to do the business with a lot of market share to take. I mean, and this is how basically, I mean, we decided to work together. So now it's now 12 years that we are partnering. So it's a pleasure working together. From a -- then after that, we started -- we continue to develop. And as I said, first geo expansion. In fact, when I joined, my first big job was our -- at that time, our biggest acquisition, that was the U.K. And it was our distributor in the U.K. And then I will explain later on that basically, we made a lot of acquisitions, very bolt-on acquisitions throughout our current distributors. And basically, when we moved to our new shareholders in 2013, Asmodee was at that time,the leading board game company in France. And we started to have a kind of decent European presence from a distribution standpoint. And then at that time, basically, we started to realize that if you wanted to continue grow, if you wanted to become a global company, we had 2 things to do -- many things to do for sure, but 2 main things to do. The first one is that we want -- we needed to enlarge our catalog, i.e., enlarged our IPs. And we -- very, very early in the days, we did understand the strength of having big IPs, the strength of IPs as an asset. And you'll see later on how it has basically shaped who we are today. And also, basically, we did understand that time obviously that if you wanted to be credible in the market, we had to develop in the U.S. because the U.S. is the first market by far. So basically, this is what we call the Asmodee 2.0 cycle, whereby we started to accelerate our international development in the U.S. but also throughout Europe. But we really accelerated in the U.S. We have our first acquisitions in the U.S. This is where we made a very great acquisitions. I'm sure you heard about a fantastic game called Catan. This is when we've been able to acquire the IP. We've also acquired another great game, so I know has a lot of success in Sweden, which is Ticket to Ride. And then we acquired Bezzerwizzer. That is the publisher of Ticket to Ride. I think that Ticket to Ride is our best seller in Sweden. And Bezzerwizzer is I think #2 or #3, #3. And we also made the acquisition of [indiscernible], which is a great studio in the U.S. specialized in big experts game but has a lot of great relationship with big franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, that are today very, very big partners. So this is basically how we've developed the business in between 2013 and 2018. Then Gel, you came on board. And you're right, 3 years is -- goes fast. And you knew that. Exactly. Exactly. So -- but it was -- what a journey. And I must say that same as last, I'm super happy that you stay in the family by you becoming a shareholder from Bresse. It's a great thing because we've been working together with the team, and it was a lot -- we've made a lot of things together. So it's a pleasure working with you, I must say. Even if I was seen, it's a pleasure talking with you. And so with Gel and the team, basically, for what we try to develop from this cycle is to basically open up whilst continuing -- super important for us, whilst continuing developing our business in the board game platform. And we'll explain to that with Marc we do that. We open up new type of horizons. We started to open up what we call emerging platforms because we really think that at the center of what we do is the IP, is the assets. And it's the universe, is the storytelling we have and so on. So thanks to that, basically, over the last years, basically, we've been able to expand and open up our businesses in digital. So now we have a fantastic family on digital, so it's going to -- I'm sure we're going to help us accelerate. And based on the further discussions I had with Matt and Randy, who I think are going to join today, we've seen a lot of potential. And I know we have already identified many ways to have fantastic synergies together. So we open up digital. We open up Asmodee Entertainment, which is about bringing some of our IPs if it makes sense into the media platforms. So we decided to set up also our in-print studio called [indiscernible]. And with -- and in 2021, we've been -- we've just launched our first books. And the reason why we're doing that is because that in a transmedia world, and I know that it's put forth, in a transmedia world, we wanted to try to work on our IP and provide more depth in terms of the characters of our IPs. And we thought that developing books around our IP and our strategy was a good way for -- to develop industry IP. What was very interesting when we set up [indiscernible] is that almost overnight, we had very interesting incoming calls from a lot of our partners, starting with Marvel, that's guys. We know you because we are partnering in the board game business because we have a very interesting licensing business, whereby we developed -- we are one of the preferred partners of [indiscernible], Star Wars Marvel. And as I say, Lord of the Ring, Game of Thrones to do to the board games. But when those guys heard that we were moving to novels, they reached out to us, okay, we love you to write books on our IPs. So this is how we've been able to strike a multiyear agreement with Marvel. So it's important for us because it brings to us a lot of credibility, and it shows also that basically, we are long-term partners. And more recently, we also now opening up discussions when it comes to media shows, either script or unscripted shows, whatever TV shows. And what we can see, what I can see since 3 years is more and more fantastic producers coming to us, interested in our IPs. And we can see basically that there is this kind of universe or horizon around us about, as we said, transmedia, how can we -- how are we going to be able to bring our IPs to -- and help people have different type of experience in the IP, like you see what we want to do. And just to finish on -- in terms of what we've been able to do in this type of diversification, we're super happy because we've just signed a very interesting development for one of our IP, which is Werewolf. And we signed a partnership with MediaOne, which is one of the biggest movie producer and TV show producer in Europe. And we're super happy because a very famous writer, which is Francois, so the guy who has developed Reaper in Netflix, the big show, we signed up to work on the movie on Werewolf. So we'll see how it goes. But it is for us, so as you see, a lot of options. We have a lot of options to continue to grow the business because what is super important to understand, but it's exactly what we think we've -- at the center, what we do is the IP, the IP, the experience, the consumer and so on. So that's basically our journey. And now we are going to enter, I hope, into Asmodee 4.0 with all the excitement. So once again, I really share the excitement. I know that we share the passion and so many things to do. I could not wait to have all this obligation behind us and then start to work together. Yes, thank you, Thomas. So let me just share with you some -- a little bit of KPIs. And obviously, I will hand over to the team. Thank you very much. Yes, it would be easier for me. So starting on some financials. So you say a lot of nice things about our performance. So just to reemphasize, yes, for the first time this year, we're going to not only hit but also exceed the more than EUR 1 billion in business sales. So it's also a big step forward for us. 3 years ago, our revenue was roughly EUR 500 million, so we've been able to double the business in 3 years. As you can see on the slide, yes, we're a growing company. We grew at a CAGR of 25% over the last 5 years. Organically, you mentioned organic for us. Organic is very important. We grew at 18% CAGR-wise. You will see later on that we do operate in a growing market. The board game market is growing. You say resilience. It's a resilient market. But you will see that we are overperforming. Historically, we have always overperformed the market, and it is going to continue. The reason why we have very good organic growth is because when you look at Asmodee -- and once again, we take the time to take you through that. You will see that based on our geographical expansion, basically, all our geographies haven't reached the same level of maturity. So we have a lot of way to grow geographically. The first one is that from a market share standpoint. So we operate in a growing market. And on that market, on the local markets, basically, we have a lot of market share to grow. If we take France, for example, which is our historical market, our market share is roughly around 25%. If we take the U.S., it's 7%, so you see the -- basically the gap that we could do. And then we look at all our countries, depending on the maturity and of the country, we have a lot of growth everywhere. Second, obviously, it's also linked to how we -- our business model basically because Marc will explain later on how we launch a game. But what is important to understand is, when we launch a game, a specific game, and the game has a lot of potential, then we're able to develop expansions from the game and so on. We can bring some license and sell, also a way to continue the organic growth coming from -- at the outset from IPs. And in fact, if you combine market growth from a market share standpoint and our ability to launch every year new games, to expand on existing games, when you combine the 2, basically, it brings a lot of potential for organic growth. We also operate in a highly fragmented market, another part of comment we have, which enable us to do a lot of acquisitions. So -- and over the years, we've made more than 50 acquisitions, all super accretive, whatever in the IP side and studio distribution and even more recently with regard to the -- in the adjacent platforms. Over the years, because we are entrepreneur, because we understand the value of EUR 1, obviously, what's our job also is to -- we love to grow. Everybody loves growth. What we love is profitable growth for sure. So over the years, okay, our job also is to increase the profitability of the business. So this is why today, I mean, I think that by 2021, we'd be delivering over 20%, so 22%. And as you say, Lars, we have very strong free cash flow conversion. The reason why we have free cash flow conversion is because we have a very, very little CapEx, in fact, or we can consider that our CapEx are our acquisitions, but it's not the way you look at it. And the reason why we have little CapEx, and this is what Marc will explain, is one of our secret source is basically the high profitability of basically developing against, you will see basically how it works. And you will understand that why we don't need to spend a lot of CapEx to develop our business. So that's on the financial side. Moving to commercial KPIs. We have a very decentralized business. And on one hand, we own today 22 studios, and studios are about game creativity, game development, and we'll present them to you. This is where people, basically our teams are developing and creating games. As a matter of fact, we now own more than 300 IPs that has spread out around our studios. And we operate a go-to-market strategy in 22 -- 21 countries, sorry. So we have a direct presence in 21 countries. We fully own go-to-market distribution subsidiaries. And as a whole, we operate in 50 countries, which means that in the countries where we don't have a direct presence, we use a third-party distributor. And you will see that when we acquired distribution very often, we acquired our former third-party distributors because we have developed long-term relationship with them, and it's for us an easy way to expand our geographical reach. One KPI on this slide which is for me very important is the fact that in 2020, we did sell worldwide on the market approximately 45 million games. It means units. So it's 45 million boxes. That's a lot. It's a lot. But what is important is not that number for -- just for sake is what is important is that I'm sure you understand that in order to be able to deliver worldwide 45 million units, we need to be structured. So we have -- and it's something that we've done with Gel and the team PAI in the last years, we've invested a lot in the quality of our infrastructure, in supply chain, in systems, ERPs. Because if we want to push 45 million boxes, we have to be ready to do it. And this is why, if we were to get back, if you remember the journey, I said, we take our time and work in sequence because it takes time to be able to push this level of volumes. And with Marc and the team and Thomas and the team and the management team, we spent a lot of time investing in the people in the right skills, in the system, as I say, in the infrastructure because for us, the promise we have is when a shop is ordering a game, he has to have it. So that's super important, super, super important. And I must say we're super proud to say that now we're able to push 45 million games. I'm sure that 25 years ago, you were pushing maybe 50 games in 1 shop. So what a journey. Maybe moving to the next slide. So just to describe to you how we organize, so this is what we call our organizations throughout the flywheel, today, we organize around 4 platforms. But as you -- I'm sure you've noticed, at the center of the wheel, there is the IP. That's important for us. And the reason why today we put the IP here is because, over the years, as I said during the introduction, we have moved from being a product-centric company to become an IP-centric company, moving from just the game as the games at the box to an IP, IP being the experience, IP being the storytelling, IP being the universe. And this is why, basically, putting the IP at the center has enabled us over the years to basically develop our business around 4 platforms. So obviously, we have our -- what we call our backbone platform, see where we come from, okay, the board game platform, which is today run by Marc. And we'll comment on that later. And over the years, okay, we opened up 3 new platforms, so as I said, the interactive platforms that today basically give our digital development and also gather one fantastic acquisition we made recently -- or I mean, that, Thomas, you successfully delivered, which is Boardgame Arena, and we'll come back to that, and Boardgame Arena is today the leading online board game platform, and with more than 7 million registered players, and it's a subscription-based platform, and obviously, you'll talk about it. As I mentioned, we set up Asmodee Entertainment. Asmodee Entertainment was set up 3 years, 3.5 years ago. And Asmodee Entertainment is about, as I said, bringing some of our IPs to the media world. And then more recently, we set up our consumer platform with the objective to better engage our communities, the objective of being -- attracting and being appealing to the wider audience and, in fact, also throughout the years, helping us moving from being a B2B business, that's what we were at the beginning, at the outset, from becoming today, a B2B2C business because we also understand that the more we'll be present throughout the whole value chain, I mean, the more we could create value. And this is why also, very recently, we made our first 2 acquisitions in e-commerce, 1 in France and 1 in the U.S., whereby we did acquire 2 specialized platform -- e-commerce platform on board games. So we are very also excited about it. Next slide, please. So now I'm handing over to you, Thomas. Maybe you want to come here. And Thomas is going to take us through the market. So I'm sure you have a lot of questions about the market, with the [indiscernible] in the market and who are our consumers.

Do you hear me okay? So I'm Thomas Koegler. I'm Head of Strategy within Asmodee. I've been with the business for the last 6 years, this fantastic ride. I wanted to share a bit about the board game market because it's a market that's not super well documented and not much information available. So I will share our insights because, as the leader in the industry, we have a very clear view on how the market is going. So the first 2 things I will do is talk about the past and the future and then spend a couple of minutes of what happened in the last 2 years in our market. The board game market is a market that has been growing resiliently. If you were to look back actually in 2008, 2009, the market was flat, so absolutely not impacted by financial crisis, et cetera. And this is because we are in an industry where there is a lot of innovation and in an industry that has transformed itself in the last 10 to 15 years because board games kind of lived the same journey as the gig culture that became the pop culture when in the early 2000s, superheroes became mainstream. Board games were kind of frowned upon by adults maybe 10, 15 years ago. And today, they are completely embedded in the cultural habits and in the entertainment habits of young adults. So it's a market that has been growing roughly 4% a year over the last 15 years because we could draw the line back 15 years. And this growth is expected to accelerate from now on for several reasons. The first one is that thanks to the innovation that exists in our industry, a lot of new ways of playing games, a lot of new formats have emerged in the last years and are answering to consumer demands. If I can give a couple of examples, for instance, there are a lot of 2 player games that arrive on the market because coplayers want to play at home, and it's an offer that did not exist. You also have new immersive games, new hybrid games with supporting apps. And all of this is fueling increasing consumer demand. And this comes from who our consumers are. So when we look at our consumers, we see 3 main categories. The core of our industry is our board game fans. So when you ask people, when you do polls, between 70%, 75% of the people say that they play board games, so a very, very high penetration rate. And out of those, like in any entertainment industry, you do have 7%, 10% of the consumers that are super fans. If you were to take the movie industry, those that go to the movies, to the cinemas every week or multiple times a week. In our case, it's people, young adults mainly, average age range is 35 to 40 years old. So it's something I want to make very clear, the board game industry, it's not a kids industry, it's a young adult industry where also kids play. It's people that play multiple times a month. Playing board games is their main entertainment. And if you take Europe and North America, it's roughly 60 million consumers, so it's a very big number. Then you have the more mainstream audience in which we see 2 different dynamics. The first one that has been growing extremely fast in the recent last 5, 6 years is casual players. It's young adults between 20 and 30 that play games basically to socialize with their friends either as a nice breaker to start the evening or as a climax in the moment where everybody is having a great laugh. And you see it more and more in universities, in people that have started their professional life and gather around, and board games are a fantastic opportunity for people to gather around. And lastly, you have families, and we don't talk about children, we talk about families because, usually, you have a lot of intergenerational play, children with children, parents with children, that's becoming more and more important; parents that are looking for games that they can play with their kids and have good time also; grandparents with their grandkids or within the expanded family. And so all in all, this is 800 million players, 60 million core players, board game fans and 750 million consumers. What happened in the last 2 years is that we did see an acceleration of the penetration of plain board games during the COVID period. We did some polls some consumer surveys before COVID hit, so in March 2020. And after we were out of the main waves of lockdowns, and what we see is that the share of people that play at least a month a board game has increased over 1 year by 17 points. So it is massive. You do have a lot of people that discovered or rediscovered the joys of playing board games because they were stuck at home. And what's very interesting is that this continues. As soon as shops reopened, for instance, that the lockdowns were eased, the demand continued. If you look at our own sales of board games month-after-month after month for the last 2 years, they've been growing year-on-year every single month. So it's not temporary. It's really a step change in our industry that has accelerated the market for the last 2 years and with high expected growth of 6% a year for the next years. The second thing that happened, as I said, is that new people discovered board games. One could ask, yes, but maybe they played when they were stuck at home, and then they moved to something else. Well, actually, when we pull the consumers, and this we did in last September, so really way after the ways of lockdown, 75% of the new buyers, so people that bought their first games in 2020 or early 2021, 75% of them say that they will play and buy at least as much as what they have done in the previous year. So again, in the board game industry, the market has taken a step, a strong acceleration over 2 years, but the growth is expected to continue for the years to come.

Thank you, Thomas. So now, let's spend some times on our backbone, the board game platform. Maybe, Marc, you want to join me, and we're going to talk a little bit about this.

Okay. So as you can see on that slide, basically, we've developed a very strong model, whereby we operates throughout all the value chain, that you can see here. So this is our value chain, you see how it works. So basically, it starts with offers, game inventors that basically present concepts to a publisher, what we call studios. And the job of a publisher is to take the concept of the game inventor. And from that, basically make it what we call a game, a board game. And there's a lot of interaction between the first time when the game inventor or the offer came with the concept and the time when the game basically exists as a product and roughly takes, what, between 12 months to...

12 and 24 months.

12 to 24 months to move from the concept to a board game. And who are game offers potentially in this room, there are game offers, I mean people that are passionate about games and that buy this. And you have also people that are professional game inventors. So it's a lot, a lot of opportunities. And that's why the market is highly fragmented, and this is why the market is growing is that every day, you've got new concepts coming on board. And where we operate is that, basically, we have developed a model, I mean, in the board game platform around, first, the publishers and also the go-to-market. And throughout the year, as I mentioned earlier, we are moving to also better understand and getting closer to consumers by our direct-to-consumer development. So I'll talk a little bit about offers. Publishers, we cannot talk about it with me, but publisher, this is where basically the games are being created, and we'll explain how we do. And then obviously, when the game is developed, because we have a business, we have a business to run, okay, the question is to bring it to the market. And then we bring into the market through our go-to-market platforms. And we distribute our games through appropriate channels. We come back to that. And we're very, very precise on the ground marketing activities that we've been developing over the years and that we've been able to really -- and we are super specialized in how you market again. What is important to understand is that the best way to sell a game is to have people play the game. So once the people is playing the game, if they love the game, they're going to become our best promoters. And this is basically how it works. So our job is to make sure that when the game comes into a market, whatever which -- whatever local market, we have people play the game, we have people play the experience, we have a good share, we have people socialize where people share the emotions. Because when you share the emotions with others, then the other people would love to take this same emotion with their inner circle. And that's basically why I see also, I mentioned during the introduction, we are growing organically. It's because little by little, now the emotion is spread out, I mean, to the wider audience.

Thank you. So now maybe we take some time, Marc, to go through our studios. And maybe you want to explain how it works and what we do.

Okay. So today, we have 22 studio. I'll say today because we increased the number of studios in shares. All these studios are independent, managed by an entrepreneur or sometimes the ex-owner of the studio. They are very focused on the creativity to relationship with others find the new prototype, take time to develop new games. And we create around this studio shared services. We take care of production, marketing, finance, legal. So they are focused on creativity. We ask to the people who manage the studio to take time to develop the best game in the world and to find the new hot seller for a few years. So we have our own studio, and we work with a lot of franchise and a fantastic brand like Pokemon, Star War Mobile. Pokemon, Magic, Hugo, we are a distributor. We distribute games in a lot of countries. And we develop with a franchise like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Ring and Marvel games in our studio. So we are a close partner with Lucasfilm, Disney and Marvel.

But also what's very important to understand is that how does -- I mean, how it goes and how the research has evolved. If we take the example of a great license such as Star Wars, obviously, at the outset, it has started with Fantasy Flight games, which is one of our studio. Very, very core gamers sport type of games. And when Fantasy Flight games joined the Asmodee family, obviously, it has enabled the other Asmodee studio to enter into the relationship also with Lucas and Star Wars. So basically, what we've been also able to -- what we proposed to our partners today is not only to have access to one of our studio. But when we develop partnerships with fantasy franchise overnight, okay, they have access to our 22 studios. So a lot of creativity, a lot of innovation and helping us to develop and strengthen very close relationships with the franchise because what we love to do with them is not to, let's say, put some of the license on our games. What we love is to develop from scratch games based on their universes in order to provide their fans a wider experience. And that's super important. And that's also a big strength of us over the years being able to develop a group of 22 studios. I mean we -- and today, as we can see, we have a lot of the -- I mean, we have fantastic IPs. I think that if you were to look at basically in terms of the last 20 years, what are the biggest IPs, I must say that most of them, not all of them, obviously, but most of them are with us. And this is also -- so it's important to understand that not only we have our own IPs and we develop and we are super innovative. But because of what we built up, we've been able also to strengthen the relationship with our big partners. And you mentioned that, but I think it's important just to reinsist. I know when I was saying that we are super happy that last -- in 2020, we pushed 45 million game boxes into the market. It's also because when we say -- we did invest a lot in infrastructure, I think that the model that we put in place about having these studios being decentralized, effectively run by entrepreneurs, I mean, super accountable on what they do. But I think as a group, what we provide them with is, as you said, we take out everything which is not about creativity, so throughout the shared services that are directly in the organization. So what it means is that those guys, they only focus on creation, creation, innovation, innovation, innovation, super important because this is what they love to do. And when you are a studio by yourself, you have to do everything. So you have to -- your passion is about developing games, but you need to develop the games. You need to then say, okay, I need to put it into production. So you need to find a manufacturing partner, then you need to talk about, okay, how we're going to sell the game, what is about my financials, the legal and so on. So what we have done is we take that from them to the shared services organization, enabling the studios to focus on what they love, what they are very good at and what creates value, which is innovation and game development.

And with a strong scouting team to go in each fair -- game fair in the world to discuss with [indiscernible], to find a new prototype and to increase our catalog and to put this prototype in our studio.

I think it's for you. And I think it's a slide that you love, Marc.

Yes.

It goes into the secret source of Asmodee and basically touching and understanding basically why we -- it's a very interesting game because it's about -- we see about a lot of small quantities and a lot of profitability.

In reality, even if it takes time to develop a new board game is very cheap. In this case, we take the example of very big games with a lot of miniature or a lot of things. And at the end, the cost of development for one game is around SEK 100,000 and SEK 150,000. And with this amount, we are 100% finished the development of the game. And if you take the economics of this game for the first run, as Stephane said, we distribute our game in 21 country ourselves, and we distribute our game in 50 countries with external distributor. So when we launch a new game, we launch this game a minimum in 3 language, French, English and, a lot of time, German and Spanish. So when you ask at all these distribution units how many games you want for the first run of the game, the average is between 40,000 and 60,000 copies. In this case, we take only 30,000 copies to make a very -- it's a worst case scenario for us. In reality, the game -- the MSRP of the game, the public price is around EUR 30 if you take a normal board game. And we sold this game to our customer shops around EUR 15. Our business -- the business margin for us, we -- if you take production cost of this kind of thing, it's around EUR 9 for us with production cost, transportation and this kind of thing. If we take just an example of 30,000 units, so it's very low for us, at the end, even if the game is not a success because for us it is not a success, at the first run of the game, at the end, we win money. But our target is not to have -- our target in Asmodee is to build a long seller game. With Catan, Ticket to Ride, our old seller is now 20 years, 25 years, and the game increase each year. But even if we don't take these kind of games, our best seller, we have a lot, a lot of games in the HALV market that we sold since now 10, 15 years between EUR 50,000 and EUR 100,000 each year without marketing. And it's like a layer in our catalog. And our goal is to increase the size of our layer cake. And of course, in this layer cake, we have some bestsellers like Ticket to Ride. And when a game, we saw that the sales increased a lot, we build around the basic game range. And if you take the example of Ticket to Ride, the game was launched in 2004 with a basic game Ticket to Ride in the U.S. And we -- with the Days of Wonder studio, the first time as a distributor and after as a owner, we build a real range around Ticket to Ride.

That's important to say that when we acquired Days of Wonder, the Renegade games were very, very limited for something like that.

So today, Ticket to Ride range, you have a lot of SKUs. And you see that the turnover of the range increase year-on-year. And today, we distribute the game everywhere in the world. In some countries, in the mass market but not -- for example, in France, we just launched in the mass market this game -- basic game last year. So we have a lot of room to grow everywhere in the world. But our goal is to build a long seller in each category of market. So sometimes, like this one, a long seller everywhere, but sometimes a long seller only on the HALV markets.

And that's super important because, in fact, sorry, Asmodee, I mean, what we do is to balance basically our development between what you just presented before, i.e., the launch of new games. And roughly, we launched roughly a little bit above like 50 new games per year having the same methodology, small first round of production, put them into the market, test the reaction. If there is some consumer reaction and we see how the retailers are working and to how what the rate of reorder, we might go into a second run of production then the third production and so on. But even if at the end, we stopped after the first run of production, as you've seen on the first -- from a slide, I mean the business is profitable. And then on the other hand, we have the ability when it makes sense, when there is a potential to take an IP and make it grow, I mean, in big time over the years. So -- and you will see -- if you were to dig into our portfolio, okay, so roughly, we have, we say 300 IPs, but we're also distributing games on behalf of third-party publishers. On average, our go-to-market distribution platform, they have -- they do hold 1,000 games. So the biggest -- our biggest entities such as the U.S., France, U.K., the more 3,000, 4,000 SKUs, our smaller businesses such as Chile, Taiwan, they have like 30 to 50 games, on average is 1,000. But if you were to dig into the catalog, you will see that we have games that basically do sell at, on a local market, 15,000, 20,000 SKUs per year. And on the other aspect of the range, we have hundreds, hundreds of thousand games or even millions. And that's basically one of the specificity of Asmodee. That's basically what makes us unique in the market because nobody else is doing that, having this balance between depth catalog, what we call long tail and fantastic blockbusters. But as you said, on the long run, that is super important to understand that our business, I mean, we're able to take an IP and make it grow over the years. And it doesn't prevent us from bringing new games on to the market.

What's very interesting is that when you look at the level of awareness of our best sellers, it's still relatively low. If you ask consumers in Europe, in the U.S., the level of awareness of Catan and Ticket to Ride, et cetera, the level of awareness is still around 10%, 20% depending on the countries. What it means and where it's the fantastic news for us is that if you take, I would say, the historical games that have been around for 50, 60, 70 years, they have a level of awareness about 80%, 90% in the general population. So we have huge room to grow even for those very high sellers that we have in our catalogue. Now what we've done is that we need to start somewhere in the industry that have such a very strong back catalogue. If you took the main competitors in the toy industry, et cetera, they have a couple of titles but limited less innovation that we have. And so automatically, a new consumer that has rediscovered plan board games in the last years, when they want to continue play games, play new games, they have to turn to our back catalog. And so we also have games in which we will put the future -- the focus in the future. And what's great is that as soon as we see a brand picking up, we can intensify the marketing effort, we can intensify the relationship with the retailers to put those games forward. This is fairly new to us, as Stephane said, because we did put in place our consumer platform to engage the consumer in the last 2 years. And so it's a journey that will deliver a lot of organic growth for the business in the next few years.

So getting back to now -- thanks, Thomas. Getting back now to our go-to-market platforms, maybe we should share a bit how we're organized from a distribution standpoint.

Today, we have 21 full distribution organization in big country in Europe, U.S. and Asia and so as America. All these units are 100% owned by us. We take care in all the -- we have all this sales team, logistic global organization. We can deliver -- in each country, we can deliver shops in between 24 and 48 hours after the order. Distribution is very important for us because we capture the distribution margin to our own game, and we have the opportunity to distribute to external studio. So when you are a new publisher, you want to launch your game, it's difficult for you to -- the go-to-market is a difficult part of the job. If everywhere in the world, if you are a new publisher, if you contact somebody at Asmodee, between 1 week and 3 months depends on the original language of your game, you can be distributed everywhere in the world. So we are the only one-touch solution to distribute a game everywhere in the world. For us, it is very important because we can attract the new publisher. We can't create relationship with this publisher. We can understand the level of sales of their game because we are the exclusive distributor of this game. And after we can relationship with this publisher and perhaps tomorrow buy this -- ask to this publisher to join the group. So this is a very virtuous ecosystem for us.

I know a company that has a similar thing.

Yes. So in France, today, we are #1; in U.K., too in distribution market. We grow a lot in Germany because we build a new organization at distribution level. And today, our challenge is in U.S. are we launched -- we work -- in U.S. in the past for game industry, everybody work with wholesalers. And Asmodee system is to be exclusive distributor. So we are exclusive distributor when we distribute our catalogue. 2 years ago, we launched exclusive distribution for market in U.S. In 2 years, we doubled our turnover. So we are in a good way. And since only between October and November, we signed a contract with 9 new external publisher in U.S., and the external publisher asks us to distribute their game everywhere in the world. So the system works.

So it's very important to understand there's a lot of added value related to our global distribution network, a lot. As you said, first of all, when we publish games, we better control how we're going to sell them. It's also a way for us to get closer to retail. It's a way for us to understand what they do. So we do a lot of activities at retail level. As you said, effectively, we have become over the years a one-stop solution for independent studios, so it's very important to understand on sales. So as I said, you are at studio, you can be everywhere in the world. You can be only one person, and then when you have no time to think about how you're going to distribute your game or you can go and meet with X number of local distribution company is going to take your time. It's not what you want to do, and you want to be focused on developing games. So with this structure, we build up, we had the one-stop solution, as you said, almost now anywhere in the world. Any studio that wants to have a global distribution can reach out to any of our businesses. And because, yes, on one hand, we are a very decentralized business but, in fact, also very integrated, so I mean, our local country managers, CEOs, they are always in contact, so very, very easily, we are building bridges between different countries. And that's basically this global distribution network is very innovative, and nobody else in the industry has such -- this type of business being, on one hand, a publisher, and obviously, we distribute but also, as you said, a distributor for a third-party publisher. And you're right, effectively -- sometimes you're right.

And this is the secret sauce and the steam platform of board gaming.

Exactly. Exactly. That's the point. I take the point. And it's fantastic because when we take a new studio on board as a third-party publisher that we distribute, it's a great for us platform for further acquisition because we test the performance of the games. We develop a strong relationship with the studio team, okay? And over the years, we come, what is the right time? Okay. If we think it's the right time for us and for the studio, okay, we'll propose them to join our family. And this is why also, if you were to look at our success rate when it comes to acquisition. And if we continue and see what this is our ambition, obviously, to continue to be the undisputed leader in the mortgage business. Now what happened up to us is these optionalities, those opportunities in bringing some of our IPs to what we call the emerging platforms.

So as Stephane said, we have 3 emerging platforms that we have created over the recent years. The first ones I would like to talk about is our consumer platform. As Stephane said, we are -- we have started the journey to transform our business from a B2B to a B2B2C business, engaging consumers. And so this came with setting up global marketing teams, reinforcing our organization there. We have our Chief Marketing and Chief Consumer Officer that joined the group 2 years ago coming from the video games and from the movie industry. And if you remember, when I talk to you about our consumers, we have 2 main consumer targets, board game fans and mainstream players. We have built for both of them consumer engagement programs that will be rolled out directly with them and with the retail over the next months. Unbox now to engage with mainstream consumers, so really here, it's focusing on the narrow selection of games, work about recommendation, work about helping people learn how to play the games and ease their experience in discovering new games, so a lot of cross-fertilization and cross sales. This will also be rolled out in terms of trade marketing in shops and in events, so very high consumer-facing value. And for our core players, we are rolling out with the Hobby shops, so the small town shops specialized in board games because they are at the basis of our industry, as Stephane said, extremely important to us. They help us start the successes of the games that are being launched. And so in partnership with shops, we built a program called Hobby Next,to help them further grow because it's something I didn't take the occasion to say, but in the last 2 years, they were fantastically resilient, very, very low default rates because they are highly embedded with their local gaming communities and very, very engaged with their fans. The second emerging platform that we have is our interactive platform. It is made of 2 components. I will actually start with the second one because it's closer to our core business, which is direct-to-consumer and e-commerce. As Stephane said, we have made our first 2 acquisitions in 2020 and in 2021: Philibert in France, which was the leading online B2C platform in board games after Amazon; and miniature market that holds the similar position in the U.S. Very strong growth there, high engagement with the communities. And those 2 platforms are first targeted to core players because another say that at Asmodee we like to build from the core. And so it's companies that are growing double digit in the last years and that carry not only our catalogue but the entire catalogue of the industry. They remain agnostic. They remain serving the entire industry, and that's what they will continue to do in the future. Then in terms of digital games and interactive gaming, our strategy is twofold. Historically, within -- Asmodee, we did have Premium Board game apps for iOS and Android on certain successful games like Ticket to Ride, for instance, where I think 70 million games have been played over the last years. However, it's not a business model for all types of Board games. And so at the beginning of the year, we made the acquisition of Board Game Arena, which is an online board gaming platform. As Stephane said. It's the leading online board gaming platform. It has 7 million player accounts. And it's a platform that has now over 400 games. It's a highly scalable platform because it's very easy to put a new game on Board Game Arena. And it's a platform business-wise that has a dual model. It's free-to-play and subscription-based. Today, we only have 200,000 subscribers. If you just look at the 60 million of core board game fans, the room to grow is fantastic. It's a business that's at the beginning of its journey. A lot of improvements will be done in the coming months both on the catalogue, very strong titles arriving and a lot of work that's been done on the user interface to bring it up to speed to the highest standards of the industry. Obviously, it's a topic where we're very excited to work with the Embracer teams to help us accelerate. And then lastly, I would say, before the last couple of days, we started opening our IPs to third-party developments for AA, AAA, premium games, et cetera. One of the most exciting prospects, and I think we're going to talk very soon about it, is that the synergies between the Embracer Studios and Asmodee to leverage some of our fantastic IPs that have very immersive worlds, that have very strong characters, very strong fit for role playing games, strategy games, adventure games, et cetera. And we're all very excited to see what we can do with the various studios within Embracer and find the right studios for the right IPs because there is tremendous potential there that's completely untapped for now. Lastly, as Stephane said, we launched our entertainment platform. It's a platform that's there to develop our IPs, expand our IPs. It's really the primary goal is to deepen the IPs, deepen the narrative arc, strengthen the backbones of those IPs and bring an additional experience beyond gaming, obviously. Physical and digital, that has been covered, to book publishing, to media, to consumer products so that the fans of the IPs can expand their experience in their beloved IP. Either through books, so we did set up Aconyte, as Stephane said. Aconyte is our fully owned fiction novel publishing imprints, has released more than 40 books in the last 12 months, very strong lineup for the future. 2/3 of those are based on IPs from owned by the group and 1/3 based on partner IPs, like Stephane said, Marvel and some players in the video games industry. Also, they are very excited to start working on some Embracer IPs, but I don't want to run the presentation on the synergies and the discussions with Matt and Randy. But very, very interesting and very cost-efficient way to develop universes, develop characters, bring flesh on the IPs and probably put them on the best path for media development. Because if you look at board game IPs, you have 2 main categories, if I was to oversimplify. You have the IPs where it's the universe, the story, that's storytelling that's extremely strong. And for those, we have a lot of interest from producers to create scripted content, TV shows, animation. Animation is very, very strong right now. TV shows, movies, a lot of projects that have started. Stephane has mentioned Werewolf with Radar Studio from MediaOne and with François Uzan, the script writer of Lupin. Many other opportunities that are in the workings. And also, you have all the games where there might be less storytelling but where the mechanic -- the game mechanic is extremely pure, extremely strong. And those are a fantastic base for unscripted content, so TV game shows, et cetera, that did inspire in the past. And we have many opportunities, many projects in the workings.

Thank you, Thomas. I'm sorry it's dragging a bit over time here, but I just think for all shareholders and especially want to put money into this and that has been shareholders, it's just important for you to understand Asmodee because it will be a very important part of Embracer going forward. So this is an opportunity to understand the business deeper, and then we will go back to work tomorrow again. So I know you can't all stay online, but hopefully, you can listen in later. We will soon have Randy and Matt joining from Embracer -- or Randy from Gearbox and Matt from Saber, and to hear them out. I think you have one more slide here?

Yes, it's one of our growth engines at Asmodee. We grow both organically, as Stephane said, very strong 18% organic growth in the last 5 years. But we also turbocharge our engine with M&A. So we've done more than 40 acquisitions in the last years. What we acquired is several fold, either we acquire to strengthen our IP catalogue and our creative capabilities. So in that case, we buy IPs or we buy studios. Or we want to expand our footprint geographically or strengthen in a location or in a country where we're already present. So we acquired local distribution business units that are run by entrepreneurs on their local markets. And in the more recent years, we have made, as I said, our first interactive acquisition with Board Game Arena and our first e-commerce acquisitions with the Philibert and Miniature Market in the U.S. Obviously, as Stephane said, we operate in a very fragmented industry. We have a lot of third-party partners. And so we have many, many opportunities to welcome additional companies, additional IPs, additional studios within the group in the coming years.

Thanks, Thomas. I think as you said, it's a highly fragmented market. I think today, we have roughly a list of roughly 100 opportunities, out of which today, we have 10 active discussions. So it's obviously, you understand that our business is the right balance between organic growth and external growth. So it's another point in common we have. So I can tell you that as soon as we get back to work, we have some discussion to have on the potential acquisition, and we will continue from Monday to enter into a very, very interesting discussion for new opportunities. Thank you. So now welcoming our friends from America. Are you online?

Yes. Hi, Lars.

Hi, Randy. How are you?

For 3 in the morning, I'm great. It's such an exciting moment. I'm fueled by adrenaline right now. This is a big moment for Asmodee and a big moment for entertainment in general and I'm excited to be a part of it.

And hello, Matt.

It's just now part of the Asmodee group. So there's a lot of reasons why I'm passionate about this. But I think the thing that I'm most excited about is that this partnership with Asmodee and Embracer is going to allow us to build transmedia IP in a way that we have not before. And there's huge amounts of opportunity. You heard over and over and saw evidence from Asmodee, the power of IP. And of course, on the video game side and especially with the gearbox entertainment company, we believe in intellectual property and creating it and cultivating it and growing it is part of why I think I'm genetically built for that, frankly. And so this moment, where we can join together with tabletop Interactive, I think it's going to show that not merely is embraced one of the greatest game companies in the world on the table or on your screen, but also one of the greatest entertainment companies in the world. And I want to note that, of course, the excitement within the Gearbox Entertainment for this acquisition, it cannot be overstated. It's clear that Asmodee is an organization and the leadership group that's passionate about games, passionate about creating entertainment experiences. And from my seat within Gearbox Entertainment, I am eager to partner with Asmodee to increasingly bring its IP to digital and transmedia. And we've already had some very substantive discussions. What happens when we get us together, we'll start for an hour-long meeting and 2 hours go by, and we have no idea where the time went because there's so much opportunity. I'm very excited to partner with Asmodee game makers to bring Gearbox entertainment IP to the tabletop. And then this is going to go in both directions. Fundamentally, I think this moment is very important for the Embracer Group because it signals something that we've known for some time. The Embracer group is not merely a video game company. It is an entertainment company. The Embracer Group is an intellectual property company and to be able to join together with Asmodee, which has grown with a philosophy and a strategy very similar to how Embracers gone forward in the world makes us very compatible. So yes, it looks great for me as a shareholder, it looks great for me as a fan and a customer with our new -- the games of our new partners. But when I think about my own role as an entertainer and what we're trying to build for the future, this is extremely exciting.

Matt?

Well, you know what, Randy has almost let me for the first time with nothing to say because he said everything so well. Look, I'm very excited because a lot of people talk about transmedia, but we're the first that are really putting our money literally where our mouths are. And I just see tremendous opportunity. It's crazy to think that it's been almost 2 years since I signed on the dotted line and at the stage with you, Lars, and tried to make you lap a little bit after we digested numbers for 1.5 hours. But since then, I've been fighting the good fight to bring all of the various groups that we have together to create new products and to cross those lines between the various groups so that we can continue to explore new IP and new opportunities. And this really takes us to an entirely different level. And not only does it bring us a tremendous number of IP, but it brings tremendous opportunity not only for us to bring Asmodee's IP to interact in a way that they haven't fully explored yet, but it also gives us an opportunity to bring our IP over to board gaming, where -- and that's not something that I was terribly thrilled, to be perfectly honest with you. That's -- it's new to me, but it's actually pretty incredible at the size of the audience and the passionate fan base on the board gaming side. And so once again, we're just scratching the surface in terms of what we can do. And I'm just excited to be part of it, and I just can't wait to see the types of synergies that we can forge. I mean some of them are obvious, and some of them are obviously less obvious. But over the coming months and years, we'll be able to explore those, I mean, or as soon as we're allowed to according to the regulators. And we're going to have a good time doing it, for sure.

Thank you. So you made a slide here jointly. And Thomas, why don't you highlight a few things on each thing here.

Well, I think it was already a lot highlighted by Randy and Matt, but there are very immediate synergies between both IP catalogs and the expertise that lie on both sides either for the Embracer studios to bring us some of the IPs to video games or the other way around, for us with the studios to craft experiences in board games for the Embracer IPs. What's very interesting is that I would say that's the first level of synergies, the immediate ones. And then we are very innovative groups. And immediately, when we started discussing about what we can do together, we wanted to put innovative people together and to see how we can go beyond, how we can go beyond in books and entertainment, obviously, but also how can we rethink the gaming experience. Are there experiences that we can invent new IPs that we can create either in hybrid gaming, exploiting the power of AR or VR of all the emerging technologies that are very -- that are coming up now. And also one of the very important points is that, as we said, we have similar, sometimes overlapping communities. And there is tremendous potential in cross-fertilization, in understanding each other's communities in data, in consumer data, in consumer understanding, that we're all very, very excited about. And then lastly, if we look even further ahead, maybe there is a world where we can also invent new location-based experiences. They are very successful groups that have built on entertainment and theme parks. Maybe there's stuff we can explore together.

All right, Thomas. And Matt, Randy, I can only concur to what you just said, I mean, it's -- we just had a quick exchange last week. And just when I was just appreciating all the flow of IPs that we share and so on basically could show the high potential that we have ahead of us with Asmodee having the possibility to join Embracer. And you say it right, I think it goes far beyond, which is a really fantastic kind of having a fantastic video game company and a fantastic board game company joining forces. It goes far beyond that. I think that it is what you call the transmedia, what we call transmedia and entertainment. I think it is something new to the business. It is something unique. I cannot imagine or -- I mean, yes, I do imagine, but I cannot wait to see having our teams together and sharing IPs. I mean you don't know what's going to come up from that. It is going to be huge in terms of IP innovation. It will be then a question for us of prioritization and so on because I can tell you that we're going to have lot of opportunities from the obvious one. But as you said, Thomas, I think that the more we think about it, the more we'll be able to provide new type of experiences because what we're doing is very, very unique.

I think from my side, one of the most important reasons and value creation of this transaction is the cultural alignment and goodwill value that I hope this creates with all our fantastic employees and the industries that people feel that we are created by art, that we really care about the communities, the IPs. And there is alignment within both groups about gaming and to create games. And I hope I'm not wrong, Randy, that there is some passion for board gaming within our games developers within Embracer and Gearbox.

It already exists. One of the big pieces of evidence of that is just in the Gearbox Entertainment Group, our interest in having tabletop game representation for our IP expand the point where my wife started a board game company just so that we can have Borderlands tabletop games. We have Borderlands Tiny Tina's Robot Tea Party already on the market and just launched Bunkers and Badasses, which is a role-playing game. And this is the very beginning of a new board game company, Nirvana Games. We did that on our own because we're trying to find a path. It's the same sort of humble beginnings that our founder friends of Asmodee began 20-plus years ago when they started making tabletop role playing games. And now we're doing it from our group because we feel that synergy already, and we're hunting for it. Now we've just accelerated that by 20 years with this deal.

Thank you. In a matter of time, in the respect of everyone's time, I think we need to move on. But thank you so much for joining from overseas. And sorry for keeping you away.

Very excited to be here. Thank you, everyone. Congratulations, everyone.

Yes. Congrats. And to you in Paris and Stockholm and Karlstad and maybe even in the United States at some point soon.

Good to see you today. Thank you. Okay. To wrap this up, I would like to just highlight the new structure of the group. Asmodee will become, when it's closes, the ninth operating group of Embracer. And combined, we will have more than 100 game development studios, more than 560 IPs across the group, and we will engage more than 11,000 people on a daily basis across the group, all led by Kicki, me and then operationally with Stephane, Randy, Matt and all other fantastic entrepreneurs within the group. And again, you hear Randy and Matt and everyone here. We believe great IPs is valuable across multiple channels. Here's a few examples. I want to bore you to take this examples through this today, but you will see things already under production coming out over the coming year and years. And just to visualize this, now at the center, Embracer, Asmodee, you can see some great examples of video games IPs we do now have and the board gaming IPs now from Asmodee currently on books and media, including a little bit from Koch Media.

That's a fantastic playground.

An amazing playground. I can't wait to see how this looks.

Exactly. We have to dive into that.

So again, Embracer, the ecosystem for entrepreneurs within gaming entertainment with the decentralized philosophy of empowering individuals to create creativity and speed.

If I may, I think one company is missing.

When closing, in respect of the legals of this transaction, I didn't want to put it here.

Of course.

So just to summarize, this marks a transformative step in Embracer strategy within gaming and entertainment, as outlined as the September AGM. It creates one of Europe's largest gaming and entertainment groups and establish an important market-leading position in board game. Again, the opportunity to cross-fertilize IPs and strengthen licensing partnership across gaming categories, the strong foundation for future development of transmedia IPs within all our game development studios, the ability to leverage omnichannel's distribution network to drive synergies across existing and new markets, a proven platform for value-creative M&A across gaming categories complemented by a sizable funnel for future opportunities, shared strong culture fit, again, with a similar integrated model operating across the value chain from IPs through publishing and distribution. And finally, it's enhancing the group's strong financial profile with added diversity, predictability, resilience and immediate accretion to adjusted earnings per share and free cash flow per share. So with that said, I would like to leave at least a few minutes, Oscar, for you to ask some questions.

Thank you for that, Lars, and I'll stand down here. So I have a lot of questions. I might not be able to ask them all. But I would also like to invite the physical audience to ask questions. There's a mic going around for questions. And they have some questions from the web here as well. So I think I'll start with some questions from Stephane and the Asmodee management team. Great presentation. And we saw that it's obviously been a combination here of organic growth and M&A, 2x sales and 3x earnings in the past 3, 4 years. So what is the sort of organic share of the growth in sales, just to break it down a little bit?

I mean -- and we are getting into too much detail. If you were to -- just to give you an example, if you were to look at the Asmodee perimeter in 2018 when we started the relationship with Gaelle, PAI, and we look at where we stand today in terms of revenues, 75% of the growth come from the perimeter that was there at the entry of PAI. 18% organic growth, exactly, year-over-year. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Great. And then a question perhaps for Thomas. You went through the slide with the market growth. All right. Okay. So I mean you went through the slide on the market growth. Obviously, tremendous growth now in the past 2 years. I know that I myself have the number of games actually, more flat, perhaps next year. But what do you see in terms of growth -- underlying market growth in the coming years?

So in -- historically, the market was growing 4% a year. Again, we've been overperforming this growth, so it's a very strong basis on which to grow our business. In the future, the expected growth is 1.5x, so 6% a year, that's expected. So it's really were an industry where the growth is accelerating because the practice of playing board games is really diffusing in the -- in all categories and more and more people play games.

Audience is getting wider. So it's like what happened is the core players, this audience is growing, and they are continuing playing games and they play more and more games. And also their average basket of purchase is increasing also what we've seen. 10% increase in average basket from, let's say, those core gamers. And then we have -- I mean, the wider audience is playing. So as such, effective use Thomas. Projections are 6% growth moving forward.

What's very important is that we are obviously an industry where people buy for themselves, but it's also an industry where gifting is a very big part because when you like a game, you gift it to other people. And when you like a game, you invite people to play. And so we have evangelists that evangelize on the games, hence, are catalogue growing much faster than the market.

And I put or we put in the press release that the management believes there will be organic growth on the profitability at the double-digit level year-over-year in the coming years -- And you feel comfortable about that?

Yes, we do.

And then I mean, related to that market share gains and high growth and earnings margin progression, the digital side. The digital share, I think, from our presentation there were no number on it, but perhaps 6%, 8% currently. What is the focus area and the potential here going forward?

I mean the potential [indiscernible] is huge. So basically, what we think is with -- I mean, today, I mean, when you look at our interactive business, it's very nascent, it's recent for us. I think that we have to separate between basically all the fantastic synergies that we'll be able to do. And now I started to think about licensing out strategy when it comes to our IPs, moving them from physical to digital. And we started to have a lot of discussion with external companies. Now then we have a preferred partner. So I think that we have -- we're going to have access to ...

You will still be obviously -- will do a license. So embrace is just 1% of the gaming industry.

But I'd say it will be our preferred route. So we have a family then so that -- for me, it's...

I don't want to limit our business.

No way for that. No, we won't limit it. And so first of things, so we're going to explore a lot of opportunities. We see -- I mean, we have more and more. I mean, great video game coming to us, wanting to license our IP. What we want to internally focus on is on Board Game Arena. We think it's a huge potential, as Thomas said. This online board gaming platform has already 7 million players. It's a subscription-based platform. So it's -- I mean -- and every week, we have more subscribers than the week before. As you said, already 400 games, -- More to come. They don't have that many games coming from Asmodee because we just put our first gaming account on Board Game Arena some month ago. Same thing. We hope to be able to work with an Andrea to help us develop accelerated development of Portgamearina. Today, it's a web-based tool. We have a lot of ideas to develop it on a web on an app standpoint, be more appealing to the wider audience. So this is basically where we stand. retail.

And curious on that. I mean, Portgamearina, market-leading player. Just to get a sense for it, what are the sort of top 3 games on the platform?

So the top 3 games on the platform are Azul that's owned by Asmodee was released 2 weeks ago, I think. Carcassonne that is established by Hans im Glück in Germany and we're a copublisher in English with Z-Man one of our studios. And the third one is probably 6 Nimmt!, which is a game that's published by Amigo, a German publisher, very fast pace game. So again, in the top, you have a lot of now Asmodee titles, but the more we have from the industry, the better it is for the consumers.

Very interesting with PGA, I mean it's a French company that's created by 2 Persian guys, but if you had to look at the split of where are the players coming from, it's worldwide and market #1 being the U.S. So very interestingly, so you have players from the U.S., from Europe, from South Korea, I mean, super spread. So already super international.

So the steam of board games as [indiscernible] very interesting. And then, I mean, Asmodee 3.0, Gaelle and her team seems to have done a good job. So if we talk about Asmodee 4.0. The U.S. still in focus, I presume, given the lower market share? What is the plan in the U.S.?

So you're right. Asmodee 4.0 is, in fact -- I mean, continuing strengthening the core, so the board game platform, continuing strengthening in the U.S., you're right. Today, in the U.S., we -- I think we are between 7% to 8% market share. As Marc explained, the first thing we did in the U.S., just to understand, in '20 -- I mean 8 years ago, our revenue in the U.S. was approximately EUR 10 million, EUR 15 million. Today, we are reaching out to the EUR 170 million. So it's already a big journey. The U.S. is, for sure, a very big country as it is. So we had to take -- we wanted to take our time. First of all, as Marc explained, we wanted to be the leading player on the -- what we call the hobby market. This is where we have all the independent shops. And because this is -- basically, we have this disposition in Europe. So we wanted first to build the stronger go-to-market layer. The U.S. normally is addressed by wholesalers. What we decided to do 3 years ago was to go direct, i.e., it means that we had to build our infrastructure internally. So we did recruit, I think, like 80 salespeople to get in touch with the local retailer. We invested in warehouses with it in a system, enabling us to go direct. And this is enabling us, as you mentioned, Marc, to double our business in the hobby. So now what we've done over the last years in the U.S., we can say that we are the leading player on the hobby market worldwide. But then as obviously, Thomas shown, we have what we call fantastic potential brands, what we call the pillar brands that are big IPs that are much more appealing to the wide audience. And in order to move forward in the U.S., we are now going to accelerate our development in the broader retail networks, obviously, the mass market, where we have a very strong presence, but now we want to get more closer, we want to become a strategic partner to the big retail networks, pushing our brands. We know that games such as Catan, Ticket to ride, Poly in the U.S. that are already well known. As we've seen, we have a rate of awareness, which is quite low compared to competition. So what we have been made is to put in place a very strong marketing approach, and we have developed a project which is called On box Now. That you will see in the coming months in the shops, how I mean, they want to build this kind of lifestyle around our IPs and pillar brands. That's going to help us develop big time in mass-market. So there's going to be a per short of Asmodee 4.0.

Great. I mean talking about market share and mass market, you're #2 globally totally. So who is the #1? Is it one of the large toy companies? Or is it game folk shops?

On the Game segment, the #1 player is Hasbro. They are fantastic IPs. We all know them, we all play them. So we've played monopoly. We all play Magic of course without the cost, so fantastic but -- and I think we will to be #2 behind Hasbro.

Okay. Understood. And then moving on here. What do you see from your side in terms of the main synergies apart from IPs which we discussed. Do you see any point of, for example, taking manufacturing in-house or is retail an important step? What you see?

So we have a lot of ways to see the synergies. We need to think about it and we need to take our time. But there is different ways. So retail is interesting, okay? As we mentioned, we move to direct-to-consumer throughout our e-commerce development. We want to be closer to consumers. We love the idea of testing things. We want to be closer to retail. So a lot of options, but a it's a bit early in the business plan that we should own retail.

What I understand is only e-commerce, perhaps not physical retail.

Yes, understood.

If you have the question, it's not in a business plan, for sure. So the idea is that we...

We wan to work with retail and support retail.

Of course, of course, of course. But we are very close to retail. We are doing a lot of activities with them. We have developed a very strong program for the hobby shops called Hobby Next which is a program whereby we do a company, selected retail shops because as I said, I mean we -- the more people play our games, the better they be promoted, the better will be the people will know them. So -- and in order to do that, we've always wanted to be closer to retail. So moving forward, we'll continue to stay super close to retail. And we will also move to an innovative way for us of being a little bit more direct using e-commerce activity and so on.

Great. And then just 2 final questions from me before handing over to potential questions from here on the web. The first question, just to get a sense for the revenue and earnings contribution the largest sort of 1 to 3 studios, how much of the revenue do they represent? Is it fancy flights, FFG or Catan, for example, are the big...

So if I may, I will maybe much more talk about the IPs for you to understand at more than studios. But in fact, our biggest IP represents 5% of the turnover. So we are very spread. We are very spread. I think that our top 20 IPs will present less than 20% of the businesses. So very spread. So a lot of room to grow. That's also linked to the rate of awareness. So I think that our biggest IP in terms of turnover will be Ticket to ride, followed by Catan, followed by Spot It!/Dobble because Spot It! and Dobble is the same game Spot It! name in the U.S. and Dobble in Europe. Those are the top 3 games.

Great. And then also Transmedia, I mean early stages it seems. What is your role as you foresee it here in terms of your role in the value chain in TV and movies, for example? Is it pure IP licensing that you see or anything else?

So far, we don't expect to become a producer. What we have is a very fantastic producing companies that are -- with whom we have entered into discussion and partnerships. Our role is to provide, I mean, content. In reality, when I said basically, you know that we have -- if you remember, our flywheel and our organization at [indiscernible]. Over the years, we've just realized that we are moving from being a game developer to becoming a content. So as such, our ambition is to be able to provide content to the media industry because we see more and more appeal for the type of content we have because, as Thomas said, we have a lot of immersive stories from our IPs. So, so far, we're very happy to enter into relationships. We've produced a media company that will take our IPs, have the same belief that we have and help us, I mean, bring them to new platforms with the will for us to provide our fans with new type of experiences with the [indiscernible], but also bring new players into our playgrounds which is our board game platform.

Understood. Very good, very good. And then do we have any questions from the audience here in the room? No. All right. So I'll take a few questions from the audience -- from the web I mean. Do we have time for that?

Yes. Let's try to finish off here in 5 or 10 minutes.

Great. That sounds like a plan. So I mean, starting here with a question from Nick Dempsey. And I think this is for primarily us. One possibility for revenue synergies between the 2 businesses is that Embracer studios could create video games based on Asmodee Board game IP, but all of the studios are working harder on plans to achieve their own targets. Is there room basically to start new side projects as you see it within Embracer for this purpose?

There is always -- as stated, there is -- the most valuable assets I have and we have is time. And there is always an alternative cost for time and resources. So there needs to be a competition for what you do, what I do, what Stephane do and what our games developer does. But how do you allocate those that time? You do that on projects you believe in, that you're passionate about, that makes financial sense, and there is a strong alignment for. So I expect any game development studio, whether it's Randy's fantastic people or Matt or that they are able to allocate and balance their resources. So any projects coming out from the Embracer side makes sense in the competition of our own IPs and licenses. And the same for board games. If we come with a action game, it might not make sense to make a board game. And then Marc will say no way, this is not commercially viable.

We need to do what makes sense for the market, the consumers.

I think the frictionless environment in a way within Embracer, the long-term mindset and the shared alignment on equity and that we are in the overall same group, we'll take down the boundaries of making things happen. I think that's critical to understand. Because normally, you have this licensing negotiations with big corporates. And now we start with the legal and then there is a limited time period. There is competition, you can't do that, you can't do that. You can't do that with that burn or figure. So I think this -- we are in the same boat. And looking a decade ahead, this will make an enormous difference. Looking 2 years ahead, not much.

Great. That's very clear. We -- I know that we have a lot of questions on Star Wars games, Star Wars sport games, but I think I'll not take them for now. But then a question here from Tom Singlehurst with Citi. Could you talk about how much revenue for tabletop gaming recurring in nature if someone buys say, Pandemic? How does the relationship evolve over time? Do players rebuy the existing game at some point? If you could discuss that.

It's a great question.

It's a great question. So there are several answers to this question. One given player that starts discovering, I would say, an IP, whether it be Pandemic, whether it be Ticket to ride, et cetera. Obviously, they start with the base game that they discovered either in the shop or in the recommendations of a friend. And then 2 things happen. First, when the game is good, and that's one of the main criteria that Marc and his team have is replayability. So first, they can continue play, play, play. Then if they want to enhance the experience, there are expansions, it's ways of complexifying the game, its ways of expanding the experience. You might have other stand-alone games with various levels of complexity. If you take Ticket to ride, for instance, you have cities versions for 2 players. You have had versions for kids, for instance, to play with your children. And then lastly, it's one of the very important points I was making on our industry is that it's also a gifting industry is that not only do you buy for yourself and do you buy more products for yourself to diversify your library of games but also you start gifting the games you like and you also start asking around what other games you can play if you like these ones. And that's where the hobby market is extremely important is that when you go into a shop within 3 or 4 questions, the shop owner can pinpoint you exactly to the game that you will take home and that you will like, for sure.

And that's why the program that we're putting, as I mentioned Hobby Next in super put up with the hobby shop because it's basically what's going to happen. You go to your shops, you're going to ask for advice, you say, okay, I just play Pandemic. I like this kind of cooperative game. What else can I play? In terms of the arcade, maybe you want to test something different from a cooperative. So why don't you play this kind of strategic game, resource game? Why don't you play Catan also? So it's a lot of way to interact. So that's one of the reason why -- wherever you enter into the board game landscape, if you like to play, if you like to socialize, if you like to share emotion, as I say, it's very, very hard to exit this landscape.

And I forgot to mention also for a limited number of players, but that like competitive play. Obviously, you do have tournaments. And with tools like Board game arena, if you don't have friends at hand, you can also play online. So it's very complementary and it's a highly complementary experience between playing around the table with friends and between playing online with people.

If you look at your IP, it's a growing revenue year-over-year. So I think that -- financially, it's important to understand.

That's very important.

Let's go, I think we need to round up. Do you have any important questions?

Yes. I think 2 important questions. It's one for the team, the new family and one for the family leader, the old family leader. So...

I think the project is highly exciting as we've been discussing for the last 2 hours. So for us, we love our portfolio company. We want them to strive after we've left. If I give you an example, we were the owners of Christian Hansen many years ago, I think the company is striving on the stock market, and that makes us super proud, and that's what we want. Because remember that we are always making new investments, and we want people to understand that we are ambitious investors but with us, they're going to have a great journey. So this is all about our reputation and bringing companies, as I mentioned at the beginning, to be better companies and companies that will continue to strive after we exit. So we always write stories that are not 5-year stories or 3-year stories. The story we wrote with the team was a 15-year story, and we have to live after some years, but the story continues. And all the strategy we've laid and we discussed that we've put a lot of resources into the business. We put new people, a lot of new people have come on board. And I think this is an investment we made and this is an investment for the future. So we really have to understand this. And why we decided to sell, I think this company needs to take another step. As you heard, the journey has been fantastic. And now I think the support of the long-term shareholders is something that is great. We've talked about the synergies. That couldn't happen under our ownership, and we are fully aware of this. So I think it's the time to let go and make sure the company continues to grow.

Do I have any competition in the process, Gaelle?

Of course, there was competition, as we mentioned. The financial trajectory is impressive. The cash flow is great. So obviously, a lot of financial investors, people like me, where I was very excited in 2018 to buy the company. And I had a lot of competition at the time. There was a lot of competition this time. I think Lars and his team were super efficient and well done on that. So super fast, they delivered faster than others. And at the end of the day, the great project, the fact that they were able to put a bid on the table super quickly and deliver on it because after you put a bid, you have to go for all the legal, et cetera, I think it was critical for them to win. And we're very happy about the result and that we were able to do this in a quite short time frame. That's efficient. For me, it's great because, again, we don't want the company to be stuck in the sale process for 6 months. They need to move on. They need to continue creating great board games and selling them. And the fact that we had a short process, I think, is the best for the company as well.

Just to add up what you said, obviously, for us for Marc and myself. It's about a project. The reason why we -- you're right, is highly competitive. We -- I mean we have the chance of been running a fantastic company. But you don't have that many fantastic product that you can share if somebody such as Lars I think that we have so many similarities. The more I was exchanging with Lars, the more it becomes from obvious. That could be that with you and the team that we'll be willing to move forward. So super happy that, as Gaelle said, you put the right bid, the right moment. You've been super agile to execute, well done. And we really look forward to be joining the family because the project is fantastic. And we're long-term people. So we love to register ourselves in the long term, and it is just the start of the journey. So it's a big change for us. It's a big change. That's been a big decision for Marc and myself. So -- it's a -- exactly, we are sizable shareholders. So in life, you have to take decisions. So that's today the right decision for the business, our people, the future. And...

I wanted to say that this is really a people's business. The assets are the people and the IPs, of course, but the IPs are created by people. And that's why from the beginning, the fact that from a personal perspective, we could get along super well with Lars and we had the same culture is very important because at the end of the day, I think the people of Asmodee and the people of Embracer need to belong in the same group and need to feel that they belong to the same group with the same culture. And that's been the starting point, I think, of the journey where we thought Embracer could be a great one. Then we had to go through all the specifics of the deal, of course. But from the beginning, we could sense that there was a human fit that was very important.

Perfect. And then finally, Lars, just a short answer as you want. But I mean you're paying quite some multiples, I mean, similar to previous sort of games company multiples above 10x earnings. What do you see ahead in terms of the M&A mix here? And also, have you funded -- yes, I'll stop there.

The M&A mix within Asmodee or within Embracer?

Within Embracer.

Well obviously, I've been talking all year I've been working on a few other deals that have been taking a lot of time that has not occurred at least not yet. So I just relieved that we are finally able to bring a fantastic company that, I think, strengthened overall group. Again, time is the limited resource. You will see more M&A coming out. Again, we have a little bit of debt, but again, there is a very cash flow generated company. So I feel much more comfortable with that debt and the situation. On the M&A side, there is a lot of activity. And let's see if there is anything else coming under the Christmas tree or if we had something for the new year. But for sure, we will have M&A coming in.

Fantastic. I will be waiting by the Christmas week. Thank you, everyone, for listening in and joining here today. Thank you to the Asmodee management team. Thank you to Randy and Mr. Carville. Thank you to you as well..

Thank you, Oscar.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you for listening.

Thank you.