Bally's Intralot S.A. (BYLOT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Vassilios, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Intralot conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the first quarter 2025 financial results. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Nikolaos Nikolakopoulos, Group CEO of Intralot. Mr. Nikolaos Nikolakopoulos, you may now proceed.

Thank you. Welcome, everyone. A small introduction from my side. In general, overall, we had a good start of the year. Even though we experienced an absence of Jackpot, both in Powerball and Mega Millions in the first quarter in the United States. We had -- which had an impact versus last year in our numbers. This was counterbalanced by better performance in the rest of the world and especially, as Andreas Chrysos is going to explain, in Turkey, Argentina and Croatia. This resulted in a steady EBITDA and the solid cash flow generation. And we experienced the same trends until -- also in the next couple of months for the second quarter. I will give now the floor to Andreas and then happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Nikos. Good afternoon to everyone. The first quarter of the year presented growth in revenues and a stable performance in terms of EBITDA, as also Nikos mentioned already, versus a year ago. At the same time, the first quarter was also characterized by strong operating, but also free cash flow generation supported to a large extent from a strongly positive working capital. Operating cash flow for the period was approximately EUR 49 million, almost EUR 22 million higher versus the respective period of last year. Cash balance at the end of the quarter stood at EUR 76 million, which was EUR 11.5 million higher versus 2024 year-end. While at the same period the group repaid almost EUR 13 million in loan amortizations in the U.S. term loan and the Greek syndicated loan. During the same period, Intralot satisfied one [ of the ] obligations to restrict 1 additional coupon payment of EUR 3.9 million as per its retail bond requirements. Adjusting free cash flow generation for these 2 elements, it stood at around EUR 28.5 million. So summarizing all the above, adjusted net debt for the first quarter landed at EUR 316.5 million improved by around EUR 40 million versus 2024 year-end closing, reflected also on the improved adjusted net leverage ratio versus year-end. And after this small introduction, we are now moving to the first quarter of 2025 financial presentation, which you may have in front of you. So going directly to Page #5. We see the revenue analysis per business activity. The first quarter's performance in all types of activity versus last year was better. Our game management contract activity line, including our business in Turkey, performed better by EUR 4.2 million year-over-year, supported by a 61% local growth of online sports betting market despite the 14.8% devaluation of the Turkish lira. Licensed operations in Argentina were higher by EUR 4.1 million year-over-year with improved macroeconomic conditions supporting market growth. In local currency terms, the results for the first -- for the current period posted an increase of 1.6% compared to the same period of last year. On the technology activity line, the first quarter was largely supported by the strong performance in Argentina, upward sales trajectory in Croatia and organic growth in Oceania. On the contrary, as also Nikos mentioned previously, the performance in the U.S. has been impacted by the lower activity of multistate jackpots. Turning to Page #6. We have the overall P&L performance for the first quarter of 2025 compared to a year ago. Revenue was higher by 10.9% for the reasons analyzed above and also the same trend for the gross gaming revenue line. Gross profit line, slightly lower and EBITDA at equal levels versus a year ago. This was due to the fact that the growth came from jurisdictions with lower margins income if compared against last year's average, such as Argentina and Turkey, which margins, however, stands well above 30%. Earnings before tax in the first quarter of 2025 amounted to EUR 3.6 million compared to EUR 5.4 million in the first quarter of 2024 with a negative variance coming from the loss due to hyperinflation indexation and the higher -- slightly higher depreciation. The decrease was in part mitigated by the benefit from lower interest expense and the nonrecurrence of reorganization costs within the current period examined. Turning to Page 7. The upper 2 graphs have already been analyzed in the previous slides. On the bottom left graph, operating cash flow was higher by EUR 22 million. mainly due to the strongly positive working capital movement. CapEx at almost equal levels year-over-year. And on the bottom right of the slide, we see that the net debt and leverage ratio, adjusted for the restricted cash referring to debt servicing and repayments was, as already mentioned, EUR 316 million and 2.4x, respectively, for the first quarter of 2025, better by around EUR 40 million and 0.3x, respectively. Turning to Page #8. We see the adjusted net debt movement bridge from December 2024 through March 2025. Adjusted net debt as of the end of March stood at EUR 316.5 million, reflecting a reduction of EUR 39.2 million, while adjusted net leverage ratio improved to 2.4x from 2.7x at year-end 2024, underscoring the company's enhanced credit profile. The solid financial performance in the first quarter is also evidenced by the generation of EUR 38.4 million in free cash flow, while principal repayments on its funded debt totaled EUR 12.9 million and net interest payments of EUR 10 million were settled during the examined period. Furthermore, our other debt movements amounted to EUR 10.8 million and are primarily attributable to favorable foreign exchange effects on our U.S. denominated -- U.S. dollar-denominated debt. Lastly, moving to Page #9. We see the contributions per region to our revenues and EBITDA. North America, stable in terms of revenues and EUR 2.3 million lower in EBITDA. The lack of multistate jackpots kept revenues at equal levels year-over-year, while some increased costs primarily attributed to inflationary pressures led to the lower EBITDA. Recorded better performance, however, in all other jurisdictions, as mentioned already previously, counterbalanced fully this deficit in the U.S. And with this final comment on the contributors, the presentation of the results for the first quarter of 2025 is finished, and the Intralot executive team is at your disposal for any questions you may have. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Chinchilla, Ricardo with Deutsche Bank.

I was hoping if you could start with some color on potential uses of capital? Is the company looking to do any asset transaction, acquisition? Is there something that you could comment on that front.

Yes. For the time being, we are focused on executing our plan in the operation. We are going to deploy some CapEx, for example, in the projects that we are going to -- we have already renewed and we are going to renew in the next 2, 3 months, such as New Hampshire or New Zealand. And other than that, as Andreas also explained, we are focusing on deleveraging -- generating cash and deleveraging. So for the time being, there is nothing that we think we can share on any acquisition based on this capital.

Perfect. With regards to your refinancing strategy, you guys were successful in pushing the maturity of the bond by 1 year. So now it matures in 2026. Is the company considering a broader refinance of the whole structure or perhaps pushing the maturities a little bit longer to have a better maturity profile? Or how you guys are thinking about approaching that refinance?

Yes. As we have said before, we are looking into various options to reunify the capital structure. So definitely, we will be coming back with some views and announcements when these plans finalize in order to refinance the existing debt that's matured.

Last one for me is on your outlook. During the last quarter's call, you guys provided a very interesting color on your expectations for the rest of the year. Given the stable first quarter performance, has anything changed? Or has any of the recent events that we see on the macro area has changed your view with regards to the potential performance for the balance of the year?

No, nothing has changed. We remain focused on executing our plan and positive on this year as well.

The next question comes from the line of Pointon, Russell with Edison Group.

A couple of questions. I'll do them individually. In terms of North America, you touched on this in your comments, Andreas, about revenue was slightly down, but the EBITDA was down quite a bit more. You talked about inflationary pressures. Could you just talk about what those cost pressures are? Is it just staff costs, that kind of thing?

As we have stated, the main issue in the U.S. is that even though the revenue year-on-year was, give or take, the same, we had no significant jackpot in the first quarter. And practically, we managed to compensate this revenue by selling equipment and selling different types of solutions to our installed base. The issue there is that since the infrastructure is already in place for our customers, every revenue -- all the revenue that we are generating through the jackpots practically goes directly to EBITDA, where the other revenue that we had in order to compensate had also some costs. So therefore, that was the pressure regarding the issue that revenue was, give or take, the same in the first quarter in the U.S., but EBITDA was lower. But we do believe that this is a seasonality issue. And that's in some other years, we have experienced 2 or 3 major jackpots within the year. We believe that sooner or later statistically this is going also to normalize. So something will come, and we are going to compensate the loss revenue and EBITDA from the first quarter. Still, as I said in the first 5 months, there is no major jackpot. The change in Mega Millions which practically increased the [ calling ] price has boosted a little bit -- give a boost to the product, but there is in no way this -- the absence of jackpot can be counterbalance of that. So all in all, this is the case. And again, this is statistic. So we believe that at some point, this is going to be normalized again.

Okay. And my second question is a similar question for the rest of the world, where actually the increase in revenue was -- it was the same amount as the EBITDA. So you've effectively had a 100% drop-through on the incremental revenue. So could you just give some insight into what were the cost drivers there? Because it looks as though there was no incremental cost for that incremental revenue.

Russell, I said already that the growth in the top line came from jurisdictions with lower margin, for instance, we experienced an important growth in Salta, Argentina. This is a licensed operation, which has a lower margin, I mean physically, it's the type of business that has a lower margin compared to the average margin of the group. In Turkey as well, the same, slightly lower. So this is -- it's not that we experienced increased costs. It's the mix of the jurisdictions from which the growth came year-over-year that led to this to this final performance of an increased revenue and a stable EBITDA.

My final question is on Argentina. I mean you have said it's -- the macro environment is helping growth. Could you just talk a bit more about that in terms of number of customers spend and what you're having to do from a cost perspective, do you actually need to be promoting that growth?

Results in Argentina, in the majority with the exception of Salta, which is a small part of Argentina, the rest of it, the 11 states that we are present, we provide the technology, and we are taking a part of the revenue. So we have a revenue share in Argentina with the states. So the -- we are not doing anything as Intralot in order -- for Tecno Accion in to acquire customers and to do the acquisition, retention and total marketing because the states are doing that, but we are getting benefit from the improved macro environment with practically the players, at least in the last month seems to be willing to spend more. So I think we have -- we're on the way, and we are trying to take advantage of that. And obviously, we are also doing all the modernization and providing also the new tools to the state lotteries in order to better execute.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments.

No further comments from our side. Thank you very much for joining, and we'll see you for the results of the first half. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good evening.