Betmakers Technology Group Ltd (BET) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us for the Betmakers' FY '24 Full Year Results Presentation. Thank you, everyone, for making the time. I'm delighted here to have Betmakers' management, Exec Chair, Matt Davey; CEO, Jake Henson; and newly appointed CFO, Carl Henschke. The guys will walk through the presentation that was lodged on the ASX earlier this morning. At the end, we will be taking some Q&A. [Operator Instructions] So without further ado, I'll hand over to you, Matt. Welcome.

Thanks, Eric. Yes. So it's a pleasure to be here today in front of all of our shareholders and we're looking forward to walking you through the results we've achieved over the last 12 months, the full year '24 results. Go to the next slide, Eric. So Betmakers is an internationally scaled B2B provider of technology solutions for the racing-led industry where we focus on tote and fixed odds wagering around racing. And the business has evolved over the last 8 years to have a range of different products and services and features and we will continue to grow those. But our core market is wagering operators around the world and the other stakeholders that make up the ecosystem for racing and wagering worldwide. Let's go to the next slide. So the results for the last 12 months included a couple of important points here. One, we actually delivered about $95.2 million of revenue at the top line. We are showing you $88.8 million here. This is a re-based number to focus our shareholders on the company's actual revenues going forward after the exit of betr, which has been well publicized. In particular, here, though, the couple of key points I wanted to touch on. One, operating expenses down 26% from the last financial year and this has had a dramatic improvement in terms of how efficiently we run the business to improve a number of activities through the deck and also what we plan going forward. The other aspect of the business is 97% of our revenues are contracted. This is not a highly volatile revenue line. This is a very strong and stable revenue line that we've built for the business going forward. The combination of this top line revenue and the improved operating expenses has delivered a 74% improvement in our adjusted EBITDA for a loss of $7.2 million for the full year. So those are the key points. But we really want to talk you through what we've done for the business up to now and where we're taking it going forward. So Eric, if you can go to the next slide. So I just wanted to step back and pull the aperture back to take a look at where the company has come from. When I first invested and became a shareholder back in 2019, over the last 5 years or so, the company has scaled its revenues greater than 10x over that period. During that time, there have been a number of bold bets taken by the business and it's delivered a company that, I think, has a wonderful set of assets on a truly international platform with a very exciting future. But during that time, there's, obviously, significant amount of digestion that we needed to go through. And we're framing that as effectively the turnaround phase here, as you can see on the left-hand side. It's important to stabilize our revenues, but also really address a couple of key things. One, the company entered into a number of long-term content type contracts that impacted gross margin. The team worked very hard to restructure those contracts and you're starting to see those benefits get delivered in an improved gross margin. Second, the cost of goods sold in our operating expenses were certainly too high for a business of our size. And the company has done an incredible job now of reducing those operating costs. And you can see that dramatic improvement in our operating expenses, as Carl will be able to walk you through going forward. So over the next 12 to 24 months, we're calling this the transformation phase. The key here is, restructure those gross margin costs that impact the gross margin, make certain that we have the right kind of disciplined operating expense base underneath the business and then set ourselves up to really grow in the areas that we want to. So this is a disciplined growth where we're focusing on high-margin contracts that will drive good top line growth. We're targeting greater than 10%, but also allow our gross margin to be greater than 75% and deliver over the next 2, 3, 4 years an EBITDA margin of greater than 25%. This is where I'd like to see the business get to. This is often known as the Rule of 40 and we think that's exactly what Betmakers can be targeting. And we feel very comfortable over the next couple of years, we'll be able to deliver that to our shareholders. So with that, let me hand over to Jake to walk you through the actual operations of the business, and all yours, Jake.

Thanks, Matt, and thanks to all the shareholders tuning in either on the live or the recorded version of the webinar. FY '24 was a transition year for the business, as touched on. We've been able to decrease our staff and our office count, whilst actually growing our racing partners around the world. 66% of our revenue is now derived from international racing partners and our top 10 customers represent 27% of our revenue. I think this speaks to our diverse and global base of customers. And certainly, the position we're in now, we're a scale B2B business that has a leaner operating base and a model that we're comfortable to move forward with. And as Matt said, we're going to target that double-digit growth. Eric, if you could just roll to the next slide. As part of this transition, we simplified the business down to 2 clear divisions. And with that, we've ended up with 2 product suites that have a clear customer base and then an enablement division or piece within the middle that we see is a crucial link to the overlap of both those products. So starting with GBS. These are digital customers operating online in established markets, such as Entain, Flutter, Evoke, where they take data and pricing services. The model for this we'll go into in the next slide. But certainly, this is a high-growth business at its core. In the sense that the digitization of racing and wagering globally is certainly still occurring and we see significant growth into new markets that we'll touch on in the slides to follow. On the other side, we have our Global Tote division. So more than 70% of the world's racing bets are pool or pari-mutuel wagering bets. And this is covering all regulated racing wagering. So I think from our perspective, we see it as our sleeping giant. And there's certainly some great deals that have gone out into the market over the last few months, covering off what we're doing in this space. And we've got a global base of customers, which is actually really important to our strategy around the tote. The commingling and the connectivity of pari-mutuel services is where we see the future and where we can deliver substantial value. So we've called out there, obviously, our tote hosting, our tote engine, the tote pooling and interface management and some of our larger customers globally, such as the UK Tote Group, Chile and Norway Rikstoto that we have included a case study of at the back of the deck for anyone that wants to read through in some more detail. The next slide, thanks, Eric. This is an important slide for shareholders to know. And certainly, there is a lot of information here. But we did want to get it down on paper because I think it paints an overall simple picture of what we've built with our Next Gen GBS transformation and from the ground up has been our approach here from the outset. And what I mean by that is our platform, both the embedded and the full turnkey at the top of the pyramid is powered by all the inputs at the bottom of the pyramid. So we've undergone a project to rebuild a lot of these key inputs at the bottom of the pyramid, such as Price Manager and DeltaFusor and our CoreAPI and that, in turn, is powering the products as we go up the funnel. And our final delivery point for a new suite of product here is the new platform, UI launch, which is slated for October. So it's been a big lift, but what we're left with is a digital product set that is brand new. It is -- has an existing customer base and then, obviously, a clear path for growth for new customers. And importantly, it's a business that we can operate on a much cleaner and leaner cost base, which was certainly one of the things that held this division back in the past and something that we've worked hard to restructure and ensure that we've had a strong base to grow from moving forward. So on the left-hand side, here, you can note we actually called out a potential target customer and the profile of that customer for each of the product suites as we go up the pyramid, including the typical revenue model you could expect if a customer interacts with one or more of those products. Obviously, for us, the utopia is to have someone that takes the full pyramid, be that a sportsbook operator or a tote operator that can interact with everything from our form to our data services, to the software, all the way through to the bet placement and throughput. We've done the same for Global Tote. Eric, so if you could cut over to the second slide, that would be fantastic. And on the tote side, we have an established business where all of the pyramid is currently live in a deployed state with existing customer bases. So again, we've called out the type of customer you can expect to interact with each of those products and the general revenue model we apply. As touched on with tote wagering still representing more than 70% of regulated racing wagering globally, we see it as a key focus area for us and certainly unique differentiator in the marketplace. And we'll use our enablement divisions and products such as the embedded racebook to be able to bridge the gap between digital operators and tote services. But important to note here, all products are live and into the market. We see this as an established division. And importantly, as Carl will touch on in his update, the business grew nicely over the last corresponding financial year. Finally, before we get into the financial update, we wanted to call out some of the industry drivers and I guess these are also trends in many respects as well. I think from a business standpoint, we are using these trends and drivers to underpin and guide our product road map, ensuring that the products we build in simple terms, we can build once and sell many off. And there's a lot of tailwinds in this space that should help our products nicely. So I think the overall theme is certainly the digitization of wagering more generally and still so much of wagering is occurring in bricks-and-mortar and point-of-sale type environments. And we've been building services that can help the transition of that into the digital age and obviously for us, as service providers, to incentivize our partners to take those products. So things like the embedded racebook and the managed services are the perfect products for markets where the knowledge base around racing isn't as great as in the U.K. or Australia, for example. But the demand for a product that's always on and covering 300,000-plus races per year is certainly there. There's also emerging and new markets. I think Brazil is a great example of this where 5 years ago it wasn't on the radar for any regulated business around the world. And now it's certainly the fastest-growing and one of the most exciting markets in the world. And it's popped up out of nowhere with 300 million people now incredibly active and some of the largest regulator plays in the world trying to get into that space. So we see a lot of instances of Brazil-like situations popping up where racing is a product that will be needed by the sportsbooks, but it's not something where the expertise lie within the current team. So the products we're trying to build are those that can sit within those environments and obviously solve a problem for the operator. On the right-hand side, we've called out some of the Betmakers' products and services that fit against the customer need in the middle of the screen or the industry trend. And I think in communications to come with the market, we'll break this out a little bit further and start to provide examples of how those products actually look and fit within a sportsbook or i-gaming or an on-track racing partner. So I think that's it from me. And certainly, a warm welcome to Carl Henschke, our new CFO, who joined the business recently. So over to Carl.

Thanks, Jake, and good to be in front of you all, I think, probably just a couple of opening comments from me. I think we want to -- throughout FY '25, we want to sort of continuously improve the financial information that we provide to investors. I think, in particular, we came to give investors a better understanding of, I guess, both our revenue composition and our margin profile, particularly given -- well, firstly, probably there's less moving parts than there has been historically. And secondly, some of the initiatives that we're hoping to implement this year and see improvements in margin in particular. So with that, we've put some further detail down here in terms of, I guess, our revenue model, our revenue composition, a few important points to make. The first one being that our revenues are 97% supported by contracted revenues at the beginning of the year. So for FY '24, 97% of revenues came from contracts with customers that were in place at the beginning of the year. That gives us a very good understanding of our customer base. It's a recurring style nature of revenue. I think the other point about our customer base is that it's diverse, it reflects our global business. Our top 10 customers only make up 27% of our revenue in FY '24. And no customer had revenue greater than 5%. So we're very happy with that. And I guess for the first time we've disclosed a little bit more about our revenue model. We have a mixed revenue model comprised of fixed fees of 37% of our revenue in FY '24 and variable fees based on turnover or revenue share or similar arrangements, comprising 63% of our revenue. That mix gives us an opportunity to participate in the upside that's generated by our products. On to the next slide, please, guys. This is just a breakdown of our revenue for FY '24. As mentioned previously, revenue was flat at the group level. There was some underlying growth. We either renewed or contracted new contracts with 29 operators during the year. However, this was effectively masked or offset by, I guess, one, the loss of betr contracts, but more generally the poorer performance in Australian platforms division, which we flagged, particularly in the second half of the year. As mentioned at the outset by Matt, that means that our revenue will be re-based moving into FY '25 and we'd expect that our -- I guess, our opening revenue base will be lower than the FY '24 exit number. From a divisional perspective, Global Tote was solid. It's 58% of revenue. It was up 3%. We continue to work on initiatives to accelerate that growth. There's one example there, the Norway tote [Technical Difficulty], which is very important to us. A 10-year contract. We're going live in the first half. GBS, 42% of revenue was weaker. It was down 3%. It was impacted by the Australian platforms division and the loss of the betr contract. We've actually given a breakdown of the GBS revenues between Australian platform and the other revenues we received, which are domestic recurring fees and revenues from international customers so that investors can get, I guess, a better understanding of the impact of that softer Australian platforms trading. And we've also posted the geographical split. Obviously, international markets are very important for us. 66% of our revenue in FY '24 came from international markets. This slide here, we're very proud of. I think a 74% improvement in adjusted EBITDA is fantastic. We've sort of given a bit of a walk of that on the right. It proves that the restructure that's been announced previously is delivering, the business is much more efficient, the business is much leaner. We would expect that to lead to improved operating leverage in future periods. The key driver of that is the reduction in operating expenses down to $65.3 million. That does include capitalized staff costs of $6.3 million in FY '24. There were no capitalized staff costs in FY '23. This remains an absolute focus for us. We continue to look for further efficiency gains and to improve margins throughout the year. Just a bit more of a deep dive into operating expenses, so you can get an understanding of what's driving that. Obviously, staff cost was a big mover down. Overall, operating expenses were down 26%, staff costs were down 29%. Overheads were reduced by $3.9 million or 16%. And as mentioned, I guess, the benefit of these reductions throughout the year, plus further reductions in FY '25 has further reduced these costs. Just in terms of the P&L, really a bit of a summary of what we've spoken about, but I'll highlight a few key points. Obviously, revenue was flat at $95.2 million, ex-betr revenue was $88.8 million. That's a better representation of our pro forma carry-forward revenue. Gross margin, despite the flat revenue, was actually down 2%. This is really the impact of weaker than we'd like gross margin in the Australian platforms business. Jake and Matt both spoke about the delivery of Next Gen, that's expected to go live in Q1 FY '25 and we're expecting good improvements in gross margin for the Australian platforms division from Next Gen which will set us up well for gross margin improvements in FY '25. Our -- I guess, adjusted EBITDA is our preferred measure of profitability. It's, I think, what a lot of the other B2B technology companies on the ASX use in terms of measuring their performance. Our adjusted EBITDA margins are now approaching profitability. Strong movement from negative 29% in FY '23 to negative 8% in FY '24. And you can see it in our EBITDA loss as well that reduced from $41 million loss to $5 million loss. As I mentioned previously, operating leverage is a big focus for us. The combination of reduction in costs, along with our expectations for improving gross margins, meaning that we're anticipating much better operating leverage moving forward, which means that we keep a much higher percentage of every dollar of revenue that we make. You'll note the NPAT result is impacted by a large movement in the income tax expense and that's largely driven by a reduction in the DTA balance by $20.1 million, which I'll talk a bit more about in a second on the balance sheet. So just in terms of balance sheet, we closed the year with $14.8 million in unrestricted cash, with $29 million in -- $29.3 million in total cash. The main difference being restricted cash, which is our player funds. We spent $3 million during the year on acquisitions, both for the acquisition of RACELAB and offer an earn-out payment in relation to Punting Form. [Technical Difficulty], we've reduced the DTA balance from $34 million to $13.9 million, which is that $20.1 million expense. However, that is, I guess, just an accounting reduction. It results in no change in tax losses available with the tax office for future periods. We've also stepped out -- I guess, what we see as our operating cash flow in FY '24. It takes the operating cash flow from our financial statements, but adjusts it for lease payments, capitalized staff costs and excludes movements in restricted cash. So we think that gives a much better representation of our true operational cash flow. It reduced from -- the operational cash outflow reduced from $21.4 million in FY '23 to only $9.7 million in FY '24, so another strong improvement that's in line with our improvements in margins and profits. [Technical Difficulty] you, Matt.

Thanks, Carl. And let me just walk everyone through our FY '25 outlook for the business going forward. Eric, if you can jump to the next slide. So look, we've taken out $23 million in operating costs, but we're not done yet. I think there's continued improvement in operating efficiency, the company needs to target. It feels like we've been set back around 6 months or so given 2 things. One, the loss of betr as a customer; but 2, the softness in the Aussie market. So that said, we need to continue to have a very strong focus on operating the business as efficiently as possible. The team have a strong plan in place. We're targeting here another 16% reduction in cash operating expenses to get us below $60 million in FY '25. But that alone is not going to get us there. It's not going to deliver the value that we're looking for, for the business. We also need to make certain that the new contracts that bring in revenues are high-quality, high-margin contracts. And so we have the team very focused on that and we have a number of exciting deals that we're going to bring to the table shortly. And then the combination of this operating efficiency, driving a more disciplined way of running the business, coupled with this growth in high-quality, high-margin revenues will deliver a significant improvement in our cash flow. And that's the focus of the business. The Board and management are hyper-focused on this. We appreciate where our cash balance is at and we appreciate the operating cash burn that the company has historically faced. We feel comfortable. We have sufficient funds and a focus on this improvement in operating efficiency and top line revenue growth for the time being. And we will continue to drive this growth in gross margin. And we definitely have a lot of momentum built into the improvement in operating efficiency. So when you combine all that, I think we have some really exciting things that are in the business today. We have a phenomenal set of assets. We have a truly scaled international business now with a broad range of customers, a strong reoccurring revenue business. No customer now accounts for greater than 10% of our revenue, so customer concentration risk is low. We are very diversified across both product ranges. We have, as Carl has touched on, now moved to the Global Tote business back into profitability, and the GBS business is now in our top focus. We're comfortable with the rollout of the new platform that we'll achieve that as well. So we are probably not exactly where I would love to have been. I think we feel like we're about 6 months or so delayed. But I'm comfortable we've got the right plan in place and we have the right management focus on the areas that are going to make the biggest difference for the businesses moving forward and that we have sufficient assets and resources to get us there as we stand today. So with that, let's hand back to Eric, and you might want to walk us through questions.

[Operator Instructions] So the first one is for you, Matt, and you pretty much talked to it then, but let's just hit it off because I think it's the #1 question on most investors' mind is just around the cash balance and whether or not how comfortable you are for Betmakers to be able to achieve that breakeven point with your existing cash balance.

Yes. This has been the #1 focus of the Board and every one of our Board meetings, and our work with management. As I said previously, I'm comfortable we have the assets we need today to get us through the cash flow breakeven and drive profitability going forward. That said, are we happy about where we're at? No. We're probably 6 months delayed in terms of where I expected us to get to that we're comfortable in our position moving forward. And we definitely have the right process in place. There is significant momentum. And as we've seen from the $23 million in costs out now, that's going to continue going forward. And we're benefiting from the significant investment we've made in the new platform and establishing our position internationally that we don't need to continue funding as we move forward. So those things combined, I think, put us in a place where we will deliver breakeven and then drive positive operating cash flow in the near-term.

So you talked about not having to necessarily fund international operations. Maybe next question for you, Jake. A strong performance from international operations. How do you -- and then also just thinking about the opportunities in the international space, can you talk a little bit more in detail about what they are, do they represent just Global Tote or is it GBS as well? Where are opportunities that you're seeing in international?

Yes, sure. So I think, generally speaking, the opportunities lie within the emerging marketplaces for the services that are relevant to those. So what I mean by that is, certain markets throughout Asia where pari-mutuel is a dominant form of wagering, we see as a strong growth area for Global Tote. We've announced many deals over the last 6 to 12 months in the Global Tote space around renewing with our partners. And the idea here is to create a network where we can bridge the content gap for these new and emerging markets, provide them with commingling opportunities, access to liquidity. And that's certainly part of the Global Tote growth story. On the GBS side, it's much more the digitization growth that we touched on in the trends and drivers earlier. So post FY '24 completion, but certainly over the last few weeks, the trade news announced a partnership between us and Sportingtech who are a platform provider into the Latin American market. I think that's a good example of the embedded racebook going into a market where racing is not currently in the digital suite and can slot into that product mix with the customer that has a broad distribution into that market. So I would say it's definitely covering both. Global Tote as an established product set has, obviously, been in the marketplace for some time, whereas GBS, we're delivering products now that are entering the market for the first time. So they have a little bit different profile of the growth. And certainly, there's more tailwinds in the digitization, as we know, with so much of the brick-and-mortar opportunity now going online.

A number of questions is coming through around FY '25 growth. Obviously, the company hasn't put out any guidance. But how -- with the re-based revenue, I guess, maybe at a high level, how should investors be thinking about sort of any top line growth of that re-based revenue going into FY '25. Maybe it's for you, Jake.

Yes, certainly. I think our target, as Matt touched on in the earlier slides, is we want to be a SaaS B2B business that grows double-digit top line. And we flagged, there's a few things that happened throughout the last reporting period, including the loss of a material contract that potentially set us back the 6 months that Matt flagged in terms of our transition and where we set the new business up, but that's certainly the target. So obviously, certain things that can be in and out of our control in that regard, but that's the target and we believe we've got the product set to get there.

And just one more on that extension. You've, obviously, got a lot of embedded growth with some of the new contracts you've announced, achieving maybe 10% or sort of that vicinity? Are you sort of banking on a lot of new customer wins to drive that?

It's a combination of that and the broader Next Gen suite now has more products within it to allow for greater upsell with our existing customer base. And the commingling we spoke about on the Global Tote side of things is another example of leveraging your existing customer base to drive more revenues through that connected flow. So I guess, it's a combination of things. Certainly, new customers into the 10% is always a focus.

Yes. Okay. A lot of questions around betr. Obviously, that relationship has now ended. Maybe if you can just -- and I know you've talked and explained this many times previously, Jake. But if you can just talk a little bit about where things are at now? And I guess -- and how you're seeing things going forward into FY '25 with Betmakers without betr as a client?

Yes, sure. So as you touched on, we have had a lot of questions come through on this topic. And certainly, it's a sizable shift in our business profile. And I think one of the questions noted is this separation a good or a bad thing for Betmakers. And I think that's a very fair question and something that I'm happy to walk through. The landscape in which the original deal was struck is dramatically different to the current landscape, both at a macro level and an Australian domestic wagering level. And with that, I think the trends that will drive M&A, marketing, regulatory headwinds in that space will continue to carry on. And they, obviously, made a decision that having access to the capital markets was the best thing for their business. And as Matt touched on it, it probably set us back a little bit in our transition story, but where it leaves is now is in a position where we can actually build our product set in a much more traditional B2B fashion. And what I mean by that is, we're underpinning everything with a core set of products that we sell to many people. Obviously, this enables us to drive a higher gross margin, run an easier and simplified business model. So right now, it certainly became a challenge and something we had to transition out of and that's impact on people and cost and things like that. But where it puts us in 6 to 12 months, it gives us control of our road map again. It allows us to lean into the metrics that Matt outlined in his outlook statement around the Rule of 40 company goal and the -- sorry, the stats and metrics that go into a business like that. I think that flexibility that we get back now with the Next Gen platform being open to all, I think, is a good thing for the medium to long-term of the business.

Great. One more for you, Jake, and I'll give you a break. A lot of questions coming through on all the various customer agreements, partner agreements. Obviously, there is limitations around how much of an update you can provide, but maybe just sort of broad-brush response. You've got the AdVantage Platform with PA Betting Services as the more recent, Bet365, New Jersey, Caymanas, Caesars, just a bit of a broad-brush update on those.

Sure. Yes, you did touch on it. It's something that at times, we'd love to be able to provide more detail on, but certainly, there's commercial sensitivities that govern some of that and also, obviously, ASX guidelines around material levels of revenue that we need to adhere to as well in terms of publishing updates to the ASX around certain deals as well. So I'll try and cover off in as many in a rapid fire format as possible. Norway, we touched on in the deck itself as well as an expanded case study. This is a material opportunity for the Global Tote division. It's a 10-year deal that when you refer back to the pyramid is basically encompassing a lot of the services within that pyramid. So everything from the hosting to race day control to interface management, even the data and the form on the track. So that one is slated to go live for October, which at the end of the quarter is also in the Next Gen platform delivery, go-live is slated for. Caesars, we're live. I think it might have been in April where the first rollout started there with Nevada. We're now in over 20 venues in Nevada. Three states in discussions with some of their other states at the moment. So that's going really well and on track for each incremental state/venue. Our margin obviously increases now that we've got that into the market, which is really important. And they, obviously, have a large suite of portfolio properties for us to target there that we'll continue to do so. Bet365 signed for Colorado and New Jersey for fixed odds and some content. Both states will go live at slightly different times. I'd anticipate that's due to the nature of the regulatory process being slightly different within each. So they're going through that at the moment, finalizing integration and testing. Again, as soon as we can provide a material update on that, we can and we will. Caymanas, live on track, obviously, for the last 12 months or so, but went live in the digital realm in the last quarter or intersecting with the last quarter of FY '24. That's going nicely. Obviously, our approach here is to build a ground-up racing offering that starts to include some of the international product. We've now got some U.S. racing flowing through there and the plan into this quarter is to bring in more of the international stuff from Europe. And I think you have one more for me, Eric. AdVantage...

The bet...

AdVantage Platform for PA. So yes, that was announced earlier in the year. We signed our first customer. We're in advanced discussions with a larger distributor at the moment. And we also had the Sportingtech B2B deal completed over the last few weeks as well, which is targeting the Latin American market with the embedded products. So I think that's everything. And yes, on the Bet365 stuff, you had Colorado, New Jersey. We'll update as we can. But given that it's 2 different regulatory regimes, it's something that we'll have to update when that information comes to hand.

All right, I'll give you a break. Carl, 2 questions. One sort of more specific has come through just around the income tax expense. What is it, is it recurring? And then maybe just a broader based question just around, there's obviously been a lot of cost out and re-basing the cost base. There's been some commentary that there's more cost to come out. Can you talk a little bit about what those additional costs out will be and whether or not it affects the future growth of the business?

Yes, no worries. So look, just in terms of the income tax expense, no, that's not a recurring expense. I think we broke out in the presentation that the vast majority or nearly all of that is related to the reduction in the deferred tax asset. I guess, every year at account states, we're required to look at that and revise that and we thought it was prudent to reduce that deferred tax asset. So there is an expense for $20.1 million, but that is not a recurring expense. If anyone wants to look at that more, there's plenty in the Annual Report about that as well. I mean in terms of the cost base, yes, absolutely. We continue to see opportunity to make our business more efficient. I think purely in terms of the numbers, not all the costs that were taken out last year were taken out at the beginning of the year. There were costs taken out through the year. So, I guess, just purely from the full year benefit, we continue -- we will see some operating efficiencies in FY '25. And I think and as Matt just mentioned from a management and Board perspective, we continue to look at other ways that we can reduce both our -- I guess, our staff expense and our overheads. But not -- absolutely not at the expense of growth. We're looking to do that in a way that's, I guess, manageable, measured and making sure that we're still on track to transform our business into a profitable business.

Right. Jake, just the Next Gen tech upgrades. Again, you talked to them in detail, but just -- if maybe just a bit more detail around the expected timing and then what the rollout of that looks like.

Sure. So the base of the pyramid, the price management and the data services are all deployed in the latest tech and servicing all existing customers now. Our embedded layer has a few customers live with a few to go live over the next few months. And then the final piece, the platform layer, particularly focused to start off in the Australian market is slated for the end of this quarter. So what that means, as Carl suggested, is a new technology stack with a multi-tenant framework, basically designed to be able to service customers at a much lower rate. And our cost per platform, cost per bet, cost per data transfer, et cetera, are all vastly improved with that improved architecture. So it's a clear focus for the business to address our gross margin deficiency within that division. And that's across that whole GBS division is guiding the decision-making through to completion for sure. And then it's on to the development of the products that sit within those 2 divisions and obviously, working with our partners to get the best possible results.

Matt, I won't leave you out. So a question for you. High level one, more broadly, how are you feeling about the broader industry and Betmakers' position within that industry? And then also maybe more specifically to FY '25, what are you really excited about for Betmakers?

Yes. Happy to take that, Eric. Look, I think this whole transition from land-based retail focused wagering on to digital and online, it's continuing to grow at pace. Some markets are more mature than others. So the U.K. and Australia, are very mature markets, U.S. emerging rapidly, Latin America emerging rapidly. Many countries in Africa, for instance, are coming through rapidly. So I think overall, the setup is great. I think for Betmakers, we've pinned a lot of hopes on things that were outside of our control and that is obviously a mistake. And so now we are very focused on doing things under our control. And the first step there is making certain we run this business profitably. So we have $23 million out in operating costs now and more to go. I think [Technical Difficulty] that, obviously, we're a little delayed in terms of time frame, I had hoped. But as we enter into FY '25, there's a lot to really like here. We have a very diversified customer base. This recurring nature of our revenue is very strong and gives us a lot of confidence in terms of how we build on. And we also have, over the last couple of years, made significant investments in assets and technology. And we haven't really demonstrated how that's been a benefit to the business. That's really going to start to shine through over the next 12 to 24 months. I'm very happy with that. And look, it's not often you get small microcap-type Australian-based businesses that can project strength internationally. Betmakers is one of the few that have actually gone into the U.S. and now run a profitable business and are staying there and growing on the back of that. So I think there are a number of things that we've done that are excellent. I think the overall market that we operate in is one that you have to look at on a country-by-country basis, some of the more mature markets versus the high-growth markets. The good news is we have products to sell in all of those markets now. But you can't ignore the fact that there was a noisy entry [Technical Difficulty] and the company has done a great job in terms of dialing down the noise. That would deliver what I call soft benefits. You don't necessarily see it as a shareholder standing outside. But internally, the company with less than 400 people now can focus a lot more. We've reduced the offices from 11 to 8. They sound like easy things to do, but they are all really important in terms of giving a strong, simple focus for the company, removing distractions and allowing us to do what we need to do, which is generate high-quality revenues from high-margin new customer contracts with a very disciplined operating cost base underneath it to deliver against those contracts. So we've done a lot of work. We're not quite there yet. There's still more hard work in front of us, but I feel like we're getting very close to that turning point. You've seen that as we've laid out the transition from where we've been to where we are. And I think FY '25 is where we deliver that and then we can look to significant high-quality growth in FY '26 and beyond, again, targeting that Rule of 40. We talked about double-digit top line revenue growth, 25% or greater EBITDA margin. That's what we're building here. And it doesn't happen by accident. We need to make certain we have good quality products to sell with the right kind of revenue around it to make certain that's high quality, high margin, and then make certain our cost base, it doesn't get away from us. And I think that's what the team has done. They've put the right discipline in place there. So I'm excited about the international rollout of the business. I'm excited about getting ourselves back on our feet and generating cash flow from operations and that's critical. And then I think it's an opportunity for us to shine as we start to deliver a great product and a great set of services. And it's worth remembering that this is just an incredibly fragmented market. There's no real multibillion-dollar market leader in the areas that we compete in. And so we have a great opportunity to kind of drive that critical mass as we grow the business. But baby steps first, let's get back to cash flow breakeven and profitability. And then we can start to really drive and put the accelerator down on the international expansion.

We've now exhausted our full 45 minutes. So I appreciate good timing. Appreciate you, Matt, Jake, Carl, making the time this morning to present the results to investors and to take the questions. Thank you to all those that took the time to join. If there's anything that wasn't covered up, please feel free to send through an e-mail, more than happy to come back to over e-mail or set up a follow-up time. I'll just hand back to you, Matt, just to close things out.

Thanks for all of our shareholders and supporting us through here and we look forward to delivering great results over the next 12 to 24, 36 months. Thanks again for your time.