Betr Entertainment Limited (BBT.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the betr Entertainment Limited FY '25 Annual Results. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Andrew Menz, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today for the betr Entertainment Limited 2025 Annual Results. I'm Andrew Menz, CEO of betr. And today, I'm joined by our Chief Financial Officer, Darren Holley; and our Chief Operating Officer, Bill Richmond. I am pleased today to release our FY '25 annual report and full year results after my first year with the company. And at the outset, I want to thank our shareholders for their support of our efforts in FY '25, and we look forward to continuing to deliver real and meaningful shareholder value in FY '26 and beyond. Starting on Slide 3 of the presentation. FY '25 was a transformational year for betr, having now closed our first full year since the combination of BlueBet and betr. As we outlined in our Q4 results presentation and as you can see on your screen, our record of swift decision-making and rapid execution has seen betr emerge from FY '25 as a larger, stronger, profitable Australian-focused wagering operator, all in line with the commitments we made to our shareholders. We, today, confirm FY '25 normalized EBITDA of $7.2 million, which is more than 15% ahead of consensus. Achieving and sustaining profitability whilst executing these transformative priorities highlights our ability to manage multiple, complex strategic priorities in tandem, and that's been driven by the deep sector experience of our Board, management team and broader workforce. Moving to Slide 4. The key metrics achieved in FY '25 confirm the new scale of betr , 1 year on from the combination. Our FY '25 result was underpinned by record levels of turnover, which was up 140% against the prior corresponding period to $1.42 billion. Gross win was up 147% to $196.2 million and net win up 133% to $147.8 million. It's worth noting that the betr migration did not take place until the end of August and that the TopSport business was only added in April. And accordingly, the turnover run rate as we head into FY '26 is materially higher with both of those businesses now fully migrated onto our proprietary platform. As you can see, both the legacy betr business and TopSport had materially lower net win [ margin ] prior to being acquired by the company. We have migrated those customer bases, obtained the benefits of scale, and most pleasingly, maintained net win margin in our target range north of 10%, which compares favorably to our peer set. Monetizing these customer bases and maintaining our stable and consistent margins provides further evidence of the strength of our proprietary technology and the evolving capability of our risk and trading team. As I said, normalized EBITDA came in at $7.2 million, and the Australian business delivered operating cash flow of $5.7 million, again, demonstrating that strategy and execution is now converting to shareholder value. FY '25 to me shows that we can run hard at transformational projects while excelling in our core business. It gives me great confidence that our team, having now got the basics right and bedded down a highly efficient operating model is well positioned to achieve greater things in FY '26 and beyond. We're well positioned to maintain our momentum into the new financial year with our laser focus on pursuing scale in the Australian market, both organically and via M&A. On to Slide 5. We are pleased to have this week announced an increase in value of our offer to $1.40 in value per PointsBet share, which we see as clearly superior to MIXI's offer of $1.25 per share, which we note can now not be increased or extended. In line with our previous announcement, we will not accept the MIXI offer. And as you can see on your screen, the selective buyback will proceed with more than 75% support based on proxies and voting intentions from shareholders that we have already received. Noting that the MIXI offer will shortly close and that our offer remains in market until at least the 25th of September, our current focus is on ongoing discussions with those PointsBet shareholders who are yet to accept either offer. And as such, it's too soon to speculate on next steps. But as we have stated, we do see significant value and further potential in PointsBet's Australian business. And once both offers are closed, we continue to remain open to collaborative discussions with other material PointsBet shareholders on how we can work together to unlock that value for the benefit of all shareholders. On Slide 6, we outlined some of the trends that we're currently noticing in the Australian wagering market as we head into FY '26 and the opportunity that presents for betr against that backdrop. Importantly, we see the market returning to low single-digit growth. And as always, scale remains critical. Our flip to profitability and the increased size and strength of betr has materially strengthened our competitive footing in this sense. We continue to see the competitive environment is favorable and aligned with our strategy and our growth trajectory, noting our next-generation brand will continue to resonate with our target audience, offering us a pathway to increase customer acquisition and maintaining CPA efficiencies. We are now very well positioned for rapid customer-facing product innovation in a market where the customer experience is the key factor for customers in choosing a wagering provider. The compliance bar continues to rise, and that's a net positive for the industry, rewarding those that invest in systems and processes ahead of the curve, and our replicable M&A model, which continues to drive profitable growth for betr. In FY '26, we will lean into each of these advantages to grow via ongoing consolidation, which is in line with our overall strategy as previously communicated to the market. We'll invest for profitable growth with opportunities to grow customer activities in high ROI, fast payback areas. And we'll continue to expand our leadership in CRM, data and AI, ensuring that we obtain payback on our initiatives via enhanced retention and also to maintain our structural net win margin advantage. Moving to Slide 7 and drilling down a bit further as to how we will actually address those opportunities. We are refreshing and redeploying our next-generation brand ahead of and during the peak wagering period across the Footy Finals and Spring Racing Carnival. We expect this to drive greater awareness, converting to more efficient acquisition and customer activity in FY '26. And we retain our key focus on reactivating and monetizing the betr database as well as TopSport and using that racing and sporting calendar to ensure efficiency and profitable activity from those customers. We're also confident that the momentum from the impending brand campaign will continue to aid efforts to strategically reactivate lapsed customers across those legacy businesses, giving us a further pathway to growth into FY '26. Our product pipeline includes first-to-market releases and other features that we are confident our customers will love and get us ahead of the game in key areas. Naturally, our always-on M&A focus will see us pursue profitable growth via industry consolidation and other strategic partnership opportunities. I will now hand over to Darren to take you through the financials in more detail.

Thanks, Andrew. Please note that the group's statutory results as well as a reconciliation to normalized results are contained in the appendix to this presentation. I'm pleased to report that the business has delivered a normalized EBITDA result of $7.2 million in our inaugural year as a combined business. This is just above the upper level of the guidance we announced to the market on 14th of July 2025. FY '25 has been highlighted by delivering on our commitments. We said we would achieve monthly EBITDA positivity in half 1, and we delivered that in November, ahead of schedule. We said we would achieve $14 million in cost synergies with the BlueBet-betr merger, and we delivered 20% above this. We said we would lift the betr customer cohort margin towards BlueBet historical levels of over 10%, and we delivered a blended 10.4% over FY '25, having migrated to lower-margin businesses. We said we would build scale through inorganic growth and acquired and migrated TopSport on 1st of April 2025. And finally, we said we would be normalized EBITDA positive for FY '25 and have exceeded our own expectations, having recorded a result of $7.2 million. Turnover was up 140% versus the PCP and net wagering revenue increased 134% to $134.6 million, reflective of the strong net win margins of 10.4%. Australian marketing expense increased 86% and employee benefits expense increased 110% versus the PCP, which are both reflective of the larger business. All other costs were in line with expectations. Importantly, all performance metrics have continued to show quarter-on-quarter growth as we continue to strategically migrate and monetize the betr and TopSport databases. And this has continued into Q1 FY '26. The company underwent transformation expansion in FY '25, marked by the customer migration of betr in Q1, the acquisition of TopSport in Q4, 2 oversubscribed capital raises, the establishment of a $35 million loan facility with the National Australia Bank, the strategic investment in a 19.6% stake in PointsBet and increased operational scale. At the 30th of June 2025, the company's corporate cash balance was $91.5 million with net assets of $198.2 million. The company remains well capitalized as we enter our new phase of profitability, cash flow positivity and pursuit of further inorganic growth opportunities. Moving to Slide 11. At the 30th of June 2025, the company's cash balance was $104.9 million, including client balances of $13.4 million. Cash used from operating activities was $19.3 million with net cash generated from operating activities for the Australian business being $5.7 million. This is reflective of the increased scale of the business as well as our disciplined marketing investment. Cash inflows from investing activities of $69.8 million were primarily driven by the strategic acquisition of the 19.6% stake in PointsBet, capitalized technology costs of $5.7 million, which were offset slightly by client balances transferred from acquired businesses. Cash inflows from financing activities were $169.6 million, which primarily relate to the net proceeds from the 2 oversubscribed capital raises completed during the year as well as the $35 million loan facility established with the National Australia Bank, of which $33.9 million has been drawn. These were used to fund the strategic 19.6% stake in PointsBet. The company is in a strong cash position as it continues to scale organically through brand and product investments, whilst pursuing inorganic opportunities via industry consolidation. That concludes the presentation. We will now open the call to any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Phil Chippindale in Ord Minnett.

Firstly, just on Slide 4, you've alluded to the product pipeline, including some releases just before Spring Carnival. We're sort of knocking on the door of that. Perhaps you could give us a sense of the categorization of that sort of product rollout, please?

Phil, yes, absolutely. So, we have recently soft launched a product, which is first to market, not just in Australia, but globally, a live tracking product that follows the success of companies in other categories like Uber and some of the airlines, where customers can now better track the progress live of their same-game multis on their lock screen on their phone. So, quite simply, people can -- not be picking up their phone, not opening the betr app, but can get live updates on the progress of their same-game multis as well as live scores of sporting events across AFL, NRL and soon to be NBA when the season comes back on. So, we found that as a really nice tactical play and an opportunity for some good branding owning the home screen. You'll see some marketing around that as we head into Footy Final. So that's the first cab off the rank. The others will focus deeply into what's important to punters as we lead into the Spring Carnival. So, there's some innovation across the app, primarily in racing and really providing a more engaging and deeper experience for our racing punters in spring. So, we've really tried to align the pipeline of releases with the racing and sporting calendar. And as I said, we've spent a lot of time making sure that we've got the system in place and the back end in place to be able to go really fast now from a front-end and customer-facing perspective. So very confident that you're going to see a consistent rollout of high-quality new and innovative products to our customers over coming months. But [ Live Track ] is the first out and well worth having a look at.

Okay. Just in terms of recent business performance, can you give us a sense of how things are tracking from 1 July? I'm particularly interested in sort of net win margin as we've been able to sort of maintain it above that 10% level?

Yes. We've been really pleased with the start to Q1. So, all of our activity metrics are ahead of where I had anticipated they'd be. So turnover active customers and also that net win margin continues in that target range of north of 10%. So, we're really, really pleased with the start that we've got and the momentum that we carry into this peak period.

Okay. And then last question from me, just on the marketing expenses. On Slide 9, you've just given us the breakdown there of marketing. I think it was about $19.5 million in FY '25, which is about 32% of gross profits. The prior year was sitting around the 34% level. Just in terms of FY '26, is there sort of a level we should be expecting here? I mean, presumably, in dollar terms, it's going to grow significantly given the growth in the business, presumably sort of sitting around that 30% of gross profit level. Is that sort of a fair estimate?

Darren, do you want to take that?

I'll take that one, Phil. So, look, I think we're certainly looking at strategic opportunities. I think as Andrew alluded to in some earlier slides that we do see some opportunities for targeted investment that returns -- return on investment -- attractive return on investment throughout the year. So, we'll continue to monitor that and invest appropriately where we see the returns. And we'll provide further updates on that as we enter into our Q1 reporting as we exit the Spring Carnival.

Your next question comes from Leo Partridge in Morgans.

Well done on the result. Just following on from Phil's questions. From a competitive perspective, how are you seeing the market shaping at the moment? And I guess, what are you seeing from your recent product innovations, promotional spend? And how is that kind of translating through? And what can we kind of expect for margin benefits on a stand-alone basis?

Leo, I'll jump in on your first question. I think we are continuing to see a much more rational wagering market in terms of advertising spend and generosity, particularly in the advertising spend, that's where we see a couple of opportunities potentially opening up for us with some high ROI, highly targeted and largely digital marketing expense where there's some opportunities that didn't previously exist. And we have seen possibly in the last week or so, a bit of a ramp-up in competitive generosity, which is very typical as you get to the first Group 1s of the season with the Winx Stakes in Sydney last week and the Memsie in Melbourne on Saturday and also into the Footy Finals. There's definitely been a step-up in aggression across the board, but it's much more targeted now. It's below the line. It's focused on right customers. So, we do see that industry trend of moving to the personalized generosity as increasing, and therefore, the battle for the valuable customers will continue to intensify. We need to continue to be disciplined. We need to leverage what we think are our best-in-class data science models and our CRM capabilities to make sure that we're only investing in customers where we see that they're delivering us the right return on that investment. So that's really the name of the game about managing your generosity budget to the right customers at the right time, and that's something we're well versed in and very ready to attack over spring. In terms of how our product and generosity is translating into activity, look, we're really, really pleased, as I said, with the start that we've had to Q1. We are well and truly maintaining a generosity budget that is allowing us to keep those net win margins north of 10%, and we'll continue to make sure that we do so whilst investing and making sure that we're attracting and retaining customers over the spring racing carnival period. In terms of product, it's a little bit too early to tell from some of the new releases. But really pleasingly, we've got very, very good retention rates of our core base and particularly those more valuable customers in our core base. So, we know that we can service those customers more cheaply, i.e., with less generosity because they're enjoying the current product offering. And that only becomes easier for us for those customers and also for more and more customers who come online as we'll make these product rollouts over the coming weeks ahead of the Carnival. So, we're really excited about the position that we're in. We're really committed to delivering great product to customers because we have a fundamental belief that, that is where this battle will be won and lost. It won't long term be in advertising and free bets. It's long term in providing an outstanding digital experience, which is what all customers expect across all categories, and this one isn't any different.

I will now pass over to Darren Holley for online written questions.

Thanks, Drew. Look, there are no online questions at this stage. So, I'll just hand back to Andrew just for closing remarks before closing out the call.

Thanks, Darren, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today for the FY '25 annual results presentation. Again, I want to thank our Board, led by Matt Tripp and Michael Sullivan for their support, and also importantly, to our shareholders who continue to back in this team to deliver. We're proud of what we've been able to achieve in FY '25, but we're much more excited about what lies ahead for betr in FY '26 and beyond. Thanks again for joining us this morning. Good morning.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.