Better Collective A/S (BETCO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Better Collective Q2 2022 Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Better Collective CEO, Jesper Sogaard. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Better Collective's quarterly webcast, which we host in connection with the release of our Q2 report. My name is Jesper Sogaard and for those of you who don't know me, I'm the Co-Founder and CEO of Better Collective. As always, I'm joined by our CFO, Flemming Pedersen, who will be introducing the financials for the quarter. Before proceeding with the presentation, I would like to thank all of Better Collective's business associates that combined make up a powerful network of knowledge and expertise. I'd also like to applaud the persistently hard work put in by everyone at Better Collective. With that said, I believe we are ready to start the Q2 2022 webcast presentation. Thank you for tuning in and for showing an interest in Better Collective. Let's get going. Please turn to Page 2. Please pay attention to this slide where we display our disclaimer regarding any forward-looking statements in this presentation. For now, please turn to Page 3. The agenda for today's presentation is structured as followed. Firstly, I'll run through our overall Q2 business highlights. Hereafter, Flemming will walk you through the financial performance of Q2 while he will also dive into some of our most important KPIs. Then I'll take you through a business review focusing on our U.S. business, seasonality, media partnerships, FUTBIN and the busy H2 ahead of us. Before concluding the webcast, I will present the key takeaways for Q2 and afterwards we open up for the Q&A session. Before turning to Page 4, please note that from this quarter and onwards, we have renamed our Rest of World business to Europe and Rest of World. This is simply a formality and has no impact on our reporting. During Q2, we delivered a very solid 40% growth whereof 22% was organic. This is despite Q2 being a low season for our industry with most sports leagues being on pause. Furthermore, we continued to be impacted by low sports win margin compared to historical levels although we are happy to see it increase quarter-over-quarter. We saw great growth across our geographies with 90% growth in the U.S. and 30% growth in Europe and Rest of World. However, our geographical diversification proved its worth as it was mainly Europe and Rest of World that delivered on operational earnings making it possible for us to continue our significant investments in the U.S. including contractual changes towards recurring revenue streams. These investments in the U.S. with our recent acquisitions as well as product investments are starting to materialize and bear fruit. Both our revenue share income and NDCs came in at all-time high levels of EUR 22 million and more than 387,000 NDCs, respectively. Our seasonality impact has become more considerable over the past years due to the acquisition of Action Network. This has made our Q2 an even smaller quarter combined with the acquisition of FUTBIN where revenues are back-end loaded by nature as the yearly FIFA game launch is in September and main ad revenues come on the back of that. The last thing I would like to highlight is our new 4 media partnerships. We signed new partnerships in the U.S. with the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chicago Tribune and today with Boston.com. And in Germany, we signed with SPORT1. This is in line with our strategy to seek partnerships in all main geographies where Better Collective is active. Please turn to Page 5. Q2 delivered strong growth of 40% to a revenue of EUR 56 million. Our EBITDA came in almost in line with Q2 of last year. This is as we expected and reflects the normalized seasonality on group revenue, our continuous U.S. investments and further the ongoing change from CPA to revenue share in our partner contracts. We still expect to take fully part in the market growth in the U.S. with revenues of more than USD 100 million and expect the U.S. business to deliver profitability in line with the group for the full year. The cash flow came in very strong with 102% growth year-on-year and the cash conversion was 182%. This is due to significant improvements in our working capital as we expected following very high revenue in Q1, which was partly paid in Q2. The number of new depositing customers delivered to our partners continues its strong growth trend we've seen since 2020. This quarter delivered an all-time high number of NDCs of more than 387,000, which equates to a growth of 93% year-on-year. Flemming will now provide some more information on the finances, including some insights into the underlying performance of the business. Please turn to Page 6.

Thank you, Jesper. As mentioned, I'm Flemming Pedersen, the CFO of Better Collective, and it's my pleasure to go through Better Collective's Q2 financials with you. So please follow me to Page #7. Total revenue for the quarter ended at EUR 56 million, which is 40% growth compared to the same period last year. Proud to see us deliver such growth in a low season and despite last year's Q2 growth being 162% where we had the Euro 2020 taking place and a much more busy sports calendar in the U.S. due to games being postponed. The organic revenue growth landed at 22% and the revenue split was 64% from Publishing and 36% from Paid Media with 76% of revenue coming from Europe and Rest of World and 24% from the U.S. Please turn to the next page. Moving on to the operational earnings, it is obvious that Q2 was a low season for us. The EBITDA came in at EUR 12.2 million, which is flat compared to last year and the EBITDA margin was blended 22%. This was as expected. Foreign exchange had a positive impact on revenue of around 3 percentage points and a negative impact on Q2 EBITDA margin of around 0.4 percentage points. Beyond the change in seasonality, EBITDA was impacted by the following 4 factors. The sports margin was lower than last year, the impact here was negative minus EUR 7 million; the U.S. business that now includes Action Network for the full quarter where it was only 1 month last year; that we have continued our significant U.S. investments in our products and organization; and as Jesper mentioned, partial change from CPA to revenue share in our U.S. partner contracts. Looking at the net profit, earnings per share increased from EUR 0.03 per share in last year to EUR 0.13 per share in Q2 this year. Please turn to Page 9. Looking into some of the underlying mechanisms for our performance in this quarter. New depositing customers landed at an all-time high of more than 387,000 new depositing customers whereof 317,000 were on revenue share contracts. I would like to highlight the strong growth in the revenue share part of our accounts on the chart to the left. As always, we are very pleased to see the strong growth development continue as it builds our recurring revenues for the future. The revenue share income accounted for 39% of the total group revenue in Q2. In absolute numbers, this is an all-time high of EUR 22 million despite lower sports win margin year-on-year. As mentioned in previous quarters, the continued large number of NDCs sent on revenue share contracts significantly increase our future recurring revenue, but also have a short-term dampening effect on revenue and earnings. Please turn to the next slide. To further illustrate the development in our revenue share counts, we share the index development in the 2 important KPIs, sports wagering and sports win margin. We have seen an increase during the past quarters in the sports wagering also reflecting the total betting volume. The spike reflects high activity with betters, but also a result of the geographical mix with increasing NDCs from the U.K. and LatAm in particular. On the right you see the sports margin for Q2, which turned and increased quarter-over-quarter. However, it is still below historical levels. The main reason for this is again the high number of NDCs we have sent through, but also some selected markets where margins have been lower than the historical average because of market-specific reasons and lastly, changes to the geographical mix. New depositing customers always start with a welcome bonus and this has to be placed and weighted before revenue share contracts become profitable. This means there is a dampening effect on revenues in the short term and vice versa a positive impact for the long term. That said, our main focus remains on sending as many valuable players as possible so we can maximize the absolute recurring revenue and we stay focused on the long-term value of the customers in each market. The main 3 reasons why we favor revenue share is the long-term recurring revenue is higher than the upfront CPA; we want to be in the same boat as our business partners hence when they make money, we make money; and lastly, the revenue share model caters well to our strong brands that see a continued retention effect and engagement with our users. Now please turn to Page 11. On this slide, we have shown our EBITDA development from Q2 last year to Q2 this year. As you can see, we have had a solid EBITDA growth both organically and through M&A in Europe and Rest of World during the quarter. Although the sports win margin increased quarter-over-quarter, it remains well below last year's levels and is estimated to impact our EBITDA negatively by EUR 7 million during the quarter when we compare to Q2 last year. Furthermore, our investment efforts in the U.S. is reflected in our earnings margin during this quarter as both U.S. excluding M&A and including M&A had a negative impact. This is, however, in line with our expectations. Please turn to the next slide where I'll be giving more clear picture on the U.S. developments. On this slide, you see our EBITDA bridge from the first half last year to the first half this year. Also for the full half year, we have seen strong performance in Europe and Rest of World business. The sports win margin also here has a big short-term impact during the first half year with estimated EUR 16.3 million. If we compare the sports win margin to average historical levels index back to Q1 '18, then the first half this year was impacted by EUR 13.7 million. As you can see, both U.S. excluding M&A and including M&A had a positive impact on our first half and the point here is that Q2 expectedly was a single standing negative quarter for the U.S. business. As the first half is in line with our expectations, we maintain our financial guidance for the full year with organic growth of 20% to 30% and EBITDA of approximately EUR 85 million. The full year financial guidance implies that we expect to absorb larger changes to some of our business contracts in the U.S. from CPA to a larger part being on revenue share and direct media placing, i.e., advertising revenue. We have forecasted these changes to have an impact of more than EUR 5 million in revenue and earnings compared to having pure CPA. We strongly believe that this is a good business case to Better Collective and aligns interest with our business partners. Isolated for the U.S., we still expect to meet the market growth with revenues of more than $100 million for the full year and expect the U.S. business to deliver profitability in line with the group on an annual basis. Please turn to next slide. Allow me briefly to run through the performance in our 4 business areas that we report on. Revenue in Publishing grew 46% to EUR 38 million, of which 18% was organic growth and Publishing accounted for 82% of the group's EBITDA. EBITDA decreased by 10% to EUR 10 million as explained in the previous slides. The reason for this is due to the U.S. business and also the sports win margin. Our Paid Media business delivered very solid results with growth of 28% to EUR 18 million and EBITDA increasing 43% to EUR 2 million. We are pleased to see the continued improvement and strong development here. Paid Media delivered 32% of the group's revenue and 18% of operational earnings. Also here the lower sports win margin compared to last year impacted revenue and profits negatively by an estimated EUR 1 million. Turning to the business split by geography. The U.S. business continued to deliver a strong growth of 90% and last year's acquisition of Action Network has been a true success for us, which has prepared us to grasp the many opportunities that lies ahead in this market. Revenue has continued to deliver as we had hoped and as a result, we have continued to invest significantly in the Action product and in general in the U.S. organization. This is also why the quarter isolated for U.S. was loss-making with EUR 1.8 million. However, as mentioned, this is in line with our expectations. For the first half of the year, the U.S. profitability came in with an EBITDA margin of 25% and we expect U.S. profitability for the full year to be in line with the group as mentioned. Lastly, revenue in the Europe and Rest of World business was EUR 42 million with implied growth of 30%. We are very pleased with the growth that in particular is driven by our media partnerships and our operations in LatAm where we are in the midst of establishing physical presence as we foresee that current and upcoming regulations of these markets will offer very exciting opportunities. As a reflection of the recent regulatory turmoil in Germany, we have been very focused on stabilize our product performance and revenues in this market. We firmly believe that the German market will establish itself once the regulatory framework has been finalized and the new licenses have been granted under the regime of the interstate treaty. For this reason, we are also happy to have signed a new media partnership with SPORT1. The partnership will be serviced and co-branded by our local brand wettbasis.com and help increase our market position there. Lastly, we have seen a good start to the Canadian market after our acquisition of Canada Sports Betting in March and the Ontario opening in April. EBITDA for Europe and Rest of World came in at EUR 14 million, which is an increase of 30%. Please turn to Page 14. Q2 cash flow bounced back from Q1 to EUR 22.5 million, which is an increase of 103% year-on-year. As mentioned, the main reason for this is that during Q1 a lot of our revenue from the New York launch fell into Q2 payments, which impacted our net working capital. Cash conversion in the quarter was similarly high at 182%. Payments related to businesses included deferred payments from the acquisition of Action Network, final earn-out payment related to the acquisition of HLTV and the last payment for the 2020 acquisition of Atemi. Further acquisitions of intangible assets reduced cash flow during H1 with EUR 92.4 million due to the acquisition of Canada Sports Betting and FUTBIN. Today we have bank credit facilities of total of EUR 214 million and by the end of June 2022, capital reserves stood at EUR 41.4 million consisting of cash of EUR 33 million and unused bank credit facilities of EUR 8.5 million. Net debt to EBITDA ended the quarter at 3.36, which is slightly above our financial target, but this will be back below 3 again during second half of the year. It is our view that Better Collective in general has reached business scale with large operational cash flow that believe will allow us continued access to attractive financing opportunities for potential future acquisitions. M&A is part of our DNA and our target list remains strong. We expect to remain active, but we also have a clear focus on our capital allocation and we are aware of the current market turmoil that makes capital raises less relevant and sometimes share buybacks more relevant. On the back of this, we are working on other financing options should the opportunity arise. Please turn to the next page and the word back to you, Jesper.

Thank you, Flemming. I would like to spend the last few minutes reviewing our business for Q2. Please turn to the next slide. Following the PASPA repeal in 2018, the U.S. has quickly become the biggest single market for Better Collective. Since the repeal, we have efficiently built our own brands and secured further growth by acquiring several strong performing assets. We have been ramping up our U.S. operations significantly and our product investments are starting to bear fruit. During Q2, our U.S. team has been working to improve operations in order for Better Collective to leverage its U.S. potential to the fullest once we enter the high season. VegasInsider has been performing well following the launch of its new app and could also celebrate its 25th anniversary. Action Network also launched a new version of BetSync, media center as well as its new improved app, an app that categorizes as a true sports media hub. The U.S. team also merged the FantasyLabs and RotoGrinders operations and RotoGrinders has been experiencing massive growth on YouTube. Our U.S. efforts were further cemented as Better Collective was awarded Sports Media Company of the Year at the 2022 SBC North American Awards, an achievement we should be very proud of. We have also been implementing some structural changes by merging 3 operational departments on the back of the Action Network transaction. In September, our joint U.S. headquarter will be opening in New York, which I'm very excited about and look forward to see. It's with great admiration that I look at how Better Selective has been elevated through innovation of new business offerings like our media partnerships. In the U.S., we have signed no less than 3 new deals and our partnerships now include prominent media brands like New York Post, Chicago Tribune and Boston.com. On that note, I think it's fair to say that we have been positively surprised by the magnitude of the market opportunity in the U.S., which showed 90% growth during Q2 and we feel well positioned to benefit from the opportunities ahead. Please turn to Slide 17. In April, we acquired the well-established and world leading esports brand FUTBIN. In short, FUTBIN is a community for players of FIFA Ultimate Team, FUT, that provides its major player base with important daily insights into the game of FIFA. FIFA is considered a pro sport with a popularity level similar to Counter-Strike. FUTBIN derive revenues from app sales and app subscriptions from its more than 60 million monthly web listers and more than 3 million daily active users on its app. With the acquisition of FUTBIN, we have further diversified our group's revenues and we are now established in an area of sports that is becoming increasingly more popular and which we believe will make up a significant part of the future sports market. I'm glad to see the expected user stickiness and organic growth in the asset as the Q2 traffic is up plus 20% year-on-year. During the first 100 days, our esports division has been knowledge sharing to make sure that we are capable at leveraging future business opportunities. The main short-term opportunities are clear and our aim is to create a community around the brand similar to HLTV to increase further engagement, derive synergies from our existing tech competencies to create a combined esports tech team and finally, optimize SEO to create a better platform for growth. The long-term opportunity within esports lies in the business as a whole where we wish to reach critical mass. In this way, we can partner with large global corporations in big branded deals. Thereby, we can utilize the massive number of users that come through our esports platform. At present, our esports business has more than 100 million monthly visits on its combined websites. There can be no doubt that with these traffic numbers, Better Collective should be considered a leading digital esport media of the world. Please turn to Page 18. Now I would like to zoom in on our media partnerships. These have become a strategically important part of our business as they have helped expand our reach significantly. Whenever I try to explain how we drive traffic and NDCs, I usually divide this into 3 categories. We have our core communities in our Publishing business that are owned and operated by Better Collective and here the traffic is coming organically. Then we have Paid Media where we acquire traffic to selected assets. This is very targeted to specific users and search queries. Lastly, we have our media partnerships where we operate and monetize our partners' traffic. Here we provide the content on our partners' platforms. There are many synergies between these businesses and each one is essential to us. If you wish to hear more on why this is important, please read my CEO letter in our report. As commented earlier, I'm extremely proud of our efforts to innovate this business framework and since our first partnership, we have been expanding our reach by partnering with prominent media outlets. In this quarter, our team put in extra great work and landed us 4 partnerships with the American Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune and boston.com as well as the German SPORT1. There's no doubt in my mind that long term these media partnerships will become an even more significant part of Better Collective's continued growth. Please turn to the next page. Following our Q2 report, we keep our guidance for the full year. July revenue came in slightly above our expectations of EUR 17 million implying 36% growth versus 2021 or 26% organic growth. Now we look ahead to the second half of the year that will be very Q4 heavy. The reason for this is that we will have the NFL kick off as well as the new FIFA game launch in September. Further, most major sports leagues will be live and the 2022 Soccer World Cup will be played in November and December. I feel extremely confident in our strategy and position in the market, all of which makes us well prepared to execute. Please turn to the next slide. Before rounding our Q2 2022 presentation, allow me to quickly do a recap. Q2 was another great quarter where we showed strong growth despite it being low season. We kept busy and I continue to be surprised about our strong organization and the talented people working at Better Collective. We continued our strong investments in the U.S. where we saw 90% growth year-on-year not to forget that we also saw 30% growth in our Europe and Rest of the World business. We acquired the world-leading esports brand FUTBIN, which has expanded our footprint within esports where we undoubtedly now hold 1 of the world's leading positions of digital esports media. Lastly, we landed 4 new media partnerships with well-renowned media outlets and our media partnership framework is now cemented as another leg from which we can drive NDC growth. This concludes our webcast presentation. I'll now pass the word back to the operator and open for questions from the audience. Thank you very much for listening in.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question. It's coming from the line of Marlon Varnik from Nordea Markets.

Can you hear me well?

Yes.

So just a question on the trading update here. I mean quite strong EUR 17 million for a low activity month of July. How was the sports book results here in the month of July and are there any regions that surprised you more in July? And also what activity increase do you expect for example September compared to July? And any comments there would be great.

Yes. So July, as we mentioned, was slightly above our expectations. Overall looking at sort of the sports margin and the outcome of results, they seem favorable especially when we had the Q1 where we saw the all-time lowest margin. We saw an increase for Q2 and it's continuing as we have experienced in Q2. Then looking ahead to September, obviously that's a month we have high expectation for because that is where the NFL will start. We will also see the launch of the new FIFA game. So we expect very high activity on our sites for September.

Yes, perfect. And for staff cost, I mean it came slightly above at least my expectation surely having some dampening effect of the margin here. But what's driving the staff cost here? Is it wage inflation? Are you adding more personnel? And how should we view this level here going forward into Q3?

As we also mentioned in the report, we see a lot of opportunity in the U.S. and have made the decision to invest significantly in that market and that is also related to then adding people and making sure we get sort of the best content writers and people to manage the business. So it's a very, you can say, aggressive approach. We really believe that we should go for the opportunity in the U.S.

All right. And lastly from my side here, I mean the organic growth 22% for the quarter. But how much of that 22% came from acquisitions within the last 12 months and how much from so-called clean organic growth? And did I understand you correctly that FX had a 3% effect on sales here in Q2?

Yes. I can't give you the number. You can say last year we had Action only for 1 month so growth in Action contributes to organic growth. Now again reminding it was a low quarter also for Action Network. So we basically see most of this as pure, what you call, clean organic growth. But we don't have the exact percentage for that.

Yes. And on FX, did I recall correctly there was a 3% effect on net sales or was the FX...

Correct, yes.

We will now take the next question. It comes from the line of Oscar Ronnkvist from ABG Sundal Collier.

First question just on the full year target of above USD 100 million in U.S. revenue. So can you just elaborate on your assumptions here for H2? So I mean we all expect Kansas with 2.9 million in population to launch in H2, perhaps Maryland, but that's quite uncertain, right? So what are your assumptions here for H2 and it's quite a significant uplift?

Well, I think there is -- just I can start on sort of the sports opportunity that we see here is that we're now entering the high activity period for the U.S. and we have been preparing our brands and assets for this. So we really expect that we'll see high activity especially starting with September and then for all of Q4. We also have New York as a state that wasn't accessible last year so obviously we expect that, that would also drive a lot of activity. So essentially it's now we have a bigger part of the U.S. that we can engage and drive revenue from and then entering this high season, that is why we expect so much activity.

Okay. And also a follow-up. So you mentioned plus EUR 5 million in revenue share impact or I mean the revenue impact from getting some rev share contracts in the U.S., which otherwise would have been CPA contracts, right? So that's plus EUR 5 million. So how much of that would you say will come in H2 because I mean if you send some NDCs on revenue share in the U.S., it will be underwater in the beginning, right, because of the bonuses? Should that be a significant H2 impact? If you could quantify some of that, please.

Yes, that is exactly what it is and you can say it's something we sort of disclosed actually in the last 2 quarters that our ambition is to try to work on recurring revenue streams in the U.S. more than just CPA, which of course is short term higher than working on the revenue share contracts and other media spend in general. So that is our clear ambition and yes, that's something that we expect we can absorb in our guidance. So that is our expectation. So I think a very positive move. I think commenting further on Jesper's the expectations to the U.S. with the investments we have made, I think also we are looking into some new contracts with business partners that we view as transformational.

Okay. Let's see, next one just so I get this right. So you had a EUR 7 million negative impact from the lower sports win margin relative to last year and also you have this revenue share impact in the U.S. of EUR 5 million. So just looking at the incremental margin here, you don't have a lot of cost if like any costs so that would be an EBITDA impact of EUR 12 million so you would effectively double your EBITDA this quarter. Is that correct roughly speaking?

The EUR 7 million just to be correct that we mentioned is basically looking at quarter 2 compared to last year. So if we have the same margin in this quarter, we would have seen EBITDA of EUR 7 million higher and of course a much higher percentage EBITDA margin. The EUR 5 million you can say that we expect to change is for H2 mostly and of course if we just continued working purely on CPA, we would have expected not EUR 85 million, but EUR 90 million. But we keep our guidance and absorb the changes. Just reminding that the sports win margin when you compare to last year, basically we had a very high sports win margin in the first half and then in the second half we had a low sports win margin starting from July. So it is hard comps in this quarter, but will be all things equal easier comps going forward.

Okay. So just a final one from me. So following I would say perhaps mainly in the U.S. some large operators mentioning that they are going to cut some marketing spend and so on. Are you seeing any pressure on rev share take rates or the CPA absolute level rates?

No, no, not really and I think sort of this trend of a changed focus on how they do marketing is potentially favoring us because we are performance based. So whenever they spend with us, it's immediate revenue and especially if you work in revenue share, it's profitable revenue. So we're a very attractive marketing channel when they are considering their marketing mix. And I think whereas buying a Super Bowl app is extremely expensive and probably with less of an immediate revenue and earnings impact.