CD Projekt S.A. (CDR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Adam Kicinski, and I'll be your host during today's conference dedicated to the CD Projekt Group’s financial results for 2022. I’ll run the presentation together with Piotr Nielubowicz. Michal Nowakowski will join us for the Q&A session. Before discussing earnings, I’ll sum up last year's main events. 2022 can be defined as the year in which we laid solid foundations for our future business. First, beginning parallel development of 2 AAA projects. As we continued working on Phantom Liberty, we started production of the next Witcher game. Parallel development should eventually let us increase the frequency of releases. Second, we entered into a strategic partnership with Epic Games. We decided to transition to the Unreal 5 engine for our future titles. This should eventually support more stable and efficient development. At the same time, we continued to improve our key products, Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. They both received a number of significant updates. Speaking of Cyberpunk, 2 important events took place in 2022. In February, we released patch 1.5. This substantial update brought various improvements to the game. What’s more? We updated the game to the full next-gen version. This means Cyberpunk 2077 can make the most of the additional power delivered by next-gens. Later that year in September, we released patch 1.6, the so-called EDGERUNNERS update. It brought another batch of meaningful improvements to the game, many of which had been directly requested by the community. Also, the update contained tie-ins to the anime series CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS, which was released on Netflix at the same time. Speaking of the direct impact of these events, let’s move to Slide 4. Analyzing the Steam reviews, there is a clear increase in positive ratings at the beginning of the year when patch 1.5 was released. It's worth mentioning that this was a next-gen patch, so the quality increase was especially noted by console players. But as we can see, PC players also appreciated the improvements. However, these results were disrupted by a review bombing linked to the war in Ukraine. It is clearly visible in March when we were hit with a massive number of negative off-topic reviews. Our understanding is that it was a direct effect of pulling out our games from Russia and Belarus and our financial support for Ukraine. The impact of the war aside, starting from September, the impact of the transmedia synergy was particularly visible. The release of the EDGERUNNERS update, combined with the very positive global reception of the anime gave the game another boost. Sentiment around Cyberpunk is clearly good, laying a solid foundation before the release of the expansion, Phantom Liberty. Now let’s move to the next slide, #5. The highlight of the late 2022 was definitely the release of the next-gen update for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In December, we invited players to return to the Witcher universe and enjoy Geralt's adventures in the best possible quality. The update featured multiple visual and technical enhancements including performance and ray tracing modes. On both next-gens, Witcher 3 hit a 94 score on Metacritic and a must play distinction. We believe that thanks to this update, we have extended the game's lifespan by another generation. Now let’s move to Slide 6 to take a look at the long-term revenues from our key games. 2022 was another year when our back catalog generated solid sales. Significantly, revenues of Cyberpunk grew on a year-on-year basis. This is a good sign ahead of the release of Phantom Liberty and its potential of supporting sales of Cyberpunk 2077 in the years ahead. Now let me walk you through the effects of strengthening the RED team, presented on Slide 7. We are rescaling as a company, now able to work on 2 AAA games simultaneously. We have turned to data, through employee surveys, to support our path for the next transformation steps. The initial results are encouraging. Especially the involvement of employees, more than 85% of the team took part in the survey. This is way above the benchmarks. At the same time, we see further room to develop the company as an attractive workplace by giving not only voice, but also real empowerment to each team. What’s more? We have stabilized our teams with a drop in turnover by 6 percentage points compared to 2021. In order to further minimize turnover and compete for the best talents, we are transforming our payroll policy. This year's dynamics of salary increases will be maintained. On top of that, we have already integrated our company-wide bonus system into the base salaries. So the total base salary growth in 2023 will be even higher than in previous years. At the moment, our compensation system does not include long-term incentive plans. To be even more competitive, we are proposing an incentive program. It will be voted on at the next shareholders meeting, which will take place on April 18. If you have any questions in this matter, do not hesitate to contact us. As for our current operations and development, let’s move on to Slide 8. Our focus remains unchanged. We’re at the final production phase of Phantom Liberty with 340 developers on that project. In parallel, we have grown the Polaris team to almost 200. Before I turn the floor over to Piotr, I would like to announce that in June we'll be launching a marketing campaign for Phantom Liberty. So stay tuned. Now it’s time for financials. Piotr, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Adam. Now let’s dive into our 2022 results. First, our consolidated profit and loss account on Slide 11. In total, our sales revenue in 2022 reached PLN 953 million. Most of that was delivered on sales of products of CD PROJEKT RED. Three major events helped us to achieve this result, in chronological order: the release of the Cyberpunk next-gen version, the whole event of the CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS update & anime launch, and last but not least, the introduction of The Witcher 3 Complete Edition on next-gens. In contrast to total group sales, our cost of sales slightly decreased, which is attributable mostly to the GOG segment. Moving on to operating costs. Our selling expenses in the amount of PLN 222 million decreased by over 1/4. This was mainly driven by a decrease of Cyberpunk servicing costs from over PLN 80 million in 2021 to nearly PLN 23 million in 2022. The updates and improvements published over the past 2 years significantly enhanced game play performance and have been met with a positive response by gamers as shown by Adam. Our focus and team involvement now naturally shifted towards future releases, including Phantom Liberty. Still overall the selling costs were high as last year we were actively promoting the 3 events I just mentioned. Next line. Our administrative expenses increased by 5%. On the one hand, we spent less on the early-phase research expenses as we progressed our projects to more advanced phases and further expenses were capitalized. But on the other, most costs are, in general, on the rise, including costs related to our historic incentive program, which only this year increased our administrative expenses by over PLN 5 million versus last year. Speaking of the historic incentive program, as you may imagine, due to a strike price of PLN 390 and goals practically out of reach for now, the program although still costly for us entirely lost its motivation function. We aim to replace it with a new one supporting our team retention, recruitment, gross and in consequence efficient and timely developments. Since the last general meeting, we collected feedback from the market and incorporated substantial changes into the new resolutions. We would like to invite you to support the company on that voting at the next general meeting on the 18th of April. Moving further to other operating income and expenses, I am aware that it’s not great to hear from a company that a project is being reevaluated. But at the same time in order to stay innovative, we must experiment and be brave when trying new paths. And to stay in control and keep the right course, especially with a project that is new to us in terms of design, developed by a new studio in our family, we need to keep evaluating the situation as we move along. It is better to cut costs early and even restart if needed than to carry on. As a result of this approach, we experienced negative results on our other operating activity due to the impairment related to Project Sirius, which we reported 10 days ago. Moving on to the EBIT line. Our operating profit reached PLN 377 million, which is 62% above the result of last year. EBIT was supported by positive results on our financial activity, although the PLN 16 million positive financial activity’s performance included PLN 27 million of revaluation of Spokko company shares upon this year's decision to sunset The Witcher Monster Slayer project. All in all, our net profit for 2022 reached PLN 347 million, which is a nice 2/3s more than a year ago. Most of the result was delivered by CD PROJEKT RED segment; however, unlike last year, GOG also delivered over PLN 5 million of net profit for the group. What is also worth mentioning is that the net profitability of the Group for this year exceeded 36%. And for CD PROJEKT RED alone, it was even close to 44%. Let’s now move on to the next slide, #12, our consolidated balance sheet. Over 2022, our balance of expenditures on development projects increased by PLN 123 million. This figure represents the balance of new expenditures on development projects for the period PLN 262 million, less the amount we recognize as costs for the period in the amount of PLN 139 million. The latter includes impairment related to Project Sirius and onetime amortization of our expenditures related to CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS. As usual, I will come back to expenditures on our new developments in a moment. Our property, plant and equipment position increased by PLN 25 million, mainly due to our investments on the Warsaw campus and acquisition of office equipment. At the same time, looking at current assets, our trade receivables increased by PLN 40 million, which I see as a consequence of higher Q4 sales this year versus the comparative period. At the same time, the other receivables line item decreased by PLN 55 million. This was mainly driven by limiting our tax related receivables and also decrease of advances on development works due to completion and delivery of the CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS project. And last but not least, the total value of cash, deposits and treasury bonds included in the 3 items marked with an asterisk is summed up under the table and totals PLN 1.091 billion as of the end of 2022. I will walk you through our main cash flow drivers in a moment. Let’s move on to the second part of the balance sheet, Slide 13. As of the end of 2022, our Group’s equity had a value of over PLN 2 billion and grew by nearly PLN 140 million driven by our profit for the period. But what is also reflected here is that during 2022, we shared over PLN 200 million with shareholders, half half by way of share buyback and dividend payout. Another noticeable change among the liabilities section involved the liabilities themselves, which decreased by PLN 22 million. This was mainly driven by other financial liabilities and reclassification of part of the liabilities to the other financial assets position, resulting from positive valuation of instruments hedging foreign exchange risk as well as from the realization of part of our liability for the payment of the purchase price of shares in The Molasses Flood. Parallel to that we increased our trade liabilities and decreased our income tax liabilities. As regards provisions, this line item grew by PLN 10 million mainly in relation to provisions for team bonuses set based on 2022 results. Having mentioned the team bonuses, I would like to add to what Adam said just now. Starting from the beginning of 2023, we've changed the general remuneration policy at CD PROJEKT RED. CD PROJEKT RED now offers a predictable remuneration system based on an attractive salary. This salary has been just revised upward with an annual raise, inflation adjustment and annual bonus, all rolled up into one flat monthly remuneration package. We believe that the ability to offer base remuneration, which is both higher and more predictable should strongly support our recruitment activity as we look to attract top talent in our industry. At the same time, when it comes to top management, the existing bonus system based on net profit is still in force as the top management should be directly involved in maximizing our sales and profits. Now please move on to the next slide, #14. CD PROJEKT RED’s expenditures on research, development, and service of released games are presented quarterly for 2021 and 2022 to illustrate the changes happening at the studio recently. The decreasing yellow part represents our total costs of servicing our released games, mainly Cyberpunk and GWENT. What is also clearly visible, the scope of our development continues to grow and the team is progressively moving on to new projects in development, which are represented by the blue part. Main projects included in the blue part in Q4 were: Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty, Polaris, Sirius and Witcher 3 next-gen edition. And now, our simplified cash flow on Slide 15. Cash wise, the PLN 347 million in net book profit for the period was supported by PLN 117 million in depreciation and amortization for the period. We used these positive cash flow drivers to finance PLN 207 million expenditure on development projects at CD PROJEKT RED. GOG also invested in its business by contracting licenses for new games for the store, which drove the increase of prepayments and deferred costs presented by the next bar. In cash terms, the group also invested PLN 48 million into both intangible and tangible assets, mainly investments on our campus, software and equipment for our business. In 2022, we also shared over PLN 200 million with our shareholders, over PLN 100 million as dividend payout and close to PLN 100 million as share buyback program. Altogether our financial reserves kept in cash, bank deposits and T-bonds decreased over the last year by PLN 63 million, which means that putting aside the transfers to shareholders, we were able to self-finance from our 2022 positive cash flows all our outflows including investment into development and on top generate PLN 138 million surplus. That’s all from me for now. Thank you for your attention. We can now proceed with the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is coming from Mr. Omar Sheikh. Sorry, Mr. Omar Sheikh is disconnected. Alexey Philippov of JPMorgan.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

Great. Many thanks for the presentation. Can you please talk a little bit about the migration to the new engine? What’s the progress there? Do you see or expect to see the fall in productivity of your developers until they learn how to use the new engine? That's my first question.

Adam Kicinski. I'll take the first one. We are preparing things on the pipeline sides and tool set sides, some developers are still learning the technology. And at the same time, there are teams working together with Epic on all those aspects that are needed for our open-world story-driven RPGs. And definitely, for the first project, I mean Polaris, it will -- maybe not slow down but it won't accelerate the processes, but for the next projects, we assume that it should smoothen the production, that was one of the reasons behind saying the strategy that we want to release 3 big Witcher games within 6 years starting from the release of Polaris, which is Witcher 4. So yes.

Great, yes, that’s very helpful. Another question is on your development costs. What is basically the effective inflation in your development costs? I mean due to this nice wage indexation that you’re doing, how much more this costs for you 1 year of development now compared to last year?

Piotr Nielubowicz. I will take this question. So comparing each year’s development versus another year is not really giving any substantial update on development inflation as each year is different. Some years, like the year of completing a big project, like it was in case of 2020, are heavy with some external expenses like external testing or localization and some others are more focused on our internal works. So we never compare it this way. In general, what I can say and what I just mentioned in the presentation, the salaries are rising, are rising along the inflation, but also due to the fact of changing the remuneration system in the company. Each of our game, we historically created was more expensive than the previous one, and I do not expect this trend to change dramatically. So games are becoming more complex, bigger and getting more expensive. But we were not guiding on future development budgets. Therefore, I wouldn't like to give any precise details on what overall game development cost in the future will be more -- will be bigger versus what we had previously.

And that's clear. Maybe a quick one on incentive program to be voted in April. So if you secure the required share of votes, not for all your suggestions, will you accept the agenda only partially or you would need to do another round of voting for the whole agenda in this scenario?

This time, we disconnected those 2 parts of the program, A and B. So there is, of course, a scenario in which one of them will be positively voted. But of course, from our perspective, we believe that this program is very helpful in delivering strategy. So we hope that both parts will be positively voted, but they are disconnected.

We'll now go to Mr. Omar Sheikh of Morgan Stanley.

Just 3 please for me, if I could. So first of all, thanks very much for giving us the actual sales numbers for Cyberpunk on Slide 6. That's very helpful. Could you maybe just talk about what the impact you saw on Cyberpunk sales from the EDGERUNNERS releasing, well, in September, what impact -- effect did that have in Q4? And maybe some commentary on how it's going in Q1, that would be helpful. Secondly, on Phantom Liberty, could you give us a sense of the scope of the marketing that you're planning? Is it going to be a short campaign, long campaign? How would it compare in terms of size and expense to what you spent on the main game and previous DLCs? And then finally, just on Project Sirius. You made a couple of comments just now about it. Just I guess, the question here is what happened, what does it imply about your kind of future, the work you might do with The Molasses Flood, what implication should we think about for the long-term kind of development programs within that studio?

So I'll take the first question. Yes. So the impact of anime and the whole concept of linking it with the update that was released just before anime was really visible on our sales. We are not publishing precise daily, weekly or monthly sales. However, it was for us the beginning of the Q4, Q4 that was super intense and that we perceive as actually the second best Q4 in our history, only the Q4 when we released the Cyberpunk itself was better than this fourth quarter. What's also interesting is the effect we saw after launching the anime was visible for many weeks after the release of the anime also when all of the promotions ended, and we returned to the standard sales. The volumes we saw were better than before. The second part of the question was about Q1. So Q1 this year, unlike last year, was not having any -- in Q1, we didn't have any extraordinary events or new releases, like last year we had the Cyberpunk next-gen release. Therefore, I would say this Q1 will be more of a normal quarter with no special situations. And still the most important event of this year, which is the Phantom Liberty launch is still ahead of us.

This is Michal Nowakowski. The second question was, I believe, about the scope of marketing, where we are with planning campaign. I mean, at least that's what we understood, feel free to correct me. Okay. I'm assuming that's correct.

That's right, yes, that's right.

Yes. Okay. So when it comes to scope of marketing, I mean, as Piotr already mentioned, Phantom Liberty launch is the biggest events for us this year. So it's going to be significant, but obviously, significant to the scale, do not expect a campaign that's going to be comparable to the launch of a completely new AAA game, obviously. But it is a very important event for us. And I can say we are -- and have been for a while. As a matter of fact, I mean, planning a campaign is not something you do over a weekend or 2. So we've been talking about it for a while now. And I believe we mentioned just today that we're going to start talking more about Phantom Liberty in June this year. So expect more news coming around that time frame. But for now, we have to be a little bit more patient. Thank you.

And Adam Kicinski here. And we'll be announcing more details regarding our plant activities fairly soon. So we will add some color about what is planned for June. And regarding Sirius, as we expected questions, please let me sum up everything we want to say at this point about it. Sirius is a codename for a project carried out by The Molasses Flood, a Boston-based studio, which joined the CD Projekt Group in 2021. So this is a project which is, I would say, insourced. It's also new to us in terms of design and format. For those reasons, it's very different from the big productions we are known for. To stay competitive, we have to keep looking for new ways to extend our franchises. At the same time, we need to be ready to reevaluate our original -- our original concepts even if development work is already underway. On the 20th of March, we announced that we want to create a new framework for Sirius. We also decided to establish an empowerment allowance on Sirius development expenditures. It was a tough decision to make, but we also believe it was the right one. Our intention was to cut costs early and give ourselves time for reassessment. We don't want to carry on with projects that we are not aligned with. So just trying to focus. So basically, that's all we would like to share about Project Sirius as for now. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now go to Mr. Matthew Walker of Crédit Suisse.

The first thing is just on the salary stuff. Is that a good idea to expand the fixed base cost just in case the game doesn't come through, then you've basically created a bit more operating leverage? Second question is, is there going to be any substantial game release in the year '24, '25 or '26? And then the final question is, with the ramp in development costs, I know you're not giving a specific number on the cash flow ramp on development cost, but can you say whether at any point given the ramp in development costs and the number of games you're doing that the company will move from net cash to net debt? Or will the current cash envelope include or deal with the ramp in development costs?

So the first question was about salaries. In general, we believe that to attract the best people, we need to offer competitive compensation packages. In general, in 2022, the rise in remuneration will be even higher than what we observed in previous years, but we decided to do this for 2 reasons. First, we always adjust remuneration on a yearly basis, taking into account, among other things, the current inflation, which in this year is particularly high. And secondly, as mentioned during our presentation, in January, we remodeled the whole compensation package in order to be able to present to our employees clear salary package that they can -- that they can estimate how much they will earn based on that and not speculate what will be the annual profit of the company divided by over 1,000 employees per person and what their final eventual annual bonus will be. We decided for more direct communication on that, which can be done only in case of offering flat salaries. And especially right now, we believe that was a perfect moment to adopt this change.

Mr. Walker, does that answer your question, sir?

Yes, answers the first one, yes.

Yes. And I -- it's Michal Nowakowski, again. I'll take the second one about the substantial game releases. So first of all, we don't really -- and we haven't guided on which of the titles comes out when and we want on this call as well. What I can say is we're totally committed right now from the publishing revenue perspective and fully focused on delivering the Phantom Liberty this calendar year. And again, come June, we're going to reveal -- we're going to start talking more about that and you learn more. And the belief behind that is this is going to help to increase the sales of Cyberpunk 2077 in the long run and establish that franchise even more and make it a long seller. We've done it in the past, which are free, and this is the effect we're looking for with Cyberpunk. And this is where we are focused. This is what we're talking about. And there's a lot of other things we're focused on right now, like preparing for the Boston hub and the Polaris is in the full development, but we honestly cannot and do not want to guide on specific releases in specific years, '24, '25 or '26. We'll talk about those things when we are ready. Thank you.

And I will take the third one. The third question was about financing development costs as far as I remember and whether we are considering to move to net cash -- negative net cash position. So as you know, as of the end of '22, our financial reserves, meaning cash, bank deposits and T-bonds amounted to almost PLN 1.1 billion. On top of that, our flagship titles, Cyberpunk and Witcher 3 generated solid revenues, next-gen additions of both games and with -- with next-gen additions of both games and with Phantom Liberty expansion coming out this year, we believe the stream of revenues will be strong in the coming years. And at the same time, in recent years, we were self-financed and we would like to continue with this approach also moving forward.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now go to Mr. Tomasz Rodak of BOS Brokerage.

Yes. I just want to make sure I understand the new remuneration system correctly. I understand that now the salary will include the bonus, and it means that the bonus is currently not related to the results. So you basically are increasing the flat salary, but getting rid of the bonus at all for developers. And second question on motivation program and on the target -- financial target, could you just elaborate more on how do you construct the financial target? Does it somehow account for your publishing pipeline? And finally, does this new target that you reviewed, it's PLN 2 billion in '23, '26, does it include the profit from the new Polaris project, which would make it, let's say, not so ambitious or maybe doesn't include the new Polaris project, which makes it very ambitious in my opinion at least?

Okay. So I'll take the first 2 questions, probably. So yes, you are right. We have recalculated average bonuses into flat monthly salary increases. Based on that, we increased proportionally the monthly salaries also taking into consideration inflation and other annual rises, which means that for the whole team, starting from this year, there will be no annual bonus, that 2022 is the last year on which we will pay annual bonuses, but starting from the 1st of January, the net profit of the company will not constitute bonus obligation for the company towards employees. But at the same time, as I mentioned, the top management will still have part of the remuneration based on the financial effectiveness of the company. Regarding the motivation program targets, I wouldn't like to go into details. And especially, as you know, we are not guiding on the release dates, I wouldn't like to go into details of whether this or that product is included. That's a goal that we believe is ambitious and we are aiming to -- we are -- we will need to work hard in order to generate such net profit within the next 4 years.

As we have no further audio questions, we turn the call back over to the [indiscernible] webcast questions.

So I'll read the first questions. We see how many developers did you have at the end of February? And how many at the end of 2022? How many would you like to have at the end of 2023? So do you have those numbers precisely?

So I'm trying to find the group results because what I have in front of me is just CD Projekt S.A., so the mother company. And I think -- let me -- yes, do we have it? So we have right now at the end of February almost 700 developers. And at the end of the year for the whole group, we had -- I'm consulting my team, slightly lower number of [ programmers ]. So that's what we can tell you on the fly. If we find more precise data, we will come back to this question.

So I'll take the second one. What do you see on American employee market right now? With all the layoffs in the U.S. tech, it seems it should be easier to find new people. Have you noticed any changes in the last 3 months? We hope. I think you know something about this.

I mean I know and I don't. I mean we obviously monitor the situation, and we're not -- we are fully aware of what's happening on the American market. But there's a couple of things. First of all, we -- with our hiring and setting up the Boston hub, we are not in the phase where we would be netting large numbers of people yet. So -- and this would be like really the practical examination of that thesis. Second thing which is important to remember is that very often, let's put it like this, the programmer from a tech company is not necessarily a good fit for a video games company. I mean he or she -- they can be, but they not necessarily are. I mean it's a question of passion, certain inclinations, certain experience as well. So I would answer like this.

The next question. Will you be attending E3 this year? Do you want to show Phantom Liberty there? As we mentioned already, we'll be kicking off marketing campaign for Phantom Liberty in June. But as for now, we are not sharing any details, but soon, we will reveal our plans so stay tuned. And I can take the next one. Can you comment on the development process of Polaris and Canis Majoris projects? Do you see a write-down risk? No, I don't see any write-down risk. Of course, this is what I see now. But bear in mind that our flagship projects like Polaris or Orion, the situation with them is kind of different. Both of them are our flagship internal production and the very core of everything what we do. So it's hard to imagine that we would decide to not carry on with these developments. There are a couple of questions about Sirius, but as I said in my kind of statement, that was all we'd like to share. So we won't go through all those questions. There's a question about dividend. What is your view on this year's dividend? Are you planning to recommend a rate of around PLN 1 per share. No decisions, no discussions were done yet. So of course, now we have results, and we'll have this discussion and once we conclude it, if there is any proposition, we will, of course, share it with you. And I think that said -- so Piotr is going to answer one of the questions. Piotr, you can take it.

Yes.

So Piotr is preparing the answer. I can read the question. Cost of products and services sold of CD PROJEKT RED in Q4 2022 amounted to PLN 27.2 million. While in Q1, Q2, it was just circa about PLN 18.5 million. Where does the difference come from? Is it additional amortization of Witcher 3 next-gen? If yes, then for how long will it be recognized?

So this is both additional amortization related to Witcher 3 next-gen, but also there is additional amortization related to Cyberpunk next-gen. So at least -- as far as I remember, at least the 2 products contributed to increasing amortization after the Q1 of last year. And there was also a question about how long we plan to amortize it. As far as I remember, for Witcher 3 the plan is to amortize it over the next 3 years.

There is one more question, how many developers are expected to work on the next Witcher game by the end of this year? Could it be more than half of your dev workforce? We'll see. We'll see. It's possible. It's possible, but it's a transfer year. So we'll see, but it could be more than half. Okay. Imagine that maybe end of this year or beginning of the next year. As we have no more questions, I would like to thank you again for joining us today. If you have any follow-up questions, do not hesitate to contact our IR team directly by mail. Have a nice evening. Goodbye. Good night.