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

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and I would like to welcome you to CD PROJEKT’s Q1 Earnings Conference Call on the 29th of May 2023. [Operator Instructions] Without further ado, I would now like to pass the line to the company's CEO, Adam Kicinski. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon. Welcome to call on CD PROJEKT Group's financial results. Today, we'll briefly sum up the first quarter of 2023. My name is Adam Kicinski, and I will run this presentation together with Piotr Nielubowicz. Michal Nowakowski will join us for the Q&A session. Before talking about Q1, I would like to share with you some good news. I'm very proud to say that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt hit 50 million copies sold. This, according to public data, ranks The Witcher 3 among the 10 best-selling video games of all time. At the same time, the whole trilogy, Witchers 1, 2 and 3 has reached a total of over 75 million copies sold. This clearly shows the strength of the franchise, and we are excited looking forward to our next projects within the Witcher universe. Let's now move to Slide 4, our developers' involvement in ongoing projects. As of the end of April, the Phantom Liberty team working on the final phase of the project was over 320 people strong, making them our biggest team. The Polaris team is still growing and has reached 220 developers. Bearing in mind recent developments, I would like to take the opportunity and make some comments on 2 other teams. First, Sirius. Following the evaluation of the game, we decided earlier this May on a new framework for the project. As a result, the composition of the team has changed, mainly on the Molasses Flood side. Therefore, next time, the red part of the chart will naturally be smaller. Second, GWENT. Having decided to entrust its future into the hands of community, the resources and roles required are naturally declining. Over the past year, we've been transferring some of the developers to other projects. But at the same time, we have to part ways with a number of team members. So the GWENT development team will continue to gradually decrease in size until the end of this year. And last but not least on my side, the marketing campaign for Phantom Liberty is kicking off soon. Less than 2 weeks from now, we'll be taking part in Summer Game Fest Play Days in Los Angeles. We'll have hands on sessions for press and content creators. And at a later date, we are also planning plenty of hands on opportunities for our community. So please stay tuned. Now, let's sum up the financials. Piotr, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Adam. Now let's dive into our results for the first 3 months of this year. Let's start with our consolidated profit and loss account on Slide 7. Unlike last year, when in Q1, we had the premiere of Cyberpunk Next Gen edition during the first quarter of this year, we had no special sales events. Internally, both development-wise and publishing-wise, we focused on preparations for the most important event of the year, the launch of Phantom Liberty. As a result, our sales revenue compared to last year was naturally lower, but still reached a robust PLN 175 million. In contrast to total group sales, our cost of sales slightly increased, which comes mostly from increased depreciation due to the completion and release of the Witcher 3 Next Gen edition in Q4 last year. Moving on to operating costs. Our selling expenses decreased by PLN 15 million, down to PLN 39 million. This was mainly driven by a decrease in Cyberpunk servicing costs as well as in Cyberpunk IP-related publishing expenses. As regards to administrative expenses, they didn't change much compared to last year. Moving further to other operating income and expenses, the positive balance of over PLN 18 million comes mostly from a partial reversal of the Sirius impairment allowance we made back in the 2022 books and partial write-off of our Q1 '23 development expenditures related to the project. All in all, Sirius impairment adjustments improved our EBIT by nearly PLN 19 million. We are happy that we've managed to work out a new framework for the project and it's already set on its new ambitious course. Another supporting driver is visible in the income tax line. Our income tax for the period decreased by half compared to last year, mainly thanks to lower withholding taxes paid abroad. All in all, our net profit for the first quarter of 2023 reached PLN 69.7 million, which is slightly above the solid result of the previous Q1. Let's now move on to the next slide, #8, our consolidated balance sheet. Over the first quarter of 2023, our balance of expenditures and development projects increased by PLN 71 million. This figure represents the balance of new expenditures and development projects for the period, PLN 74 million, plus the already mentioned nearly PLN 19 million impairment adjustment related to Project Sirius and less the amount we recognized as costs for the period of PLN 22 million. At the same time, among current assets, our trade receivables decreased by PLN 91 million, which is standard for Q1 when we collect receivables for the preceding [ juicy ] Q4 period. And last but not least, the total value of cash deposits and treasury bonds included in the 3 asset items marked with an asterisk is summed up under the table and totals PLN 1.112 billion as of the end of March 2023. 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 9. This time, the situation regarding equity and liabilities is quite simple. Our equity grew mainly due to profits for the current period and our liabilities, mostly trade liabilities decreased since the end of 2022, similarly to the decrease in receivables. Now, please move on to the next Slide, #10. So the PROJEKT RED's expenditures on the research, development and service of released games are presented quarterly since 2021 to illustrate the changes happening at the studio after the launch of Cyberpunk. I'll now focus on comparing this Q1 to the past Q4 to highlight the most recent changes. The yellow part represents our total cost of servicing our released games. The increase in Q1 comes from additional support we allocated for the next-gen edition of The Witcher 3 released recently in Q4. And also, as we are getting closer to completing Phantom Liberty, initial research works on new projects are on the rise, mainly Hadar and Orion. Hence, the slightly shorter blue bar and the more visible green bar. The main projects included in the blue part in Q1 were Cyberpunk, Phantom Liberty, Polaris and Sirius. And now our simplified cash flow on Slide 11. Cash wise, the PLN 70 million in net book profit for the period was supported by PLN 25 million in depreciation and amortization for the period. At the same time, when talking about cash expenses, the Sirius impairment allowance adjustment in the amount of PLN 19 million needs to be deducted. The already mentioned change in our receivables and liabilities represented by the next 2 bars also significantly boosted our cash flows this Q1 We used the positive operating cash flows to finance over PLN 70 million of expenditures on our development projects, which are the core of our business. Altogether, our financial reserves kept in cash, bank deposits and T-bonds increased by PLN 21 million over the first quarter. Our strong cash position leads us to the next page and the recent announcement regarding the recommended allocation of profit earned in 2022. The board of CD PROJEKT recommended to the general meeting to allocate PLN 241 million to the reserve capital and to share PLN 100 million with our shareholders by way of a dividend payout. We continue to believe that the dividend is the most straightforward, instant and democratic way of sharing profits on equal terms with all shareholders. That's all from me for now. Thank you for your attention. We can now move on to the Q&A section.

Thank you very much for the presentation. We will now be moving to the Q&A part of the call. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mr. Matthew Walker from Credit Suisse.

I hope you can hear my questions. The first question is just on [ Reuters ] and elsewhere, there's been some rumors around Sony being interested in the business. In the past, you've made it pretty clear you want to remain independent. So just an update on your thoughts on that would be helpful. And then if you've got any more clarity around the Phantom Liberty; I know you haven't announced a particular release date yet, but if you could give us a bit of help on the modeling, and is it more likely to be in the third quarter or the fourth quarter of this year?

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes.

All right. So I'll take the first one. Nothing has changed on our end. So I can repeat what we've been saying throughout the years, CD PROJEKT is not for sale. We want to remain independent. We have, I believe, excellent strategy, not easy to execute, for sure, but it's very exciting to follow our own path. So it's a pure rumor.

Okay. Hello, and I'll take the second one. We are, unfortunately, not guiding specifically on the release date -- sorry for I muted. I have some technical issue. So we're not guiding specifically on the release dates. We'll give more details from June, so very, very soon, as we have previously mentioned in our communication.

Okay. Just a quick follow-up, if I can. Is there any more reversals of expenses around the Sirius project to come? Or is that basically finished now?

We naturally believe there is no more reversals or write-offs for Project Sirius, everything we knew, we adopted into the financial report that was published today. So as for today, and I hope nothing will change in the future. This is the status quo.

Our next question comes from Mr. Alexey Philippov from JPMorgan.

The first one on development costs, which accelerated quarter-on-quarter quite significantly. At the same time, the number of developers should have been broadly flat and you are basically maintaining your key projects. So shall we treat this increase as the underlying inflation in wages that you capitalize? And the second question on -- can you please talk about the withholding tax effect? Was it a one-off? And how shall we model the effective tax rate for the rest of the year?

So first of all, I'm not sure whether the [ thesis ] that is part of the first bullet is -- of your first question is true. Cash wise, as far as I remember, and as it was presented on the presentation, the expenditures and development we had in Q1 were very similar to what we had in Q4 last year. Actually, they were slightly lower. And yes, a bit higher than in previous quarters. So that's what happened. But on the other hand, we can expect the expenses on development, which are mainly driven by salaries to increase as a natural way of wage inflation and adopting new salaries -- new remuneration policy at CD PROJEKT in 2023. Regarding the withholding tax, how to model it. It's really hard to guide, in this respect, you regarding the future as the withholding tax depends on our international partners withholding this tax from payments to us. And we are at the end of the chain in this respect receiving their reports and their declarations on what taxes were withheld. And this is not directly in our control. Having said that, from [Technical Difficulty] I was somehow on mute. Having said that, in many jurisdictions, some -- the taxes withheld are being deducted. However, on some thanks to the treaties Poland signed with partnering countries, the withholding tax is not to be applied.

And if I may, one more question on the coming game gest. So what will be happening there, in particular? Can you explain that in more detail, please? You will be showing the game playing -- the game play or you're not disclosing that at this juncture?

I'll take that, Michal Nowakowski. It's meant to be a surprise. So if it's still meant to be surprised, coming June, I cannot disclose it here. So I would still -- we would still have to ask you to be a little bit more patient, but we seriously hope it's going to be worth it for you and for the fans of the game. So please have some patience.

Our next question comes from Nick Dempsey from Barclays.