Light & Wonder, Inc. (LNWO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's Grover Charitable Gaming Acquisition Conference Call. My name is Sheila, and I'll be your moderator for today. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to turn the conference over to our host, Nick Zangari, the Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury. Nick, you may proceed.

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone. We appreciate you joining the call on short notice. Today, we'll be discussing Light & Wonder's announced agreement to acquire Grover Gaming's charitable gaming assets, followed by a brief question-and-answer session. With me today are Matt Wilson, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Oliver Chow, our Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. A presentation on the proposed transaction is available in the Investors section of the Light & Wonder website. This call is also being webcast, which can be accessed on the Investors section of our site as well. A replay of this webcast and accompanying materials will be archived in the Investors section of our site. Today's call may contain forward-looking statements that may involve certain risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed. For details on these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the press release and other materials we issued today that are posted on our website and also our filings with the SEC. During this conference call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. A description of each non-GAAP measure and a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in the press release and in our materials on the website. We will also discuss certain combined financial information calculated as the historical results of the company plus the preliminary unaudited historical results of Grover Charitable Gaming for the period stated as well as run rate financial information. This information is for informational purposes only and does not purport to represent with the company's financial position and results of operations would have been if the transactions had occurred at specified dates or maybe in the future after giving effect to the acquisition. The financial information for Grover Charitable Gaming discussed today has been prepared for management accounts is preliminary unaudited and does not conform to Regulation S-X. Audited results of Grover Charitable Gaming may differ materially from the information contained in this release. Today's discussion will be focused on the proposed acquisition. We will not be discussing full year financial or operating results of Light & Wonder. Full details of our performance for the period ended December 31, 2024, will be presented next Tuesday, February 25, as scheduled. Now I will turn the call over to Matt Wilson, our President and CEO.

Thanks, Nick. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. I'm excited to be here today to discuss Light & Wonder's acquisition of Grover Gaming's charitable gaming business. The teams have worked hard to get us into a position to make this announcement and I couldn't be more pleased to share the details of the agreement with you here today and more importantly, to share the strategic vision that we have for Grover as part of Light & Wonder. As our teams came together, it became quite clear that we have a shared vision and values and that this transaction would further extend our cost platform strategy and unlock significant value creation opportunities for all stakeholders. I'll move to the agenda on Slide 3. Today, we'll provide a summary of the transaction and an introduction to Grover Gaming and the Charitable Gaming space in the U.S. We'll then discuss the strategic rationale behind the deal, followed by a high-level overview of Grover's financials and expected funding arrangements for the transaction. Finally, we'll open the floor for Q&A. Let's move now to Slide 5, providing an overview of the transaction. As announced, Light & Wonder has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the charitable gaming assets of Grover Gaming, the total consideration of $850 million cash upfront and an earn-out arrangement payable to Grover Gaming shareholders of up to a potential $200 million cash over a 4-year period based on achieving certain revenue targets and other metrics. The upfront purchase price reflects a multiple of 7.7x Grover adjusted EBITDA for 2024 and a 7.1x multiple based on Grover run rate adjusted EBITDA. With the purchase multiple expected to be only further reduced if we achieve the earn-out provision in the agreement. Grover is an ideal fit for us with a market-leading position in a new adjacent channel in North America with long-standing customer relationships and a very compelling financial profile. The business will fit seamlessly into our cross-platform strategy and vision for the future of the company. Oliver will provide additional detail on the financials later in the presentation. Broadly, the transaction is expected to deliver high single-digit accretion to adjusted net profit after tax before amortization of acquired intangibles in the first full calendar year of L&W ownership in 2026. Turning to Slide 6, where we provide some further details on the transaction. As you will see in the presentation, a number of key members of Grover's team have signed employment offer letters with L&W reflecting their commitment to the success of the new combined group. We are really excited about the talent that is coming across with the transaction as well as the opportunities for our existing employees to be deployed in a new growth adjacency. This transaction is truly a win-win for both teams. Additionally, under the terms of agreement, Light & Wonder will retain access to founder, Garrett Blackwelder, for a period of 3 years and will also enter into a variety of other commercial arrangements with the existing Grover business covering hardware supply and a variety of other transitional service agreements. Turning to Slide 7, where we summarize the key investment highlights of the Grover acquisition. Grover's best-in-class position in a fast-growing adjacency is an ideal fit for Light & Wonder's cross-platform gaming strategy. The combined entity will be positioned to deliver leading content to a broader customer base, both geographically and by product. Grover has an attractive recurring revenue model with a loyal customer base. This will be the newest adjacency within which we intend to deploy our robust R&D engine and distribute our variety of hit franchises and games. This will also serve as a catalyst to further accelerate across platform game development initiatives under Nathan Drane and Victor Blanco, as we will prioritize this opportunity as we integrate the new platform. As a result, we anticipate the creation of further expected revenue synergies through leveraging our best-in-class content in this new channel. The opportunity to continue to build on our recurring revenue business through this channel over the long term should be a great outcome for our shareholders. Turning to Slide 9, I'll provide a more detailed overview of Grover and the charitable gaming space. Grover Gaming is a vertically integrated provider of electronic pull tabs or E-Pull tabs to over 1,500 charitable organizations with over 10,000 installed devices across 5 U.S. states: North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky and New Hampshire. Charitable gaming is a form of regulated gaming in which a portion of the proceeds are given to charity. It exists in several offerings ranging from Raffles, Bingo, Paper Pull tabs and E-Pull tabs. The assets we are acquiring are focused specifically on the E-Pull tabs vertical. Flipping to Slide 10, I won't talk to each state in detail, however, Grover has a diversified and scaled revenue base across 5 key states, in particular, North Dakota, Ohio and Virginia, and in many cases have had the first-mover advantage entering the market shortly after legalization. While our business case is not underwriting a new state expansion, it is notable that E-Pull tabs are currently legal in only a handful of states for charitable gaming, while generating growing charitable and tax contributions. This provides a potential opportunity for future new state legalization supporting the E-Pull tabs segment. To understand the stakeholders of Grover, I'll direct your attention to Slide 11. In short, Grover's business model benefits all stakeholders involved. Its Electronic Pull tab machines increased food traffic and revenue for local businesses while providing contributions to local charities that support impactful community investment. These impacts are consistent and recurring as hyper locality, new content development and a low churn customer base to ensure revenue consistency. These factors benefit shareholders, customers and communities with an opportunity for expansion for further legalization as previously discussed and from engagement with new chargeable organizations. Slide 12 provides further detail of Grover's hardware, content and infrastructure. The Electronic Pull tab machines, which you see an example of on the slide, are fairly similar in appearance to a slot machine and are distributed to charities across Grover's geographic markets. These machines are supported by the company's customizable underlying infrastructure, able to be adapted to specific regulation, gameplay features and customer experience requirements. Grover's existing cloud-based e-gaming library will be leveraged in combination with Light & Wonder's content to drive future performance. Turning to Slide 14, this slide summarizes our strategic rationale for the transaction at a glance, and I will turn to some of these elements in more detail in the following slides. At a high level, Grover is a leading player in the charitable gaming space. As you know, we are a growth company, and the charitable gaming space has exhibited strong growth in recent years, presenting an opportunity to expand Light & Wonder's total addressable market and accelerate future growth within our business. This growth is supported by the complementary nature of the charitable gaming industry, providing an opportunity to leverage existing Light & Wonder content across a new customer base, which aligns with our overall cross-platform strategy. The third strategic pillar of the acquisition is the company's loyal customer base. Customer loyalty has been created by Grover through relationships, reputation and brand recognition. In a fragmented and highly localized marketplace, Grover's high-touch local market service footprint create the durable advantage. Finally, from a purely financial perspective, this acquisition is highly beneficial to the group. The high margin and attractive cash flow generation profile of Grover will contribute positively to shareholder return and will unlock high single-digit accretion through adjusted NPATA as we continue to invest and grow the business. I look forward to providing you all with more details on the charitable gaming market and our expectations for the business at our upcoming Investor Day in May. On to Slide 15, where once again I'd like to highlight the robust R&D engine that's grown our success quarter after quarter. Grover provides us another vertical to enhance our omnichannel strategy, where we deploy the best-in-class content hardware and technology across our businesses as we continue to leverage our cross-sell strategy to maximize the full potential of our games and franchises. As a customer-centric content and technology business, I want to now focus a bit on the content and customer pillars of this transaction. As we set out on Slide 16, a key pillar of our acquisition rationale is the potential for leveraging Light & Wonder's content across Grover's installed base and customer demographic. Those of you who have been following our journey in recent years will recognize some of these North American adjacencies in the great puzzle pieces, representing land-based verticals in which Light & Wonder's presence has expanded in recent years. We see charitable gaming as a continuation of this strategy, representing a logical, high-growth, regulated adjacency that we can enter as part of our cross-platform content distribution strategy. Moving to Slide 17, I'd like to just point out the diverse breadth of charitable gaming footprint alongside the leading national charities in which Grover has relationships. These venues represent a loyal and broad customer base with deeply ingrained relationships and a strong growth profile. I will now hand over to Oliver to present a brief summary of Grover's financials and expected timing for closing of the transaction.

Thanks, Matt. It's great to be with you all today to share this exciting M&A opportunity that -- as Matt said, fits the core of our strategy and is complementary to our existing business, providing yet another avenue for Light & Wonder that continue to be a compounded growth over the long term. Looking to Slide 19. Grover delivered $135 million of revenue in 2024, which represents a 29% 2-year CAGR and reached a Grover adjusted EBITDA of $111 million, representing a margin of approximately 82%. In executing our cross-platform strategy, we anticipate further investment in content and technology to unlock identified revenue opportunities from distributing our leading game content to a new customer base. It is premature to discuss this in more detail at this time, but we look forward to sharing more details on our investment in this space and revenue opportunities you just are looking to unlock at our Investor Day on May 20 in New York. As Matt discussed earlier, the consideration consists of an upfront purchase price of $850 million and is comprised of an earnout of up to $200 million over 4 years based on revenue targets and other metrics. The acquisition will be funded by a combination of cash on hand and incremental debt financing. While net leverage is expected to increase modestly due to the acquisition being funded primarily with debt, Light & Wonder's net debt leverage ratio on a combined basis is expected to remain within our targeted range of 2.5x to 3.5x, underpinned by our existing growth profile and the strong cash flow generation of the global business. Lastly, we anticipate the transaction to close in Q2 2025, subject to receipt of required gaming and other regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Grover has an attractive business and a strong financial profile, which we can further integrate and enhance with our complementary business. I am confident that this transaction can take our content to new heights and expect to deliver strong long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'll conclude the formal presentation and invite the operator to open the line to questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Barry Jonas with Truist Securities.

Congratulations on the transaction. Apologies if some of this has to wait for the Analyst Day, but can you talk a little bit about the avenues for same-store growth from here to hit those revenue earnouts? And then maybe how should we think about the EBITDA or free cash flow margin as the business scales and develops further?

Barry, Matt Wilson. Yes, a really exciting day for everyone at Light & Wonder. We've been working on this potential transaction for quite some time. This feels like exactly in our wheelhouse as an organization. The thing that we love about Grover is really their front-end execution piece. They have an amazing sales team, relationship management team across the 5 states they're in. They've got 1,500 customers. So really a nice moat around the business in terms of building that front end. Combine that customer obsession that Grover has with our games obsession, it feels like a combustible combination. So I think the most obvious way for us to kind of drive the top line growth -- with the Grover asset under our ownership is to deploy our R&D arsenal on the charitable gaming sector. If you think about Light & Wonder, over the last few decades, we've spent literally billions of dollars on R&D building great franchises, game math, art animations, all of these things across many different studios. Our intention is to really kind of turn that canon, that is the R&D engine directly on the charitable market. So really efficient use of our R&D investment. And this is a beautiful recurring revenue business. It's all on rev share. So to the extent that our games do better, our customers do better, and we do better as an organization. So really a marriage of 2 fantastic organization that bring very complementary skill set. Oliver, do you want to just touch on how to think about EBITDA margins and cash flow?

Yes. Yes, it's a great question. So I think from our perspective, obviously, the healthy margins and the cash conversion kind of opportunities with this business was very compelling for us as we were going through this process. You would have seen in the pack, the 80% margins you see are incredibly healthy. But remember, this is a carved-out business perspective. So maybe the simplest way to kind of frame this is think of this -- think of the margins that's kind of similar to our gaming operations business. To kind of Matt's point, if you think about our base business, where we invest about 10% of our revenues to R&D, everything that Matt just said, we should be able to more efficiently build those capabilities in. So leveraging the talent, leveraging our infrastructure, the content capabilities that we have, so we will continue to invest into this business. We integrate to enhance this product portfolio. But ultimately, we see strong top line growth on top of that to sustain healthy margins and cash flow conversions over time.

Our next question comes from Matt Ryan with the company, Barrenjoey.

Just looking at Slide 10 with the new state expansion commentary that you gave, it looks like growth is in 5 states, but E-Pull tabs are actually legal on 11. So just trying to understand if you can give us some color on why Grover's not in the other states? Is that something that you might look to roll out in the near future?

Hi Matt. Yes, I guess the waterfall is paper pull tabs in 39 states, electronic pull tabs in 11, Grover in 5. So you can see expansion opportunity there on the horizon. I guess the 2 big priority states for us outside of the addressable market today, the 5 that we're in is Minnesota. It's a big market that Grover hasn't been in for a variety of reasons that we can move into as Light & Wonder, and we plan to do that expeditiously. The other major state is Maryland. So I'd say they're the 2 approved E-Pull tab states that we see the ability for us to move into quickly and it will be a huge priority for us. And outside of that, you're hearing potential expansion opportunities into some other states. In the U.S., we haven't built any of that into our base case. Really, our base case is predicated on better games on the existing infrastructure, continue to scale the number of units on a same-store basis, take share in the market off the back of better content and then get the revenue per day uplift when we start to see Huff N Puff on this route, or you see Ultimate Fire Link or Dancing Drums, you name your franchise from Light & Wonder, that's how best to think about market entry and then expansion of top line over time.

Our next question comes from Chad Beynon with the company Macquarie.

I wanted to ask about the competitive landscape. As you've moved into adjacencies over the past couple of years, whether it's VLTs, HHR, COAMs, it seems like some of those markets were owned from a market share standpoint by some of the smaller players. And then you and others kind of got into those markets. So as we think about this new E-Pull tab market that's dominated by Grover and then a few other kind of niche type of players. How are you thinking about the competitive landscape? Are there -- is it R&D? Is it regulatory? What's going to keep some of the other big players from competing here?

Yes, great question. It's really about scalability. We love this segment. We've been looking at it for quite some time. Transparently, we thought about entering organically. The challenge that you have is it's very fragmented in terms of customers. So think about the customer base for Grover, it's 1,500 customers across 5 states. If you think about our land-based business, it's 700 customers across the entire North American market. So it just shows you how fragmented is. So building out that infrastructure to have kind of a hand-to-hand combat to engage with those customers, it takes time. It takes the scalability. So with us acquiring Grover, they have that in place today. We could have built that organically, could have taken us 5, 6, 7, 8 years to get to this level of scale. We get to buy over 10,000 units immediately and then layering our content. So I think, again, the combination of their incredible front-end, they're unbelievable, market-leading customer relationships. I've seen that firsthand being out in the market with our obsession and focus on games. I just think that the combination of those 2 drives really great outcomes for our customers, which are charities. So there's a real kind of feel good element to this. The thing that we generate great outcomes for veterans and fraternal in the U.S. So again, I think that combination of a very developed front end that they spent 10 years developing and our product portfolio will deliver great returns.

Our next question comes from Rohan Gallagher with the company Jarden Group.

Firstly, can I just reiterate that all the acquisition financing is in addition to or outside the scope of your FY targeted $1.4 billion adjusted EBITDA, please?

Yes. Let me be very clear about this. Our core base business is still on target to deliver $1.4 billion. What we're investing in here is the future. It will add some additional revenue and EBITDA contribution to the second half but consider that all incremental to what we've committed to the market, to the Board, to all of our stakeholders. This is us really positioning the business for future growth beyond 2025. We're excited. May 20th, you would have heard the date for Investor Day. We're going to come together in New York. And then quickly behind that in Australia to tell the investor days how to think about Light & Wonder beyond 2025. We know that's been a request from investors for quite some time. So looking forward to that event. We'll add a lot more detail about how to think about Grover in the context of Light & Wonder's future plans, but also the portfolio more broadly and what you can expect from that over the long term.

And Matt, thank you for that clarification. Oliver, a quick question. At the back of the appendix you've got operating income of $82 million, $18 million D&A. Thank you for the clarity there. But you've also got $11 million of distribution cost to get to your $111 million adjusted EBITDA. Can you understand or explain why the distribution costs are separated out?

Yes, those are going to be costs that we will be eliminated once this transaction is complete. But we can go through more of that in more detail during our investor event as we kind of unpack the business a bit more broadly. But generally speaking, that's just how we're kind of viewing the go-forward financials as we think about their contribution from an EBITDA perspective.

Our next question comes from David Katz with the company Jefferies.

I wanted to ask about margins. It's interesting, listening, Matt, to talk about the way this business is fragmented versus your game ops business, right, which is much more concentrated, yet they seem to have the same margin. I'm just looking for a little insight, not certainly challenging, whether it's true. But how does this business get to that margin level with what I perceive to be more of a route heavy lift to it?

Yes. Fair question. I guess, there's a lot of stakeholders kind of getting educated on this segment. So we'll give you a lot of detail when we get to New York. I guess the best way to think about this is a hardware light type infrastructure. So if you see these games, they're pretty basic in terms of hardware that they deploy. So the BOM cost on the hardware that we're deploying into the route is significantly lower than what you see in a Class III casino environment. You think about premium gaming ops, huge signage, merchandising, oversized cabinetry. So that drives a lot of cost into the BOM cost. So that kind of gives you a little bit of the differential in the base cost. I think one other really important opportunity for us as an organization, not only can we flip the R&D investment that we've made over decades to deploy into this route. But we can also take those premium gaming ops units out of our Class III business and deploy them into these facilities, which will be much enhanced in terms of the quality of the hardware we're going to deploy. So they're not completely analogous when you think about the cost base, and that really gives you the consistency in the margin, not as high RPDs as you get in premium gaming ops, but also not the same level of cabinetry costs and bond costs. But Oliver, anything you want to add?

Yes. I just think a lot quickly because, again, we can't go into explicit details here, but I think the other add here would be the length of time that these machines stay on the floor. And so if you think about basic gaming operations, Class III length of time, I think you'll see that much longer on the Grover side in the charitable space. So these assets have been on the floor. They've been growing pretty nicely here over the last several quarters, last couple of years. And so those assets [ sweating on the floor ], to Matt's point, we'll start to integrate our content, our cabinets as well. So we're going to see multiple lifts, both top and bottom line.

The next question comes from Andre Fromyhr with the company UBS.

I was just wondering if you could comment a bit more about the earn-out conditions. I think, Matt, you made a comment earlier that the acquisition multiple at the upfront consideration gets better if they're delivering to targets. Can you just say a bit more about those dynamics?

Yes. You can see in the schedule the way the payments come over time. We haven't given specific KPIs or metrics, but yes, to echo the point that you just made, I made earlier, is the internal rate of return gets better over time as we pay the earnout out. So we'd be more than thrilled to make sure that Grover shareholders get every dollar of the earnout. It's in the best interest of our shareholders, too.

The next question comes from Ryan Sigdahl with the company Craig-Hallum.

I want to dig into the -- I appreciate kind of the historical context from a revenue growth financial perspective. It looks like revenue growth is actually accelerating to 20% over a 5-year CAGR, 29% over the last 2 years. Despite when I look at Slide 10, not really entering any new states, a little bit Ohio, I guess, Kentucky expansion. But can you talk through kind of the industry trends from an organic same-state basis? And how you think that will play out with kind of the optionality of new state expansion being on top of that?

Yes, you can see dramatic growth in the size of the market over the last 5 years. Some of that's driven by market expansion, Ohio coming online. Kentucky adding EGMs as opposed to [ just tablets ]. So you can see in the last 12 months it's really normalized to a same-store sales type growth paradigm. And you can see the market's still continuing to grow very nicely organically. There's capacity for the venues to take on more games. Not many of them are at the full allocation now. So we've got a long list of opportunities where we can go knock on doors, add games and deliver incremental returns beyond that. So we see lots of growth organically just with the existing content and then couple that with, again, all of our best brands laid on to the Grover infrastructure, some of our premium hardware, that will give us the ability to continue that game in our own sites, but also potentially take share from competitors.

Next question comes from Justin Barratt with the company CLSA.

Congrats again. Just wanted to ask, you made a couple of really brief comments around the fact that there are 11 states currently legalized -- that have legalized E-Pull tabs. But I just wanted to get an idea of how we should think about the potential for further states to potentially legalize going forward as well?

Yes. Thanks, Justin. I think we've learned not to commit too much to things that are outside of our control. So regulatory expansion is something that's definitely on our list of opportunities but not built into any of our base cases. You are starting to see some activity in the space looking at charitable gaming. Again, this drives fantastic outcome for veterans in North America and have lived in the country for 13 years, and we worked closely with tribal gaming. There's one population of the U.S. demographics that's more favorable than tribal gaming. It's veterans. Veterans are holding very high regard in this country. And this business supports great outcomes from a charitable perspective for veterans. So it's an agenda that is active with veterans across all states. And so they are the one agitating for expansion here. And so we support that. But we don't build that into our base case just given it's somewhat out of our control.

Fantastic. And then the 2 priority states that you mentioned, Minnesota and Maryland, can you just give us an idea what are kind of barriers or hurdles that you need to get through to, I guess, move into those states? Is it simply regulatory approval and then setting up your operations there? Or is there some more meaningful barriers to entry to get into those states?

Minnesota is a unique market. It's tablet-only. And so we do have a tablet product that's ready for deployment. So it's coupling our infrastructure with the tablet technology. Most states that we're in today are EGM, so look like swap machines. Minnesota is really the exception where it's a tablet-only market. So we're building the product, getting ready for entry there. Its approval is Light & Wonder in that state. So again, it will be a priority for us. Maryland was just lower on our list of priorities. So that will be a state that we can expand into. That's an EGM market. So again, these are 2 things that are on our opportunity list and seems that the team is focused on to make sure we activate quickly.

Next question comes from Jeff Stantial with the company Stifel.

Matt or Oliver, whoever wants to take this. This might be front-running your upcoming Analyst Day a bit. But I was hoping you just might add some numbers or frame for us a bit more how you think about the potential uplift to win per unit per day for conversions of the legacy Grover content over to your top franchises or I guess, framed a little bit differently, maybe how do you think about return hurdles on that capital deployed swapping the Grover units out versus potentially other uses for that capital?

Yes, a little premature to kind of guide on the specifics there. So come and see us in New York and we'll give you a lot of detail around that. I would say -- the same way that we sweat our R&D assets into iGaming, we take Huff N Puff is a great example. We build up for the land-based business. We've just launched that into the iGaming channel. It's one of our best releases -- it's actually our best release ever. Same use case here. We take that same investment for a fraction of the cost, you have to deploy that onto the Grover infrastructure of 10,000 gains. So the ROI hurdle is very low because the return on investment is there given the limited incremental R&D resources that we need to put in. I would say the first protocol is for us to get that games across that infrastructure. Swapping out hardware, that will happen over time as assets become fully depreciated as we get line of sight to what's coming off the gaming ops route, what we can deploy. So that's all optionality over time. But given this is kind of monetizing our core business in an efficient way, we see lots of opportunity and a low hurdle rate. We see this as a way to really monetize the resources that we have coming out of the R&D engine.

Our next question comes from Paul Mason with the company E&P.

I just wanted to ask a bit about the way that the math works for E-Pull tabs like from reading upon it, it sounds like it's pretty straightforward, sort of quite similar to like lottery math. And so just in terms of when you get around supporting some of your big franchises across like, is there much of an approval process to do that? Or is it actually like pretty straightforward because it's just like -- just a couple of numbers that you have to tell the regulator about.

Great question. It's a bit more nuanced than that. It's a limited outcomes market, the same way Class II is or HHR is. So they do take some modification at a mass level. So they won't be the same -- exact variations that you see in a Class III facility. The thing that gives us great confidence that we can do this effectively is we've taken all of our best brands from Class III into HHR, which is probably the closest analog of finite group of outcomes that you have to utilize against the mass profile. So we know how to do this. We've done it in VLT as well. We've done it in Georgia COAM. I said that 2024 was the year of adjacencies. This is a pretty massive continuation of that in a recurring revenue footprint. So yes, it's not exactly the same, but we know how to do it. We've proven this out in many adjacencies, particularly in 2024, we had a fantastic year in kind of redeploying our R&D resources into new variations of end markets.

Our next question comes from Rohan Sundram for the company MST Financial.

Just the one for me. And Matt, I know you talked about competitive landscape earlier and sorry if I missed it. But can you just remind us or just give us an overview -- who are the key players in this space currently? And how would you describe the barriers to entry? I know you talked about scale earlier, but that would be great.

Yes. Great question. Really kind of 2-horse race in the marketplace today. Obviously, Grover has a leading position. The other major company is a company called Arrow, who is another formidable competitor. I think the 2 companies kind of battled it out state for state. So yes, really, they are the 2 major competitors in the marketplace, both similar size when it comes to electronic pull tabs. Arrow has a paper pull tabs business. I guess that's kind of one of the differentiations in their product suite. So the business that we've built is completely aligned to our core competency of building great games and then monetizing those across multiple channels. So they're really the 2 big supplies in the space. Again, the barriers to entry are, it's that front end. It's the kind of building out the networks, building out the infrastructure, building out those relationships. It's a very, very fragmented front end. And so the capability that they've built -- both of those businesses is a high class. So that's really the competitive landscape.

Our next question comes from Adrian Lemme with the company Citi.

Thanks for that earlier answer then. I guess to clarify, would Arrow then be the dominant player in Minnesota and Maryland where you're looking to enter? And then the second part is you mentioned earlier that machine life is longer in this vertical than your Class III gaming ops. So does that create a barrier for driving growth in new markets because the machines on the floor are still good.

It's a little bit different, slightly different market. There's an incumbent in there that really is a dominant player in that space, who is a tablet provider. So yes, I guess it's an option for us to move into that space. But really in the broad base of the market, it's Arrow and Grover are the 2 major competitors.

And then just the second question on whether the longer machine life makes it harder to enter those new markets because you've got to displace the existing machine?

Yes. Minnesota is a tablet market. So not that difficult to displace. There's not a lot of capital investment that's going into those markets. So yes, we'll tell you more about our expansion plans in those 2 markets. I guess the base businesses continue to grow in the states that we're in, layer in, better gains, better hardware to ignite and accelerate growth there. And then we'll give you a pretty detailed synopsis of how we think about getting into those states that we're not in today when we get to New York in May.

At this time there are no more questions in the queue. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Matt for closing remarks. Matt, please proceed.

Thank you for joining us today, and thank you for all your interest and questions. We're extremely excited about the news we shared with you today, and we'll keep you updated as the acquisition moves forward. We also look forward to speaking to many of you again next week to discuss our full year results. Thank you for your ongoing interest in Light & Wonder, and thank you for your time.

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and enjoy the rest of your day.