MAG Interactive AB (publ) (MAGI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to our Q4 report presentation. And today, to present, it's me, Daniel Hasselberg, the CEO of MAG.

And me, Magnus Wiklander, CFO of MAG.

And we're going to talk you through some of the highlights from the quarter and of course, just mention a couple of words about what we're doing here in general. So here, at MAG, we make mobile games. We, both, developer and publisher of the games. The target audience are casual gamers, mainly in North America and Western Europe. And they're all free-to-play. And our games have been downloaded more than 350 million times over the last 10, 11 years. Of course, it's a free-to-play company. We're both involved in creating really fun games but also work with kind of optimization on the data side in terms of improving the product and of course, working with performance marketing. We are about 100 people at MAG right now. Studios here in Stockholm and in Brighton in the U.K. And to some of the highlights. So we'll walk you through this over the next 10 minutes or so. So first of all, just want to summarize, since it's a Q4, we have a full financial year. And it's the best year in the company history. So it's something we're very proud of and happy about. So thanks to everyone at MAG for helping to contribute to this. So we ended the year at SEK 287 million in revenues, which is 32% up versus last year. Yes. And we also ended up in a profitable year. So that's something we're happy with as well.

Exactly. And we will look at our continued growth and our improved margins as well as our ARPDAU journey, which concludes with another strong quarter.

Exactly. And we'll also talk a little bit about our Live Operations, which are growing in importance for the company and some talk about new games as well. So let's dive into it. So here, we can see a picture of our revenues and ARPDAU for the last 9 quarters. So I think what this picture tells us, of course, 59% growth year-over-year, which is fantastic but also the, of course, the long-term trend here, we see revenues going up and ARPDAU, for a very long period of time. And this is a very orchestrated effort across all the teams to try continuously improve our games. What we see here as well is a very clear seasonal pattern. So we always have this kind of Q3 to Q4 dip in terms of usage. So our Q4 are June, July, August, which are the summer months. So people tend to play less games during the summer. And also, in the advertising space is less appetite for buying ad inventory, which means that the CPM, so the average revenue get from the impressions, go down a bit during Q4. So that, combined, usually puts a press on our revenues and ARPDAU. We can see this in this picture. Q3 a year ago is a bit different. As you all know, it was kind of -- when the pandemic hit, and we had a lot of unexpected downloads coming in. So higher revenues and DAUs, and also slightly pushed down on ARPDAU. So that's kind of, I think, puts this picture into context.

Yes. And more of that, we're looking at our KPIs. And first, our audience KPIs, MAU and DAU, we see a decline year-over-year. We can see that. But behind that, we have a lower marketing activity. We use acquisition this year. And we also have an effect from COVID, where fourth quarter, last year, was affected by the influx of users in the third quarter. So with both of those contribute to the decline. And of course, as mentioned, we have the ARPDAU improvement of 59%, which we see comes from the switch from QuizDuel to New QuizDuel, which pretty much happened during this year, as well as growing Wordzee, adding to increase of ARPDAU. We also had acquisition activity, adding above-average games in the portfolio. And also, broadly, every game actually improved ARPDAU individually in the portfolio. So that's behind the growth in ARPDAU since last year. And our financial KPIs, seventh consecutive quarter with a plus 20% growth with a 26% growth to SEK 70 million in this quarter. User acquisition is lower, as we mentioned. And we're working actively to get that back to levels where we want to be. And all of this leaves us with a strong SEK 48 million contribution, giving us a positive EBIT and positive cash flow for the quarter.

Yes. It's fantastic to see. And if we look a bit longer term here, how our revenues and EBITDA margins have developed. So this is something that you and I have talked about for several years now, that we want to grow the company into higher profitability. And I think that's what we're looking at here. So a longer trend line. We're increasing revenues and also the strong underlying margins that we see in the business become more and more visible as we grow the overall revenues. So there are always fluctuations in EBITDA margins, especially when you have kind of this UA volumes that go up and down that affect the margins. But I think the long-term trend here is interesting, and that's our continued plan for the future as well to continue to grow the company's revenues and get the margins continue to go up. And as we talked about last quarter, we also stated kind of a long-term EBIT goal of at least 20%. So that's where we're heading. And during the quarter, we also had some changes in how we kind of classify our products. So if you talk about the product mix for a bit here.

Yes. We had Word Domination, during the fourth quarter, moved into the evergreen segment. And that's a segment where we focus on sustained and high revenues and sales over time and -- with high margins. So we don't have any or at least low UA support for these games. And we expect them to be there for a long time in delivering profits to the company for years to come.

At the same time, as we kind of started thinking about Word Domination more as an evergreen title than a growth game, we also transitioned the game to our operations team. So there's one single team that manages a number of our products. So already, since a couple of years, they've been running WordBrain and WordBrain2, and Wordalot. But this year, they've also have the responsibility for Ruzzle and now also Word Domination. And there's been some great developments in the Live Operations side of things. So in Q4, we released a new event engine from our -- back in a core team into WordBrain. And through using that, they've been able to push up both ARPDAU and revenues quite significantly versus previous years. So it's actually the best Q4 for WordBrain in more than 3 years. So it's going to be really exciting to see now what we can do with the Ruzzle and Word Domination also being run in the same way, and of course, across learnings when we have one team and multiple games. And another effect when we transition a game to Live Ops is that we have fewer people actively involved in that particular product. So we free up resources to go and work on other projects. So right now, we have a lot of focus as a company on developing new games and kind of finding the next hit game for the company. So in Q4, we had 4 different games out in market tests. Some with thousands of players in -- like on the Google Play store and some in more closed environment testing. But really important for us now is like have a high speed in validating ideas and getting the next game out to market. So we know already in Q1, we're going to have additional tests of new products as well. So it's very exciting point in time for MAG. And what we search for and try to find is these games that can take the same journey as Word Domination's done from launching as a new game and then becoming a growth product for the company for multiple years. So Word Domination launched slightly more than 3 years ago globally. And now, it's kind of time to move from growth to the evergreen state. And then, of course, we have always focused on supporting the growth games. So the user acquisition behind Wordzee and growing the other growth games as well is very important for us going forward. And New QuizDuel, we talk about that game a lot because it's our biggest game in terms of DAUs and want to share some stuff with you regarding what's happened recently and some stuff that's about to happen in the game.

Exactly. And first of all, we have the Arena mode. It has been around for a while in the game, but there was work done in Q4 -- actually, launched after Q4, that significantly changed the in-app conversion in the game by tuning the economy basically, in that mode. That's exciting.

And we also, during Q4, we did tests in Germany. We launched something called Solo mode. So it means that you have a single player challenge in the game. You see a picture here in the middle of what Solo mode looks like. And here, we have like the full free-to-play toolbox to work with in terms of engine mechanics or using in-game currency to skip ahead, the reroll categories and so on. So there's a lot of potential here to kind of build a stronger in-app economy. So version 2 of the Solo mode based on the learnings from this summer are rolling out in Germany this week. And then the plan is to continue to extend that later in the year to more markets as well. And also, QuizDuel Live, which is this game mode we're building in collaboration with Primetime, a company we acquired last year, that we had launched before summer, but without cash prizes. And now, we relaunched it in mid-August with cash prizes. And what we wanted to see here was kind of increased engagement from the players. So is it exciting to win real money? And I think the answer is yes. We can see the ARPDAU is up quite significantly, thanks to having the cash prizes, and we also see kind of a stickier audience. So it's fairly stable level now, slightly north of 10,000 daily players. And that's, of course, a number we want to grow. And I think the most obvious way to grow that is to make sure more people have actually tried the game or to see how fun it is. And one test we did to do -- to expose it to more player was, about a week ago, we ran a live marathon in the game. So we had 6 shows running the same day. And then we had more than 50,000 show entries during that day. So some were repeated players, playing multiple times during the day, but we also reached a bigger audience. So it's exciting to see this kind of interest in the game mode and we continue to work on increasing the number of involved players. So summing up. The focus for us as a company now going forward is to leverage this big potential we see from New QuizDuel and massive audience, and a great team that's really kind of shipping new stuff frequently now out to the players. So it's a lot of great stuff going on in the game. And then, of course, the growth games. We have really strong growth products. We want to support with more user acquisition and just continue to grow those games. And as we mentioned, Live Operations is becoming more and more important for us now. We have both Ruzzle and Word Domination in that category. And new games. So if you follow us closely, of course, you're going to see more market tests and our ambition for this year is to get new games out globally. So hopefully, at least one more game launch and maybe more during the year. That's what we aim for. So with that, I think we're ready to go and to see if we have some questions. And also, reminding that we always have, throughout the day, we'll answer any questions you have on Twitter. So you'll find that in the invite to the meeting as we show that on the screen as well, how you find us. And we're super happy to take any questions for me, or Magnus, or anyone else throughout the day.

So we'll take a look at some questions here in the Twitch stream. So one is it's great to see the ARPDAU improvement. Can we expect this to continue? So that is our own expectations that we'll be able to continue to improve the ARPDAU. And I think both, I mean, all the stuff that's happening in New QuizDuel, but also the fact that all new games we do and the newer games in the portfolio, in general, is above average. So when the mix changes to more new game players, ARPDAU should continue to go up. So we definitely are not happy or content with where we are right now. Happy with the progress, but we have more to do. No new game from -- in 2 years since you released Wordzee. Can we hope that they can -- comes a new games next year? Or demand's too great? Or why are you slow on launching new games? So I think -- we launched New QuizDuel as well. That was in May last year, but it's still more than a year ago. And it is really important for us, this kind of discipline to make sure when we launch a game, it can be a game that provides value for MAG for many, many years. So I mean, we -- Ruzzle is still an important game for us. It's 9 years since launch. So when we do get these games out with high quality, it's a huge value for us, and we can continue to operate it for many years. So the bar is high. So you're correct in that sense that we have very high demands for a game to be launched, but I think that's the right way for us to go. And that's also because every new game that's actually out live will take some focus from our teams. So we need to make sure they are great, and we can operate them for many years. So rather have longer time between game launches, but make them really, really great. But a strong focus for us is, as I mentioned, to get new games out. We really want to release games every year. That's our ambition. Okay. Personnel costs in Q4 were down SEK 7 million from Q3. What's the explanation? So you want to take that, Magnus?

Exactly. I think there's probably a good reason for commenting on that. So between quarter-to-quarter, I think there's going to be several things you'd comment on personnel cost. But quarter-over-quarter, it's mostly seasonal effects, with Q4 generally being lower. And in this particular quarter, we also have a revaluation of the social fees on our option programs and it kicks in. So that has some effect on this quarter, in particular, otherwise, this is normal seasonal effects in Q4. And then year-over-year, we also had a change that is worth commenting where in the Q4, last year, we had the research and development tax relief coming into the fourth quarter. And we have commented on that, in the report, how that affects the comparison numbers. So that could be good to know as well.

Good. Can you tell us more about market test of new games? So, yes. So what we're doing here is basically when we have new game concept, we test them in kind of multiple iterations. So one is, of course, all the internal game testing that's going on, but we also use services where we can reach a limited set of players that we know are fans of particular type of game, so we can get relevant feedback and see how they interact with the games. So we try to do that multiple times during development to get -- be as close to the players as possible. But sometimes, you also need to do a slightly larger scale. What we usually do is to take the game out on the Google Play store and acquire hundreds, or sometimes 1,000 players for a new update, and then we can start measuring data. So that's where it's good to have been around for 10 years. So we have a lot of benchmark data to look at to see what should the game look like at this particular point in its development cycle. So we go back and forth with that. And I think on an accounting side of things, we don't treat this as kind of investments until we've decided we're going to go for a soft launch. And that's when we kind of make it public to anyone outside of the company, that this is a game we aim to actually get to market and then we treat it as an investment. So there are no kind of bad surprises, especially all of a sudden, there's any games as canceled that will hit the P&L because we test this kind of -- in another way. But when we do -- to soft launch, we also sent out a press release and tell everyone about it. Okay. I have a question, which games have lost the most DAU during the quarter? So I think, in general, it's -- depending on the total DAU. So usually, it's a very similar pattern in terms of percentages. So if all games lose -- I think we're down 15% if you compare Q3 to Q4, and that's probably relatively across the board. So biggest games lose the most absolute number of players, but it's a similar pattern in terms of fewer installs and slightly fewer play days or player during the summer months. Talk about the ability to invest in the UA? Did you plan to reduce Q4 '21? Or was it due to market conditions? And provide an update on Facebook and other algos since the Apple change. So this is -- yes, are you seeing the same ROI? So this is, of course -- it's a great question and a very relevant one. So what we do is we always aim to maximize our investments in user acquisition. We work with payback windows. We want to see money back in x number of months, and that's kind of based on the lifetime value development of that particular product. So we don't plan ahead and say, let's invest SEK 10 million or SEK 30 million next quarter. It's always how can we maximize the amount of money we invest tomorrow and the day after that, based on what we see in our prediction models. And on the IDFA sites, so Apple's changes to iOS 14. I think we've seen different impact on different networks. So some ad networks seem to handle this effect better or worse. And as I pointed out in the report as well, we've seen Facebook being impacted the most. And I think you -- if you follow Facebook in the public market, you see they also publicly talked about that, that this is having a lot of impact on us. So of course, they have an enormous and fantastic development team. So we expect them to improve and adapt to this new situation and start working better in the future as well. But that's the -- naturally we've seen the biggest effect on both sides, both user acquisition not working great and ad monetization not working great either. But it's -- overall, it's -- I think -- especially on the ad monetization side, it's been much smaller effect than we might have expected. But the same return on investments. So this is -- we work the other way around. So we have our target and then we try to invest as long as we can meet the target rather than seeing what it ended up being. How aggressive would you consider monetization in QuizDuel currently? So it's not very aggressive. I mean, the monetization is still mainly from advertising. So that means that you, as a player, actually don't have to pay anything to play the game. They are always free-to-play. But I think in QuizDuel is actually less things that people spend money on than in other games, but that's something we want to change as well to add more fun things you, as a player, think is rewarding to spend money on. So hence, kind of Solo mode, for example, where it's really fun new way of playing a quiz game, but where you also have some free-to-play mechanics. How would you handle backlash from members due to previous payment solutions? So this is another good question. So of course, when you introduce new things to a game, you need to do it with care. So for example, one reason for looking more to, for example, Arena mode and Solo mode, or free-to-play mechanics and improve in-game economy is that there's new things that players have not been playing before versus going into the classic player versus player mode in New QuizDuel, which is much more sensitive to change and where you would have to thoroughly AB-test and verify that it's a good idea before you do it. But it's, I think, less controversial to add new fun stuff where you have a different way of progressing, for example. So we're very careful with the audience for sure. I think that's it in terms of questions here. But as a reminder, feel free to reach out to us on Twitter or through e-mail and just ask any questions you might have in the report. So thank you so much for watching.

Thank you.