PlaySide Studios Limited (PLY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to PlaySide Studios FY '26 Results Presentation Webinar. Up on your screen is a presentation that's been released to the ASX this morning, and we've got the company's CEO, Benn Skender, who will go through that. Before I hand it over to Benn to go through it, I'll just remind you can submit questions through the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. [Operator Instructions] So with that, Benn, I'll hand it over to you.

Thanks, Matt. Thanks, everyone, for joining the PlaySide Studios FY '26 Results Presentation. My name is Benn Skender. I'm the CEO of PlaySide. I'll take you through our results briefly this morning, and then we can open up for some Q&A. Turning to Slide 2 and the investment summary. We exceeded our guidance for FY '26. We previously guided to revenues of $50 million to $53 million, which would represent growth over FY '25 given the launch of MOUSE: P.I. For Hire. And we've come in ahead of that with revenue just shy of $55 million. We also flagged a significant restructuring in our cost base, which we've delivered primarily or a reduction in our cost base that we've delivered primarily through restructuring, reducing overheads by $12 million on an annualized basis. Importantly, even with that focus on cost discipline, we've expanded our investment in our business development and marketing teams over the last 18 months, and that's to ensure that our gamer-facing and client-facing brand is as strong as we can make it. MOUSE was by far and away the highlight of the year for PlaySide. It's the most commercially successful original IP franchise in the company's history, and it gives us a great deal to build on, both for the game itself and for the franchise around it. There's also a halo effect from a success like this. It's presented several opportunities for us to invest in new publishing deals. One of those titles we've already announced this year, and we're in active discussions on other publishing opportunities. Late in the financial year, we lost the Horizon Worlds contract with Meta, which was a material loss for us, but we've moved quickly to replace that work. In the last few weeks, we've signed new contracts with Meta, putting some of our resources on to different projects where Meta is directing increased focus as well as with Epic Games and with Zero Latency. We're building on that momentum and rebuilding our pipeline is our top priority. There's a significant marketing campaign underway for Game of Thrones: War for Westeros. Some of you may have seen the teaser trailer that we released last week, which has now had more than 15 million views across all channels. And we've got a major marketing beat coming next week with the official gameplay reveal trailer during Opening Night Live at Gamescom, which is the largest consumer gaming conference in the world. And finally, we're very pleased to announce our new PC console title, Dumb Ways to Build. We released the announcement trailer today, and the game will launch on all platforms on the 10th of September. I've covered a number of the financial highlights in that intro, but I'll point out a few things. MOUSE was the primary contributor to our result. It generated $24 million in revenue to PlaySide. Platform sales are, of course, higher on a gross basis. The game sold just shy of 1 million units within the period. It's passed that milestone since, generating gross sales revenue of USD 28 million during the financial year. And that puts it among the best-performing titles launched on PC this year. Around 30% of our original IP revenues now are derived from our back catalogue, with continued strong performance from our PC and mobile titles and the Dumb Ways brand. External projects, as flagged, had a weaker year. We completed the Civilization project for 2K in September. And while we had several smaller wins and scope expansions in the first half, overall, it was a tougher year for that part of the business. We still delivered a significant turnaround in EBITDA. That was driven by our focus on cost reduction. The Digital Games Tax Offset contributed $7.8 million. But even if we back that out, the underlying turnaround in EBITDA is substantial, and that's still after absorbing one-off restructuring costs incurred to achieve those savings. We returned to profitability with NPAT of $5.4 million. Operating cash flow was positive at $10.7 million, and we closed the year with a cash balance of $15.4 million. Looking at the P&L, you can clearly see the impact of the MOUSE launch driving our revenue growth over the prior corresponding period. That was well flagged and drove a significant second half revenue skew to the result given the game launched in April. External projects, by contrast, had a first half skew, and that reflects the smaller wins and scope expansions that we had in the first half and the completion of the Civilization work for 2K during that period. Cost savings are starting to come through. You can clearly see that in the EBITDA turnaround, and they will continue to flow through into FY '27. We always show this chart. This is our revenue growth now growth over the last 7 years. We've resumed growth in FY '26 off a leaner cost base, and our revenue CAGR over that period is around 40%. This was a record year for original IP revenues as we continue to grow our portfolio with the launch of MOUSE. Operating cash flow was positive with MOUSE, a major contributor alongside the cost savings from the April 2025 restructure. You'll note that our capitalized development remains high. That reflects the increased team size on Game of Thrones: War for Westeros and on MOUSE through to its launch. On our numbers, there's around $16 million in cash costs that was spent supporting the launch of future titles, with the main one obviously being Game of Thrones. So that spend isn't generating a return in the FY '26 operating cash flow, but it's something that we'd expect to reap the benefits from in FY '27 and beyond. We also undertook some capital management during the year, a placement, a share purchase plan and a debt facility. Those combined contributed $13.9 million net of costs, and that assists us in funding our investment in future titles. Turning to our operating highlights. MOUSE was the most successful game launch in the company's history. We launched simultaneously on 6 different platforms in a single day without a major hitch. It's now done more than USD 30 million in gross sales and over 1.1 million units to date. The physical edition has been in retailers globally for the past month and is performing well. On external projects, lots of large studios conducted restructuring during the year in terms of our client base, and that doesn't really stop our need for content and the likelihood of them outsourcing work, but it does slow down decision-making. In several instances, clients have shown us a road map of RFPs or projects that we'd be pitching for and then gone and put it all on hold until a later date. We see the current conditions as cyclical. We've already deliberately positioned ourselves for expansion on the other side of that, and we are already seeing some signs in several small contracts signed since June. Our publishing investment also continues. Publishing is another way for us to derisk our investment in new titles. It gives us the ability to scale up and grow our portfolio quickly because not everything we release needs to be built by us. When we act as a publisher, it continues to generate new opportunities to build out our original IP portfolio. We undertook an operating restructure in recent months following the loss of the Horizon Worlds work. That's brought our headcount in the team to 214. There's one-off costs baked into our EBITDA associated with that restructure. And ultimately, it will contribute around $5 million in annualized cost savings going into FY '27. We'll also be moving into our new office next month, consolidating 2 Port Melbourne offices into a single floor plan in Docklands. It will be significantly better for morale getting everyone into the one place and for the P&L and balance sheet as well because it's a really attractive office leasing market, so we'll save some money doing it as well. We'll be hosting our AGM there later this year, so I look forward to seeing more of you there and introducing you to some of our team. And importantly, we are continuing to sign new work. We haven't made announcements because none of the contracts is individually material, but the pipeline is building momentum, and we have still signed several small contracts in recent weeks. Meta has been one of those clients, which underscores the strong relationship that we maintain with them. While they've adjusted their focus on Horizon Worlds, which directly impacted our teams working on those projects, there are other areas that Meta is investing in where we are already being awarded work, which is really promising. We've also won work with Epic Games and with Zero Latency, and that means that most of the people that were affected by the Horizon Worlds termination are now actively working for us on other client projects. We continue to pitch for significant amounts of work with the upcoming conference circuit likely to generate further opportunities. We'll be present at conferences in Europe, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Canada through August and September. A new Dumb Ways game launching and major marketing and media initiatives at Gamescom for both Game of Thrones and MOUSE all help us to be front of mind with clients regarding potential opportunities. The BD team is performing well. It takes time for new people to onboard, but I'm really pleased that we now have 4 industry veterans in place, based in Germany, the UAE and Australia, giving us excellent coverage with strong relationships across all the major markets and conferences. This slide shows some of the stats on MOUSE. Most of the main ones have already covered. One I'll call out, we've still got 3.3 million outstanding wish lists. We often get questions about how that number translates into sales. And the way that I'd characterize it is as an opportunity to convert over time. Around 50% of the people that bought the game on PC had already wishlisted the game. And that's what makes wishlisting valuable going into launch. It doesn't all convert immediately, but we're extremely happy with the numbers so far. And as we release more content for the game, that gives us fresh opportunities to convert those wishlisters into paying players in the coming years. We've got a road map for downloadable content, which lets us add more content to the game and then go out on sale again with a stronger value proposition for people that have been considering buying MOUSE but haven't done it yet. And we've got a sequel in planning as well. I'm not going to rush that. There's still significant revenue to come from the base game, but it does speak to the strong franchise opportunity that we believe we'll have for years to come. As MOUSE eventually moves into our back catalogue, it's going to keep lifting the percentage of our revenue that comes from having an established portfolio of titles. And we've received fantastic feedback from critics and players alike, a 94% very positive Steam review score and similar reviews on console storefront, which is really pleasing. Game of Thrones: War for Westeros is our next major title to come, launching on PC early in the next calendar year. Some of you might have seen the teaser trailer that we released on the 14th of August following the House of the Dragon finale. The response has been good. What we're really looking forward to, though, is the gameplay reveal trailer next week during opening night live at Gamescom. Such a high-profile event presents us a huge opportunity for media exposure and wishlisting activity. We've really only released one major trailer to date for the game, which was more than 12 months ago. So to have already cleared 300,000 wish lists is a great outcome. And we'd expect that number to track up strongly as we embark on the next phase of the campaign and get closer to launch. Unlike MOUSE, there's going to be a lot more community engagement prior to launching a title like this. I don't want to get bogged down in too much detail, but for this real-time strategy genre, we're going to be engaging heavily with players and giving people opportunities to experience aspects of the game before launch. And even the gameplay trailer, true to its name, shows lots of gameplay. And that's important in letting players know exactly what this game is going to be in a genre that's got a lot of passionate supporters. The team and I are really keen to see the feedback in the media and comments on socials in response to the trailer next week. Dumb Ways to Die. So we did a lot with Dumb Ways to Die over the year. We collaborated with Epic Games to bring Dumb Ways characters into Fortnite for the first time. And off the back of that success, we've signed a new deal in recent weeks to develop additional game content for UEFN, which is Epic's platform for creating games within Fortnite. It's a small deal, but it's a strategically valuable one for us. And we've been focused on cost-effective investment in the Dumb Ways IP. Spin Master launched a new game under license. It was a card game, paying us royalties to use the brand. And we're exploring additional opportunities to license the IP or find cost-effective ways to build out a larger portfolio of gaming content for the brand. Here on the screen, you can see some images from the original Fortnite collaboration, the back bling featuring Botch, which is one of our characters, along with emotes set to the iconic theme song. Dumb Ways to Build is our next initiative, a new cooperative multiplayer PC console title, which we've announced today and will launch on the 10th of September. Dumb Ways to Build started as an idea to repurpose some of our Dumb Ways to Party assets in a cost-effective manner and quickly capitalize on a popular new genre referred to as friendslop. So these are low budget, highly social games designed to be played as a group. The gameplay loops are usually pretty simple, and the enjoyment comes from memorable moments of shared chaos. Some of these friendslop games have been incredibly successful this year. There's been titles that do 1 million units straight out of the gate in the first week. There are several that I've mentioned there that have already cleared 10 million unit sales this year. The challenge in terms of hitting those sales is that their success is typically driven by word of mouth, exposure from content creators and player moments that go viral on social media. So we've deliberately kept our forecast for the game modest because that virality is largely out of our control. But really, our job in original IP is to identify where the best opportunities for strong returns are, come up with concepts that we believe in and then execute in a cost-effective manner. And I feel like our teams are getting better and better at that every year. And that's what's going to help us build a strong portfolio of titles, which I'll talk a little bit more about later. Our unique selling points for the game are threefold. This is going to be the first friendslop game with a globally recognized IP attached. It's one that we think is a natural fit for the genre. It's gone viral several times before, which is promising. Secondly, it will be available on all PC console platforms at launch, and it supports cross-play. So people will be able to play with their friends regardless of which gaming hardware they own. I've got some screenshots here I can share. Everyone at the studio has been involved in play testing the game over the last few weeks, and we also employ a small group of external testers and feedback has been really positive. So we're looking forward to getting it into the hands of gamers very soon and seeing how it goes. Just to recap on some of the numbers around Dumb Ways. We get significant reach out of this brand. It's an iconic property with more than 11 million followers across social channels, over 1.3 billion views in 2025 and reach of more than 30 million people each month. So it's an IP that we want to keep investing in, and we feel like a multiplayer PC console title like Dumb Ways to Build is the next appropriate expression of that. Dew is a title that we signed in our publishing division with MVRX Games in February earlier this year. It's a beautiful-looking cooperative platformer set in a stunningly realistic environment. We're partnering with an established team here. They were the lead developers on the Unravel franchise, which was published by EA. That was a multimillion unit selling title, and that experience really helps derisk our investment as publisher. We will be progressively investing low to mid-single-digit millions in the game over the next couple of years. The game recently passed its vertical slice milestone. So that's where we get a clear look of what the entire game will be from a gameplay perspective. And we use external reviewers as well as our own assessment of that. It's passed all of its KPIs. We're really happy with the feedback and passing that milestone triggers our continued investment and becomes the catalyst to curate our initial marketing campaign, which we drive as the publisher. So that should start to move the needle for wishlisting over time and interest in the title more meaningfully when it comes out. Dew is on track for a calendar 2028 launch on PC console. So this slide demonstrates our portfolio growth. As I mentioned, around 30% of our original IP revenues now are derived from our back catalogue, and that's a number that we want to see go up over time. Original IP, as many of you would know, is a hit-driven business at the level of each individual title. But if you start building a portfolio of successful content, that back catalogue revenue starts doing a lot of work for you in terms of stabilizing your revenues year-to-year. So KILL KNIGHT and Age of Darkness have been out for a couple of years now. They're stalwarts in our back catalogue. MOUSE obviously is our best-performing title by a long way. It's well reviewed. It's had really strong unit sales. Dumb Ways to Build arrives this calendar year. Game of Thrones early next calendar year, and then we're going to continue to release new content across the Dumb Ways IP and the MOUSE franchise ahead of developing the sequel. And then our next publishing title, Dew, is already slated for calendar 2028 as well. So our intention is to keep building titles into that pipeline. So that can come from new publishing agreements or titles that we internally develop. And then we look to identify ways to keep those back catalogue revenue steady. So that can come from a combination of participating in sales through the year, developing new content, building opportunities to bundle games promotionally with other games in the genre and low-cost forms of collaboration with other IPs as well. Every time we've got a success, it raises our profile as publisher and as developer. But not only that, it continues to strengthen our reputation with gamers and with the studios that we pitch to for outsourced and co-development work, which is really important. Finally, in terms of catalysts for FY '27, there's really 3 things that we're setting out to do. The first is rebuilding our external projects pipeline. Losing Horizon Worlds was a setback, but rebuilding that pipeline is our #1 priority. Momentum is building. We've signed several smaller pieces of work in recent weeks. We've increased our spread of clients, which is critical. And in the BD team, we've got industry veterans with excellent relationships. So it's a cyclical industry. We've seen a big washout since COVID, but the demand for content is a genuine driver of outsourced work, and we've got a big slate of conferences coming up internationally. They represent critical touch points with our global clients. And I'm confident that over the coming months, we're going to continue to grow the number of small projects and the number of individual clients that we are working with, and that's going to position us well to convert opportunities with larger contracts as the cycle continues to improve. Secondly, Game of Thrones: War for Westeros, that launches on PC early in calendar 2027. That's going to be a meaningful driver of revenue for the year. And then thirdly, building and monetizing the Dumb Ways to Die IP. So starting with Dumb Ways to Build launching on PC console in a few weeks' time and then continuing to find cost-effective ways to monetize the brand. With that, I'm happy to open up for questions. Thanks.

Thanks so much, Benn. First question, how many real-time strategy titles are releasing on console these days? Any plans for this?

I think someone asked me this 6 months ago, and I said it was hotly debated within the team. So not at the moment. Our plans are that it's a premium title that will be released on PC. We are open to it and do talk with people that represent the console platforms. The challenge is that in the RTS genre, there would have to be significant design changes that are made to make sure that the game was still enjoyable and playable on console. And that really has to do with the fact that you've got a lot more keys on the keyboard than you do have buttons on a controller. So it requires changes to thinking about controller mapping and how you would set up that game. And so there's a real trade-off there in terms of staying true to the experience that we want fans of the genre to experience and obviously opening up the opportunity to sell a lot more units or introduce people to games in that genre on console. So it's not in the plans at the moment, but it's something that we remain open to having conversations with about.

Just a question from Jasper, Canaccord. Congrats on the strong results, especially the outstanding performance on MOUSE. First question, given the material cost rationalization post Horizon Worlds contract conclusion, could you give us more color on what the annualized operating cost base is entering FY '27?

Maybe not the cost base, but in terms of the cost savings, they'll be running at. Well, you'll get an incremental $5 million of annualized cost savings going into next year. So I think in the deck, we talked about $12 million in annualized cost savings, that's really across the 2 restructures. So we did the first one in April 2025. You saw all of those cost savings reflected in our result this year, which was alongside MOUSE, a big driver of the EBITDA turnaround. And then our most recent one has seen $5 million worth of cost savings that you'll witness in the current year's results. I think I already mentioned that because a lot of the people that were on the Horizon Worlds work are actually now working on other projects, a lot of the cost savings that we made were genuine restructuring costs in the sense that they were not from revenue-generating roles.

And can you give us a sense of the work for hire contract size wins you've recently received and how they compare in size to the Horizon-Meta contract you lost, assuming they're relatively small?

Yes. So we've been pretty open about the fact that our external projects division enters the financial year in a rebuilding phase. So Meta was a major contract, and now we're starting to fill that with smaller contracts that we've signed since June across Meta, Epic Games and Zero Latency. And we've got a pipeline of pitches with an expanded BD team out there bringing opportunities in. The reality is like a lot of those are still small. There are some midsized contracts that we're actively pitching on, and I do think there'll be more of those through the year. But yes, I can appreciate because we've been quiet lately and haven't announced anything that people could easily think or nothing is happening on the external project side. But when you get so much disruption in the industry, all your clients are risk averse. They're all worried about their jobs. They're not taking big risks on content. And so what you end up seeing is stuff like people come to us for 2 or 3 months of work, then that gets rolled over for another 2 or 3 months. Sometimes 1 project turns into 2 or the team size that's on a project expands as it rolls over. And so that's not ideal for us in terms of visibility. But if I'm taking a glass half full perspective, that's exactly the kind of behavior that I'd expect as things start to turn again. Obviously, I've got to be respectful that one of our major clients has had a big restructure and they're still giving us work. So there's not really anything I can speak to in detail about that. And I'm trying to temper my optimism with the reality that people haven't seen us announce anything material on this side for quite a while. But since that Horizon Worlds work has started to wind down, most of the team are working on other client projects, and I'm really happy with that.

And how the conversations progressed with these companies? And is there more optimism across the industry?

I mean I can tell you in a month because, yes, as mentioned, me, the BD team, several of our senior leaders across original IP, marketing and external projects are all going to be out at conferences. There's a lot on -- we've got conferences in Cologne, Riyadh, Greece, Vancouver. We're seeing clients in San Francisco. That's really going to be major touch points with all of our clients to get feedback. But what I'm seeing on paper in terms of signing small extensions to the work that we've got is a positive, and I'm expecting that to continue to pick up.

And just another question from Jasper at Canaccord. Could you give us more detail on the pipeline for external projects? Is it still largely weighted to smaller scoping work? Or are there any large RFPs coming back to market that you're bidding on?

Yes, I guess I probably mostly answered that in the question from a couple ago, but a lot of them are sort of starting small, and that's just reflective of the clients' appetite to take risk on new content. But there are certain providers or participants in the industry that have slates for gaming content on their platforms that are much less risk averse. And so there are still reasonable sized contracts in that sort of $5 million to $10 million range that we talk about that are out there that we're actively pitching on. But then there is another subset of studios where they're starting much smaller.

And how many internal projects are being worked on at PlaySide currently?