Playtech plc ($PTEC)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our full year 2025 results. As always, I will begin with a brief overview before handing over to Chris, who will take you through the financials and the outlook. I will then update you on our progress against our strategic priorities. 2025 was a year of strategic transformation for Playtech and one that went better than we had expected. We successfully completed the sale of Snaitech, revised our agreement with Caliente Interactive and transformed Playtech into a highly focused B2B technology business with a portfolio of valuable assets. Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 197 million, around 20% ahead of market expectations at the start of 2025. This performance was underpinned by strong momentum across the Americas and material investment income from our equity stakes in Caliente Interactive and Hard Rock Digital. We ended the year with net cash position of EUR 29 million, reinforcing the strength of our balance sheet, which gives us flexibility to invest behind growth opportunities and consider further shareholder returns. As a simplified group with strengthened foundations and clear levers in our key markets, we move into 2026 with confidence on track to deliver 2026 full year adjusted EBITDA ahead of market expectations while continuing to make progress towards our medium-term financial targets. I will now hand over to Chris.

Thanks, Moran. On to Slide 5, please. As we communicated at both our full year 2024 and our H1 '25 results, these financial results for 2025 reflect the impact of the revised Caliente Interactive agreement, which came into effect on the 1st of April 2025. As a brief reminder, as part of the new agreement, we no longer receive the additional B2B services fee, which is now removed from revenue and direct costs. Instead, Playtech now recognizes its 30.8% share of income from associate from Caliente Interactive within adjusted EBITDA with dividends flowing into free cash flow. This rebases our reported revenue and affects both adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, but introduces a more aligned recurring investment income stream. These impacts are particularly noticeable in the year-on-year comparatives given the new agreement came into effect on the 1st of April 2025, but will normalize going forward. Now on to the highlights. I'm pleased to report good financial performance of the group with adjusted EBITDA reaching EUR 197 million, around 20% ahead of market expectations at the start of 2025. Outside of the rebasing of numbers from the full year '25 to reflect the revised Caliente agreement, underlying revenue and adjusted EBITDA were impacted by regulatory headwinds in Colombia and Brazil. However, overall, the group performed strongly in the Americas with significant investment income contribution from Caliente and Hard Rock Digital. Together, these accounted for the vast majority of the EUR 62 million of adjusted EBITDA from investment income, highlighting the value in our strategic investments. Free cash flow improved materially in the second half of the year, supported by growing investment income distributions. For the full year 2025, free cash flow is down compared to the reported 2024 figure. However, this comparative includes the impact of Caliente under the previous agreement. When normalizing for this, the starting point was broadly breakeven free cash flow for 2024. And as such, our 2025 result shows significant progress. At the same time, we maintained a strong balance sheet, finishing the year in a net cash position even after repurchasing 8.3% of our equity capital in the second half for a total of EUR 77 million. On to the next slide, where we will look at our B2B revenue performance. Reported B2B revenue was EUR 688 million, down year-on-year due to the impact of the revised Caliente agreement. On an underlying basis, regulated B2B revenue grew 6%, reflecting very strong momentum in the Americas. U.S. and Canada delivered over 70% growth in constant currency, driven by continued wallet share gains with Tier 1 operators and strong performance across live, casino and the PAM+ verticals. In Latin America, underlying revenue grew 8% despite the impact from Colombia VAT headwinds and Brazil's particularly stringent transition to a regulated market. Europe ex U.K. performance was driven by strong growth in Poland and Spain, offset partially by the impact of higher hardware sales in the prior year. The U.K. was impacted by tougher regulatory backdrop and certain customer-specific changes, including the previously communicated in-sourcing of self-service betting terminals by one operator. Elsewhere, Rest of the World delivered strong double-digit growth, driven primarily by strong performance in South Africa. Revenues from unregulated markets declined year-on-year as expected due to the reclassification of Brazil into our regulated reporting segment. Turning to Slide 5 -- sorry, next slide, Slide 7. B2B costs increased modestly in 2025, reflecting continued investments in areas where we see strongest potential for long-term returns. In particular, the live vertical, where we continue to invest in expansion by increasing capacity in our U.S. studios, which accounted for the majority of the increase in live costs, but we also added new tables in Peru and opened our studio in Sao Paulo to support our growth in the Americas. During the year, we absorbed higher G&A expenses, primarily reflecting certain nonrecurring costs, professional fees and advisory costs, including some legal expenses. Looking ahead, we will continue to manage costs carefully, focusing investments on our areas of strategic priority, particularly in the Americas and Live while preserving efficiency and driving operating leverage over time. On to the next slide. Following the sale of Snaitech, our B2C operations now represent a much smaller part of the group. HappyBet is considered noncore. And in 2025, we took decisive steps towards winding down the business, which is now nearing completion. Given the changes to the U.K. gambling tax framework, we have commenced an operational review of Sun Bingo to assess its long-term prospects. Our actions across B2C reflect our focus on building a more streamlined operating footprint. On to the balance sheet, looking at our net debt bridge. We began the year with net debt of EUR 143 million. The largest cash movements in the year were the EUR 2.3 billion proceeds received from the sale of Snaitech. The payment of EUR 1.8 billion as a special dividend to shareholders and the repayment of the remaining EUR 150 million of our EUR 350 million bond that matured in March 2026. That leaves the group with a single EUR 300 million bond maturing in June 2028. In addition, we repurchased 8.3% of our issued equity capital at an average price of GBP 2.67 per share for a total of EUR 77 million, which should limit future dilution from employee share plans, including the PTP. As a result of various cash movements outlined, we ended the year in a net cash position of EUR 29 million, supported by a fully undrawn EUR 225 million revolving credit facility, which together demonstrates the strength of our balance sheet even after the substantial capital returns through the special dividend and share buyback. Looking ahead, we have a number of remaining liabilities related to the Snaitech sale totaling approximately EUR 90 million, of which around EUR 70 million will be settled in 2026 and EUR 20 million in 2027. Including these upcoming outflows would imply a pro forma net debt position of around EUR 60 million for the group. Next slide, please. Let me briefly take you through our capital allocation policy. As a reminder, we maintained our previously communicated net debt to adjusted EBITDA target of 1 to 2x. Our balance sheet remains strong. And while we have a lot going on in the business, I wanted to put a pause in front of you now in terms of how I think about capital allocation. We look at it in 3 buckets, the first of which is growth. We continue to prioritize organic investments into priority product verticals, namely Live Casino as well as in the high-growth geographies across the Americas, including the U.S., Mexico and Brazil. A key part of our framework is our early-stage investments via structured agreements where we typically partner with local heroes ahead of regulation and as a result, directly participate in the future upside. This approach has proven to be hugely successful through our long-standing success with Caliente Interactive and more recently with Hard Rock Digital. The second bucket is maintaining flexibility for less predictable events, including M&A and regulatory or tax changes. We remain open to selective M&A opportunities particularly those aligned with our ambition to strengthen Playtech's position as the leading B2B technology provider. As well, we need to remain flexible given the uncertainty of our industry, as highlighted by recent events such as regulatory and tax changes we have seen in various markets in recent months. We also need to maintain flexibility for contingent liabilities, including earnout payments on existing ventures. Finally, shareholder returns. We returned EUR 1.8 billion to shareholders as a special dividend following the Snaitech in H1, representing a return greater than our market capitalization earlier in the year prior to the deal announcement. We also returned EUR 77 million in H2 in the form of share buybacks. We intend to continue returning capital to shareholders going forward. The capital we retained beyond the first 2 buckets I mentioned of, one, investing in growth, and two, maintaining flexibility is what we will consider to be structurally surplus capital. We intend to return to surplus capital to shareholders going forward. This should also grow over time as we generate increasing free cash flow, as I discussed on a previous slide. Going forward, we will review returns, including dividends and buybacks in line with this policy. Turning to Slide 11 and our levers to get to our medium-term financial targets of EUR 250 million to EUR 300 million in adjusted EBITDA and EUR 70 million to EUR 100 million in free cash flow. 2025, we've made a number of important steps towards these goals. Starting with the U.S., we have seen strong performance across our live casino and PAM+ verticals as well as good progress with Hard Rock Digital. The outlook is encouraging with a healthy pipeline of new commercial opportunities across our products and services, and we will be profitable on an adjusted EBITDA basis in 2026. Last year, I said we have around EUR 20 million of losses at the EBITDA level and around EUR 25 million at the cash flow level from underperforming businesses. These figures have improved somewhat year-on-year, but more importantly, we have taken decisive action to address some of these units with the wind down of HappyBet now nearing completion and the IGS business now classified as an asset held for sale. At the same time, we continue to capture growth from regulated markets, namely the Americas and selected European jurisdictions. We are investing to further improve and innovate our key product verticals while consistently realizing the benefits of our revenue share business models and the attractive economics within our structured agreements. Partnerships with leading operators remain a core competitive advantage, and we are particularly pleased with the momentum we are seeing with Caliente, DraftKings and Hard Rock Digital, amongst others. Collectively, these levers coupled with continued focus on cost efficiency and our efforts in addressing underperforming business units will drive operating leverage over time. We remain extremely confident in achieving our medium-term adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow targets. Next slide, please. Finally, I would like to update you on our 2026 trading so far and the outlook. We've had a very strong start to the year, particularly across the Americas, where we continue to see sustained demand in both the U.S. and Mexico. In the U.S., the strong activity we saw in Q4 has continued into the new year, and we are encouraged by the healthy pipeline of upcoming launches. In Mexico, Caliente continues to perform strongly, and we expect to see a further uplift from the 2026 FIFA World Cup, where Mexico is a co-host nation and the games will be on a local time zone. This is a once in a generation event that will significantly boost visibility, engagement and betting volumes. Reflecting the strong start, we now expect to deliver full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA ahead of current market expectations, despite the regulatory headwinds across some of our markets. We expect 2026 full year CapEx, including capitalized development to be in the range of EUR 90 million to EUR 100 million with the increase compared to 25 due to our expansion plans in Brazil. We expect the group's effective tax rate to be approximately 25% to 28%. Finally, as I highlighted earlier, both management and the Board of Directors remain confident in Playtech's ability to execute our strategy and to deliver our medium-term financial targets of EUR 250 million to EUR 300 million in adjusted EBITDA and EUR 70 million to EUR 100 million of free cash flow. And with that, I'll now hand back to Moran to cover our strategic priorities.

Thanks, Chris. I will now take you through our investment case strategy, the progress made so far and our ambitions for the future. But first, a reminder of how we capture value across the value chain. Our wide product offering gives customers access to best-in-class operational expertise, this is how we have supported local heroes and help them to grow into market-leading operations. Outside of our strong live offering and casino content, we have a very unique selling point, our 25-plus years of data from our customers. We also have a multi-decade expertise, which will translate into a services offering that supports the optimization of our products and for our customers. With our regulatory expertise and market-leading safer gambling tools, there is no other player in the market that offer solutions across the entire value chain. Now to our investment case. For those of you looking at our story after some time, we are now a simplified business. Playtech today is a high growth, predominantly B2B technology business serving over 200 customers across more than 50 regulated jurisdictions and providing mission-critical infrastructure to many of the world's leading gambling operators. We are recognized for delivering market-leading content and platform technology through value-accretive business models across some of the fastest-growing regulated markets globally. We also partner with many of the world's largest and most influential brands from local heroes such as Totalizator [indiscernible] major global operators, including Flutter, PENN and bet365. Our multi-decade experience supporting B2B customers enables us to identify opportunities early and invest selectively directly and via our structured agreement framework. Through its strategy, we have built a portfolio of highly valuable strategic assets now exceeding more than EUR 1 billion in value on our balance sheet. This is important to understand. Among these assets, we hold a highly attractive 30.8% stake in Caliente Interactive, Mexico's undisputed market leader. We also have a minority equity stake in Hard Rock Digital, which is performing strongly in the U.S. with the value of our investment, increasing by more than 2x since the original investment in March 2023. In addition, we are stake in high-potential local operators such as Galera.bet in Brazil and Wplay in Colombia, as well as LSports, a rapidly growing sports data provider. The combination of our B2B technology platform and our portfolio of highly valuable assets gives Playtech a uniquely compelling investment case with significant optionality. Coupled with our ambitious medium-term targets and our confidence in achieving them, we believe we are exceptionally well positioned to capture growth and deliver attractive, sustainable value to our shareholders. Turning to the next slide, where I would like to briefly outline our strategic priorities. Firstly, we remain focused on regulated and regulating markets where we see long-term potential for strong growth. As you will hear in the next few slides, we are making significant progress across our core markets, including the U.S., Mexico and Brazil. Secondly, we continue to invest in our product suite to ensure we stay ahead of competition. In Live Casino, we are expanding our studio footprint and scaling the capacity. Casino and PAM+, we continue to prioritize personalization, delivery of bespoke solutions an innovative, high-performing content. Alongside this, we ensure our customers have access to in-house expertise through our managed services offering where we can take ownership of a customer's day-to-day operations and use our decades of expertise to optimize their operations without needing to migrate platform infrastructure. We also offer the latest safer gambling technology through BetBuddy, helping customers optimize their performance while maintaining the highest standards of player protection. Lastly, following the sale of Snaitech, we have intensified our focus on simplifying the organization and optimizing our operating model, ensuring we have the right cost base, the right footprint and the right allocation of resources to support the next phase of growth. Taken together, these priorities form a clear road map for execution and give us strong conviction in our ability to deliver on our medium-term financial targets while positioning Playtech to capture structural growth opportunities and continue to generate attractive, sustainable value to -- for our shareholders. On to the next slide, please. I would like to highlight our longstanding partnership with Caliente Interactive and how together we are positioned to unlock Mexico's significant growth opportunities. And I'll start with the market overview. Mexico's online gambling market is expanding rapidly with industry forecasts indicating it could double in size over the next 5 years. The country benefits from a large mobile-first population of over 100 million adults supported by high online penetration. Importantly, GGR per adult is relatively low at around $35. And when compared with a market such as Brazil at $64, the room for growth is exciting. Within this context, Caliente is the undisputed leader with more than 100 years of brand heritage, deep cultural localization and one of the most extensive sponsorship portfolios in the region Caliente has created a formidable competitive moat that continues to reinforce its dominance. Under the revised agreement, Caliente contributed around EUR 55 million to Playtech's adjusted EBITDA through our 30.8% equity stake and distributed around EUR 45 million to Playtech in dividends, which flow directly into our free cash flow. The performance has remained strong into 2026. 2026 also brings once in a generation catalyst, the FIFA Men's World Cup cohosted in Mexico and importantly, on the local time zone. As the official sponsor of the Mexican national football team, Caliente is set to benefit from unprecedented global visibility during a tournament expected to reach more than 6 billion cumulative viewership engagements. This creates a powerful platform to accelerate customer acquisition, enhancing cross-sell and driving higher engagement over the next few years. Playtech is well positioned to benefit from this growth. The combination of Caliente's market leadership as well as the many other operators we serve in the market, Mexico structural growth drivers and the World Cup catalyst collectively represent a major value driver for Playtech over the medium term. Turning to the next slide and looking at our progress in the U.S. For the second consecutive year, our U.S. business delivered revenue growth of more than 100% as we continued executing on our strategy and began to realign meaningful returns on the investments made over the last few years. Live Casino remains a standout growth driver with revenues up over 110% year-on-year. Our ability to deliver high-quality dedicated tables continues to be a clear point of differentiation with more than 60 U.S. tables in operation at year-end, we continue to scale capacity to meet sustained demand from Tier 1 operators. In casino, we are recognized for our bespoke development and our exclusive branded content which together offer our customers meaningful differentiation. In 2025, we developed and launched several high-performing bespoke titers for Fanduel, Hard Rock Digital and Rush Street Interactive. Our PAM+ platform continues to be a major contributor to U.S. momentum and is now ranked the #1 third-party iGaming platform in the country. PAM+ supported the successful expansion of Delaware North, including new retail and online sports launches across multiple states and the rollout of casino in West Virginia. In addition, Parx Casino delivered strong performance, exceeding market growth supported by our platform capabilities. Finally, I would like to highlight our strong progress with Hard Rock Digital. Together, we developed a first of its kind sports wagering product where outcomes are based on past motorizing events. Offered by the seminal tribe, the product has received very positive customer feedback since launch in Q4 last year. Hard Rock has also continued to expand on Florida with further momentum in New Jersey and the new launch in Michigan in Q4 where they quickly go to #4 market share. Our progress in the U.S. highlights accelerating demand across our products and reinforces the scale of the long-term opportunity for Playtech in this market. And the journey in the U.S. is just beginning. In 2025, we launched with major customers in West Virginia and Delaware and launched earlier this month in Connecticut bringing our regulated iGaming presence to 6 U.S. states. As you can see on the map, also in the appendix, the number of U.S. states that have not yet regulated iGaming. We are really excited about the opportunity ahead of us as this evolves over time. Next slide, please. Looking at Brazil, one of the most exciting regulated opportunities globally. According to industry estimates, Brazil's newly licensed online gambling market is expected to generate around 50% of Latin America's total by 2030 underscoring its potential to become one of the world's largest regulated markets. As we indicated before, Brazil has been challenging in terms of regulatory measures with some of the strictest onboarding requirements globally. However, we view these challenges as temporary. Our confidence in Brazil is grounded in powerful long-term fundamentals, a population of 150 million adults, rising digital adoption and deep national patient for sports all of which underpin sustained structural growth. During the year, we completed the build-out of our Sao Paulo Live Studio, purpose built to deliver highly localized content through native speaking dealers. We also expanded our local team to over 100 employees, giving us the scale and capability to support a growing demand from customers for our bespoke content solutions. I'm excited about the prospects of this market going forward. Now looking at Live Casino. Live continues to be a high-growth high-margin vertical and one where Playtech is steadily gaining share. With the global live market projected to double over the next 5 years, we remain exceptionally well positioned in key markets such as the U.S., Mexico and Brazil, where growth is forecasted to be particularly strong. Importantly, our internal data shows that live casino players generate around 1.8x more revenue than traditional casino players making Live a highly attractive cross-sell destination. During 2025, we continue to scale our Live operations to meet rising demand. Live delivered 10% growth in regulated markets in 2025 excluding the beneficial impact of Brazil moving into our regulated segment. By the year-end, we operated more than 500 tables across 17 studios doubling our table count since 2020 and adding 11 new studios in the last 5 years. Our investments were focused on strategic capacity expansion adding tables across our U.S. studios, launching the Live from Las Vegas broadcast studio from the MGM Grand casino floor, opening our new Sao Paulo studio in Brazil and selectively increasing table capacity across Peru and Romania. Looking ahead, we remain committed to advancing our Live strategy with expanding studio capacity, differentiated bespoke content and strong commercial momentum. We expect Live Casino to become a material contributor to achieving our medium-term financial targets. Turning to the next slide. and the opportunities ahead with AI. Playtech was early in applying machine learning within our solutions. And over the past year, we have continued to accelerate our AI adoption. We established a robust AI governance framework, rolled out AI tooling across the organization and fostering cross-functional innovation through our innovation labs, while continuing to advance our AI-enabled safer gambling capabilities through Playtech Protect. The models are only as good as the data stake they are trained on. We are a data-centric business, and we have over 25 years of data from our customers across platform and products. This is a core differentiator for Playtech. As we further our AI adoption, the opportunities are significant. From a revenue perspective, we are already using AI to enhance game development in casino while exploring AI host and brand customization in Live. Across the platform, we are improving personalized player journeys and developing more intelligent AI-generated sports bet builders. These initiatives help operators deliver more relevant content, deepen engagement and ultimately grow revenues. On the cost side, AI is unlocking efficiency opportunities across the organization. We are automating routine tasks. We are also responsibly rolling out Agentic solutions for software development, coding, testing and quality assurance. These areas are already generating early productivity gains with more expected over time. Overall, AI is becoming an increasingly meaningful contributor across Playtech's operations, driving product innovation, improving efficiency and enhancing how we support our customers. Next slide, please. 2025 marked the final year of our 5-year sustainability strategy, and I'm pleased to say we delivered meaningful progress across all of our commitments. During the year, we expected the uptake of BetBuddy further reinforcing our role as a trusted partner in regulated markets. Our female representation in leadership roles reached 32%, up from 23% when laying out our commitments. We have reduced scope 1 and 2 emissions by 48% against our 2018 baseline, an important step towards our 2040 net zero target. And through our partnership, we supported over 530,000 people in community programs over the last 5 years. Our efforts were also recognized externally. In 2025, Playtech was ranked #1 in our sector in FTSE women leaders report 2025, climate leader by the Financial Times, and we were included in the time Statista World's most sustainable companies list. We are proud of the progress made since establishing our 2025 commitments 5 years ago. In 2026, we will define our next 5-year sustainability road map building on these foundations with renewed focus to support a more resilient, responsible and future-ready business that delivers long-term value for our customers, colleagues, communities and shareholders. On to the final slide. As you've heard today, 2025 was a year of successful strategic reset for Playtech. Having delivered EUR 197 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2025, we are off to an excellent start this year and we are now on track to deliver full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA ahead of current market expectations. We have very good momentum in the U.S. and increasing activity in Mexico as we enter a World Cup year with Caliente and others. We have a strong balance sheet, which gives us flexibility to invest, and we continue to look for efficiencies by using AI and addressing underperforming businesses. As we finish the first quarter of 2026, we are confident in the outlook on track to deliver our medium-term targets and excited about the future of Playtech. Thank you for listening. Chris and I will now take any questions you may have. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Ivor Jones from Peel Hunt. You've talked lots about fast-growing markets, but Europe ex U.K. is still a big proportion of the current total. Could you just talk about the growth prospects and whether that region is ex growth? Or you're going to see stronger growth from some of the territories. And I'm not sure really how to ask this question. But in relation to evolutions litigation and Black Cube, is there anything you can tell us about what you are doing?

Do you want to take that?

I've got some things I can say.

Obviously, we understand it's -- so it's an interesting topic. I think we made our position clear in the RNS. We issued back in October. Just to be clear, we have not been at it to any case. So there's not really much we can say. We're not going to be taking any further questions on the topic. Thanks for asking, but I'm not going to say anything further. And we are limited by what we can say under legal privilege and confidentiality rules in the U.S. So nothing further on that topic. And then Europe ex U.K., I wouldn't describe it as ex growth. Obviously, there's a lot of different markets that make up that sort of bucket in our results. It is one of the largest portions of our revenue, but there's a lot of different moving parts within that. Certainly, there are growth opportunities within it -- with that question. I think the figures you see from a growth perspective and any particular set of results are going to be a mix of the trends in that period. There'll be some times one particular market and the dynamics there may be sort of drag all the results along with or perhaps vice versa. But it will be a blend of the different markets. But without question, there are exciting markets within Europe. Going forward, I think for Playtech, you saw this in 2025 with sort of the strong finish to the year and the upgrade and the equally or positive comments today around 2026, disproportionately the growth is going to come from the Americas, right, north and south. There's no doubt about that, but will be -- that's probably been the story of our performance in recent times, and we'll be probably for much of '26, but that's not to say there are not exciting opportunities within Europe as well.

If I may just further elaborate, I will say the following. One of the things we are very proud of, one of the elements of our strategy that is shared amongst the company is obviously the diversity of Playtech. We have been diversifying our business for many, many years. We started like many others in the U.K. being one of the first that adopted the framework that allowed regulated gaming even though -- even before it was locally regulated, accepting other jurisdiction and the activity and marketing into the U.K. I would say that we are very proud of the diversity of Playtech. Obviously, the rest of the business is today by farther in the U.K., which was not the case maybe some years ago, many years ago. And we believe that the other markets present a higher growth opportunity for Playtech, and we put a lot of efforts. Having said all that, experience shows having been around for 20 years -- more than 20 years now, I would say that we have seen that already happening a few times with new regulations being introduced with tax being introduced some years ago. I will say that given the size, the importance, the significance and the fact that it's driven -- and the fact that the U.K. is driven by well-established operator like PENN like Flutter, like [indiscernible] given the size still and the scale of the U.K. market, I think the U.K. will remain an important market for the sector. We fully committed -- we are fully -- we remain fully committed to the relationships that we have in the U.K. and the U.K. market pole together. There will be a reset. Reality shows that some midsize, small size operators will leave the market will decide will probably given the higher taxes and stricter regulations will move elsewhere, allocate marketing as well, which will give an opportunity to the larger operators to take some market share and offset the impact. I think that there will be a reset. But over time, we will see some growth in the future. Hence, why we believe that we should remain committed not only to the relationships, but the market altogether, it will not be -- maybe it will not be as exciting as the U.S., Mexico or Brazil. But still, it comes from not a small base. So obviously, a good contribution for the operators, for the operators and Playtech and other B2B suppliers alike.

I just ask one follow-up question about growth. You mentioned when you were talking about increased CapEx and capitalized DevEx this year. One reason for that will be Brazil. Why does driving Brazilian growth require CapEx beyond the live studios you've already said you opened?

I think it's general infrastructure expansion. We have big plans of bill, both with our existing partners there and other opportunities that we've been working on. So it's a market that we're extremely excited about, and it's one of the most exciting ones across the group. And given the dynamics there, it requires some CapEx that we felt needed to be single. And just is going up year-on-year. So I just wanted to make that clear as to why that is.

If I may just add one -- sorry, if I may, just to add one more comment, which is, I think, extremely important. Brazil is one of the fastest-growing markets. If you compare it to -- on a state-by-state basis in the U.S. because, obviously, there are 6 or 7, there are 7 gaming states and many other sports-only states, right? But they are very, very different, right? Market taxes is different operators are different. Yes, there is a common denominator. You will find the largest 3 in most jurisdictions, operating in more jurisdictions, but not necessarily midsized operators in each and every state. So when you compare the state on an individual basis compared to the U.K., which is quite stagnant as we just discussed, in Brazil with the fast-growing market. I think Brazil is a very, very exciting opportunity for the industry altogether, given the growth, yes, it has gone through very challenging times in 2025. It has been stable in the last -- it has been stable since the second of last year, and we now see accelerated growth. Playtech has a lot to achieve there with local partners. We have a group of brands that we support on a structured basis -- on a structured basis Luva.bet obviously, Galera.bet, Brazil.bet, Luva.bet, F12 between them, not insignificant. Many, many B2B customers. There are many others who are in the process of establishing ourselves with Live Casino going back to your question, Live Casino will require some OpEx, and we believe that we will see exponential demand for Live Casino formats and we identified some that will be, we believe, very exciting for the Brazilian market together that we developed internally or in collaboration with some companies that we collaborate with. And we are also looking at certain partnerships that we believe we will be able to deliver within 2026, and those require certain investments. We can't really need them at this point in time. We don't want to set any expectations. I don't want to get ahead of myself. I think that this is public that we've won certain tenders in the market, and we are preparing for that. And this requires an additional investment that we already started incurring since the end of last year, which will grow the CapEx -- which will grow the CapEx and OpEx to some extent. But it will be limited. It's not -- we believe that the investment will be in 2026. I don't see that as a recurring theme beyond 2020 -- I mean 2027 and beyond this specifically.

Follow when we made Ivor house analyst to start asking easier questions.

It's Roberta Ciaccia from Investec. I have 2 quick questions. First one on the U.S., clearly a step change in profitability according to your indications today, can you give us a bit more detail on what you expect it to be this year and in the coming years? And also, is this a cash positive -- is this going to be cash positive already in 2026? Second thing on the B2C business. So HappyBet, where do you stand in the process of unwinding it? And what are potential plans for Sun Bingo, you said you're considering different options? That's all for me now.

Yes. On U.S. profitability, yes, good spot. There's definitely a change in our expectations around that business. We really -- we've been investing in that business as we've talked about with you for several years. And I think -- the returns have been coming, but that really sort of started to accelerate as we finish 2025 and has continued into 2026. I believe our previous guidance on U.S. profitability was to reach by the end of 2026. And I now can say that we'll be profitable for 2026 as a whole. So it's not just -- we're not just talking -- finishing the year, run rate profitability. We will be U.S. profitable for 2026 as a whole. So -- and that would include on a cash basis as well. So we're very pleased with how that's going, and it's -- we're a little bit ahead of our plans, I would say. On B2C, HappyBet we're -- I'd say, in 2026, we will completely have closed that business. We're well on the way towards that is -- the costs are almost all gone. There's a small amount of monthly remaining costs. But at its peak, the business was double-digit millions loss making on an annual basis. You saw it was negative 6 in 2025 on a monthly basis. Now it's almost negligible. So there's a little bit left to do to fully close it, but it's -- that's basically done. Sun Bingo is a bit different. Obviously, it's like a lot of smaller operators in the U.K. It's going to be challenged by the remote gaming duty increases that are coming into effect shortly. That does significantly alter the profitability of that business in terms of our expectations going forward. So we are working with them to to do an operational review of that business and look for opportunities and some plans of how we will address that going forward. I will say the Sun Bingo business is more -- it's classified as B2B, but it had more B2B characteristics, but similar to some of our structured agreements, right? So I think the possible does have a future with Playtech. So it's very different HappyBet is what I'm saying. But that being said, it does -- something needs to be addressed about it because it's no longer profitable or it's no longer expected to be profitable given the changes that are coming imminently in the [indiscernible] duty.

Richard Stuber from Deutsche Bank. Can I ask 3 questions, one on Brazil, one on Caliente, one on Live. In terms of Live, I think you talked about revenues were up sort of 10% year-on-year. Could you talk about the profitability of Live as well? Is that up? And if so, what sort of EBITDA is Live now making? Second question is on Caliente. Could you just remind us the split of sort of sports versus casino there? Because clearly, you talk about the World Cup being a massive benefit, but interesting to know how material that will be? And the third point is on Brazil. I think at the end of the -- at our interims, you talked about sort of close to a deal with CAIXA. Could you talk a little bit more about where we are with that agreement, please?

Yes, Live. The -- we haven't disclosed the margins or EBITDA in these results, there's a lot of moving parts. And I'd say it's a business, as we talked about, still with significant investment going into it. So we have given margins and EBITDA in the past. I wouldn't say margins have significantly expanded, but that's been somewhat by choice as we've continued to expand and invest in both CapEx and OpEx. As I said, we're starting to see returns in places like the U.S. Live is one of the contributors to the previous question around U.S. profitability, but not the only one, but we are significantly continuing to expand Live in the U.S., but also significantly including expanding in other areas like Brazil that Moran as discussed. So the live margins have been really expanded. But like I said, that's effectively a choice we're making to sacrifice short-term margins for future growth. So I think if you took the revenue growth figures we've disclosed today on Live and assume not much margin expansion, you can probably get an idea of how EBITDA has trended for that business.

Yes. On Caliente, I will say the following. Caliente, I can't really provide the numbers. It's not a question for us. It's a question for them. However, I will say the following. Grupo Caliente is a casino group, right? However, on the other hand, the digital business, the Caliente Interactive established itself as a sports-driven business that has one of the largest, if not the largest sponsorship portfolio through which it markets or that it is for marketing purposes. So I would say that it's one of the best positioned businesses between casino and sports, right? So on one hand, the Interactive business is led by sports. On the other hand, there is a clear association with casino given the roots of Caliente, it's the perfect combination of both retail and online sports and casino. The story about Caliente and its position is -- and its preparation for the World Cup, it is the position that they have in the market, the sponsorship portfolio that they have, the fact that they support the national team, the visibility of all of that. And when you combine all of that, and combined the fact -- with the fact that it's a very balanced business between sports and casino. I think that the opportunity is very, very significant. I think that they are one of the best, if not best positioned operators in the region and specifically Mexico for coming World Cup. On CAIXA, as we indicated before, like I said earlier, I don't want to get ahead of myself. We won the tender it's public. We can say that. I don't want to get ahead of myself. I will say the following. We are trying hard, we are pushing hard. And we still believe in the prospects of Brazil and partnerships in Brazil, we truly believe, however, that if we do manage to enter into an agreement with CAIXA, it will become one of the most significant opportunities for Playtech for the coming years inside the U.S., Mexico and few other territories. Given the size, the significance and the position of CAIXA, just so you understand, this is one of the largest banks, if not the largest bank, right? It's a country that has 150 million adults in the country, they have 140 million registered customers. The access to the market, the access to the popularity of the brand is unparalleled. You can't find -- I tried to -- when I thought about CAIXA, I was trying to think about another country where you have a brand that you can basically -- obviously, Caliente is the closest. But I think that the best example would be Apple going live with the betting product in the U.S. will people want to try it. I believe the answer is yes. That, I think, is the best example of the position of CAIXA in Brazil. And I know that -- most people here in this room and most people in -- including by the way I educated myself about that and spend some time with CAIXA and spend some time in Brazil to better understand it. I think that it's an opportunity that a lot of people do not understand, and I understand why they cannot understand because they are not there, they're not Brazilian. They did not go within Brazil and understand the importance of CAIXA to the community and the economy of Brazil. Like I said, as a very significant opportunity, not yet there, we are trying our best. And if it will come to that, obviously, we will announce it in due course.

I have 3 questions, if I may. The first one is on you guys provided very good color with regards to the potential opportunities from AI. Have you guys quantified the potential margin improvement or dollar costs, higher your cost that the savings could be? And with regards to software as a service, I believe that there has been some concerns with regards to AI being a threat to Software as a Service. I was wondering if you could provide your thoughts on how your product would not be so impacted by potential AI replacing Software as a Service? On the M&A side, could you please comment on your appetite for M&A and what type of opportunities would be looking or will be interesting to you guys in terms of bolt-ons or anything major? And last one with regards to the debt. I know that you guys have 2 years towards the maturity of the bonds. But if you could quickly provide some comments on the refinancing strategy for that bond. And if you would consider switching from fixed to some prepayable debt?

Okay. A few -- I can probably do the M&A and the debt, if you want to do the AI and SaaS. On M&A, I think I communicated during the presentation around capital allocation, it remains part of our strategy. That being said, we haven't done meaningful true M&A since really Snaitech in 2018. We did -- we have done investments which may or may not be considered in M&A, depending on how you look at it. We still have an M&A strategy. We regularly are looking at potential opportunities. I think the good thing for Playtech is there's no obvious gaps in our portfolio, whether that's product or geographically. So there's nothing we feel we need to fill so we can be picky and and if the something that the lines with our strategy and also has the right financial profile, we will certainly explore it. But it's -- so it remains a part of our strategy, but there's no urgency or desperation to pursue M&A, but we will do so if the right opportunity presents itself. And like I said during the presentation, we'll fit it in with -- it has to fit in with our overall capital allocation strategy. In terms of the debt, like you said, we have one bond remaining, it matures in June 2028. So we're 2 to 2.5 years away from that. So we do have some time. It's something we look at regularly, both in the context of Playtech's performance and whatever refinancing would look like, but also in terms of what the market for refinancings are like. Obviously, we're in a good position with a very, very strong balance sheet. So nothing imminent on that. Obviously, when you get closer to 2 years and sub 2 years, you're probably what's more typical refinancing window. So I think we will start to look at it more closely later this year. But it's -- while we keep our ear to the ground and our on top of these things, it's not something I would describe as an urgent priority. In terms of the type of debt we may refinance it with our starting point is probably a similar bond to be quite honest, but we'll always look at Playtech and what different types of securities might make sense. So we'd certainly be open to considering something different, but I'd say a traditional bond is probably our starting point.

I'll try to give you a brief answer on AI. Otherwise, we need to put a lunch here outside, right? Because I have been educating myself about that for many, many months now, more than many, many months. I can tell you the following. One of the things I mentioned in the presentation, Playtech is a data-centric business. Playtech has taken the decision to include machine learning algorithms, partly the basis for AI, in April 2017, right, 9 years ago. And a lot of what we do today is data-driven across different parts of the platform and the products that we provide. So there is a good basis there. One thing you learn about AI, a lot of people say, AI, but what AI really means, right? I've been -- I'll give you an example. I've been on a call with a company we are now going to collaborate with. They have 100 data scientists, all geniuses, right? And they focused on GenAI, generative AI around video, around video and graphics, right? And when I ask, do you have -- what LLM models do you have, large language models do you have and deploy? And they said, it has nothing to do with LLMs. So AI consists of many categories. You can use the AI for graphics, for content, you can -- for video. And you can do that for data, data collection, data analysis to generate better engagement with the customer. We are already deploying and already using a lot of those AI capabilities, whether it is GenAI or LLM in order to improve the product. The one thing which I also mentioned in the presentation, which is the key and people need to understand that, right? You can go and buy certain tools or get a license from certain companies that provide you with an API for AI tools. And everyone, everyone, right, we'll use over time, AI capabilities in order to streamline the games development, for example, to make it quicker and cheaper. Playtech is already doing that, and we will progress and invest more into it in order to make it quicker and in order to make it cheaper. But this is not where the story -- this is not the story. The story is about how you can use how you can use AI beyond that. Our industry is going through a change. AI is the catalyst for that, right? But it's how do you appeal to a younger generation, how do you appeal to content creators. This is the future of e-commerce. This is the future of communications. This is the future. And accordingly, this is the future of our industry. The one area that people need to understand, Playtech as a key differentiator that no other company I'm familiar with has is 25-plus years of data we accumulated supporting by empowering and supporting the largest and leading operators across the space. And when you think how you basically create AI tools or AI or using AI tools solutions right, for the benefit of the customers, like personalization, like customer engagement, like content creation -- content creation, Playtech is almost uniquely positioned in this category by the fact that it can use the data accumulated for so many years. There is a reason why you won't find too many platform providers, right? Because in order to build a platform, you need to have access to operators that will share with you the processes and the methodologies and the efficiencies within gaming operations. We have that from the platform. We have the data that comes together with that from 25 years of supporting the largest and leading, which positions us better to provide whether it is SaaS, games, products or platform capabilities that no other companies will be able to provide using AI and data-driven solutions. And this is why I don't believe that there is a real risk for plate, right? But again, I don't want to get ahead of myself because we have to understand, and again, I know that it's kind of a confused answer, but because I can talk you need to go through the basic GenAI versus LLM versus different other tools. And how you employ that and how do you deploy that and how you use that, but I think that Playtech is a data-centric business with data and therefore, position better to provide better solutions that will allow us to how to basically compete better against the competition. I believe that other companies will find it hard to create software-as-a-service solutions that we'll be able to compete with the data and the solutions we will create on the basis of this data. But in general, AI, AI is something that everyone will use. And I think that -- and again, one last comment I wanted to make is sometimes, certain things that look very, very trivial, right, Live Casino dealer, an AI host a dealer, right, an AI dealer, an AI casino deal right? Yes, it's easy to create the dealer right? It's easy to use AI tools, you create a digital dealer. But when you start communicating, it will not pass regulatory requirements, right? It will fail to communicate well enough with the customer, right, because -- and it can be a real risk to the business, right? So we still have a long way before there will be real AI-supported AI-generated solutions that will be that operators will be able to use in a secure, regulated way in different territories. But we're investing heavily into that, and I think that Playtech will be one of the first to come out with some AI-driven solutions, products even the platform, a better platform that will be driven by AI, which will position us ahead of the competition. Hence, why I think that there is a risk, don't get me wrong, but it's limited. And even though -- and -- but still, it's something we monitor on a [indiscernible] basis. On the AI and the efficiencies and how much money we can save, I would say, that for us now, it's not necessarily because of the strong demand because of the accelerated growth. It's less about cutting costs. It's about leading to efficiencies. So for example, our games development unit, our goal using AI is to cut the -- or to double, I would say, to double the amount of games we developed bespoke branded and other games for the benefit of our customers because we see a strong demand, right, on the basis of the same resources that we have today. So we will not need even though there is a strong demand and an increasing demand in different territories for additional content. Our goal is by using AI is to use the same amount of people that we have today in order to generate double the amount of games that we can offer the customers. And I think that this is a better approach for us than simply cutting the cost and suggesting that we can now by using cloud -- by using Claude or cursor, right? We can reduce the cost of coding by 30%, and we will make people redundant. Our industry is a fast-growing business. We are going through 2026, which is an important year. It's a World Cup year. A lot of our customers are driven by sports. We don't want to make mistakes. And for us, it will be using -- it will be to use AI in order to accelerate the growth rather than to cut the costs. Don't get me wrong. It's also reduces certain routine tasks, right, internally, like, for example, quality assurance, testing, where we can cut the costs alongside that. But we haven't yet quantified that and it's a work in progress. All this AI, is a work in progress, not only for us, for many, many other companies as well.

Thanks, Moran. I think we've got time for one more from the audience. Jamie?

It's Jamie Bass from Citi. I want to ask on AI because I think that's been pretty well covered. I have 3 questions, please. The first one on the World Cup. Could we talk a bit about phasing, given that it's June and July, would you expect H1 to be more of an investment and then see the benefit flowing through in H2? And then second one, Chris, I know you said you wouldn't comment any more. So I hope this doesn't count, but could you give us an idea for legal costs for the year? And then finally, on Brazil, we've talked about the opportunity there. We've been seeing a lot of headlines about potential regulatory changes from where we already are potential tax increases. So how do you think about the potential for that market if the situation were to change?

Which market was the last...

Brazil.

So -- on the World Cup, certainly in the -- I think the biggest impact on Playtech or others, but the biggest will be through our investment in Caliente, their plans, they actually had a Board meeting this week, which Moran and I attend. They're planning significant investment in H1 in the lead up to the World Cup. I mean they're still growing in H1 year-on-year. So the business -- but they are planning a heavy investment, and that should -- then you see the benefits on that. So on that basis, I think the investment from an OpEx perspective will be more H1 weighted and H2 should be -- you should see in theory at least accelerated revenue growth and perhaps OpEx tapering off somewhat. So their business would be more H2 weighted, and the benefits should go beyond H2 as well as should go into 2027 and beyond. Legal costs, nothing to call out, to be honest. Obviously, we've published our results, which I think were quite strong. So any costs were within that. And I don't think anyone has noticed because they're not that significant. And similarly, we're -- we've given a upgrade on 2026 today. So nothing to really say about legal costs to be honest.

And on Brazil, we -- the market is expected to grow significantly over the course of the coming years. There were a lot of suggestions, a lot of proposals. We believe that regardless of any regulatory change, the market will remain an attractive market and will present for Playtech specifically a significant opportunity going forward. So there may be some changes. There were references to tax. There were references to certain products. But we believe that the market is -- presents a sustainable growth, a significant sustainable growth opportunity for Playtech. One of the first test will be obviously whether CAIXA will indeed launch betting and gaming in the country. Once that happens, I think that they will become the standard. And I think that it will be a clear indication where the market is headed. I'm not -- it is not -- obviously, it made the case that there will be certain regulatory changes. But in light of the size, in light of the significance of certain operators in the market, we believe that even if it will be introduced on a medium-term basis, it may be that the impact will be short term. But on a medium, long-term basis, this is still one of the most promising opportunities for operators operating in Brazil companies like Playtech and others.

Okay. I think on that note, we're out of time. So thank you, everyone, for joining and participating today. That brings our full year 2025 results to close, and we will see you all at the next one. Operator, you can close the lines. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you, everyone.