Remedy Entertainment Oyj (REMEDY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, there, and welcome to the full year 2020 review of Remedy Entertainment. My name is Lauri Haavisto. I'm the Investor Relations manager here at Remedy, and today, for this special occasion, I'm also a Zoom meeting host. So if at some point during the presentation, a face of our speaker turns into a cat or they get suddenly kicked out, don't worry. I know what I'm doing. But speaking of speakers, let -- don't I have some great ones for you. First on the agenda, Remedy's CEO, Tero Virtala, will give you an overview of 2020; followed by a financial review from our CFO, Terhi Kauppi. To wrap things up, Tero will close with a summary and give an outlook for 2021. After the presentation, we'll have a Q&A session, but you can send your questions already now by using the Zoom control panel. You can also wait until the end of the presentation and ask directly from our presenters. This means that also those who have dialed in have a chance to participate in the Q&A. But more on that later. Now let's get Tero on the line, hopefully, with a human-looking face. Go ahead, Tero. The stage is yours.

All right. Thank you, Lauri. So let's get straight into our year 2020. 2020 was a strong year for us. Our revenue was EUR 41.1 million, which is 30% growth compared to previous year. Operating profit, EUR 13.2 million, almost doubling or actually doubling the EBIT compared to previous year. And the operating profit was 32% of our revenue. What I would like to highlight in this respect, that these numbers, we're pleased with no new major game launches. And for us, it also shows that our games and our multi-project model are working. And we are happy that this is giving us a strong position also for the future. Having reached this and with the strong position -- strong cash position, our Board of Directors proposes a dividend of EUR 0.15 per share. We also had our Capital Markets Day in December, and there, we introduced an updated strategy and long-term objectives. I will get back to these a bit later in this presentation. One topic that was also a key topic for us, as for any company in 2020, was COVID. But so far, we have managed that well. Then in relation to our games in 2020, Control got 2 paid DLCs, downloadable content packs, and the content -- the game was expanded to a number of new stores, services and platforms. And all this helped us to reach new audiences and new sales for Control. We also closed and announced a new partnership with Epic Games related to 2 Remedy-owned games. Our collaboration with Smilegate continued well. For 2020, we were mainly focused on developing our second single-player campaign for Crossfire, and it will release with CrossfireX. And that release was moved by our publisher partner, Smilegate, to '21. And as I mentioned, in December, we had our first Capital Market Day. And gamers, game media, our business partners, investors have a high appreciation for Remedy, and we are naturally thankful for that. But we have been often asked that what makes Remedy so special and somehow different to many other gaming companies. And it's not just one single thing, but the combination of key ingredients that, together, give us a competitive advantage. We see that Remedy is a category-defining, creative, super-developer. And what do we mean with this? We have the rare skills of creating world-class gaming brands. Out of these brands, we can create distinctive, benchmark-setting games. We have the teams and organization to develop multiple this type of high-quality games at the same time, which is quite unique because many of the world's other AAA game developer studios can just develop one big game at a time. Also, Remedy has always been a highly appreciated partner. And with some of our future games, we will continue collaborating with world-class publishing partners. But now we have developed into a stage where we are also building abilities to self-finance and self-publish some of our future games and, therefore, also capture a bigger part of the value created. We continue being a creative organization. And at the heart of Remedy are highly creative, empowered people and teams, and we are an attractive home to these professionals. And while we do this, year-on-year, we are a profitable growth company that's always also managing risks well. So this is the bio background. And now in 2020, we have 4 game teams that were, according to these principles, developing 5 games; Control with 505 games; Crossfire with Smilegate; 2 unannounced games with Epic; and our Vanguard multi-project -- multiplayer project, sorry. So let's have a short look at each of these games and projects in more detail. First, Control. So Control launched in August 2019. And we can now say that Control has been both critical success with a lot of industry awards and love from the gamers, and it has also been a commercial success. Since the launch, and especially in 2020, we have had 3 main focuses. First of all, we have been expanding Control with new content updates, both free content updates and paid content updates, and these were then combined into the Ultimate Edition that launched in August 2020. Secondly, we have been actively promoting the game, running targeted advertisement campaigns to boost the sales in the existing channels where Control has been. And then thirdly, we have been expanding the game to new platforms and new stores. And through all of these activities, the awareness of Control has been increasing steadily. We have been reaching new audiences, and Control has continued to sell well. And when we look at the sales of the Control today, Control has sold over 2 million copies. And how the industry has changed, we have clearly seen that high-quality games keep on selling for a long time, especially in digital channels. Control is an excellent example of that. 15 months after the game was launched, in November 2020, we made a sales record in terms of units sold. And this is, of course, thanks to Control being a high-quality game, Control having expanded to big new audiences and the active promotions that we have been running with our partner, 505 Games. We see a lot of opportunities for Control in years to come. We do keep on supporting Control. We will keep on expanding it to new audiences, new services and platforms. But at the same time, part of Control team has now moved on to think and prepare the next new Remedy games. Then on Crossfire. We have collaborated with the Korean gaming company, Smilegate, in relation to their hugely successful Crossfire. We, at Remedy, are developing single-player campaigns for Crossfire. Crossfire as a game was originally launched already back in 2007. It's one of the most popular game brands in Asia and especially in China, with hundreds of millions of registered users. And still, after 13 years, it's one of the top grossing PC games in the world. Smilegate has strong ambitions to grow the Crossfire franchise, and Remedy, via creating single-player operations, is helping Cross Fire to do this expansion. Our revenues at Remedy are based on the development payments and with an option to potential additional royalties once the games are out in the market. And as I said, the collaboration with Smilegate is on strong grounds and does continue. We have now in 2020 completed the majority of the work on this operation, 2 single-player campaign for the Crossfire franchise. We are, at the moment, preparing for the upcoming Crossfire HD launch in China and CrossfireX for Xbox. And this has been one question that has been asked quite many times, and it's good to highlight that we are talking here 2 Crossfire games: Crossfire HD and CrossfireX. So Crossfire HD is a continuation to Smilegate's huge success for the Crossfire game in China. It's a game for PC platform. It's already available, has gone through the closed out as open beta phase. The game, the multiplayer part, is developed by Smilegate and published by Tencent. CrossfireX, then, on the other hand, is a new console game in the Crossfire franchise for the Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S. It is going to be released in '21. Game, again, the multiplayer part, developed by Smilegate, published by Microsoft. However, what's really important for us is that both of these games will include Remedy's single-payer operations, and therefore, both of these games offer a royalty potential for us. Then our third major focus in relation to our games has been on the 2 games made in collaboration with Epic Games. In March, we closed the publishing deal with Epic Games on 2 games for PC and consoles, one bigger one, one bit smaller one, both based on an IP brand created and owned by Remedy. We are very happy with the deal that we have with Epic. We had multiple good options. Epic was able to convince us with their capabilities and plans. And definitely, the deal terms were also really good. Epic is funding full development 100%, and Epic will invest over EUR 10 million into marketing of these games. And after the development advances and marketing investments have been [ recouped ], the net revenues will be shared 50-50. For us, it's also important that we are a key partner supporting Epic in its ambitious plans to shake up the publishing business. And in relation to these 2 projects, one bigger one and one smaller one, they have been progressing well in 2020. We have close to 100 people at Remedy working on these games. The smaller-scale game is already in production phase. The bigger one will be entering into full production in spring '21. Then Vanguard. Vanguard is a long-lasting service-based, cooperative, multiplayer game that also utilizes Remedy's known world-building and narrative strengths. This is a new project for us, new type of project for us. We have proceeded with patience. We have been developing the game iteratively, testing it, learning along the way. We, at the moment, have a bit over 20 people working on Vanguard. The first external evaluations on the concept, they have some promise. Vanguard as a game is being designed as a long-lasting, service-based game with the free-to-play model. We are, at the moment, self-funding the development. There are different options for the publishing model, but we haven't yet decided on those with Vanguard. To make this type and the future category-defining games that we create at Remedy at the heart are, of course, our world-class talent. We have almost 300 of these talents at Remedy handpicked from all around the world. We continue to grow also in this respect, but we'll do it selectively. We will keep the recruitment bar high. We put a lot of effort into finding the best people for us and our type of games, with whom we can then build high-performing teams. These people, they give us the creativity and fulfill the key positions in our game development teams. However, it's good to note that as we move to '21 and beyond, we are systematically expanding our capabilities that give us even more scalability. And one key aspect is that we have all the time to strengthen our production capabilities and ways we work. We have been -- for example, in 2020, we have been working on 5 main games that I mentioned. However, internally, these 5 main games consist of 15 distinct projects that are delivering our games to over 10 different gaming platforms so that in itself is a proof that we have been able to develop our products and capabilities quite significantly. And our talent is, of course, at the core of making this happen, but we want them more and more to focus on the creative parts of the game, on the critical parts that really define what the Remedy games are. Therefore, to complement our own people and to allow us to, step-by-step, advance in our multi-project model and develop bigger games, external development capabilities have been one of our key focus areas. We have always, of course, used external development partners, but now we have started to take it to next level. We are, again, doing it patiently. We don't compromise quality, but we have already made good progress in this avenue. In 2020, we have 31 external development partners. And within these companies, altogether, 370 external talents were working with our teams to make the Remedy games happen. This is an important avenue, as I said, that we continue taking further. Then, in a very short look at the market, our viewpoints on it, of course, the video gaming market is a massive fast-growing market. Our focus in that market has stayed the same. We are focused on developing console and PC games for core gamers, as we say it, big-screen games for gamers. This is what we know at Remedy, where we have clear strengths, and we keep on building these strengths systematically. For us, this has meant PlayStation, Xbox, PC, Nintendo Switch is an opportunity, and then, there are number of new subscription and streaming services that are opening up new opportunities. When we look at the future markets in the longer term, we see 5 additional trends that are really relevant also for us. First, stronger than ever before, new entrants are challenging the dominant PC and console platforms. Microsoft and Sony are strong. They just launched their next-gen consoles. On PC side, Steam is big. Epic Games store keeps on growing. And then there are new subscription and streaming platforms and service models that keep on growing. Our industry is in transformation and many big players are, at the moment, building their future positions. One consequence is that good quality content is more and more important, more important than it ever has been in growing and transforming markets. Consumers look for good content, but in the ongoing battle for the domination of the new gaming services and platforms, content is going to be the key driver for platform sales. Content is going to be the key driver for user acquisition for these new services. Therefore, there is going to be higher and higher demand for new games and good development studios. Naturally, due to all this, also, consolidation in the industry is just accelerating, both within game developers and among game publishers. These are the higher-level, very obvious industrial market trends. There are also 2 key trends that are more specific to the type of games that also we are making. First of all, PC and console games are becoming, step-by-step, longer lasting and longer engaging, which is important to take into account in our plans as well. And within these vibrant PC and console games, AAA games, they continue to provide massive opportunities, but they continue to be a very [ infrequent ] business. It's not a big amount of AAA games that will succeed, but those that will, will succeed in a big way. We have been, at Remedy, closely analyzing the markets. We have the creativity and skills to succeed here, but to reach the really big success, we will need to systematically develop ourselves further. Multiplayer keeps on growing, but also single player continues to be a key element of AAA successes. And for us, whatever the means, these AAA successes need to make games longer lasting and longer engaging, step-by-step. So taking into consideration where we are, Remedy, at the moment, where the market is heading, what are the conclusions for us? First, we have a strong basis to build in high-potential brands. We have the creativity, technology; good games already out there and good games in development. Market has developed favorably to us. They keep on growing. Markets are crowded, but good games keep on selling for years. We have seen that with Control. We have multiple good partnership options. And with digital markets, barriers to successful self-publishing have gotten lower. At Remedy, we are now starting a phase where we will aim for bigger opportunities. Our games will, step-by-step, grow bigger and longer engaging. We will seek ways how both our games at Remedy will capture more value. And of course, this is a long-term game. We have always been smart. We have always been patient and systematic. We keep on following that. Having said all this, we are now starting our next growth phase with ambitious but still realistic plans. We stated in December last year in our first Capital Market Day our long-term objectives by the end of 2025, that we will create several successful games and at least one major hit game, a game that reaches global top-selling charts and can keep on succeeding also after that. As a company, we have the unique creative skills and can create worlds, characters, stories that build powerful brands. We will own at least 3 expanding game brands, and every single one of them has the long-term hit potential. As a company, we will strengthen our commercial capabilities so that we can select the right commercial model for each of the games that we are creating. For some, it's going to be self-financing and self-publishing. With some, it's going to be work and collaboration with strong publishing partners. Great people continue to be a key focus for us. We aim to be the most attractive gaming industry employer in Europe, and we'll follow and measure our success in that respect. And we will reach these objectives while having a profitable and growing business still managing the risks. How we will do all this? We have 5 strategic guidelines that we are following related to how we are growing and building our game brands, how we are creating longer-engaging games in our immersive and expanding worlds. We are systematically strengthening our position in the value chain. We have clear plans in the production side how we aim to iterate towards bigger games with very professional and scalable [ all-game ] productions. And we keep on empowering creative world-class teams and people. Internally, this is not really naturally that broken down into more concrete actionable plans, but this is the plan that we keep on following. We are, at the moment, starting the next phase in our growth, and all this is not a radical change. It's a natural next step in our development and builds on top of what we have already built in the recent years. That's the business summary on 2020 and how that sets the stage for our future plans. At this point, I'll hand the presentation to our CFO, Terhi Kauppi, and Terhi will give a closer look at the 2020 financials.

Thank you, Tero. Hello and welcome to everyone. From my part, it's very nice to see that you are interested in Remedy. Like Tero already mentioned, we really did have a good year. So I have a pleasure to take a short, deeper look at our financials with you. So we grew our revenues to EUR 24.1 million during the second half of 2020, with a growth of 35%. And that resulted for full year of revenue of EUR 41.1 million with 30% growth. Our revenue grew because we continued to have good partnerships and gained a very new significant one with Epic Games. But we also enjoyed the results of Control teams still selling well, especially, the Ultimate Edition launch in the Steam platform was successful. Our EBIT in the second half of 2020 was EUR 10.1 million with 99% growth and representing a high 42% level from revenue. And for full year, our EBIT was EUR 13.2 million with 103% growth, and that represents 32% level of revenue. Increase in the revenue is, of course, affecting the increase in the EBIT, and also, in addition, we did have more product development expenses capitalization than we did in the comparison. But I'm especially happy about our strong operating cash flow. It was EUR 11.8 million for the full year. And in the comparison period, it was slightly negative. The main reason in this increase is the timing of the royalty payments. So during 2019, we recognized the royalties as accrual basis, but we did not yet receive them in as cash flow. But during 2020, we started to also receive them in as cash flow, so there is not such a big timing difference anymore. In addition to operating activities, our cash flow was impacted by EUR 6.4 million negative investing cash flow and EUR 1.3 million negative financing cash flow. But overall, our cash position grew by EUR 4.1 million during 2020 and resulted to good position of EUR 23.7 million. And like Tero mentioned already, that enables us to pay dividend, and we are paying EUR 0.04 more than in 2019, so EUR 0.15, resulting to the total amount of EUR 1.8 million to be paid out during this spring. So we have gotten in a profitable growth track clearly. We have been increasing our revenue levels for many, many years. Actually, we have about 10x more revenue now than we had about 10 years ago. And we have always been profitable, which is pretty good in this industry. And again, in 2020, we reached higher revenues and also the very, very good, the highest level of EBIT we have had ever. And traditionally, the profitability has been peaking around the game launches, but this pattern is about to change or actually has already changed as we did not have any major game release in 2020. So our revenue, it grew by EUR 9.5 million due to Control continuing to sell well and due to the projects for Epic proceeding well, resulting in a good amount of both development fees and royalties in our revenue. Our EBIT doubled compared to the comparison period from EUR 6.5 million to EUR 13.2 million due to increased sales, due to more product development activations but also due to the COVID situation limiting some of the operating expenses. Our OpEx actually decreased by 11% when compared to the comparison period. And it is -- so it's basically due to the fact that, for example, traveling was basically non-existent for the 3 last quarters of 2020. But on the other hand, we were investing more in external development. We had EUR 2.9 million more expenses in external development than in 2019, and that is clearly due our strategic intent to increase the external development in our game projects. Our capitalization grew. They grew by EUR 3.6 million. And we now have, all in all, 4 projects which are under capitalization. Two of these projects are such that we are currently taking the full risk for those projects, and we are also capitalizing then their expenses fully. And then we have the 2 projects with Epic, and those, we are capitalizing only partially. And we are basing our capitalizations on the percentage of how we see the share of onshore revenues out of the total expected revenues in the future. Our staff expenses grew by 21%, as the number of average personnel grew by 16%. And that means that we reached the level of full-time equivalent people 271 by the end of December, and this means our old personnel only. We are also using subcontractors. And the higher bonus accrual also affected the increase in the staff expenses, and that is simply due to the higher EBIT level than in 2019. So the key in the multi-project model is to ensure on portfolio level multiple streams of revenue and the ability to balance risk. It is clear that in the most cases, the risk and reward potential go hand in hand. And this is especially true for self-publishing since there's no need to share the revenue with the publisher. We might someday enter this scheme but with enough muscle power. On the other side is subcontracting, which involves lower risk but still good business. For Remedy, cooperation with Smilegate in Crossfire operations represents this part. And in between these 2 models, we are having currently projects with 505 Games and Epic, where the IP is owned by Remedy and we share the development fees and the returns. There are also many dimensions within this area, and we can play our games smartly there when choosing the right partnering structure or structures. And we are also looking at the aspect of having projects on a portfolio level, enhancing each other's success. So we are in a strong position for the future. The first block in this we see is the subcontracting. And there, we see that it's most possible that we also have royalty possibilities in there. Then we could have our own IP game. We have then received both development fees and the royalties as revenue share, and these revenues can be posted by DLCs. And on top of that, we could have another own IP game similarly with development fees and royalties, also posted with DLCs. Then we might have self-publishing with a higher revenue peak. And on top of this, we might slowly build the GaaS model with a more longer-term monetization possibilities. And then kind of naturally, the EBIT percentage grows as there is more royalties out of the total revenue. And this is one realistic future scenario for us. And should one of these games be a big hit as we, of course, aim at, then this picture would look even better. So there is clearly a lot of potential. Thank you very much. And now back to Tero for summary and outlook.

Thank you, Terhi. All right. So summarizing for 2020, we worked on 4 brands, 4 game franchises under them at 5 game projects in development. In Control, we introduced 2 paid expansions and also the Ultimate Edition. And the game was also prepared, taken to next-generation consoles and new stores, new streaming platforms, new gaming services. Control reached wider audiences as we were doing all this. And we see this as an important thing to build the awareness further, provide the new sales opportunities. But also in the digital space, the awareness is going to have indirect effects on boosting the sales for years to come. Crossfire team, on the other hand, continued preparing for the CrossfireX and Crossfire HD releases. With Epic Games, our 2 projects have been proceeding well in different stages, as said, the smaller one already being in production; the bigger one approaching production in spring '21. Vanguard, the game as a service, cooperative free-to-play game, has continued in early development stage, but there has been continuous progress in the right direction. And the first tests are already showing some promise. We introduced the new strategy and objectives until end of '25 in our Capital Markets Day in December '20. With all this, when we look at the outlook for '21, we continued according to our long-term growth plans with an aim to launch at least one game or game expansion every year. CrossfireX will launch on Xbox platforms; Crossfire HD on PC. Both of these games expected to launch in this year '21. And overall, as an outlook, we expect '21 to be a good year; revenue and EBIT to grow. Majority of the growth is expected to happen on the second half of this year. So on my part, at this moment, thank you for listening. Now to Lauri on the questions and answers.

Thank you, Tero and Terhi. [Operator Instructions] But we have quite a bit of questions already in the Q&A queue, so I'll post the first one. So [ Esgard Fagerheim ] asks, in terms of publishing deal regarding Control with Digital Bros, the deal was announced to span [ 20 ] years. Is this regarding the Control franchise as a whole, or just the first Control game? And Tero might have an answer for this.

Well, the focus in this type of deals is always for the game in hand. So we knew that Control, as a game that we launched, have a lot of opportunities. That's been our main focus. But then how it relates to other potential future collaboration opportunities, I actually can't disclose the specific deal terms because they relate not only to us but also a publicly listed company, 505 Games.

Okay. Let's take the next question from a phone number, so a phone number 011 -- or at least at beginning of the number is 011358. So 011 -- so the whole number 01135850. Okay. Let's move on to the Q&A tool question. So from [ Henri Ikonen ], can you describe the plans for monetization in free-to-play Vanguard? Is it subscription, cosmetics, et cetera? And once again, Tero, could you answer?

Again, unfortunately, we can't go into too much details. When we develop a free-to-play game, especially the meta game design, the monetization are key parts of the design to make the game long engaging, long retaining, highly potential but also a fun game. And as many of you know, there are many opportunities in the free-to-play space, as the person has here also asked. But it's so deeply into the game that we are designing, and we haven't yet really -- we haven't yet told more on that, so I can't go into specific -- into this specific in relation to Vanguard.

Okay. Then we have 3 questions from Atte Riikola. Let's start with the first one. So market consolidation has accelerated. What is your latest estimate of the number of independent AAA studios left in the world?

We are actually, at the moment, doing a bit more detailed study on that, updating it. Couple of years back, the amount of independent developers that have the possibility to collaborate with different first parties and publishers and ability to develop AAA games, it was approximately 50. About 6 months ago, the amount was 35. Now we know, as everyone has seen, that there's been a lot of consolidation. Many studios bought, and there might be also some studios that have made very exclusive deals, so the number is lower. How much lower? I don't yet know, but it's less than 35 in our estimates.

Okay. The next one is, how long has the new unannounced project been under development, the project that was mentioned in the report?

We haven't said anything more. So if this question relates to us mentioning that we have an excellent team who has been working on Control, and we still keep on supporting, taking Control to new platforms. But part of the team has moved on to start planning and considering the next new Remedy game. And in part, it has happened very recently because we have been active with Control. But as a multi-project organization that tries to make more and more games in the future, do it systematically step-by-step, of course, we are thinking about new game concepts, taking our times. So the idea of the game has been growing up now already for a while, but it's been very recent before we started moving a bit more developers for the first next phase of developers for that game.

Okay. Then the last question from Atte. Could you say anything about subscription and streaming services impact on Control's revenue in 2020?

No, no. We can't disclose that. That's again -- it's, of course -- it's been relevant for us. But it's also then related to our publisher, 505 Games, making these deals. So I can't disclose anything more.

Then [ Ryan Skaria ] asks, why did headcount only grow 11%? Do you need to be scaling faster for multiple projects?

That's actually a really good question. And it's yes and no, in that sense that the multi-project model does give us economies of scale, so we don't need to grow the headcount in a similar pace that we did in the early phases. But definitely, as we move on, we have needs. And in that sense, I said no, that we don't need to grow kind of like in a similar base percentage-wise when we go into the future. But at the same time, we have, all the time, had 20 to 30 open positions. So yes, our projects do need more people, and we have been continuously taking our recruitment networks and capabilities further. And we keep on growing, but we are selective in that because we know that one of our unique parts is the creativity and high-quality that we can make with our games. And that does require exactly the right type of people, the excellent talents. Finding those people always takes time, and we are not speeding that process so, that we would need to compromise the quality of our games.

Then I'm aware we're a bit running out of time. So the last question is from [ Mikko Settala ]. Congratulations, Tero and the team, for a great 2020. You are very profitable, almost too profitable. Have you considered spending more money in marketing, for example?

Well, a very relevant question and a justified one. We have actually, step-by-step, been doing that. But so far, when we look at our first phase of growth, we have been collaborating with our publishing partner in all the games that we have been developing in the past. And typically, in those deals, the marketing responsibilities lie with our publishing partners. In Control, there has been some marketing that we have been doing. But as we introduced in our new strategy, we are now moving towards a future where we will self-publishing some of our future games, and that will therefore also mean that we need to develop our commercial capabilities further. And we need to then, of course, have the big role in marketing as well. So in the longer-term future, it will mean that we will be also spending more on marketing than we have done in the past.

Thank you for the answers and questions as well. That's all the time we have this time. Thank you for joining our full year 2020 results broadcast. And I wish you a very, very happy beginning of the year, and see you next time.