Starbreeze AB (publ) (STARB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everybody. Welcome to this presentation of Starbreeze fourth quarter and full year 2024. Today's presenter is Mats Juhl, acting CEO and CFO. And with that introduction, I leave it over to you, Mats.

Thank you, Martin, and welcome to everybody, and thank you for listening in to our presentation of our fourth quarter and full year numbers for 2024. Let me run through some slides, and then there will be time to answer questions after the presentation. And please keep in mind that you can also send in questions during the presentation, and we will try to answer as many as we can before closing them. So let's get into it. Our fourth quarter key takeaways. We have had a great quarter when it comes to PAYDAY franchise and both leveraging our IP, but also PAYDAY 3 as a game. Regarding our IP, we announced our fantastic collaboration with KRAFTON. We are making a PAYDAY game in the PUBG: Battlegrounds platform. That's going to be an amazing opportunity for us and that we can explore that large platform of players and also introduce so many new players to PAYDAY. So we're really looking forward to see that game out live. And the project is a work-for-hire, as we communicated earlier, and I can talk a little bit more about that later. We also announced that we are letting PAYDAY make a reappearance on Roblox. It's a PAYDAY experience done by Notoriety. He's great -- made a great version of PAYDAY on that platform. We see great attention on that as well. It's already out there available for everybody to play. We also released the new content and functionality to PAYDAY 3, for instance, VoIP and server browser in October; and lately, the popular heist, First World Bank, that we released in December, specifically for PAYDAY 3. Our next game, Baxter, we are in full production, progressing according to plan and with the ambition to release the game during 2026. We also have a playable demo that we're actually showcasing now and letting potential partners play. And we are getting great feedback and a lot of laughs during those sessions. It seems like it's not only us that likes that game, how it looks and how it's coming together. So the team has made a really great progress with the game, and it comes together as a true GMV experience as we interpret it within Starbreeze. So I'm looking forward to show more about Baxter going forward. But at the moment, we focus on showcasing it to potential partners before announcing more details out of the game to the market. But bear with me, it will come. As you know then, we have 3 games on the market. So that includes Roboquest that we publish. And as you've seen, Roboquest continues to perform really well, and we are looking forward to see the game on PlayStation in a couple of months. So that's also a good expansion for that game. It remains very popular, and we see good revenue from that game to Starbreeze as well. We do also continuously review our organization, our investments and our efficiency and have, during and after the quarter, made several changes to make improvements both financially and operationally. I will mention a little bit more about that later in the presentation as well. And last but not least, we continuously have a good cash position and limited debt. So those 2 ensures that we can continue to deliver on our strategic plan. So -- and by that, let's get in to our strategy, where we are today and looking forward a little bit. So looking into the years to come, our strategy remains intact, as we communicated before. We aim to build Starbreeze both stronger and better through self-publishing of our own games based on our own IPs. So as I said, we have several games on the market driving revenue and, at the same time, increasing stability and reducing risk. We will continue to monetize on all the titles we have published and will publish going forward. And we have the ambition to expand our franchises both to more platforms as well to other entertainment areas and beyond games. So this is something we will intensify now going forward, and we'll communicate more about that in the coming quarters. Our core ambition as a company, as we've mentioned before as well, it is to make cooperative multiplayer games with a focus on our community for a long time ahead. The model for doing so differs depending on market demands and type of game, but it remains our foundation of the company. So we still have the strategic platform that we work [ according ]. So if you're looking on the PAYDAY franchise and a little bit beyond that during the quarter, as I partly mentioned already, there's been a lot of activity on the PAYDAY franchise. We launched our First Year Edition with multiple new features and also the well-received heist in First World Bank and now lately also the very popular character Jacket with over 90% in Steam ratings. So a fantastic achievement to get that out on PAYDAY 3, a fine character. You should try it. On top of that, we also see that PAYDAY 3 is 1 out of 3 games that's actually the game of the month on PlayStation Plus. Good opportunity for us to increase our player base long term. And we see great attention from players on PlayStation, but also on other platforms at the moment. We see CCU numbers and DAU numbers at levels that we haven't seen since the launch of the game. We will communicate more about that in the Q1 presentation as well, but this as well is a great achievement by the team to actually get the game out there. And based on all the improvements that we've done over the last year to make the game a better playing experience, but also more content, has really improved the game over time. And that will continue. So we will continue to make improvements and release more DLCs and content for PAYDAY 3, both over the months to come, but also over the years to come. So the ambition is to continue to grow the game experience as well as making it more profitable. I already mentioned a little bit about the collaboration with KRAFTON and Notoriety, which is an expansion of our franchise and PAYDAY as an experience. So now we reach a lot more players compared to what we did before. So that will be a huge expansion of the franchise when KRAFTON decides to release the PUBG experience. Also worth mentioning is that we have a cooperation with the Swedish developer, The Gang. We will publish a game together with them called Unseen and continue to monetize also on Roboquest, as I mentioned. As I also said, looking into our efficiency and cost structure in the company, this is something that we always need to monitor and do our best with. So even if it's an ongoing activity continuously over the last couple of months, we pay some extra attention to the matter. And we actually made a strategic overview looking into our current and future projects in order to strengthen the company long term. So we have initiated a process to build a state-of-the-art tech team based in Sweden. We also reviewed the organization in terms of needs and competencies. Unfortunately, that involves some reductions in workforce to meet the needs we see going forward. This is primarily impacting our marketing organization and publishing organization. To further reduce costs and complexity within the company, we're also evaluating the possibilities to close down part of our foreign entities in line with -- that's part of our strategy to build Starbreeze stronger in Sweden with the head office here and having Stockholm as a base for the company. We will still have, of course, employees and great developers around the world as we do because we recruit based on competence and not location. That's the most important for us to have the best team that we can. All this together, of course, will strengthen us both financially and operationally and ensure that we continue to deliver the great gaming experience that our players expect. So the impacts of the changes we do will be visible going forward in the coming quarters. If we go into the financials then for the quarter and for the full year, net sales for the quarter amounted to about SEK 46.4 million, a slight increase from previous quarter, but a decrease compared to last year. And obviously, we released PAYDAY 3 late in Q3 last year, so we saw an impact of that also in Q4 last year. Our EBITDA for the quarter amounted to SEK 19.7 million, a great improvement compared to last year where we saw higher costs. Based on our depreciation plan for PAYDAY 3, we depreciated SEK 71.6 million during the quarter. So it's decreasing slightly quarter-by-quarter. We do continue to invest into our game, both PAYDAY and Baxter, as I mentioned, and we report a loss after tax of SEK 49.2 million in the quarter driven by these investments, of course, as well. Our cash flow for the quarter was flat, which is an improvement from previous quarter with about SEK 15 million. All in all, this gave us a healthy cash position in the end of the quarter of about SEK 192 million. And also worth mentioning about the cash position and our burn rate going forward. Of course, that's always a concern if we have enough cash to continue to develop the projects that we do, and we definitely do so. And the -- since we're reducing costs and also have the work-for-hire contract going on currently, that generates revenue going forward, which we haven't seen the full impact of in Q4, but we'll see the full impact of in Q1. Our burn rate will go down during 2025. If we look on the full year numbers, net sales amounted to SEK 185.9 million, and our EBITDA amounted to SEK 97.6 million. Our cash flow for the first -- for the year was positive with SEK 64.9 million from operating activities. If we look on our cash flow over time, we closed the year 2023 with a cash position of SEK 348 million. And during 2024, we have a positive cash flow from operating activities of almost SEK 65 million then. And as I mentioned, we continue to do gaming investments, and we invested into our games about SEK 228 million out of a total investment of SEK 245 million. Part of our revenue related to PAYDAY 3 is recognized as financing related to development of content not currently released. That, together with IFRS adjustment, sums up to SEK 25 million in positive effect. And as I mentioned, we closed the year with a cash position of nearly SEK 192 million. And even though we continue to invest into our games in 2025 and up until the release of Baxter and onwards after that as well, of course, we also see that the cash generated both from the games that we have out on the market and also the work-for-hire that we have with KRAFTON generates a positive cash injection into the company every month going forward. So as mentioned, the cash position we have remains enough to actually deliver on the ambitions we have. If we look into our expenses, our underlying expenses are decreasing, as mentioned, to a more long-term healthy level. And we are continuously monitoring and reviewing the expenses and priorities to make sure that they are -- we are as a company as efficient as possible. Direct costs amounted to SEK 80.4 million, and the decrease compared to last year mainly relates to lower depreciation of intangible assets. The depreciation recognized as direct cost in the quarter amounted to SEK 65.4 million. Recognized under direct cost, we also have the revenue share related to Roboquest and PAYDAY of about SEK 7.6 million. Selling and marketing amounted to SEK 6.7 million, which is in line with previous quarter. Expenses mainly relates to cost for personnel working with marketing and PR activities for our games. Administrative expenses amounted to SEK 9.8 million, which is a decrease compared to previous year of about SEK 12 million. We had about 186 employees at the end of the period, end of the year, which is a decrease with about 7 people compared to the same period last year. And if we look into our balance sheet, which is very clean at the moment and have been for quite some time now. So our intangible assets amounts to [ SEK 291 million ], consists mainly of capitalized expenses for game development and IP rights. PPE, which is property, plant and equipment, amounts to SEK 26 million, of which right-of-use assets for office lease amounts to SEK 18 million. Our current assets amounts to SEK 170 million, mainly related to prepaid expenses and trade receivables. As mentioned, our cash position of SEK 192 million. And furthermore, our external noncurrent liabilities have been amortized previously, and the remaining part mainly relates to lease liabilities for office and tax. And our current liabilities of SEK 122 million mainly relates to accrued expenses and trade payables. So all in all, a very clean and healthy balance sheet as well. Yes. So back to the key takeaways and to sum up the quarter. I think we have a good split of sales between our different games. PAYDAY 3, still not where we want it to be, but we see a strong positive trend and looking forward to releasing more content going forward. And on top of that, we see the full impact of the work-for-hire in Q1. We do have the solid cash position, as mentioned, to further invest into PAYDAY 3 and Baxter and also other projects going forward. And we also see the expansion then on the franchise that will impact us positively going forward as well. So looking forward to presenting in the next quarter as well. But we have -- we're leaving 2024 strong and very confident and with full energy to make the best of 2025. And by that, I think we open up for questions.

Yes. Then let's see here. We have quite a few questions to go through.

The first one here is you communicated that you hope to be able to show more from Baxter before year-end. What is the current status there?

Yes. I think I said so during a previous presentation where I talked about Baxter and said that I hope to be able to present more about the game before year-end. We decided to prioritize our partners or potential partners that we hopefully work with on Baxter going forward. So when we have done that and continuously talk to them for a while, then we have the opportunity to actually disclose more, both in-game footage and hopefully some videos and stuff like that for the game as well. So I want everybody to get a feeling of how great the project is, but it needs to take time, and I leave that in the hands of the publishing and marketing department to decide when we go public with more information. But hopefully, we can showcase more going forward.

Right. So the next question here, do you have any plans to release or make the PAYDAY 3 base game more for free like you did with PAYDAY 2 and move over to more of a DLC model?

That's a good question. We are continuously evaluating the pricing strategy for PAYDAY 3. There are no plans to make PAYDAY 3 a free game or free-to-play game in that sense. And PAYDAY 2 is not free. What we have done on PAYDAY 2 historically is to give away free copies in period, which is a marketing strategy that you can use to increase the player base and then monetize on DLCs. At the moment, we are more working with discounts and sales. So -- but as I mentioned, it's something that we're always evaluating. At the moment, there's no plan to make PAYDAY 3 free, totally free, but we will continue to work with discounts and so on to increase the player base. And as I mentioned before, being on PlayStation Plus is a great first step in increasing the player base. So with the large player base that PlayStation have and the huge amount of players that are actually trying PAYDAY 3 now for the first time, I hope to see that we have an ongoing player base that are significantly bigger than before that we can monetize when it comes to DLCs and other content. But that's a good first step, and then we see going forward how we can further increase the player base.

Do you have any plans to develop a pure single-player game instead of a co-op? The example here in the question is the Riddick games that Starbreeze once developed.

Fantastic games. So we have done that historically. At the moment, our focus is and our core strength as a company is to do cooperative games. But I would never say never that we would evaluate the opportunity if it is there on the table, so to say. It could be a good opportunity to further build competence in the company. But at the moment, our strategy remains intact, and it is cooperative games that we do with a long lifetime and a full focus on the community.

Can you give us any update on the PAYDAY TV series or movie deal?

Yes. It's an ongoing discussion. It takes time. We are looking into to do as a fantastic deal as possible regarding a movie and TV series deal. We have partners working on that, and we are continuously evaluating different opportunities. We haven't decided on how and when we will progress with that, but it is a good opportunity to further expand the franchise and make PAYDAY available in different formats. So we're definitely pursuing that opportunity. But I don't have anything more to say about that today. We will disclose that once we have signed a contract and are ready to go, so to say. But it's absolutely in the works and not something that we have put on hold in any way.

Will Starbreeze communicate any sort of road map or detailed plan for PAYDAY 3's second year in the market, for instance, the pace of new game updates, what kind of game updates and also planned releases of new functionalities?

Yes, we will do so. And we are currently in the works in setting the plan for the full year. And at the moment, we have released Jacket now, and now we focus on the PlayStation Plus activities. But there will be more coming out, and we will announce that in due time. But as I said before as well, I leave that to our marketing and publishing department to work that out together with our co-publishing partner, Plaion, on how and when to communicate that. But there's definitely more content coming out, and we will talk more about that going forward and, hopefully, be able to present the full year plan.