Verve Group SE (VRV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Media and Games Invest Q1 Report 2021. [Operator Instructions] Today, I am pleased to present CEO, Remco Westermann; and CFO, Paul Echt. Please begin your meeting.

Yes. Good morning. I would like to welcome our investors, analysts and all others who have dialed in to the Media and Games Invest earnings call for Q1. We released our financials early this morning, and we are very happy and proud regarding the great performance we showed in Q1 2021. And yes, it's continuing our fast profitable growth strategies and giving us a very good start into the year 2021. And we will run you through the headlines today, and this will be done by Paul Echt and myself, and I would like to start on Page #4, where there's a short picture of Paul and myself, and I won't go into detail. I think everybody knows it by now, and just giving a short overview of the shareholdings, we talked about in total of 128.7 million shares outstanding, where let's say I'm holding still at 33%, and the rest is free float, where we highlight here Oaktree as well as our cornerstone investors. We'd like to go to the presentation, Page #6. Here we show our financial highlights for Q1 2021. And yes, really happy about these numbers. A good start into the year. We did EUR 51.9 million revenues, which is a 96% year-on-year growth so compared to Q1 2020. And we did this with a 26% EBITDA margin. So we realized EUR 13.5 million adjusted EBITDA, which is a 127% increase versus the EBITDA of Q1 of 2020. What were the highlights of the quarter are 2 M&A transactions that we did early in the quarter, Kingsisle, a transforming transaction, getting 2 great games into our portfolio, also adding very nicely to the revenues already in Q1; and LKQD, a company that we acquired from Nexstar Digital of Nexstar, a large TV company -- a digital TV company in the U.S., which also added a lot of GAAP assets to our media site also growing very substantially. Going to the next slide, Slide #7, which gives an overview of who we are, a bit of our -- yes, the 1 slide that shows the main things, characteristics of the company. We did over 30 M&A transactions, just going through on the left side, in the last year. So M&A has been really very strong in building our critical mass. I mean it's how we started with a small game company, Gamigo, where we said, okay, that's too small. Let's really build critical mass and with critical mass, we can also do strong organic growth, which we are now also showing. Market cap over EUR 600 million now. We are listed on Frankfurt Stock Exchange since early 2018, also on NASDAQ First North Premier since October last year. Over 800 employees. The gaming side, I mean, [indiscernible] do media and games. The gaming side, the majority of our revenues is coming from so-called massive multiplayer games, games people are playing together, are building up the character or the city and are very loyal and also very loyal paying players. Also casual games, over 5,000 casual games. And what really is common on everything that we do on the gaming side is we are looking for sustainable long-term revenue streams. So games or game subscriptions or again categories where people are in for a long time, so that our user acquisition costs are relatively low in comparison to the lifetime revenues that those games generate. Over EUR 100 million registered gamers stand out. And on the media side, yes, we delivered EUR 111 billion ads in the last 12 months, which is -- if you look at December, we announced that we did EUR 83 billion over 2020. So we had a strong growth in that and working for over 5,000 advertisers, getting a bit more in detail later into the segments. Then on the right upper side, a bit of the regions. Yes, in Q1, we did 61% of our revenues in North America. So we further strengthened our position in North America, which had to do a lot -- or has a lot to do with Kingsisle. Last year -- full last year, we did 54% just as a comparison shows really strong growth in North America. Also happy to see that Asia and the other parts of the world have also been growing. Everything has basically been growing. And also, Europe has been growing, although the percentage-wise Europe has gone down a bit. Yes, in the segments, roughly 50-50, so 53% games, 47% media. And on the bottom side, you see that, yes, we have really been able to grow substantially year-on-year. But now the last bit over 2 years, we had a CAGR of 76%, which has also continued to trade strongly as shown with a 96% growth quarter-on-quarter in Q1. Coming to the next slide, Slide 8. And we are going into the 2 segments. So the gaming part, EUR 27.4 million revenues in Q1, which was a 97% growth. The media side on the right side, EUR 24.5 million revenues, which was a 94% growth. So gaming grew a little bit faster, but I mean both have extremely fast growth. Yes, EBITDA, EUR 10.9 million on the gaming side, which is 40%, so it's an extremely very strong EBITDA, which is realized, and we have been able to improve our EBITDA by economies of scale, further cost savings, and of course, also Kingsisle added a lot to more substantial EBITDA. Most money coming on the gaming side still from in-game purchases, but also against subscriptions and advertising revenues. On the media side, EUR 2.6 million EBITDA, which is much lower; at 11% of the revenue, which is, let's say, compared to the gaming side still low. But also, we need to realize that the media side, we're only doing integrations and have been building up the segments since less than 4 years. While on the gaming side, we're doing it over 8 years. So on the media side, we are not into our target margin. Target margin is 15% to 20%, which we also expect to reach soon. And also here to realize in 2020, we had an EBITDA margin of 9% over the full year. So Q1, which is not the strongest one in media. Media Q1 normally is the weakest quarter. We did already 11%, and then expect to lift that up further in the year. Revenues in the media side coming from SaaS fees, agency fees and ad commissions, but the majority now is SaaS fees. Coming to the next slide, Slide 9. Yes, also to show a bit that we are working in growing markets. Games as well as media has shown strong growth. So 2020 revenues worldwide. Annual revenues are expected to be EUR 175 million in the -- sorry, on the Gaming side and the EUR 323 million on the media side with strong growth expected in the next years. 12% CAGR is expected. Yes, and we are very happy that with our 38% organic growth that we did now in Q1 that we are really far above that. So the markets are growing, which make our lives a lot easier. But with our strategy, where we in the beginning, only did acquisitions, but now have really strong organic growth. We're showing that we can outreach the market by organic growth. Coming to the next slide, Slide 10. Yes, that's also the reason that we're combining the two. And I think that's a big part of our organic growth, is really combining gaming and media. We are not unique in this. I don't know for those that watched. AppLovin has announced its IPO. IronSource has announced the SPAC deal. Those are companies that originally were media companies have started to get into gaming. So they also do the combination like we do. And yes, what you see here on the slide without going in every detail, the combination of media and gaming makes a gaming company much more effective, much more efficient. And also a media company gets more efficient by having the gaming side. So that's a really big win, and we're really starting to show that more and more in our combination. Coming to Slide 11, highlights for Q1 on our products. On the gaming side, yes, acquisition of Kingsisle, already mentioned before. We added 2 strong games to our portfolio, Wizard101 and Pirate101. They both performed in Q1 above the plan that we made when we acquired the company. So really happy with it. There is, of course, always when you do an acquisition, there's a certain risk of the -- let's say, in the handover phase. But it was really extremely smooth transaction, and the team is extremely motivated, has been integrated in the total team of the gaming part and is extremely [indiscernible] and a lot more to come. The Trove South Korea. Yes, we have, let's say, a lot of IPs that we -- where we own the IP worldwide fully. And here also, let's say, in certain markets, we don't want to publish the games ourselves because of the market risk or the political risk. And one of those markets, South Korea, is a very competitive market. And here we found Aprogen Games, a strong publisher in the Korean market, who -- yes, we closed a partnership with -- to publish Trove in that market. The open beta has been finished. The game is now being live. And let's say, yes, it looks very promising. So we expect quite something from the Korean market. Then the third one, Echo of Soul, another of our games that we have. We had a massive 3.0 update, which -- yes, which brought a lot of extra levels to the players. So they can now play altogether 99 levels, which is a big upgrade on the game. And that's also typical in massive multiplayer games. At a certain point, people are at a level cap, which means they have reached the highest level. And then if you open more levels, new levels, people get much more active again and also, of course, that's good for the revenue. So that's what we show in Q1. And then ArcheAge, one of our other strong games. Akasch Invasion was a big update that we did, which gives access to Gunslinger skill sets and also, let's say, a lot of new things to explore and to further elaborate on the game. So those things have been driving strong organic growth on the gaming side. Then on the media side, we have -- sorry, strong organic and inorganic growth because Kingsisle is also on the list. Then on the media side, also here to start with the nonorganic part, which was the acquisition of LKQD, as already mentioned before, which is a digital video platform. Video is becoming more and more important for advertising. A lot of traditional TV is moving to digital TV. More and more is on video screens. And for that, it's very interesting and very important as a gaming company also to have capability to advertise the games on these media. So with that, we are really happy with the acquisition. LKQD is fully focused on the U.S. market. So that's one thing that the Verve team is now working on to also expand it outside of the U.S. Then the launch in Japan. Japan is a very important market for gaming, but also for media. So also very happy to have an office there on the Verve group and also, let's say, starting to roll out our products and advertising services there. Then very important, having done also several acquisitions on the media side, where a lot of them were still working with their own brands, we have now decided to take everything under the Verve brand. [indiscernible] new logo, which was released, and we are now rolling out to all the companies, all the group companies with logo. But the integration there with the teams happened already before, but we also want to show this out to the market, and we also have a single offering out to the market. Then, yes, very important also, being a gaming company, the media part did last year, 60% of their revenues with game companies. We've increased that now by 10%, so to 70%. We see that the know-how that we have on the gaming side and also the properties and everything is really a very attractive offering for other game companies. So also there, we show a strong growth. So yes, 94% revenue growth on the media side, 97% of the revenue growth on the gaming side, so really bright and happy with these results. Then going to Slide 13. The strategy we’ll quickly go over because this has not changed in the last 8 years. We buy companies, we integrate the companies and then we build and improve. So buy -- yes, as part of the strategy, looking for targets. There's so many targets out in the market. Then integrating, that's a bit special. I mean that a lot of other buying build stores in the market are not integrating the companies they buy. We strongly believe that when we integrate and that we get more efficient and that it's easier to manage those companies and you get larger cost savings because of that, which we also can prove. And then with that, of course, when we have those integrated groups, which is the media part and the gaming part, as we go over, we really work on improving the product, on expanding the user base, on internationalization, and yes, altogether, further growth of the group. Page 14, a bit more about the M&A side. Also saying here, this is the principles we are working on, on the M&A side. So it has done over 30 acquisitions in the last years. Typically, we target 2 kinds of targets. The one is more the distress side, where we typically look at a payback of below 24 months, which means purchase price plus burn rate, plus restructuring costs, which has so far been happening. And on the EBITDA positive side, we look to not pay more than 6x EBITDA. It sounds like extremely low because at the moment, we see that certain acquisitions, really, people paying 15, 20% -- 20x and over EBITDA multiples. That's the reason we are targeting a bit smaller targets because if you target the large targets, they really get more expensive. And the other thing, of course, because we integrate the targets, we have a lot of synergies there. So it might be that we pay also 10x or even a bit more than that as a notable, but then there must be enough synergy to really come up in the end at this purchase price of the 6x EBITDA. Target size, as just mentioned, if you target game companies between EUR 5 million and EUR 40 million, that's -- yes, let's say, a level where you can still get good multiples. Gaming companies with EUR 50 million in over revenues are really -- there's a lot of bidding on them, a lot of competition, and that's the reason we try to stay away from that. But we will rather do a bit more M&A in the next year, so more M&A cases instead of moving towards too much larger cases. On the right bottom side, you see that we have a well-filled pipeline of targets. And on the left side, yes, we have well-defined processes for integrating the companies -- or acquiring the companies, but also integrating the companies. Next page, Page 15, Kingsisle. This is the slide from the old presentation. So we acquired the company in January with USD 32 million expected revenues expected; USD 21 million EBITDA, which is a 66% EBITDA margin; purchase price, USD 126 million; and an EBITDA of 6x. It looks like the performance of this company is much stronger than we expected. We haven't raised the targets yet. But yes, with 17% of our MGI group revenues in the first quarter, it was well above plan. Revenues, as you see on the left side, it's mostly still U.S., which we're working on also internationalizing that more but having it just acquired in January, this will take a bit more time to really see those effects. And on the right side, you see the split of where the revenues come from, which is very interesting because most of our M&A MMOs do only in-game revenues, but subscription revenues are not so strong in the MMOs. Here we have 2 games with subscription revenues, which is an interesting model, which we also might roll out partly on some of our older games to make some additional revenues. So interesting case, very happy with this. And as said before, the team has integrated very nicely, and that's, of course, a good start for it. Next slide, Page 16, an overview of the M&A pipeline. Nothing changed here since our last presentation, which was not so long ago. So we have very substantial targets lined up. We have also smaller targets lined up and other targets that are a bit earlier in the pipeline. We wouldn't like to buy all 5 targets of this, but I'm pretty confident that we can close 2 or 3 out of this list in the coming 6 months, maybe a bit earlier already, and that's what we're focusing on to further grow on the M&A side. But not only M&A, as I showed before. Also, organic is going very nicely. Then I would like to hand over to Paul to present the financials, or to go through the financials. Paul, if you take over from Page 18.

Yes. So starting here on Page 18, with the first quarter financial highlights. Here we can see that we increased net revenues to EUR 51.9 million compared to EUR 26.5 million last year, which is an increase of 96% with a strong underlying organic growth of 38% and an M&A growth of 58%, while the adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 13.5 million compared to EUR 5.9 million last year, which is an increase of 127% due to the Kingsisle acquisition, but also increased EBITDA margins on the media side. The adjusted EBIT increased to EUR 9.3 million compared to EUR 3.4 million last year, which is an increase of 173%. And the operating cash flow increased to EUR 11.3 million compared to EUR 6.2 million last year, which is an increase of 83%, and that's been mitigated a bit compared to the EBITDA [indiscernible] working capital effect. Coming now to Page 19, the summary of the financial performance. And here we see that we have now reached EUR 166 million revenues and EUR 37 million adjusted EBITDA on a last 12-month basis, with 96% total growth in Q1 versus Q1 last year, with a strong organic growth of 38%, while the EBITDA margins for the group have been increased from 20.8% to 22.2%. And as Kingsisle discussed here, 1 quarter included, we will also see a strong increase in EBITDA margins over the coming 3 months, but also in combination with the increased organic growth, economy of scale and then also overall increasing EBITDA margins in our gaming segment, but especially also coming from the media segment where we, as Remco mentioned, already expect 15% to 20% in the second half year. And therefore, we expect to go to the 25% to 30% EBITDA margin that we have set as a financial target during 2021. Coming now a bit more into the first quarter revenue development on Page 20. On the left side, we see the revenue, where we have increased revenues in the first quarter from EUR 27 million last year to EUR 52 million this year, which is again 96% year-over-year revenue growth. But on a last 12 months basis, we increased revenues from EUR 97 million to EUR 166 million. On the right side, we see the adjusted EBITDA until we have actually increased EBITDA from EUR 6 million to now EUR 40 million in Q1 2021, where we increased on a quarter basis the EBITDA margin pretty strong strongly from 22% to 26%; and on the last 12 months basis, increased EBITDA from EUR 29 million to EUR 37 million. So an overall very strong increase in revenues, in combination with a strong increase in EBITDA and also overall increased EBITDA margins for the group. Coming now to Page 21, a bit more in detail after the segment performance. And as we started in the first quarter of 2020, also with the segment reporting for the games and media segment, we are able now for the first time to show also year-over-year comparison. So on the left side, you see the games segment year-over-year. So first quarter of 2020, we reached EUR 14 million revenues and in the first quarter of 2021, EUR 27 million revenues, which is a 97% revenue increase for the games segment, where we were growing the EBITDA from EUR 5 million to EUR 11 million now, which is a strong increase also in EBITDA margins, from 36% to 40%. While on the right side, you see the media segment where we also increased the revenue substantially from EUR 13 million to EUR 25 million, where we increased the EBITDA from EUR 1 million to EUR 3 million and also see a very strong EBITDA margin increase from 7% to 11%. We are not at the 15% to 20%, as Remco mentioned, at the beginning yet. But as mentioned as well already, we expect to be there within the second half of 2021, so to 15% to 20% and already see here a very strong increase in overall EBITDA margins, in line with also a very strong increase in revenues. Coming now to Page 22, the operating cash flow and CapEx development. And here we see that in line with also the previous years and quarters, we have increased, on the left side, our operating cash flow substantially to more than EUR 30 million now, with a very strong underlying free cash flow of almost EUR 25 million, which is achieved to a very limited maintenance CapEx, what we see on the right side, so EUR 5.7 million. That has increased compared to the EUR 4.6 million in 2020, as we also now have the investments for the Wizard101 IP. But it's also limited and, therefore, we have a very strong free cash flow. And the expansion CapEx, which includes investments in M&A, but also into new game IPs where we [indiscernible] later in our outlook until we also see a very strong increase in expansion CapEx due to the purchase price of Kingsisle and LKQD and again, also some organic growth investments. So we are well prepared for also further organic growth in combination with also a strong increase in operating cash flow and free cash flow during 2021. Coming now on Page 23 to the risk profile of MGI. And here we see that we have actually stayed between -- in our financial net leverage target rate between 2 and 3, despite the fact that we had a pretty strong high cash out in the first quarter of 2021. So we increased our net debt from EUR 62 million to EUR 98 million, and our net leverage ratio from 2.1 to 2.7, but it's super important to mention here that there's just 1 quarter of Kingsisle included yet. And therefore, we will see a very strong deleverage over the coming quarters and they will most likely be at our net lower net leverage target range of 2 and 3 or even below the 2. And therefore, again, a low risk profile of MGI. Coming now to Page 24, our midterm financial targets. And as we mentioned in the last presentations already, we can tick the box for 2021 here already and rather overachieve, and I think that's also what we can see now here in the first quarter. So starting with a revenue CAGR of 25% to 30%, which we have set as a target. We overachieved that substantially with 96% total growth and 38% organic growth with an underlying 58% M&A growth, so 3x higher than our financial targets. While we are, in terms of the margins, have been well within our target range of 25% to 30% with 26% and rather also increase that over time. But our adjusted EBIT margin target of 15% to 20%. Here, we have achieved 18% in the first quarter. So also within -- with this target and on the net leverage side, 2 to 3 have been achieved 2.7, which will further delever over the coming quarters as Kingsisle will contribute further strong to our group EBITDA. And also, yes, the Media segment is also increasing in EBITDA in terms of EBITDA margins currently. And therefore, we will overall see deleverage over the coming quarters. Coming now to Page 25. And here, I would like to hand over to Remco for a brief outlook of our organic growth pipeline.

Yes. Thanks, Paul. This is also the last Page of our presentation. After that, there's time for questions, and -- which we'll happily answer. Now Page 25. Yes, as I mentioned before, we have a very strong organic growth, and we will want to continue this. We have the strongest organic growth pipeline in history. So going a little bit back in history, this company started really with a small acquisition of a distressed gaming company called Gamigo, which we then turned around and then started buying critical mass via M&A. And the last years, we have seen each year that we were able to grow our organic growth substantially year-on-year, which now in '20 -- and it's also a bit based on investments, by the way, but we're complaining about where is your organic growth? We said, let's first build credible months, but now we're really proud to show the organic growth -- and yes, we have so much in the -- how to say, we have so many iron in the fire at the moment, so much fireworks coming now. And it's gaming. I mean it's difficult to say which games will really be successful and which will maybe not. But we do have a very strong pre-selection. We have a lot of good IPs. So we have a lot of things. We are more certain about success. New game launches are always a bit more risky, of course. We still don't do new game development. So developing game from scratch is something that we don't touch. But what we do, of course, is in-licensing games or in the case of Golf Champions, buying a game where, let's say, the last part of the development still has to be done but where the game is already 90% ready. So those kind of things we do. And yes, I would like to run you through the highlights here. Heroes of Twilight. The new IP, it's going -- yes, it's -- we're expecting a lot of it. It's been made ready for launch. Testing is going on at the moment. And we expect it to be on the mobile front, Android and iOS in the summer this year. It's a mixed genre. So it's mixing different game genres. It's turn-based tactical combat combining with real-time PvP battles, so person versus person. It's licensed from a top Canadian game studio, which called BKOM. And we're looking forward to this launch. So that's coming up. Then Golf Champions – Swing of Glory, as just already mentioned, yes, a strong game. We expect a lot. Gamigo has, in its past, also quite some experience already with golf games. It's a pretty nice niche segment with people spending quite good money and being very loyal. So also here, it's a competitive free-to-play game. People can compete in different leagues. And they can, of course, improve their skills, and get a better golf swing, all those kind of things. So also here, looking forward, this will be more a bit towards the end of the year as far as we expect it at the moment. Then we have Desert Operations, one of our old strong IPs. Here, we do what we do with more games, porting to other platforms. So Desert Operations is extremely successful on PC. We work on the mobile version. Yes, it's -- the early [indiscernible] we wanted to do a quick report. We have decided to really make it much more substantial to do it much more thorough. So this will take also a bit, but we also expect to launch this in 2021. We're looking forward to that. The IP is strong, and we have the user base, so that should also bring quite some nice things on mobile. Then Skydome. That's a new name that was not formally mentioned also in presentations. It's a PC game, 4 versus 4 tower defense battle arena, a really very exciting game, which we licensed from Kinship Entertainment and will also be published for Europe and North America, where we have exclusive licenses. So also here, preparations are ongoing, also expecting quite something nice from that. That's a bit about the gaming side, some highlights. There's much more on the gaming side, update in existing games, some big DLCs, for example, porting other platforms or, let's say, other games to other platforms. Trove being transformed to Switch, which will also hopefully already be launched in end of Q2, but latest early Q3, as we see it now. So we expect a lot from that. So there's more and more -- -- much more coming on the gaming side. Yes, in-licensing things, we're preparing for the gaming side, but also out-licensing deals. Too much to mention on the slide here. Then on the media side, also a lot of stuff happening, a lot going on. The first, a very obvious one, of course, adding more customers, adding more suppliers. Often suppliers and customers are the same in this field. Of course, a game company has -- is let's say, placing ads or buying advertisements for user acquisition. But on the other hand, it also has a lot of ads in their games. So also here, we have a good task. Some game companies that only do the advertising via us or only fill their ads via us, and it's, of course, nice if we have on both fields. So that's a very important thing also to make sure that somebody was -- maybe with LKQD already buying CTV that he now is also starting to buy by our platforms. The other formats that we have like banners, like video ads, like, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a very important thing for organic growth. Internationalization, as before, with Japan. Also in South America, for example, we are expanding our reach adding new countries. So that's important. And then also, of course, the technical side, the product side. Enterprise solutions, as shown here on the slide, we have a full spec SaaS platform, which means that we cover the full advertising channel from DSP via DMP to SSP to SDKs, which means that advertisers have a full transparency and also publishers in this whole chain, which is a very big asset in the market where a lot of identifiers are disappearing. So that's what we are, let's say, leveraging at the moment, and we're also using the data that we have from the gaming side to make the advertisements better and to target better. Yes, so focus on customer acquisition for the [indiscernible] and further growing. And then IDFA. Yes, Apple has now finally announced that IDFA will be out -- or let's say, will be fully implemented by end of this month, which means that a lot of companies that are advertising will be a little bit more blind than before, or will be quite a lot more blind than before. And there are solutions for that. Our technology part of the media site as we worked very hard on that. And there will be more formal announcements around it in the coming weeks. But we have pretty nice solutions to mitigate that, to even be able to target very nicely. So that's some of the highlights. Much more -- there is much more in the pipeline, as mentioned already before. But we need to have something in our next presentation, of course, also to announce, so not giving all the facts here. But as always a warning, new game launches are risky, I mean there's over 2,000 game launches per month. We do our selection very carefully. And we think that we have games that really have a lot of potential but you never know with game launches. With own IPS, of course, the risk is much less. There, we know already that the games are successful, that we have a user base, which we can grow. And yes, building on our existing user base. We have, let's say, tons of registered gamers and tons of advertisers is, of course, also less risky than doing anything that's new-new. That brings me to the end of the presentation. Yes, time for questions. So I hope you all like our numbers, and would hand over to the moderator to organize questions. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ellis Acklin of First Berlin.

Thank you for the detailed information. That means I've just got 1 question at the moment. If you could maybe quantify the organic growth by segment for me that would be much appreciated.

Should I, Remco or...

Yes, please Paul, go ahead.

Yes. So we show here on a combined basis, there's a lot of synergies between the segments where we could realize the organic growth, but you can almost cut it by half, the kind of -- for each segment. But therefore, we decided now showing on a combined basis. It really depends also how much for you the acquisition you invest on the games segment, which means then further organic growth on that side. But it then also leverages further organic growth on the media side. And therefore, yes, we show it on a combined basis, which is, from our point, the most true and fair view and therefore. But to give a rough number, it's cut by half currently.

Our next question comes from the line of Danesh Zare of Redeye.

Congrats on a great quarter. So Kingsisle, 17% of total revenues, really strong. Just to clarify, that Kingsisle only contributed to 2 months to the quarter? Or was it consolidated from January 1?

It was consolidated from the January 1. So we made a very deep dive with the auditors. And -- but as the FDA was structured in a way where we have set a target date for closing on the 1st of January, already. And also the profit from the first of January is 100% ours. Therefore, we could also go for the first-time consolidation to the 1st of January. So that's the reason why also, yes, the 1st of January were chosen here despite the fact that the FDA was signed afterwards.

Okay. And you mentioned reincreased marketing budgets affecting media segment in a positive way due to the reopening of the economies. How does this affect the user acquisition cost in the gaming market. Have you seen an increased budget for that?

Remco, should I or do you want to...

Yes. If you want, you can. Otherwise, I can.

You can go forward and then I maybe add 1 or 2 sentences.

Okay. Let's say, what we saw last year in the media side, especially in Q2, there's a lot of parties either totally stopped advertising or were hesitant about advertising. Then after that, we saw the -- let's say, the more digital companies, like gaming companies, media companies already starting to further increase their budget. While we have now seen also from early this year that also, let's say, there's non-digital companies, which also part of them are our customers, which are more traditional companies like the McDonald's and those kind of guys that they are also starting to further increase their budgets again. So that's basically what's happening in the overall media market. And what we also saw, of course, that if there's less demand, prices go down. And prices go up, of course, if there's more demand. So we expect, indeed, let's say, also gaming companies will be influenced a bit by upcoming -- by higher CPMs, higher CPCs, so cost per minute or cost per click and that it will affect the market a bit. But in the -- let's say, also looking at the market that might mean that further budget increases will come up. So altogether, we expect further growth of the market. And of course, not to forget that there is still a lot of media that's coming from traditional media parts, like traditional TV advertising and newspaper advertising, where the numbers are further going down, which is all going into digital. And I think also there, of course, the whole COVID helped a lot that people -- companies are realizing that they have to go digital or that they have to strengthen their digital. So that's also, of course, helping the whole media part.

And in terms of your user acquisition costs for the gaming segment. Do you still push on the gas pedal when prices increase? Or do you dial that back a bit?

In general, let's say, we look at efficient user acquisition. And let's say, that was the reason that we -- let's say that, first of all, the reason that we are focusing on MMOs, where if you have a user, he's with you for many years, secondly, that's the reason that we started to invest in the media side because we said we need to become more efficient and more effective on the media side with user acquisition. And we are not, if you work with external parties that are sub-optimizing the whole chain. So those 2 things are really working in our advantage. And with, let's say, a closer cooperation between the media part and the gaming part, where we still have a lot of potential, we are able to get more users for every dollar we spend basically. So it's becoming more efficient. But on the other hand, of course, working a bit against it would be higher prices. But so far, we're still, let's say, increasing our budget because we see that by the efficiency gains that we have because of the tools that we have enhanced now, that we are still able to further increase our user acquisition.

Okay. Great. And then lastly, M&A firepower. So you're at the higher end of your net leverage ratio and you're in deep talks with several companies on the M&A front. How should we think about basically the size of potential acquisitions when you're at the higher end of the net leverage ratio and -- or a little bit tapping the equity markets basically?

Maybe let me start, Remco, and then you can step in. So on the net leverage, so that's based on reported numbers, right, the 2.7. But if you take into account the additional 9 months of Kingsisle on a pro forma basis, we are at the lower end of the net leverage target, even below 2. So therefore, actually, in terms of really taking into account also the full EBITDA, which we acquired in the last 12 months, we are much lower on the net leverage. So therefore, we're feeling pretty comfortable on that end. And in terms of M&A, we have done the tap issue. So we have more than EUR 50 million cash in bank. And as we are also pretty smart in a way to structure the deals when it comes to cheaper purchase prices and also earn-out payments and these kind of things, we have quite some room to do further M&A and can also do contribution kinds and these kind of things, not to say that we plan to do it on a short notice, but we have sufficient firepower also to take advantage of some acquisitions on our M&A pipeline.

And maybe to add, let's say, we don't need to do M&A. We have this growth target of 20% to 30% year-on-year, which I think with Q1, we almost have met already. So on the other hand, it's pretty relaxed. But if there aren’t good opportunities out there and there are good opportunities, we would also be stupid to not do M&A. But yes, as Paul said, I think midsized, smaller M&As, we can finance easily from our existing cash and our also strong cash flow, of course. If you would do really a larger deal, it might be that we have to tap capital markets. But I don't -- yes, I don't expect it till it happens. And so in that sense, we are well positioned at the moment for further M&A.

[Operator Instructions] Okay, there seems to be no further -- just 1 minute, there's 1 question coming in, just as I start to say that. [Operator Instructions] Apologies for the delay there. [Operator Instructions] So there are no further questions at this time, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.

Great. That -- I would like to thank everybody for participating in this call. And as always, if there's more questions, we're also happy to do one-to-one sessions and to answer questions, of course. Yes, thank you, everybody, and looking forward to Q2. Thank you very much. Bye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.