Q4 2022 Gan Ltd Earnings Call
Speaker 1: The.
Speaker 2: Greetings and welcome to the GAN Limited's fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the form of presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. You cannot Spawn!
Speaker 2: As a reminder, this conflict is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your hosts, Robert Shure, VP of Capital Markets and IR. Please proceed, sir.
Speaker 3: Thank you and good afternoon everyone. GaN's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings release was issued today after the market closed and is posted on the company's website at gan.com. With me today are Dermot Smarthit, President and CEO , and Brian Chang, Interim Chief Financial considerations hosted by
Speaker 3: I'd like to remind our audience today that we may make forward-looking statements on the call which are protected under State of Harbor or afforded by the federal securities laws and in each case are qualified for the forward-looking disclaimer as it contains our earnings release.
Speaker 3: Please refer to our filings with the SEC to understand how we calculate any of the metrics discussed in today's call. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO , Germin Smarfe. Germin, go ahead, please. Thank you, Bobby, and good afternoon, everyone. I look forward to discussing our fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial performance and operating segment results.
Speaker 3: As major agenda items, we will also discuss the strategic review process we are announcing today, our recent successful sports betting deployment for win resorts, and our amended Ainsworth exclusive iGaming content distribution partnership that will help reduce our future cash commitments by $15 million.
Speaker 3: Each of these items underscores a refocus of our business towards segments where we can truly win, notably B2B GAN Sports and in the B2C Division, Latin American Operations and of course related items in our earnings release.
Speaker 3: Taking a brief look back, our full year 2022 revenue increased 15% to $142 million versus $124 million in 2021.
Speaker 3: The growth was driven by both our B2C segment or CoolBet.com and our domestic B2B segment.
Speaker 3: The increased growth in revenue and cost controls led to $6 million of positive adjusted EBITDA as compared to a loss of $3 million in the prior year.
Speaker 3: Looking at the fourth quarter, the momentum in our revenue growth continued as we generated $36.9 million of revenue, an increase of 21% from the prior year. The growth was enabled by both our B2B and B2C segments.
Speaker 3: In the B2C segment, active customers grew nearly 50% to 331,000 in the quarter. This was enabled by a strong World Cup where the team delivered a masterful performance to support our B2B clients and of course our B2C end-user customers before and during the event. During the World Cup event, we saw new depositing customers...
Speaker 3: or NDCs of approximately 47,000 driven by the Latin American region together with approximately 42 million dollars in sports bets wagered and the final between Argentina and France actually resulted in a record two million dollars in sports betting handled for a single event
Speaker 3: We are optimistic that the new customers we gained during the tournament and the positive experience we were able to deliver will ensure they remain loyal players even after the World Cup.
Speaker 3: However, while adjusted EBITDA improved to loss of 0.4 million versus 6 million dollars in the prior year on cost-saving measures, we didn't deliver positive results and we must continue to improve our operations and cost containment efforts.
Speaker 3: In 2023 we're off to an exciting start on several operational fronts.
Firstly, we launched GAN Sports with WinBet in Massachusetts in retail in January , and earlier this month on mobile on March 10, 2023.
Secondarily, CoolBet launched in the Mexican regulated market, a country with a large and growing $700 million plus TAM where we can leverage our proven success in the LATAM regions. And thirdly, we are making progress on our new version 2 GameStack 2.0 platform which will result in significant cost savings.
We expect to have this up and running by the second half of 2023.
Now moving to our financial outlook for the year in the first quarter, for the first quarter we expect revenue to be in a range of $37 million to $39 million. Unfortunately for the full year 2023 we are unable to provide guidance at this time given the nature of our strategic review process.
As a result, the variability of potential outcomes prevents us from providing an outlook within a reasonable range. However, we do expect to be in a good position to provide future guidance for the year upon the resolution of these discussions, hopefully in the very near future. I'll now turn over the call to our interim Chief Financial Officer, Brian Chang, to provide more color on financial and accounting items, and then I'll conclude with additional color on strategy and the strategic review process. Brian . Thank you, Dermot, and good afternoon, everyone.
I'll just briefly touch on a few highlights or items worth noting from our fourth quarter results. One, cash increased by 4.1 million to 45.9 million in the quarter, driven by strong results and activity generated from the World Cup in our B2C segment. Two, G&A expense was consistent compared to prior year, however reduced as a percentage of revenue by 800 basis points. Three, we recognized an adjusted EBITDA loss of 0.4 million for the quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA was impacted by incremental costs within our product and technology group that did not qualify for capitalized development treatment.
4. FX in the quarter did not materially impact us as the majority of our foreign revenues and expenses are aligned and constant currency exposure was awash.
Moving on, we recorded $137 million related to non-cash impairment charges in the quarter across goodwill, intangible assets, and capitalized development costs.
The impairment charges were a result of changes to the company's 2023 budget and long-range plan as a result of material reductions in our expected future cash flows from our B2B segment.
a strategic decision to not pursue and invest further in our exclusive content strategy, and a reassessment of our growth strategy related to the B2C segment.
The results of the impairment charge cleared the caring balance of our goodwill to zero, reduced our intangibles by 19 million, and reduced our capitalized development costs by 10 million.
Lastly, GAN was in compliance with all financial covenants associated with our term loan as of year end. However, given our cash flow and net losses for the LTM period ended December 31, 2022 and updates to our 2023 budget and long-range plan as noted earlier, there is the potential that the company could violate a financial covenant associated with the term loan in-land.
with our lender and expect further amendments to the credit facility as needed to maintain compliance with the future financial covenants. But we cannot make any assurances regarding the likelihood, certainty, or exact timing of further amendments to the credit facility.
operations, cost savings initiatives implemented during the past year, and the strategic review process. I'd encourage investors on the call to refer to our annual 10K filing for additional details when filed. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Dermot. Thank you, Brian . Despite many positive achievements last year, our financial performance has not been up to our expectations.
This is due to both external factors and admittedly suboptimal execution on our part. In our B2C segment, despite a record performance in the fourth quarter, which featured the soccer world cup, our annual growth was impacted by a combination of factors including a reduction in Covid-related tailwinds, increased competition in certain Latin American markets, and a reduction in Covid-related tailwinds.
and regulatory marketing challenges in Europe .
In our B2B segment, we met internal revenue guidance expectations but under-performed in-segment profitability with continued over-concentration on certain partnerships as newer B2B clients failed to attain meaningful scale.
Furthermore, our iGaming content distribution strategy has struggled against competitors' content libraries.
Our focus for 2023, therefore, is on these unresolved challenges.
The business is now focused on markets where we can truly win. Those which offer attractive growth profiles, scalability and rapid ROIs. These will be the markets that require lower future capital intensity and where we are better positioned to capture market share. Essentially we are putting...
more of our woodpile behind fewer fires to ensure success. Firstly, in B2C, we aim to be a podium player in the Latin American market and leverage our existing success to new adjacent regulated markets such as Mexico, where we recently launched CoolBath.NX.
We hope to leverage our existing playbook that has proven successful in other Latin countries, and we view these markets and adjacent launches as generally having lower startup costs in terms of marketing spend and labor. We follow the same path of being highly localized and pro-consumer by offering the best odds in sports betting.
This is reflected in our branding, product offering, and markets for local sports events. For those markets where we don't see a clear and rapid path to profitability outside of Latin America, we will pull back resources and or exit those markets.
To that end, we have exited the Ontario market described by some industry experts as the most competitive market in the world.
The shared number of entrenched operators and the heightened promotional environment did not present a clear path to profitability or achieving an adequate return on capital relative to existing Latin American market opportunities.
These resources, both operational and financial, will be focused towards higher return markets and cash flow generation.
Secondly, in the B2B division, our area of focus is now firmly on GAN sports, already deployed successfully in multiple states across the US.
Back in September , we launched retail sports for Island View Casino Resort in Mississippi, and very recently, launch GAMsports for Wimbett in Massachusetts, on-core Boston Harbor, the first launch in a nationwide deployment for Wimbett. Next up is our fourth coming launch in Nevada with Station Casinos LLC in the second half.
sports today, coupled to 22 states for our online GAMS sports offering.
Thirdly, when it comes to technical efficiency, we are rolling out Game Stack 2.0, our new B2B technology offering in the US. This will bring together the best elements of new and existing tech to drive efficiencies and deliver a superior product to our clients at substantially lower cost again.
Moving on as part of our commitment to improving our return to shareholders, we have launched a formal strategic review process to evaluate options available to us to facilitate that value creation process and hasten our path to better profitability metrics and a more attractive return profile.
We hope to complete this process in a timely manner and will certainly provide updates as required.
Let me be extremely clear on a very important point.
I and my entire executive group firmly believe that there is tremendous unrealized value in our proprietary technology offerings, our patented IP, and a growing profitable B2C business that generated annual revenue of nearly $19 million this past year.
which is well north of our current trading market cap. The board and I feel it's highly prudent at this time to explore all options to realize this value.
It's also worth noting, given the range of potential outcomes related to the Strategic Review, we do not currently have an adequate level of visibility to provide guidance for 2023 within a reasonable range. That said, we do expect a relatively swift resolution to the Strategic Review process and hope to be in a position to provide our financial outlook for 2023 at some point in
for the Go Forward organization all for the company.
In addition, the variability of potential outcomes for the process precludes us from confidently outlining our forward outlook until we reach a resolution which we expect to occur in the very near future.
And with that, Betanya will be happy to take questions. Thank you. We will now conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.
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One moment while we poll for our first question.
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Our first question comes from Ryan Sigdahl with Craig Hallam. Please proceed.
Hey good afternoon Dermot.
Curious, Super RGS, it's been a focus area, you're pulling capital resources away from it. I guess is the plan to continue to support existing relationships and kind of work as is, but just push resources away or is it...
planning to kind of shutter that business line.
Thanks Ryan, there's no plan to shutter that business line. In fact the only area which we're reallocating resources is in relation to the exclusive content distribution deal that we entered into as Ainsworth which has been amended to save our company $15 million in cash.
That's helpful. Incredible technologies. I think you had an exclusive with them as well. Any change to that agreement?
No, no, there was no exclusive agreement with incredible technologies ultimately consummated and we continue to distribute theirs and many others. In fact, we have 36 individual game content suppliers integrated into our iGaming aggregation platform, which is one of the largest content portfolios available anywhere in the US. Good, maybe just one on the quarter.
I can speak to the product and technology line specifically. I saw an increase because related to the impairment, it changes some of our accounting implications. And as discussed on the call, we are unable to capitalize quite as much within the B2B segment specifically.
Are you able to quantify that? If I had to guess, it's between 1.5 million and 2 million.
Are you able to quantify that? If I had to guess it's between 1.5 million and 2 million in the quarter.
Gotcha. One more housekeeping. What was debt? As of 1231 I don't believe it wasn't in the press release. I don't believe I heard you say it. And then if you're willing to comment what cash and debt are at the end of Q1 given that's tomorrow that would also be helpful.
Our principal debt balance is 30 million and it's the same at both year end and the quarter. Good, one more for me. You gave a revenue range for Q1, I guess. Are you willing to give EBITDA range given again the quarter ends tomorrow? And then secondly, I'm thinking pretty simplistically here without having your covenants in front of me.
Given the trailing 12 months, it implies lower EBITDA expected in 2023 relative to the 6 million in 2022. Is that the right high-level implication?
Apologies, but we can't comment on the EBITDA at this point in time. I'll pass it on. Thanks. Thank you.
Once again to ask a question at star one at this time. Our next question comes from Chad Manion with Macquarie. Please proceed.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. First one for you guys, understanding that you're not giving annual guidance. Jeremy, I'm just wondering if you could kind of reframe out some B2B opportunities. I know over the past...
several quarters you've talked about some of the early marriages and partnerships that happened right after past but was repealed and I think it was your call that you know some of these could come to an end. We've seen some of that happen. Just wondering if there's some more.
You know, retail or mobile opportunities now, even what you have in the full stack versus what you had before. And then also, I believe there's some new retail markets like Ohio and some others. Just wondering if you could kind of frame out how you're thinking about B2B opportunities in 23.
Yep, no problem Chad. Thank you. So we see ourselves through the the WIN nationwide support spending partnership. Massachusetts just the beginning we will be in Ohio as well and many other states 18 in total for WIN. It's been a highly successful deployment not just at the end of January for retail where it's been extremely well received by residents.
achievement and contribution to WIN's overall strategy. We do see other replacement opportunities, in fact WIN itself is effectively a replacement opportunity that we captured with GANs Sports product and service solution. The same is true of the RedRock contract which will come on stream later on this year and we're very...
the silver state of Nevada, subject of course to the all-important licensing process. But there are many other replacement opportunities. There are two primary competitors for GAN Sports and we believe our GAN Sports product and services feature set is substantially advanced as compared to those competitors. So we're extremely happy with.
you said you know there's there's some low startup costs you're going to approach this as you have in other markets with the localized approach could could this be I don't know could this be like a top three market by the end of 23 I believe for cool bedded
You know Finland some of the northern European markets and then obviously Chile and some other Latin Can Mexico kind of move into you know a podium position in your geographies? by 10 to 23 Yeah, we think we got a very real shot at a podium position in Mexico. We've proven we can get onto the podium in Mexico.
sports betting experience to the consumers. So we think CoolBet has got a very serious advantage and you just don't see the kind of competitive promotional orientated mania that we saw in Ontario during the first several months of that markets launch where a lot of the US brands were pushing north very very aggressively.
combined with the entrenched operators who've been there for many many years indeed. So Mexico is a great market, very well suited to the cool back product offering. Relatively small group of people on the ground in Mexico supporting the business combination of local traders, local marketers, local customer services agents.
in the random Mexico City area and we're very happy to drive the CoolBette team and exciting article offering into Mexico, which is of course just south of our domestic market in the US. Thanks. And then with the net deposit customers, the NDCs that you gained during
of additional revenues beyond the first quarter, maybe kind of through 23. Is that what you've seen in some of these previous big soccer tournaments?
Yeah well there's always effectively the business equivalent of a hangover after a major soccer event like the World Cup. Industry kind of expectation would be doing a great job if you see 40% retention quarter and quarter and that's thankfully we've had performed at that expectation so we're seeing you know.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Dermot Smurfit for closing comments.
Thank you everyone for joining this afternoon's call. While 2022 saw many important achievements, our profitability execution did not meet our expectations for the year. We understand that we have plenty of work to do in 2023 to improve our return profile and deliver better returns for our shareholders. We anticipated that the strategic review will facilitate that process along with our renewed
All right.