Codere Online Luxembourg, S.A. Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call

My name is Brianna, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Codere Online First Quarter 2024 Financial Results Investor Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. I will now turn today's call over to Guillermo Lancha, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator, and welcome, everyone, to Codere Online's earnings call for the first quarter of 2024. Today you will hear from our CEO, Aviv Sher; and CFO, Oscar Iglesias. Our executive vice chairman, Moshe Edree, will also join us in the Q&A session. Before turning the call over to Aviv, I'd like to remind everyone that during this call we will be referring to a presentation we uploaded to our website earlier today which includes non-GAAP preliminary unaudited financial metrics such as net gaming revenue or adjusted EBITDA for which you can find reconciliations in the appendix of the presentation. Please note that all growth rates discussed during this call are year-on-year comparisons unless noted otherwise. Let me also remind you that our accounting information is prepared under IFRS accounting standards and that throughout this presentation all monetary figures will be in euro unless expressed otherwise. Finally, please note that a replay and transcript of this call will be available on our website, where you can also sign up for our investor email alerts. With that, I will go ahead and pass the call on to Aviv.

Thanks, Guillermo, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I'm happy to share our first quarter 2024 earnings, which have again exceeded our expectations, and to discuss the trends we are seeing in what is shaping up to be another great year for our company. Our first quarter results are also a significant step towards achieving our 2024 profitability targets, which we will cover later. So jumping straight into the highlights of first quarter 2024 on page 8, we delivered €536 million in net gaming revenue, almost €14 million or 34% above Q1 2023. As we have discussed in the past, the increasing contribution from our casino segment, which accounted for 56% of our net gaming revenue in this quarter, is a key driver behind our growth as we continue to optimize the mix of acquired customers toward this segment. This growth in net gaming revenue was driven by a 16% increase in average monthly spend per customer to €123, along with a similar increase in the number of average monthly active customers. In terms of customer acquisition, we have had 75,000 first-time depositors at an average CPA of €216, reflecting an increased focus on casino first acquisition, which comes at a higher upfront cost but also with significantly higher levels of player spend. Moving on to the business developments, we are now very close to launching our operation in the Province of Mendoza in Argentina, which we expect will happen soon. While we continue pursuing a license in the Province of Buenos Aires, Mendoza is a fairly sizable province that we believe will benefit from and otherwise complement our existing operation in the city of Buenos Aires. Finally, during March, we renewed our front-of-shirt sponsorship with Rayados in Mexico for the next four seasons, also increasing its scope to now include the women's teams of Rayados. This has been one of the pillars behind our recent success in Mexico, and we expect it will continue to contribute to further success in the future. With this, I will now turn the call over to Oscar to cover the financial highlights of the quarter and our revised 2024 outlook. Oscar?

Thanks, Aviv. Turning now to the financial performance for the quarter on Page 10. Consolidated net gaming revenue grew by 34% to €53 million. This growth was driven primarily by our Mexican business, which continued to outperform with growth of 51% to €27 million, together with a 21% growth in Spain to over €22 million. Adjusted EBITDA was positive €1.7 million in the first quarter, nearly €5 million better than in Q1 2023, and included a contribution of almost €7 million from Spain, about €1 million above last year's result. More importantly, Mexico has also contributed to this improvement, posting for the first time positive adjusted EBITDA in the quarter versus the negative €2 million in the prior year period. Other markets, which now include Colombia in addition to Panama and Argentina, reduced losses by half and contributed nearly €1 million to the overall improvement. Looking now at our P&L on page 11, the €5 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter was primarily driven by the combination of a €13.5 million improvement in net gaming revenue, though it was partially offset by a higher marketing investment in the first quarter to take advantage of the continued strong performance in our two main markets. Looking ahead, we are expecting a similar level of marketing investment in the second quarter as a result of the strong sports calendar that we have this summer, with the Euro Cup starting on June 14th and the Copa America on June 20th, in addition to the Summer Olympics starting in late July. While we typically do not address the consolidated numbers, there are a couple of important points to make here. First, the increase in active customers once again is benefiting from significant growth in both Spain and Mexico, and not just driven by growth in Mexico. Second, the decline in FTDs in the quarter, which is a consequence of our focus on improving the quality of our acquired customers, which as we have seen in recent quarters and expect will be the case going forward, leads to an improvement in the quality of our active portfolio of customers. Turning to the Spanish operating and financial metrics. Net gaming revenue in the first quarter increased 21% versus the prior year, driven by a significant 25% increase in the number of active customers to 50,000. This is a very relevant milestone for our Spanish market, where expanding our active customer base in the face of advertising restrictions has been a challenge over the last few years. In Mexico, meanwhile, net gaming revenue was €27 million in the first quarter, an increase of 51% year-on-year and 6% sequentially. This strong performance was driven by a 26% increase in the number of active customers and a 20% higher spend per active customer. Turning to the balance sheet on Page 15. As of March 31st, we had €38 million of total cash on the balance sheet, of which approximately €33 million was available. In terms of our net working capital position, we ended the quarter with negative €18 million or around 10% of LTM net gaming revenue, which reflects a normalized level of working capital for our business. Looking at our cash flow on Page 16, in the first quarter, we utilized approximately €4 million of available cash, partially offset by a positive €0.7 million impact from FX on our ending cash balance, primarily due to the strengthening of the U.S. dollar in the quarter. Please note that this cash consumption was driven almost entirely by an increase in cash in transit, which we have reflected in the balance sheet as part of short-term financial assets, and this was due to the timing of Easter. In short, we advanced more funds than usual to our payment service providers, primarily in Spain and Mexico, to ensure that we would have more than sufficient balance going into the 4-day break at the end of March. Turning to our 2024 outlook on Page 18, and given the strong performance we have seen in the first quarter and that we continue to see in the current quarter, we are increasing our net gaming revenue outlook by €10 million, from a range of €185 million to €200 million to €195 million to €210 million. At the mid-point, this would imply an 18% growth versus 2023 results. In terms of adjusted EBITDA, we are maintaining our target to be adjusted EBITDA and cash flow positive for the year. As we discussed last quarter, we would like to have better visibility and the ability to make additional opportunistic marketing investments in and around the Euro Cup, Copa America, and to a lesser extent, the Olympics, all of which are taking place this summer. We expect that once we are past these high-profile tournaments, we'll be in a position to commit to a more specific range regarding adjusted EBITDA performance for the year. That's all from my end. I will now hand it back over to Aviv for closing remarks.

Thanks, Oscar. Before we turn to the Q&A, I would like to thank the Codere Online team as always for their hard work and their contribution to delivering these strong results. This is a very exciting time for this company, with no shortage of opportunities to grow the business and create value for our shareholders, and I'm confident we will continue to deliver. As always, thanks to the analysts, investors, and other market participants for your interest and support. We look forward to speaking with you again soon. With that said, I will turn it back to the operator to open the call to Q&A.

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Jeff Stantial with Stifel.

Maybe starting off on the Spanish business, I believe about a month ago, the Spanish Supreme Court overturned some of the restrictions put in place around the Spanish royal decree. Indeed, I'm just curious to get your thoughts on how you think this might impact your business both directly in terms of user acquisition returns and strategy as well as, more indirect if you think this could bring some competitive investment back to the market. Thanks.

We are monitoring it closely. I would start maybe from the end: we think that this restriction will only be lifted for something like one year going forward, and then probably the government will change it back under a royal decree or a different law. So it's quite a short-term change. We are trying to adjust to the market with different offers and evaluating other possibilities. We are also looking at some kind of self-regulation to make the regulator more pleased with our actions. Directly, we are not taking any actions. We did shift some funds toward media that were prohibited before. So I think it will take us maybe another quarter to be able to answer this question correctly. What we do see is that in the market, currently, in the last couple of weeks since this push from the Supreme Court, we don't see major changes, but we will continue to follow up. Everything is very, very close to this decision. So probably next call, I can answer that better.

And then turning to I think earlier in the prepared remarks, you made a comment on strategically focusing more of your user acquisition efforts on iCasino led players, which carry a higher acquisition cost but also higher spending behavior. I guess just in terms of the mechanics of that, what specifically are you doing to target these players both from marketing and a user acquisition strategy standpoint as well as from product development?

So, basically, what we are doing is if, in the past, we were only launching campaigns for sports acquisition and sports branding, now we are launching campaigns also focused on casino. We are buying media in different areas, not only on sports games or sports events. So we are trying to appeal to a broader audience that might be more relevant for casino players. Also, from the digital perspective, we are targeting casino sites and casino keywords and on Facebook for casino players. So I think the mix has changed. Our approach to the product has changed. Instead of marketing one product, we are looking at it now from a two-product perspective. And wherever we continue with the same approach, wherever we see better ROI, we continue to invest there. So we see better ROI in those casino players, and we will continue shifting our investment there until it balances out. And if it does not balance, we will shift all the investment to the casino, but just theoretically. But we will continue to invest where we see the ROI and continue to push that investment through more casino marketing efforts. But we will continue to develop our sports strategy, especially towards the summer when we are going to have a few big tournaments that, traditionally are helping to push our acquisition up. Not necessarily our revenue, but to introduce the product to new customers and new audiences. So I think the shift that we've made to the casino really helped us deliver the results that we are seeing here, especially from the EBITDA and ROI point of view.

Aviv, on the product side, is there a focus on casino or new introductions, anything you want to comment on there?

Yes. From the product side, we are making a lot of investment into the technology related to casino, whether it's more content, more technology and gamification technology, and the ability to filter to have the best gaming experience depending on the territory. We see also good support from the product side for those efforts.

And then if I could just squeeze in one more question on the Mexico business. What are you seeing in terms of the competitive landscape? Are you seeing new competitors enter the market? In terms of the incumbents, are you seeing any changes in marketing investment or strategy or anything along those lines? And that's all for me.

Yes. Well, we do see competitors coming in, as they said that they would do during this year. We see Betano now coming in very, very strong, with a lot of marketing investment into Mexico in some kind of partnership with a local TV station. So, yes, I think the competitive landscape in Mexico is changing. We know our main competitor keeps growing, same as we are. We keep growing. So the market is growing, but more and more competitors are coming in. For now, especially it's Betano, but we know that other brands are looking to make huge investments. So we'll keep monitoring, but for now, I think our market share will be able to define it going forward.

My first question has to do with the Argentina application process. So you mentioned the approval in the province of Mendoza. I'm wondering when you compare the provinces, are there similarities in the application process and the hurdles you have to get past that would lead us to think that the positive news from Mendoza would also be a positive sign for your efforts in the province of Buenos Aires? Is there anything you can take from this news and kind of apply that to your efforts in the province and Buenos Aires?

Oscar?

I think the important thing beyond the basic fact that in Argentina, you don't have national online licenses, but regional licenses, is the fact that in the province, that process has already played out. So that was a few years back. We participated in that process. Unfortunately, we were not awarded a license; we're not one of the seven that were awarded. So anything we've done in the past or continue doing in terms of finding our way into a license in the province would really be by partnership or other corporate development activity, M&A, acquiring a license, or otherwise partnering with someone that has a license. So there's some opportunities to do so, given the global context or the macro context in Argentina with the elections last year and all the reforms that have been implemented. It's not an easy environment to get a deal done, but we continue working on that. So in the interim, we continue focusing on what we have there, the city of Buenos Aires, now the launch in Mendoza, which we think is going to be a nice business for us over time. But ultimately stitching together more of a national strategy with the Province of Buenos Aires may be in the future Santa Fe, maybe a few other smaller regions we think could be attractive for us. But again, in the context of a very noisy time in Argentina with all the impact of all the reforms, following the elections and inflation and all the rest. So we'll have to see how all that plays out, but we're still a market that we're focused on. It's still a market that we're interested in, and we'll see how that plays out over time.

And then I was wondering, it's sort of a follow-up to Jeff's question. When it comes to the kind of the tradeoff between or the comparison, I guess, between the casino and the sports betting customer, I know that you try to get as much crossover between those cohorts as possible. I'm wondering what you're seeing there, how those efforts have played out recently to get customers to sort of be dual customers on both sides.

I think in terms of crossing players from sports to casino, we are getting better on that, but it's not one of our main efforts. Let's call it a secondary effort. It's happening constantly, and the rates are improving, nothing dramatically. So it's kind of stable, maybe improving a little bit. I think we concentrate more efforts on bringing casino first players and managing to do so. Later, we are trying to convert and to get some more crossover between the two customers. By the way, we didn't mention here omni-channel, which we are also putting a lot of efforts into those kinds of customers, but the main effort still remains the acquisition of casino first ones. Later on, the crossover. I think we are getting better, but it's quite stable right now, on double figures percentage. I think we will continue like that, and if we are able to preserve this ratio, I think it will be very good.

And by the way, on the casino side, especially in a market like Mexico where our retail parent is a leader in the market, something between 85% and 90% of that retail business is slot-focused. It's a relatively smaller contribution from sports betting and other products, bingo, and the rest. So there is a greater opportunity on the casino side to leverage, probably, I would say, less so, less crossover in that direction than there is sports to casino and more leveraging by offering them games that they're familiar with and leveraging that retail preference for a comprehensive omni-channel offer.

And then final question, you mentioned the increasing competition in Mexico. But of course, where you stand today with the cash balance that you have and profitability on a full-year basis looking like you're going to achieve it, I'm wondering when it comes to being aggressive with marketing spend throughout this year, are there any steps you might take that would be different from the ways you've been aggressive in the past, or would it be more of the same? I know you put, would it be more sponsorships of sports teams? Or are there any other more aggressive steps that you haven't taken in the past that now sort of become options since you're so close to achieving positive cash flow generation?

No. Look, we have a very concrete plan about Mexico, which is part of the long-term plan. As you said earlier, we already suggested last quarter that we are about to turn into a cash positive EBITDA next year. So we will continue with the strategy as it is, but at the same time, we are looking for further sponsorship. It works very well for us in the north, with Rayados, while we took this team. So we're definitely looking for another sponsorship, but I will not say that's going to be an acceleration of our business plan. It's part of the plan. Other than that, there isn’t any other aggressive, I would say, marketing plan that we are right now planning other than the normal, the formal trick that we have about keeping on modifying and enhancing our ability to recruit more players with a lower value and to gain more in terms of player value by enhancing our content, enhancing our CRM activity, and the VIP treatment.

I would say that two and a half years out of the D-SPAC and given we've now delivered a positive EBITDA quarter, were it not for some of the monies that we had to, let's say, advance to our PSP partners going into the end of the quarter. It would have been a quarter where we would have generated cash. I think we definitely are in a position where we're starting to explore more options. So that is now part of what we're doing on a day-to-day basis, but there's nothing there that I would say is what we're looking to take any aggressive steps. I think what we're doing is working in these two core markets. If anything, the debate internally is around the edges on marketing spend across Mexico and Spain and how much we want to do this year, but finding that balance between continuing to deliver strong growth while also remaining profitable.

Seeing no other questions in our queue, I will now turn the call back to the management team for any additional webcast questions and closing remarks.

Yes. So we have a few questions coming in through the webcast. The first one is around the Easter holiday. If there is any seasonal impact worth mentioning in Q1 '24 versus Q1 '23?

It's a good question. When did I forget when Easter last year? When did it fall this year? It fell…

End of March until mid-April, I think.

Right. Well, go ahead.

I think, Oscar, this question is, I think in a marginal way, maybe there is a small impact, and we had a little bit more games during the first quarter, but it's not enough to justify the increase we have, maybe marginal. We didn't see anything seasonal.

Yes. Mostly on the cash front, what I pointed out, which was the Thursday, Friday, I believe, holidays here in Spain as well as Mexico, and then the 30th, 31st for Saturday, Sunday. So it's a 4-day, let's say, long weekend, bank holidays. Earlier that week, we topped up with all our PSPs and had quite a bit of cash in transit that affected our working capital position. But other than that, I didn't see anything meaningful in terms of a year-on-year seasonal impact from Easter.

Next one on the webcast is around Mexico. I mean, we have seen any impact from the issues that our retail parent company has faced in some of its gaming halls.

No. That doesn't affect us at this point.

Another question, in terms of insight into the split of the new revenue guidance. What we expect in Spain and Mexico and in terms of adjusted EBITDA in both countries, I guess the answer is we don't provide.

Yes. We don't provide segment-level or country-level guidance, but I think what we're seeing already is that we're at least versus internal expectations, people don't necessarily have, but we're spending a little bit more already this year, year-to-date than what we initially expected. But that's only because we're seeing kind of outsized performance in terms of growth. As a result of that, those good returns on investment in each of those two core markets. So we're going to continue this path, sustainable growth. We're not going to come off the full-year guide of being positive. Hopefully, we'll get through this second quarter when we come back to report Q2. We can not only give a better view on what we're expecting in terms of net gaming revenue for the year, but something specific, a specific guide on the adjusted EBITDA. We hope to come back with that in our Q2 call later this year.

And the final one we have on the webcast is around the TAM expansion market of 5.5 billion on Slide 7. How much address do we have present? And the answer to that is 3.4.

That's the overall market.

And then also in terms of how many of those countries have legislation in place, I think it's most of them.

I mean, Brazil is, there's legislation there in the process of regulating, Chile and Uruguay not yet. Peru just legislated and regulated licenses. Mexico and Colombia already regulated national licenses. Argentina, we discussed as regional. And there still is a development process where additional regions within Argentina are evaluating and launching processes. I think Santa Fe is going to be the next one that comes over the next few months. And I'm not regulated as well as Puerto Rico as well. But Uruguay and Chile are still analyzing what they want to do as it relates to regulating the online gaming search jurisdictions.

That's it on the webcast, and I don't see any further questions on the phone line either. So if you have any further questions, I guess we will leave it here. Thank you everyone for joining us, and we will see you with our Q2 earnings later on this year.

This will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.