Thank you for standing by. My name is Kathleen and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Codere Online Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results.

Thanks, operator, and welcome everyone to Codere Online earnings call for the second 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 section. 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 and audited 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 euros unless expressed otherwise. Finally, please note that our replay and transcript of this call will be available on our website.

Thanks, Guillermo, and thanks everyone for joining us today. I’m once again pleased to report a strong set of earnings for the second quarter and to share our expectations for the remainder of the year. With two quarters behind us, this year is poised to be a pivotal one in our company’s history, as we expect to achieve profitability in our third year post this SPAC. So jumping straight into the highlights of the second quarter of 2024, we delivered €54 million in net gaming revenue, more than €15 million or 13% above Q2 2023. This was also a sequential uplift versus the €53 million in Q1, thanks in part to the busy sports calendar with the Eurocup and Copa America. In terms of product mix, the contribution from our casino segment reached a record high of 59% of total net gaming revenue in the quarter and continues to be the key driver behind our goals as we not only acquire more customers in this segment, but also continue converting sports betting customers over to the casino. This was particularly relevant this quarter where customers remained engaged, notwithstanding the generally favorable sports results they enjoyed, especially here in Spain, with Real Madrid winning the Champions League and Spain winning the Eurocup. This growth in net gaming revenue was driven by a 20% increase in average monthly spend per customer to €225, together with a 16% increase in the number of average monthly active customers. In terms of customer acquisitions, we had 73,000 first-time depositors at an average of €236 CPA. As we have discussed in prior quarters, our increased focus on casino-first customer acquisitions in Spain and Mexico is the main driver behind the increase in CPA, but the spend we see from customers in this segment is both higher and more stable, leading to better returns on investment despite the higher level of upfront investment. Oscar will cover our improved outlook later. So I will conclude with my remarks with a quick mention of the changes we’ve made on the board in July. As previously disclosed, we have three new board members joining us recently, and existing board member Gonzaga Higuero will be succeeding Pat Ramsey as Chairman going forward. We look forward to working with Gonzaga in his new role and would like to thank Pat, who was recently named to the Board of Directors of Codere Group, for his support, dedication, and contributions over the past two and a half years. With this, I will now turn the call over to Oscar to cover the financial highlights of the quarter and our revised 2024 outlook.

Thanks, Aviv. Turning now to the financial performance for the quarter. Consolidated Net Gaming Revenue grew by 39% to €54 million. This growth was driven primarily by our Mexican business, which continued to outperform our internal expectations with growth of 57% to €28 million. In Spain, meanwhile, we also continued to deliver significant growth, with net gaming revenue up 25% to nearly €22 million. Adjusted EBITDA was positive €1.3 million in the second quarter, nearly €6 million better than in the second quarter of 2023 and included a contribution of €6 million from our Spanish business. As a reminder, our country level results now include certain expenses that in the past were classified as undistributed B2B expenses, so the comparisons versus prior year periods are hard if we were to adjust Spain’s adjusted EBITDA on the prior year period, for example, to reflect the same allocation of expenses, adjusted EBITDA in the current quarter would have grown 34% instead of the 5% reflected in the earnings deck. Separately, and for a second consecutive quarter, Mexico contributed to this improvement with a positive adjusted EBITDA on the quarter versus the negative €2 million in the prior year period. Undistributed B2B expenses, meanwhile, decreased by €3 million, primarily due to the allocation of certain expenses to country-level results. Looking now at our PNL, the nearly €6 million improvement in adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was primarily driven by the €15.3 million increase in net gaming revenue, partially offset by a higher level of marketing and investment than would have otherwise been the case leading up to and around the Eurocup and Copa America tournaments, which took place in the back half of June and front half of July. Turning now to the increase in net gaming revenue being driven by both an increase in active customers from Spain and Mexico, together with a higher spend per active first-time depositors, which increased by 5% in the quarter driven by our acquisition efforts around the Eurocup and Copa America. We had a 16% increase in active customers in the quarter, primarily due to improved retention of existing customers. This improvement reflects not only the improved quality of our customer acquisitions but also the significant efforts from our CRM team, which is delivering day after day for our customers and for the company. Turning to the Spanish operating and financial metrics, net gaming revenue in the second quarter increased 24% versus the prior year driven by a significant 27% increase in the number of active customers to 52,000. On a sequential basis, net gaming revenue decreased slightly despite a 3% increase in active customers due to the favorable results for customers in Spanish football and tennis, which, while increasing engagement from our customers, especially here in Spain, negatively impacted our sports betting margin. That said, we would like to congratulate Carlos Alcaraz for his wins at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, our partners Real Madrid for their win of the Champions League, and of course, the Spanish men’s football team for their win in the Eurocup, though a win in extended time would have been a better outcome for Codere Online. In Mexico, net gaming revenue was €28 million in the second quarter, an increase of 57% year-on-year and 6% sequentially. With this impressive growth, Mexico has already exceeded the €100 million mark in LTM net gaming revenue, double that of 2022 in just a year and a half. The strong performance was driven by a 26% increase in the number of active customers and a 25% higher spend per active customer. Turning to the balance sheet, as of June 30, we had €41 million of total cash in the balance sheet, of which approximately €35 million was available, €2 million more than where we ended the first quarter. I believe this was the first quarter since listing the business where we have increased cash from one quarter to the next, notwithstanding that we had a few million in extended accounts payable at quarter’s end. In terms of networking capital position, we ended the quarter with negative €19 million, or around 9% of LTM net gaming revenue, which, while lower than in the past, reflects a new normal level of working capital for our business given increasingly restricted trade terms from suppliers. Looking at our cash flow, in the first half, we have utilized €1.5 million of available cash, including a €0.2 million negative impact from FX on ending cash balances. Turning to our 2024 outlook, given the strong performance we have seen in the first half of the year, we are increasing the lower end of our net gaming revenue outlook by €10 million and the upper end by €5 million. This is from a range of €195 million to €210 million, to a new outlook of €205 million to €215 million. At the mid, this would imply a 22% growth in net gaming revenue versus 2023. In terms of adjusted EBITDA, with the benefit of a busier than usual summer sports calendar now behind us, we are establishing a range of between €2.5 million and €7.5 million for the year, which reflects both our positive outlook for the second half of the year, but also leaves us with some wiggle room to continue investing where and when we see opportunities to do so in furtherance of creating meaningful value for shareholders. That’s all from my end. I’ll now hand it back over to Aviv for closing remarks.

Thanks, Oscar. Before we turn to Q&A, I would like to thank the Codere Online team, as always, for their hard work to deliver these strong results, and for their effort to present earnings a month early in the newsroom. As we look out to the second half of the year, we remain fully focused on execution and are confident that we will continue to meet our goal of delivering sustainable and profitable growth. As always, thanks to the investors, analysts, and other market participants for your interest and support. We look forward to speaking to you again soon and wish you a pleasant summer break. With that said, I will turn it back to the operator to open up the call to Q&A.

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Your first question comes from the line of Jeff Stantial at Stifel. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Aviv. Oscar, thanks for taking our questions. Maybe starting out here on the newly introduced 2024 EBITDA guide, now that you’re through Copa and Euro’s and add some greater visibility into planned marketing spend, I was just hoping to get some updated thoughts on how you see the underlying margin expansion algorithm from here, based on customer acquisition volumes and the return on the UA spend that you’re seeing currently. How do you think about leverage, going through the P&L? Maybe, looking out beyond this year, into 2025 and beyond, is there a rough even flow-through level that we should be anchoring to, keeping in mind the opportunity to turn the marketing spigot back on here and there? Just any thoughts you could provide on the margin expansion path from here would be helpful? Thanks.

Hi, Jeff. Thanks for the question. I heard the word algorithm in there, so I don’t know if I should pass the question over to Aviv or not, but I think it’s a little bit early, Jeff, for us to give, let’s say, longer-term expectations in terms of where kind of the blended margin or country level margins on the EBITDA front could play out. Obviously, we’re already delivering significant EBITDA margin. A significant and healthy EBITDA margin in Spain and Mexico is really the market where, and again, we post U.S. SPAC, we really started to invest heavily in Mexico, and we’re starting to see, I would say, over the last 18 months, the benefits of that early upfront investment, post U.S. SPAC, and the unit economics have done nothing but improve in that market. That said, Mexico is a market that has a disadvantage from a gaming tax rate versus Spain; it’s something like 9 to 10 percentage points. So it’s never going to be at that same long-term EBITDA margin that Spain will be, all else being equal. So I think we’re optimistic for the second half of the year. I think as we start generating positive EBITDA in Mexico, obviously we have to monitor FX impacts versus internal expectations; the Mexican peso has been all over the place. After the elections in early June, it devalued, but it strengthened a little bit, and now it’s back on a devaluation track. We have U.S. elections later this fall, and the last time we had elections, it always has the potential to have a significant impact on the Mexican business. So I’d be hesitant to give any kind of real guidance in terms of margin expansion. Other than that, the underlying unit economics of the business are healthy. We continue investing and focusing on what’s working, and hopefully that will continue. I don’t know, Aviv, if you want to talk a little bit about the competitive landscape, because that obviously is the other side of the coin here.

Yes, the competitive landscape in Mexico is getting tougher and tougher. We have new competitors coming in, new international competitors with a lot of money looking at this lucrative market. At least from a total addressable market and gross gaming revenue point of view, we expect to try and increase our market share and defend it with more marketing budget in order to maintain our position in Mexico. In Spain, I think more or less it’s a steady state because we cannot advertise more because of the advertising ban. We do see some good investments on the casino front, but again, it’s very hard for us to go over there. So we will continue to focus our efforts in marketing, both in Spain and Mexico, and then on the satellite sites right now, we are focusing on keeping them in a healthy state and being able to break even with them and even make a small profit. I think, up until now, if you are looking for more hints, I think we are more or less at the beginning of the road show. When we started with the investors and the SPAC, we gave a map of where we want to be, and I think up until now, we have kind of delivered, and hopefully in the future, we will continue to deliver according to the five-year plan.

Okay, that’s perfect. That’s really helpful and a great segue into my follow-up question, which was going to be on your Mexico operations. There’s been some speculation that the transition to a new president could ultimately lead to some more formal gambling regulation, just given that the president-elect has a history of working with the industry on some various initiatives. Oscar or Aviv, I’m curious to get your perspective here, and to the extent you do ultimately see some regulatory reform in the market, how do you think about potential implications for your business, whether positive or negative? Thanks.

I will answer at a very high level because everything that we are hearing is merely speculation. The president is still not in power. We didn’t see what she’s going to do exactly. We also hear rumors and things moving, but nothing official. In general, my view is that formal regulation will only benefit us, since we are locally present there. We’ve been there for many years. We know how to work with a regulated market, so everything is clear right now. The Mexican regulation is a little bit ambiguous and relies on very, very old rules. So I think any modern regulation that comes will help us and benefit us as a big operator in this market, and hopefully we can contribute in the process and help them to get to an efficient regulation that eventually will generate more tax revenue and create a safer environment for the players.

Okay, that’s great. Thank you, Aviv. Then, if I could just squeeze in one more quick one here, Oscar, is there any way that you could quantify the overall contribution to Q2, and even July as well, from the Copa America and the Euro’s? And then, similarly, is there any way to assess the hold impact from Spain winning the Euro’s, Real winning Champions League, Carlos winning Wimbledon and Roland? Just any sense there to help us calibrate your Q3 and next year estimates would be helpful. Thank you.

Yes, I think there definitely was a margin impact, particularly in Spain. I would say almost exclusively in Spain, the sports side, and that was true in June and the first part of July. I mean, happily, what we’re seeing is a good dynamic on the casino side. So it’s hard to quantify and put numbers behind it, but when we’re returning more money to the customers on the sports side, having the strong casino business, and for the subset of customers that play across both channels, we’re seeing greater activity on the casino front. So, the interplay between those two verticals that we’ve always understood is even more important in the context of these major sporting events. When we’re having some, let’s say, the favorites win or specifically the dynamic here in Spain, which has a bias to bet in favor of Spanish sports figures or Spanish teams. I don’t want to put a specific figure on that, but I would say just in terms of margin off whatever would be our regular targeted margin, we probably lost 3 to 4 percentage points there, so still a positive contribution, which was more than compensated by internal expectations on the casino front.

Great. Very helpful. Thank you both. I’ll pass it on.

Thanks, Jeff.

Thank you.

Hi, good day, guys. Congrats on another strong quarter. Maybe just staying on the topic of Eurocup and Copa. Any other notable trends besides win rates and Spain winning, whether it be bet builders, parlays, anything relative to the last time these tournaments were held?

Aviv, do you want to talk about that builder, some of the new product?

Yes, from a product perspective, I think right now, our sports product is in line with, let’s call it, the industry standard. We even added, for the Eurocup, bet builder live features, which not all the competitors have. We still don’t see big movements in new product features. It’s more supplemental to the current betting behavior that we see in sports. To tap into what Oscar said in the previous question, I think those winnings for Spain for us as a company, and we stated that in the speech before, since we are already with 60% of the NGR relying on casino, those events, although fun, are not so impactful on the revenue stream itself, maybe a few percentage points up or down. We are more stable now, and hence easier for us to focus the future in a better way. So, in terms of betting behavior, we didn’t see anything big change from a product perspective. We see how people are engaged. We also know that if they are winning, they stay engaged with us for entertainment purposes and spend some money in the casino, whether it’s on roulette, blackjack, or slots a little bit. So, overall, I think the trends are healthy and stable for us. In that sense, it’s not that one win by Spain or Alcaraz or Real Madrid will move the needle for us.

Yes. Thanks. Then just switching over to CAC, it continues to move higher in the quarter. How much of that is the competitiveness you mentioned in Mexico versus just seeing higher spending proactive and allowing you to be more aggressive on the customer acquisition side to target those higher LTVs?

What we see is that because we are aiming to buy more casino-first customers, they cost us more because the total addressable market of casino is smaller than sports. We do see an increase in media prices, still not significant enough. It’s more significant that we moved our buying strategy to be more casino-oriented, so it’s more expensive for us to find and purchase those casino players, which eventually leads to, of course, higher LTV and more stability over time. I think this is the more significant effect currently. Currently, I’m saying currently because we do see our competitors coming into Mexico, and prices of media going up. But right now, it’s a stronger effect of our aim to target casino players than the media prices going up, but there is still a contribution.

Yes, a little bit of both. It’s a little bit of both. It’s definitely a little bit of both. Every year it seems like we’re talking about different competitors that are coming into the market that we’re monitoring to see how they behave, but there’s definitely more interest. Some of the revised market forecasts that an HTC or others are putting out, I think it’s starting to get on everyone’s radar, given the existing size of the market. In some cases, well, I think in most cases, people believe that Mexico is already bigger than Spain, and the market forecast, in terms of the growth potential in the market, is significant, so I think it’s starting to catch everyone’s attention.

Yes. On a side note, the Copa America and the Eurocup prices went a little bit higher than previous years on those two events. Copa America was less interesting for us because Mexico lost quite early in the stages, but still, the media was a little bit more expensive for those events.

Last one for me, just any update on your guys’ thoughts around Peru?

We were looking at Peru. It’s important to say we were looking at Brazil as well. Right now where we are at company level, after looking at all the possibilities, we think we continue to focus on our core markets. We still have a lot of room to grow out there. At this moment, we don’t see ourselves opening any of those new markets in the short term, especially where we can still invest very effectively in the two core markets we are operating. This was maybe a short-term decision that we’ll evaluate again at the end of the year. We see a lot of competitors coming into Peru. We see a lot of money being pulled in, and we’ve made an evaluation of this market. We think it’s going to be interesting, but for now, not as interesting as Mexico and Spain.

I think our most – just to add to what Aviv said, Argentina is still a situation that we are monitoring and could be of interest to us. Given the fact that we have a stable team operating in the city, we just launched in the Province of Mendoza, and we have the River Plate sponsorship. So, there are significant synergies to the extent that we can find our way into a license in the Province of Mendoza, given that our retail parent is a leader in that market with upwards of 40% market share. So, I think Argentina is probably the one that, if there is an opportunity to do so, and in a way that makes sense for us, we would look to commit resources before any other expansion market where we don’t have existing operations or capabilities.

Thanks guys. Good luck.

Thanks Ryan.

Thank you for taking the questions. And let me offer my congratulations as well on the quarter and the positive adjusted EBITDA. My question is really related to your guidance in the second half, particularly given the trajectory that you have done in the first – this particular quarter. It seems like your guidance might be a little conservative. I know that the sports calendar gets a little lighter, but I was wondering if you could just give a little color on your thoughts in terms of the marketing spend and where you plan to have a little bit of wiggle room. If you could just add a little color in terms of what your thoughts are for the trajectory, particularly in Spain and Mexico, and if you are planning to spend a little bit more heavily in some of the more developing markets, like you just mentioned, Argentina. This is kind of a broad question about the second half.

Yes. Maybe I can start by splitting the guidance between the revenue guidance and the adjusted EBITDA. On the revenue side, I think the only thing that’s keeping us a little cautious looking at the back half is what could happen with the Mexican peso. As you know, this is already over half of our top line in our business, and any significant devaluation of the Mexican peso could affect our trajectory going out to the balance of the year. That said, obviously the cost structure is also peso-denominated, so we would be more hedged from an EBITDA standpoint. As you rightly say, on the EBITDA front, I think it’s just maintaining that flexibility in the event that we see opportunities, and opportunities always do arise. It’s across one or both of our core markets to be able to invest a little bit more than what we have planned internally. Obviously, this is always in coordination with our Board of Directors, but I think opportunities are always present, so we want to keep a little wiggle room there. I think it’s less the case that it would be Argentina. I think Argentina is more we are setting our sights to more like 2025, in terms of if and when we would be deploying additional resources in that market, if it makes sense for us to do so. In the front half, we are spending something like €22 million, €23 million on average. Last year we were spending about €20 million a quarter, other than the fourth quarter, which is always a higher spend quarter with a lot of events, where we spent €25 million. So, hopefully the guidance is conservative, but we think it’s appropriate given what we are seeing today and how the business is performing.

Thanks for that color. And just one quick follow-up, I know that you have cash, and obviously now you are looking at your more maturing markets, like Mexico, with positive EBITDA. I was wondering, does it become a prospect that the company would look at M&A and some of the competitors that may be struggling a little bit but may offer an opportunity to kind of get a foothold in some of the developing markets? I mean, is that a possibility?

I mean just, maybe I will kick it off and then Aviv, if you want to jump in. I mean I am a finance guy, and I think that it’s always a question of price and structure, but if there are good opportunities, M&A opportunities in the market, and they make sense for us as a company and our shareholders, then I think we would obviously pursue that. I don’t think we would ever close the door on M&A. I think it’s easier, Mike, as you have pointed out, now that we are inflecting to profitability and we have more visibility over, let’s say, that trough cash position, again, all else being equal, which is significantly more than three years ago when we had our investor plan where we thought we would be three years forward. So, I think now is a better context to be thinking about those things. But we are not going to do any deal that isn’t compelling and doesn’t make sense for us as a company.

No, I think M&A in general, for any company at our position should be interesting. It should take us with another big block to the next level. We see opportunities coming in, but we didn’t see any interesting ones so far. We have a very good team for M&A; Oscar and his team know what they are doing. So, we are constantly looking into this, but it’s not part of our short-term strategy. There is some deal flow coming in. With the little cash that we have, I know it looks like a lot, but maybe we can do something interesting. We are especially looking in the core markets, but in the short term, it’s not something that we have on the table, but we keep looking.

Thanks for that. If I could slip one more quick question in, previously you mentioned that you were monitoring the situation in Spain after the Supreme Court overturned some restrictions, and I was wondering if there are any updates on that and how things are playing out.

No, actually, there are no real updates. We think that eventually what the Supreme Court gave us back, the possibility will come back as a law, and maybe next year it will come back to the situation that was before. We constantly keep a close eye on the Spanish regulation, which changes constantly. It’s becoming more and more strict. Hopefully, it will stop at some point. Right now, from a development point of view, we need to do heavy, heavy development just to change all the reporting modules to fit the new regulatory demands, so it’s heavy lifting there in the regulation, and we are doing our best to follow it up. I don’t think from the Supreme Court point of view, anything has changed. I think eventually the Parliament will come back with the law and return things to where they previously were.

Thank you for that. That’s all I have. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Hickey from Benchmark. Please go ahead.

Hey Aviv, Oscar, great quarter guys and congrats on growth in Mexico. I guess that’s the first topic here. Just curious if you have a sense of your market share in Mexico, and when you look at your NGR growth, nearly 60% in the quarter, if you can sort of balance that growth between growth you are seeing in the Mexican market and growth you may be seeing in share gains?

Yes. Listen, it’s very hard for us, and we are doing a lot of effort to try and estimate the size of the market. We get a lot of numbers from a lot of sources, but there is no official number for the size of the market. We think that we have a market share of low-double digits compared to our biggest competitor, which we think controls most of the market with a huge market share of above 60%. So it’s very hard for us to estimate the size of the market. We are, of course, growing. We are not sure exactly if we are just growing with the market; we think we are performing a little bit better. Let’s say, if the market goes every year 20%, maybe we are doing 25%. I think the market, by the way, goes more than 20% a year in Mexico. Our biggest competitor there is heavily invested in marketing, so that grows the market, and now more international competitors are coming in, which will continue to grow the market. I think our product is well established. We have a few advantages over our competitors. One of the main advantages is that we are still a local company. We have local presence. We have points for cash-in and cash-out in our retail locations, which gives us an advantage. We have local knowledge utilized in our platform. Let’s say we have knowledge coming from the retail about the game selections and what players like more or less. We are utilizing all this knowledge into the product. I think we have a couple of more products up our sleeve, not so innovative, but I think they will increase our reach to new audiences and enable us to compete a little differently and not directly with the same sport product. So, I think we are well positioned with a good platform and a good partner in the Mexican market, and I think it will help us to achieve the LTVs that we want, and eventually the results and P&L that we want.

I will only add to that, Aviv, on the product front, that the payment integrations we have done have been a lot of work over the last two to three years to really improve the efficiency and effectiveness of those payment options that we offer customers for deposit and withdrawal. I think we have done an excellent job and spent a lot of time on that internally, and it’s critical to customer experience and ultimately to retaining existing and new customers. So, I think there we have made a lot of headway.

Thanks.

Beyond just producing positive adjusted EBITDA, cash flow involves other components. We have third parties that provide platform services to us across our jurisdictions, so we don’t have that technology in the perimeter. We don’t have much in Capital Expenditure, but we do spend a lot of time managing our working capital position, and structuring our corporate income taxes according to the rules and regulations in place. The holy grail of converting adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow, one for one, is not achievable. There are always corporate income taxes that need to be paid across jurisdictions, even during periods when you are loss-making due to various complex rules. We spend a lot of time on that, and I think it’s a critical element of value creation, it’s the top line growth, it’s the flow-through to EBITDA, and then the conversion of that EBITDA to cash flow.

Thanks.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Guillermo Lancha.

Okay. We don’t have any questions coming in through the webcast either, so we will leave it here. Thank you everyone for joining us. If you would like to follow up on any of the topics we discussed, feel free to reach out to Oscar or myself, and if not, we will talk again in November with our Q3 results. Thank you everyone.

Thanks everyone.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.