DraftKings Inc. Q3 FY2022 Earnings Call

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Certain statements we make during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors as discussed further in our SEC filings that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility to update forward-looking statements other than as required by law. During this call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating DraftKings' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for DraftKings financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings presentation, which can be found on our website and in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. Hosting the call today, we have Jason Robins, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of DraftKings, who will share some opening remarks and an update on our business; and Jason Park, Chief Financial Officer of DraftKings, who will provide a review of our financials. We will then open the line to questions. I will now turn the call over to Jason Robins.

Good morning, everyone. I hope you've all enjoyed the first two months of NFL and college football as much as I have and are excited about all of the other sporting events going on, including the MLB playoffs in the first few weeks season for the NBA and NHL. We're also ready for the start of college basketball and the World Cup later this month. As you know, the fall is always a very exciting time of the year for DraftKings, with the packed sports calendar featuring the four major North American sports active at the same time, as well as many other exciting events. I want to discuss a few topics today, starting off with our very strong third quarter. In short, our product and technology, trading, customer service, and marketing teams all executed extremely well, which resulted in the best multistate NFL kickoff in our history based on our September handle and gross revenue share. We are very well prepared, and I'm very proud of the team for executing so effectively. Customers have enjoyed the new features that we rolled out around the start of NFL season such as quick parlay, quick same-game parlays, and the ability to combine most of the same-game parlays. Our parlay handle mix increased 500 basis points year-over-year in Q3, and our parlay bet mix increased 1,500 basis points. Additionally, our innovative early payout capability, otherwise known as 7 up or 10 up, engaged both new and existing customers. We had an excellent launch in Kansas on September 1, with more rapid customer acquisition on a population-adjusted basis than we have experienced with any other state launch, resulting in very attractive Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). For the month of September, we led the state in handle share with more than twice that of the second largest operator. Based on the states that reported operator-level handle and GGR data through September, we are capturing GGR share that is at or above our long-term target, as industry activity continues to coalesce towards a very limited number of operators. We announced in September that Amazon selected DraftKings as a sponsor and exclusive pregame odds provider for Thursday Night Football and Prime Video. This is a unique opportunity to engage with customers in a true digital environment. Our multiyear collaboration with Amazon will deliver fans engaging pregame content and unique betting offers on Thursday throughout the NFL season. As part of our agreement with Amazon, Thursday Night Football features DraftKings integrations in its live pregame show, including odds and additional sports betting insights. DraftKings and Amazon will also collaborate on TNF-themed offerings, including same-game parlays, available on the DraftKings Sportsbook app, with our content featured in all 15 Thursday Night Football games on Prime Video during the 2022 NFL season. In terms of financials, our third quarter revenue was $502 million, much higher than expected, supported by favorable sport outcomes, as well as the excellent execution across product technology, trading, customer service, and marketing. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $264 million, also much better than anticipated due to flow-through from higher revenue and expenses shifting out of Q3 into Q4, despite marketing investments into our Kansas launch that had not been included in the expectations we provided in early August. 2022 has been a transformative year for DraftKings. We have shifted more attention towards cost controls in our path to profitability. We identified over $100 million of annual cost savings and have significantly slowed year-over-year fixed cost growth, as evidenced by our Q3 results. What I am most proud of, though, is that we've been able to do all of this while continuing to focus heavily on top line growth, winning competitively, and most importantly, retaining and growing engagement with our customers. We are also seeing a benefit to our marketing efficiency from shifting towards national advertising and away from local spending, considering we're now live with mobile sports betting in 18 states that collectively represent 37% of the U.S. population. In the third quarter, we acquired more new customers at a 10% lower average CAC relative to the third quarter of 2021. And looking ahead, we expect CAC to decline as our state footprint continues to expand. The progress we have made over the past year on our products, customer service, and internal operations has been tremendous. Our Q3 results demonstrate all of these points, with both revenue and adjusted EBITDA significantly exceeding our expectations. It is evident that the hard work of our team this year is paying off. We believe we are striking a great balance between maintaining an aggressive and customer-focused growth plan while simultaneously managing expenses. This combination of revenue growth and expense management creates a clear path to profitability consistent with the long-term gross margins and adjusted EBITDA margins we have consistently articulated. Now, I'd like to move on to our financial outlook. For 2022, we are excited to be raising the midpoint of our revenue guidance by $45 million. We are also increasing the midpoint of our 2022 adjusted EBITDA guidance by $10 million. Our guidance now includes our launching Kansas, as well as our expected launch in Maryland in Q4 and pre-launch marketing investment for Ohio that we expect to launch on January 1, 2023, with both Maryland and Ohio pending licensure and regulatory approval. These three states were not included in our prior adjusted EBITDA guidance. Therefore, we are improving our guidance despite the addition of these marketing investments. We are also excited to share our initial 2023 outlook today, which reflects our core principles of maintaining strong growth and customer engagement while also continuing on our path to profitability, as well as having a cost structure that supports our long-term margin goals. For 2023, we are introducing revenue guidance of $2.8 billion to $3 billion and adjusted EBITDA guidance of negative $575 million to $475 million. Unlike our prior guidance, our outlook now reflects our existing state footprint, including Kansas, as well as expected launches subject to licensure regulatory approvals in Maryland, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico. As we've stated previously, we expect that the fourth quarter of 2023, only one year away from now, will be our first quarter with positive adjusted EBITDA. Additionally, as previously stated, we are well-positioned from a balance sheet standpoint to reach profitability under most reasonable legalization scenarios without needing to raise additional capital. We expect to end 2022 with a cash balance that is roughly double the high end of our guidance for our adjusted EBITDA loss in 2023. While it's too early to guide full year 2024, our current multiyear plan suggests that we'll be approximately breakeven on a full year adjusted EBITDA basis in 2024, assuming legalization and launch trends remain consistent with prior years. Looking ahead, the outlook for state launches continues to be positive. We anticipate launching Online Sports Betting (OSB) in Maryland in the fourth quarter of 2022; and Ohio, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico in 2023, which would bring our penetration of the U.S. population to 45%. Californians will vote on whether to legalize OSB on November 8. We are still deploying grassroots efforts, but the most recent polling suggests a likely unfavorable outcome for our coalition. DraftKings has discontinued additional cash investment in the campaign. Please note that DraftKings' 2022 cash investment in California was approximately $17 million. Lastly, while it's still too early to know which states may pass OSB and iGaming legislation in 2023, we expect several states will actively consider legislation. There's a lot to be excited about on the regulatory front. We remain confident in our long-term outlook that states comprising 65% of the U.S. population will ultimately permit legalized OSB and states comprising 30% of the U.S. population will ultimately permit legalized iGaming. Now, I'd like to spend a few more minutes providing additional detail on our recent product enhancements. We have continued to expand the content and functionality of our Sportsbook product, which drives efficient customer acquisition as well as long-term engagement retention. The wagering content we launched for the 2022 NFL season included head-to-head matchups, several new multiplayer props, and flash player market and full-time and anytime squares. Head-to-head matchups include spreads, moneylines, and totals on all our player subcategories to improve the depth of our derivative player offering. Multiplayer props include game and highest total from a list of options to increase the variety of player-propped bet types. Player flash costs include player-specific next drive and next play markets to increase the depth of our player performance offering. Full-time and anytime squares is our model-driven squares product, which we've now extended to every game in the season. DraftKings also added new functionality such as early payoffs for moneyline wagers, quick parlay and quick same-game parlay, as well as the ability for users to combine multiple same-game parlays. Early payout is a newly introduced mechanic to settle moneyline bets once the team reaches a certain lead. Quick parlay is a new interface for customers to build larger parlays with more cross-sport play. Quick Same-Game Parlay (SGP) features dozens of prepackaged same-game parlay bets per game for all same-game parlay sports. SGP allows customers to parlay same-game parlays with other same-game parlays and singles from different games, which increases the size and average leg count of parlays. It has been an exciting 12 months of product and technology innovation enabled by our vertical integration with much more to come. For iGaming, we recently introduced player-contributed jackpots in response to customer demand and are the only operator in the U.S. with this in-house capability. Players can opt in for an additional modest wager for a chance to win potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. We believe this product functionality will increase customer engagement and demonstrates our continued differentiation from the competition. Now, I'll turn the call over to DraftKings' CFO, Jason Park, who will discuss our third quarter results and refreshed outlook.

Thanks, Jason, and hello, everyone. I'll start off by providing more granularity pertaining to Q3 and then I'll shift to the outlook for Q4 and 2023. Please note that all income statement measures discussed, except for revenue, are on a non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA basis. We executed very well in Q3. Customer activity was robust, supported by new product functionality that we rolled out around the start of the NFL season. We have continued to look at detailed cohort data and are not seeing any discernible indication that the macroeconomic environment is impacting our overall customer engagement. In Q3, we generated $502 million of revenue and negative $264 million of adjusted EBITDA, both significantly outperformed the expectations that we provided on our Q2 call in August. Our B2C segment revenue increased 161% versus Q3 of 2021 compared to Q2 2022's year-over-year growth rate of 68%. Sport outcomes certainly were favorable for our operators this quarter, lapping unfavorable outcomes last year. Our strong execution across acquisition, retention, and monetization initiatives for our core product offerings was also a driver of our outperformance. In Q3, favorable sports outcomes contributed approximately $70 million of revenue. On our call in August, we provided a rule of thumb for you to understand potential revenue volatility in Q3. As most of you are well aware, it was an operator-friendly quarter. NFL underdogs generally did well in September. For example, three of the biggest underdogs won in week one, including the Seahawks, Steelers, and Bears. In addition, several Sunday night, Monday night, and Thursday night football games fell in our favor. These games tend to attract higher handle per game relative to other NFL games. Isolating just these 11 primetime games in the third quarter, our hold rate was greater than 10%. It's important to note we launched Kansas on September 1, and we had not included that in our prior guidance due to the significant uncertainty about that launch date. Kansas generated negative $8 million of net revenue in the quarter, consistent with our standard new state launch playbook. Kansas is off to a fantastic start. Net revenue growth also benefited from a less promotional environment than in Q3 of 2021 for the industry as a whole. We saw more rational behavior, which we expect to persist. Within the DraftKings business, we deployed more surgical promotions based on player-specific gross profit profiles and, as we consistently reiterated, are reinvesting less as cohorts mature. We had 1.6 million monthly unique payers in Q3, which is 22% higher than the prior year period. It's important to remember that Q3 2021 included the conclusion of the NBA playoffs, while the NBA playoffs were completed before Q3 in 2022. Notably, in September alone, monthly unique players increased 27% year-over-year to 2.7 million, which is typically our seasonally strongest month of the year for monthly unique players due to the kickoff of the NFL season. Average revenue per monthly unique payer (ARPMUP) more than doubled on a year-over-year basis to $100 with solid gross margin flow-through. This balance of player growth and revenue per player growth is very healthy as promotional intensity naturally declines as states mature. Adjusted EBITDA in Q3 was negative $264 million, which is $50 million better than the negative $314 million of adjusted EBITDA in the prior year period and significantly outperformed the expectations for Q3 that we provided on our August call, primarily due to the higher-than-anticipated revenue. Our Q3 performance was especially impressive, given that it included investment in our Kansas launch, which was not included in our previous guidance. Additionally, certain expenses, principally within our marketing and G&A line items, shifted out of Q3 and into Q4. As a reminder, revenue upside driven by favorable outcomes and revenue downside driven by unfavorable outcomes typically flows through to our adjusted EBITDA at a high incremental margin, given certain expenses within our cost of revenues are tied to deposits in handle rather than gross or net revenue. Gross margin rate for Q3 was 34% and increased 100 basis points compared to the third quarter of last year. On a year-over-year basis, the inclusion of New York and our continued mix shift out of our DFS product into our growing Sportsbook and iGaming products significantly limited our gross margin rate improvement. However, I was pleased that the OSB and iGaming states where we were live prior to Q3 2021, saw an increase in gross profit of over $110 million primarily due to revenue growth as well as a meaningful reduction in promotional intensity. We continue to expect our gross margin rate to be approximately 40% for the full year 2022 and to improve in 2023 into the low to mid-40% range as our promotional intensity naturally declines across our portfolio of states. Sales and marketing expense was up 8% versus Q3 of 2021. For our states that have been live for more than a year, external marketing spend was down 20% on a year-over-year basis. We generated significant profit contribution from these states in Q3 2022 compared to a deep loss in Q3 2021, which was largely driven by unfavorable outcomes. We continue to be pleased with our LTV-to-CAC ratios and continue to be on track for a three-year gross profit payback. As we mentioned on our Q2 call, our fixed expense growth began to moderate meaningfully in the third quarter, with products and technology and general and administrative expenses up 37% and 28%, respectively, compared to the prior year period. The growth in P&T expenses is primarily the result of the additional engineering and product management resources we've added over the past year to help build the best product in the industry and to strengthen our data science capabilities. For G&A expense, the growth is largely a reflection of the increased investment in our customer experience capabilities, which we expect will continue to grow as we add new customers but at a slower pace than previous quarters as we reach scale and lap the significant investments we made late in the second half of 2021 and early in 2022. Moving into guidance. Please note that unlike the guidance that we provided in the past, we are now guiding 2022 and 2023 inclusive of states that have legalized and in which it is reasonably foreseeable that we will launch during the guided period. Specifically, our 2022 guidance now includes Kansas, which launched in September, as well as Maryland, which we expect to launch in the fourth quarter and prelaunch marketing spend related to Ohio, which we expect to launch on January 1, 2023, both pending licensure and regulatory approvals. Looking at 2022, we are pleased to be raising our full-year revenue outlook to a range of $2.16 billion to $2.19 billion from a range of $2.08 billion to $2.18 billion, which increases the midpoint of our guidance to $2.175 billion from $2.13 billion. The midpoint of our increased revenue guidance implies a 68% growth compared to the full-year 2021. We are increasing our revenue guidance due to the strength we saw in our online gaming verticals in Q3. For newly included states, we expect Maryland to contribute negative revenue as we invest in the state in the early weeks following its launch. In Q4, we expect to generate about $790 million in revenue based on the midpoint of our 2022 revenue guidance, which represents substantial year-over-year growth and planned reinvestment in customers who experienced significant unlucky outcomes early in the football season. Our Q4 expectations also reflect continued softness in the broader NFT market, which has impacted our new Reignmakers vertical. Looking at MUPs and ARPMUP, we expect ARPMUP growth to be higher than MUP growth for the full year. Moving on to our adjusted EBITDA guidance. We are improving the midpoint of our full-year 2022 guidance by $10 million to negative $790 million despite now including Kansas and investments in expected state launches for Maryland and Ohio. The significant improvement in our 2022 adjusted EBITDA guidance on a comparable basis was primarily driven by higher revenue combined with cost discipline, particularly in the marketing and G&A expense lines. I'm proud that we expect to land materially better than where we thought at the beginning of the year despite launching in new states. There has been an ongoing effort throughout the year to drive and capture efficiencies, which has resulted in more than $100 million of in-year cost savings in 2022. We will continue to focus diligently on this area of the business for the remainder of this year and beyond. Finally, I want to reiterate that we continue to expect at least 10 states to be contribution profit positive for the full year 2022. Today, we are also introducing 2023 guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We expect revenue for the full year 2023 to be between $2.8 billion and $3.0 billion and adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2023 to be negative $575 million to negative $475 million. For our full year 2023 guidance, we are assuming that Maryland launches in Q4 2022, Ohio and Massachusetts launch in Q1 2023, and Puerto Rico launches in Q3 2023. We expect launches in new jurisdictions on a combined basis to generate less than 5% of full-year 2023 revenue and to account for approximately 25% of our full-year 2023 negative adjusted EBITDA. In 2023, we expect gross margin to improve slightly relative to 2022 as we reduce promotional intensity in more mature states, partially offset by new state launches and continued mix shift out of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS). Our population-weighted average state age will be 2.6 years exiting 2023 versus 1.8 years exiting 2022. If that number appreciates, the gross margin rate is expected to improve dramatically. We expect fixed cost growth to slow meaningfully, while variable marketing will largely depend upon how many new users we acquire. Lastly, I'll touch on our liquidity position. With close to $1.4 billion in cash as of September 30 and our guided adjusted EBITDA range for the fourth quarter combined with expected other usages, we are poised to exit the year with between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion of cash. Based on our 2023 adjusted EBITDA guidance and other expected cash usages next year, we expect to end 2023 with more than $500 million in cash on the balance sheet. It's important to note that a significant amount of our 2022 cash outflows, such as $97 million in net cash paid for GNOG, are not expected to recur in 2023. Looking out to 2024, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be roughly breakeven on a full-year basis under most reasonable legalization and launch scenarios. In summary, we believe we are well capitalized to become free cash flow positive with existing resources. The business is on a clear path to achieve our long-term gross margin and EBITDA margin targets. That concludes our remarks, and we will now open the line for questions.

I wanted to just touch on Golden Nugget for a minute. I realize it's not right down the middle and probably why it isn't necessarily core of the discussion. But iGaming becomes discussed more and more, its profit potential, its long-term growth, etc. How are you doing with that, what are you doing with that? What can you share with us? And how should we look at its prospects, please?

Thank you. Great question. Everything is going really well with the integration. We started to realize some synergies, particularly on the marketing side. Really, the biggest synergies will come next year when we migrate the entire Golden Nugget operation onto our platform. So I'm very excited about that. That should hopefully happen in the back half of the year. We're on track, and the teams are gelling nicely. I'm really excited about the future of Golden Nugget as a way to penetrate deeper into the iGaming market.

Jason or Jason, just wanted to ask a little bit more about kind of hold versus product mix. Obviously, Jason Robins, you outlined a bunch of new product initiatives and your parlay mix being materially higher in the quarter. I imagine a lot of those changes are here to stay. We're sort of trying to wrap our minds around go-forward hold rates as some of these new product initiatives take hold and sort of what's the ability to push that percentage higher relative to what we saw in the quarter, which is obviously a lot of luck-based outcomes as well. So if you could just talk about some of those trade-offs and how you thought about it or what's baked into 2023.

Yes. Great question. I think that a lot of progress has been made on the whole front primarily driven by our improvement in bet mix year-over-year. That's largely been product as well as merchandising and marketing. We launched a whole host of parlay options, same-game parlays, combinations of multiple same-game parlays, prepacks, and many other features. The team has done a great job merchandising and marketing those, including through our NFL Thursday Night Football relationship with Amazon. Many parts of the company have executed to drive that mix, and we should definitely continue to see improvement. We feel like there are a lot of tailwinds there. As far as what's baked in, we've been cautious about projecting improvements. Typically, we only include things we have a clear view on. I think 2022 has been a great example of that. In February, we guided to negative $875 million in EBITDA, and now we're guiding to negative $790 million, along with our launches in new states. We've rallied the team around various cost initiatives throughout the year and saved over $100 million. That's how we approach guidance. We'll try to do better each year.

As my follow-up, could you just talk a little bit about how you're thinking about some of these fixed marketing investments relative to and sponsorship deals relative to variable going forward? Obviously, the big Amazon partnership you outlined for Thursday Night Football, ESPN is another one where you have a relationship, but there could potentially be more. So just maybe strategically, how are you thinking about investing in these types of deals, where maybe there's more committed spend relative to things that could be more variable and directly tied to top line outcomes?

The majority of our marketing spend is not committed. It's completely controllable. We're pretty selective with deals, but we feel really good about the Amazon deal. It's one of the better deals we've made in recent years, and we're very excited about the results we’ve seen through the first several weeks of Thursday Night Football with that partnership. But most of our marketing spend is not committed. We like to keep flexibility so we can optimize our investments.

My first question is just a clarification really. You touched on it, Jason Park, in the comments, but I wonder if you could quantify the EBITDA impact from Kansas and the Q4 investments in Maryland and Ohio just to give us a sense of your underlying assumptions you're making in this year's guidance.

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Our full year 2022 and the 2023 guide that we provided today includes Kansas, which has obviously already launched, as well as the expected imminent launch in Maryland and Ohio. In terms of Q4, what you're seeing is a little bit of flow-through from the slightly lower revenue outlook in Q4. That lower revenue outlook is due to the planned reinvestment in a very surgical way for players who had unlucky outcomes in Q3, as well as some headwinds from the Reignmakers NFT product. So that's impacting the Q4 EBITDA. The major change in Q4 EBITDA is the inclusion of Maryland and Ohio, which we are now including in our Q4 EBITDA guide. In terms of 2023, as mentioned in our call, about 5% of the revenue guide comes from those new states, while 25% of the EBITDA loss comes from those new states.

I think it's important to take away that this guidance shows a change from our prior approach. We guided with new states included for the first time. This is a shift based on investor requests for clarity on projected timelines. We've received our licenses in Maryland, and we expect the launch there and in Ohio on January 1.

The first question is just you mentioned the national advertising mix. And I just wonder if you could give us an update on where you are in the arc of transforming that mix? What do you expect kind of the terminal mix between national and local to be? Just how you're thinking about a possible recession next year? How would you expect that to impact your business and how is it affecting your planning?

Yes. A good question. We've said that as we get over around 35% of the population with legal online sports betting, it would be a turning point. We're just crossing that threshold now, currently live in states representing about 37% of the population. We're starting to see favorable impacts from this national advertising shift and our CACs were 10% better than we expected. We're also planning on executing rapidly based on that foundation. As for the recession question, we have looked at different scenarios in which a recession could impact revenue. Right now, we don’t see any signs of that impacting our business, but we're prepared to shift quickly if there's any indication it has started. I think it's worth noting that we are ready to pivot if we see anything concerning. We've prepared for various scenarios but are currently managing to the environment we're experiencing.

On the iGaming side, can you talk about the pace of new content coming onto your platform? And then maybe any improvements you've made on that end?

Yes. The biggest thing that we just launched was our jackpot functionality. It's unique to the market. No other operators have it. Players can opt-in to a separate jackpot pool that usually pays out very high sums. I'm very proud of the product team for getting that out there. We've been launching lots of new content as well, including games through third-party integrations, making sure we provide popular titles alongside unique offerings. I want to thank everyone for joining the call today. We had an excellent third quarter, and I'm excited about our performance. We feel we're well-positioned for a strong finish to 2022 and for the success in 2023 going into 2024, where we expect to be roughly breakeven, potentially our first full profitable year. Q4 of 2023 is projected to be our first quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. Thank you everyone, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the sports calendar this year.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.