Flutter Entertainment plc Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call

Thank you for standing by. My name is Greg, and I will be your conference operator today.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to today's Flutter Entertainment Q2 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, star one. And if you'd like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul Timms, Group Director of Investor Relations.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Flutter's Q2 update call. With me today are Flutter's CEO, Peter Jackson, and CFO, Rob Coldrake. After this short intro, Peter will open with a summary of our operational progress, and then Rob will go through our Q2 financials and our updated guidance for 2026. We will then open the lines for Q&A. Some of the information we are providing today, including our 2026 guidance, constitutes forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual outcomes or results to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. These factors are detailed in our earnings press release and our SEC filings. In addition, all forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required by law. Also, in our remarks or responses to questions, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations are included in the results materials we have released today, available in the Investors section of our website. I will now hand you over to Peter.

Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before we get into the results, I wanted to say a few words about the announcement we made this morning. After nearly nine years of CEO, this is the right time to hand over to Dan, and I'll be stepping down at the end of September. It's been an enormous privilege to lead this business, and I do so with tremendous confidence in Flutter's future, in the team we've built, and in Dan's leadership. One thing I've always tried to do throughout my time as CEO is to take a long-term view of how we create value for shareholders. That has sometimes meant making decisions that weren't universally welcomed in the moment because we believed they would strengthen the business over the long term. In 2019 and 2020, for example, we continued to invest heavily in FanDuel at a time when many questioned those decisions because of the impact on near-term earnings. Looking back, those investments proved to be the right thing to do. They strengthened our competitive position and laid the foundations for the business we have today. And we're making the same type of decision again today. We see a significant opportunity to invest behind our leadership in US sports betting and iGaming, strengthening our proposition and positioning the business for future growth. We recognise that this weighs on near-term earnings, but we're convinced it's the right thing to do to maximise long-term shareholder value. With that, let me turn to our results. We've delivered an encouraging quarter relative to our expectations and I'm pleased with the progress we're making across the business. In the US, we've implemented our new leadership structure, made good progress on our sportsbook improvement plan and further expanded our prediction market offering and capabilities. For H2, we'll be delivering an improved value proposition for our customers, a move we believe is critical to strengthening our number one position in the highly competitive US market, aligns with our new customer first strategy, and better positioning the business for market share gains in 2027 and beyond. During Q2, US revenue was 6% lower year over year, reflecting a 6 percentage point growth impact from customer friendly sports results, as the next legendary win in June put some cash back in our customers wallets in time for the World Cup. Customer engagement was excellent throughout the NBA finals and the FIFA World Cup. And even when you adjust for these marquee events, underlying sports book trends were in line with our expectations as our sports book improvement plan continues to deliver. We continue to see a limited cannibalization impact from prediction markets on our existing customer base in regulated sports book states. And we believe Fangio's operational execution and outperformance, both in recent state launches and during key marquee events, confirms the strong demand for traditional sports betting products when sports content is compelling. We expanded our loyalty program to 70% of customers this quarter, which has helped with engagement metrics, with 82% of customers surveyed saying the rewards club improved their experience and more than half saying it lifts their betting activity. We also introduced BetProtect+, our best-in-market injury protection feature and enhanced our soccer offering for the World Cup. leveraging the FlutterEdge to offer unique features such as SuperSup. And while FanDuel trends have been encouraging, the market continues to be subdued, and we estimate that the market grew by around 5% in H1. Although we continue to closely monitor the implications of the growth in prediction markets on the broader online sports betting market, we believe the market is yet to rebound from the disappointing NFL performance experienced in Q4 2025. We firmly believe market growth will ultimately return to higher levels, with more compelling content driving stronger customer engagement. There are forecasts prudently assume market growth rates in H2 will be broadly consistent with those seen in the first half. The U.S. leadership changes we recently implemented are working, and we are well positioned to deliver improved performance through a more competitive, customer-led proposition. In fact, the encouraging underlying signs we're seeing give us the confidence to increase generosity to customers and improve our value proposition. And while this proactive action will result in a reduction in near-term profitability, investing behind customer momentum is an approach that has consistently served us well. This momentum and the current market dynamics mean now is the right time to move from a focus on margin growth to prioritizing amps and growing RP. This will position us well to extend our leadership in the U.S. market and capture further share in 2027. Turning now to prediction markets. We view prediction markets as an attractive opportunity. And while we are closely monitoring their impact on the broader online sports betting market, we continue to see prediction markets as incremental to sports betting and iGaming, growing the overall market by capturing new demand. Our own prediction market offering, Fangio Predicts, allows us to acquire customers ahead of sports betting regulation in new states while delivering incremental economics in the meantime. And while operational progress in H1 was slower than planned, we are gaining traction and have a clear roadmap for improvement. The integration of the crypto.com exchange to expand our sports offering ahead of the FIFA World Cup has significantly enhanced our product proposition. And in coordination with CME, we have agreed that all Fangel predicts sports and novelty contracts will now be moved to Crypto.com while continuing to provide our customers access to CME's extensive financial markets. This new exchange arrangement will ensure we can deliver new products at pace ahead of the NFL season's start. Our OneApp offering is also enabling us to leverage FanDuel's nationwide brand equity, driving both accelerated penetration and marketing efficiencies. We believe we are also uniquely positioned to provide liquidity for combination markets across different prediction market platforms with a market making offering that can scale rapidly and at low incremental investment. It is very early days but we would expect to generate approximately 50 million dollars of revenue from market making this year demonstrating both the good progress made so far and the potential opportunity. Turning now to international. We've made good progress in the quarter. We've strengthened our market leading position in Italy and leveraged the power of the Flutter Edge to drive record engagement during the World Cup. As a result, revenue grew 10%, including the benefit of our SNI and Bette National acquisitions. Amp growth in the quarter was impacted by the closure of our India business last year. Italy continues to deliver exceptional levels of growth across both Sportsbook and iGaming, and our revenue performance continues to outpace the market as we extend our market leadership. This was despite the short-term impact from the STY migration, which we successfully completed back in April. As expected, the migration resulted in a brief period of share loss, but performance recovered strongly in June as customers embraced a significantly expanded pilot offering, with amps increasing 30% in June and strong parlay penetration during the World Cup. SEA iGaming revenues were up 34% driven by new and exclusive content in Italy and an expanded product offer in Turkey. The post-migration recovery in SNI and the strength of our first half performance in both Italy and Turkey give us confidence in sustaining this strong growth in the second half. In the UKI, Skybet customers are adapting well to the new highly rated user interface driving a sequential improvement in skyback performance while overall iGaming growth in the UKI remains robust at 7%. The increase in UK iGaming tax became effective in April. As a leading operator in the market we are confident in the delivery of our first order cost savings and in our ability to gain share as other operators begin to react to this increase. In Brazil, good operational progress, including the integration of Flutter's product and pricing capabilities into our local platform, was offset by more challenging market conditions driven by government social economic measures. This resulted in Flutter Brazil organic revenue declining year over year in line with the market. We will continue to enhance our Sportsbook product offering with further product rollouts enabled by the integration and improve iGaming generosity mechanics in the second half of the year Brazil remains an attractive long-term opportunity and we are focused on building a market-leading platform that scales our customer base and delivers strong returns our performance in APAC was broadly in line with expectations with positive performance in key sports are setting continued softness in racing a while excellent execution in CEE so us gain market share in all of our main markets. And finally, we've also announced today that we've initiated the next phase of Flutter's cost transformation, reshaping our cost base to fund our next stage of growth. Rob will cover this in more detail shortly. To close, I'm encouraged by the progress we've made in Q2. In the US, we're delivering continued sequential improvement in key sportsbook metrics alongside sustained iGaming growth. The new U.S. leadership team is driving a renewed customer-first approach, and our proactive investment will help place us in the best possible position for growth in 2027. Within International, we are executing at pace, and Flutter Edge enabled product improvements of driving our momentum in the second half. I'm confident that the choices we're making today, from investing in the U.S. to expanding our term with financial predicts and market making, strengthening our international businesses and advancing the next phase of cost transformation will deliver sustainable long-term value for our shoulders. And with that, I'll hand over to Rob.

Thanks, Peter, and good morning, everyone. Q2 performance was ahead of expectations, with revenue growth of 3%, reflecting the benefit of M&A and excellent engagement during the FIFA World Cup across the US and international. This was partly offset by an adverse swing in US sports results year over year. The increase in UK gaming taxes and planned investments in both prediction markets and World Cup marketing resulted in adjusted EBITDA declining 45%. A net loss of $296 million for the quarter versus a net income of $37 million in Q2 2025 was primarily driven by the reduction in segment profitability and one-off historical tax costs of $95 million. These were partially offset by an improvement of $81 million and $171 million in other income, expense and taxation respectively. Loss per share and adjusted loss per share declined to $1.57 and $0.49 respectively, reflecting these profitability factors and a non-controlling interest benefit. Net cash provided by operating activities increased by $4 million, with the increased net loss in the quarter offset by the benefit of an increase in other current liabilities, including the impact of UK gaming tax increase, historical tax cost provisions and a positive swing in player deposit liabilities. As a result, free cash flow including financing CapEx and excluding player funds reduced by 56% year over year. We ended Q2 with a leverage ratio of 4.3 times. We expect our second half cash generation will drive a reduction in leverage by the end of 2026. We continue to prioritise organic investment in our core business and strategic initiatives including emerging opportunities such as prediction markets while also maintaining a clear focus on deleveraging the balance sheet We expect to return to our target leverage range of 2-2.5 times in the medium term consistent with our stated policy with exact timing dependent on the cadence of our strategic investments Moving now to our group-wide cost transformation programme. Phase one of our programme is delivering ahead of expectations. We are on track to deliver in excess of the previously guided $300 million of savings by 2027 and $200 million of additional cost savings that were announced as part of our UK gaming tax mitigation plans, also expected to be delivered in 2027. Building on this significant progress, we have initiated the next phase of Flutter's cost transformation. Phase two reflects a broader program to reshape our cost base, build a more efficient, resilient cost structure for the long term, and protect profitability. Through removing duplication, delivering technology efficiencies, and leveraging AI, this cost action will reflect and evolution in how Flutter operates, leveraging our global scale while still maintaining a fundamental local focus on the customer. We expect phase two to deliver an additional $500 million of gross savings by 2029, providing the headroom to absorb inflationary pressures and known tax headwinds, whilst freeing up capacity to invest in revenue generating initiatives. In the US, we believe that this will ensure the business is well positioned for its next stage of growth. In international we expect that the benefits will underpin our 5 to 10 percent revenue growth algorithm by both protecting adjusted EBITDA margins in more mature markets and enabling investment in growth areas. These actions are also expected to drive a meaningful improvement in cash generation. Our plans are progressing well and we will be in a position to share more details of our Q3 results in November. Moving now to our 2026 outlook. Early Q3 trading was ahead of expectations, reflecting good engagement in the knockout stages of the FIFA World Cup and slightly favourable sports results. Full-year guidance is therefore updated to reflect positive impact of Q2 trading in US and international, expected market-making revenue and adjusted EBITDA benefit of $50 million. Additional operating cost savings of $45 million delivered through our efficiency program in the US. The impact of confirmed one week delay to the 2026-2027 NFL season start, not previously capturing guidance of $75 million revenue and $50 million adjusted EBITDA. Investment to strengthen our proposition and accelerate Fangio's sports momentum, as Peter outlined earlier. and forward FX rates in international. These movements result in a reduction to our full-year group revenue guidance of $395 million to $17.91 billion at the midpoint, and a reduction of our adjusted EBITDA guidance of $210 million to $2.655 billion at the midpoint. We've also improved our capital expenditure guidance to $815 million to reflect incremental project efficiencies also resulting in a reduction in depreciation and amortization guidance to $730 million. Additionally, group transaction restructuring and integration costs will be approximately $500 million, reflecting an increase of approximately $200 million from our previous expectations, primarily due to the initial cost to implement our 2026 cost efficiency programs and tax provisions of $95 million relating to historical India and US sales and use tax exposures. Additional detail on our guidance is available in today's release. Before I close, I'd like to acknowledge and thank Peter. His leadership over the past nine years has been instrumental in building Flutter into the global leader it is today. On a personal note, I've greatly valued his support and advice since becoming CFO and I'm incredibly grateful for his partnership. Having worked closely with Dan over the past six years, I'm equally confident that we have the right leader for the next phase of Flutter's journey. He knows our business exceptionally well, has played a central role in shaping our strategy, and is ideally placed to lead the company as we continue to execute our strategy and deliver sustainable long-term shareholder value. in closing i'm really encouraged by the momentum we've built through h1 and in particular during the fifa world cup which gives me confidence in delivering our second half guidance peter and i are now happy to tell your questions thank you and at this time i would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question press star then the number one on your telephone keypad once

again, star one. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to two questions. And we will pause just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. All right. Looks like our first question today comes from the line of Ed Young with Morgan Stanley. Ed, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My first question is on the additional 270 million of EBITDA investment you're putting into the U.S. business. Can you give us some color on how we should think about the components on that because obviously on promotions you've launched a new novelty scheme there was some events noise in q2 but you're already at 540 basis points for promo spend so some thoughts on that and then in marketing similarly how would you think about the cac to ltv that you're putting on the incremental marketing dollars you intend to put to work in the current competitive environment and then my second question peter in your written remarks you mentioned i think you reiterated in your verbal remarks as well about long-term thinking the business um in your letter you noted you're convinced dan shares a similar mentality i guess given your expectations for a mid single digit growing market in the us at least for now

how do you weigh up the argument that some of your international markets might be as or more deserving of incremental investment than the us thanks thanks ed um no i think what we have to focus on is the sports book improvement plan and the great progress we're seeing on that at the moment in FanDuel. If I think about the growth we saw in Handle around the NBA finals, where up 40% year over year per game, Act is up 25% year over year, 2.3 million customers engaged in the world cup a third of which had been reactivated and in recent trading you know i think we've seen record uh weeks for from an mlb uh perspective so yeah i feel like we've got good momentum in evangel the sportsbook improvement plan is working um you know the changes have made to loyalty there's a generosity posture from a product perspective things like you know bet protect and of course we've brought super sub uh here in in frangio around around the world so there's there's good momentum in business i think you know what we've always found before is that when we've got you know great content great product we've invested behind it it's helped build uh a bigger business for the future and that's what we're um intending to do you know so we want to invest behind the momentum we see at the moment robert do you want to pick up on the specifics Yeah, a couple of points to add.

I mean, this is an investment in generosity, so it's a deliberate investment decision. We've made really good progress with the sportsbook improvement plan in the last course. We're really encouraged by the customer response that we're seeing. We're also seeing really good returns on our marketing spend, both on sports and in casino, and that's been boosted by the World Cup. But yeah, the paybacks that we're seeing at the moment are excellent. This is a proactive decision that we're making around the longer term US opportunity. We're really seeing an opportunity to lean in at the moment. It's working well. We intend to continue that in H2 and exit 2026 with the strongest business possible.

Thank you.

On the international versus US investment? well look i think we've we've always been very focused on investing you know behind organic opportunities across the business if i look at the progress that we're making in in italy in turkey in the central eastern europe the sequential improvements we're seeing in the uk these are all benefiting from the investments we're making uh behind the business and so you know look i I think we are focused on delivering the funds, driving growth in international and in the U.S. market. And I think, as Rob mentioned, we see good returns from the investments we're seeing here in the U.S. and international. And that's why we're investing behind both of them.

Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you, Ed. And our next question comes from the line of Barry Jonas with Truist Securities. Barry, please go ahead.

Hey, guys. thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to get some maybe additional thoughts on what do you think is driving the softer market-wide trends in the US? You comment on prediction market cannibalization, but curious with the increasing popularity of combos, if maybe those risks have increased from an OSB cannibalization perspective. Thank you.

Hi, Barry. I think if we look at the success of the NBA finals and the World Cup, where with exciting content, we've seen really good engagement from a customer perspective. I mentioned the 2.3 million customers, sort of those that were re-estivated going into the World Cup. They're seeing active numbers up 26% year over year on our NBA Finals games. We're seeing very good content from these are big marquee events, and I think it's helping drive engagement from a customer perspective. Clearly, parlays are very popular for us, and we've made a bunch of changes to enable us to drive some improvements from a parlay penetration perspective through things like the World Cup and the MBA, which we delivered on. I think from the question around cannibalization, we have seen, as we stated before, low single-digit impacts on the business. I look at this as incremental tap. There are opportunities for us to go and acquire customers in advance of sportsbook regulation passing in, frankly, the half of America that we can't currently operate in. And then there's the opportunity for us to leverage our pricing and risk management capabilities through market making on a national basis. Both of those things are incremental terms for us. We are going to deliver a step change in our prediction market product as we go into the football season. The launch of the One App, which is going to enable customers nationally to access the tremendous user experience that we have currently available in our regulated states is going to be important. But we're going to see a really big step change in the catalogue that's available to customers through the integration and movement of all of our sports contracts to crypto.com.

I think I'd just add as well that you look at the recent World Cup tournament and when you've got really good content, it really kind of reaffirms the demand that there is out there for traditional online sports betting products. So in June and July in the US, we had our highest respective active months ever, and we're carrying that momentum through now. It's a slightly lower point in the sporting calendar from a phasing perspective, but we're seeing really strong volumes through into that MLB season, which is really encouraging. Of course, still early days in Q3, and whilst that momentum is really encouraging, ultimately, performance in the quarter, and the second half will be determined by the football season, as we know.

Got it. And then just for a follow-up, North Carolina just recently passed a tax increase for OSB, taking a rate to 22%, while they also effectively added a 6% tax for prediction markets. How does that weigh into your thinking strategically about prediction markets, given the state effectively is signing off on it here? Just curious if it makes you want to lean in more or less strategically between the two offerings.

There's a lot of questions and work going on from a regulatory perspective around prediction markets. some of these things you know and you know the extent to which they can be rolled out will be resolved by the the supreme court i mean from a state by state tax receptive there's also yeah a lot going on at the moment yeah i think we've been pleased with um you know our uh our focus on trying to get new states to open i think that's an important uh component that we need to uh that we need to recognize as well and i think you know we're excited to see some of the progress we're going to be able to make around both iGaming and sports betting as well.

Thank you. Thank you, Barry. And our next question comes from the line of Brant Montour with Barclays. Brant, please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. So I wanted to start off with the market making and get your sense on, you know, how that market it feels for you guys going into the second half. I think following the prediction markets, it's been out there that these markets are getting efficient pretty quickly. And so I know you guys did 6 million in the 2Q, and you've got 50 million for the year. So what are you baking in for the second half? What platforms do you think you'll be most active in? And what can you tell us about the mix between where you're trading in single leg versus combos as a percentage of mix?

Yeah, so let me pick up on that one. I mean, we're really excited about the opportunity in market making. Actually, Peter and I were with the team in Jersey City last week, and we're definitely seeing volumes continue to increase across the ecosystem, and that gives us an increased level of confidence in the long-term potential of that market. Our ambition here as we've stated before is to establish a leading position in this space by leveraging the pricing and risk management and the trading capabilities that we've got developed over the years with our sports book and we feel that we've got a real advantage in that place in pricing complex and correlated markets as the combo volume increases we're a better place to take advantage of that and you know we we see that as a really attractive and fine margin segment um for us of course so it's still early days um i think you know the volumes that we're achieving into the second half of the year are encouraging and we think this has got the potential to become a meaningful revenue stream for us um but we see how we trade through the second half of the year and then we'll update forecast into 2027.

Okay, great. Thanks for that. And then a follow-up on the NFL. Could you just flesh out a little bit more details about the delayed start? You know, this is a market that you've commonly wanted to, you know, invest obviously ahead of the start, the time, you know, when there's the best customer acquisition opportunity. So what's sort of the playbook with a delayed start? How will you approach – how will you have to approach that differently?

The late start is really just a technicality brand. It's all around the timing of the season and where Labor Day falls, and this can move from one year to the next. We're not actually changing our investment posture at all here. The start of the NFL season is something that we'll lean into. It's really important for us in terms of re-engaging customers. What I would say is that during the World Cup, we actually reactivated a bunch more customers than we were anticipating which um was really encouraging for us to actually starting in a in a stronger position we're also clearly focused on on college football and the staff that which is a key opportunity um for us to you know get behind some sort of as we start the nfl but you know from a posture perspective we're not going to be changing our approach massively having the rewards club live for all customers this year is also going to be really important so we've already rolled it out to seven by the start of the nfl that's going to be available for all of our customers we're seeing really good traction behind that so you know with the college football starting the week before that's a great opportunity to prime customer wallets we hope to see a running start to the nfl season okay so the nfl schedule delay was not previously in guidance and is today, but this is an NFL schedule, not a flutter schedule. Correct. This is NFL judgment, which was a previously in guidance, and we've updated our guidance for it. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, Brant. And our next question comes from the line of Jordan Bender with Citizens. Jordan, please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Good morning. So direct casino and crew have actually looked pretty strong in the quarter, and keeping in mind, you can't grow iGaming revenue 40% forever. Can you just talk about what the sports betting to iGaming cross sell looks like now, and should we expect the investment into sports in the NFL season to actually help iCasino growth in the back half of the year? And then, Peter, I guess the second question, handle up 31% in July, which was better than your June performance. Just trying to piece together some of your comments around your market growth won't pick up in the back half of the year, but you did say MLB is starting to pick up a little bit. I guess just like what does that imply for your actual underlying business outside of the World Cup in July?

Okay, thank you, Jordan. Look, picking up on the gaming, we clearly harnessed the World Cup opportunity to increase the football-relevant content or soccer-relevant content during during the world cup um you know which obviously you know helped drive sort of reactivations and cross activation in in the tournament but you know you've got to remember that the main focus and push for us from a an i-gaming perspective is you know around acquiring those direct to casino customers and you know the love island unlocked launch we had in june our new brand ambassador and brand ambassador Ariana Maddox you know we've seen some really good success from that you know the monopoly live exclusive launch yeah so there's been a lot of great content that we've got supporting iGaming so clearly the smaller sports betting business we had coming into the year did impact cross-sell but you know as well as mentioned we've got a bigger uh a bigger base now so look i think we're um you know we're feeling um good about the the prospects for for the iGaming business you know your question around market growth you know we are you know we have seen this strong performance um through uh q2 um so we have seen um you know the strong you know nba finals we've been very pleased with the uh engagement we've seen around the world cup we are pleased with how we started into into q3 you know the the football season was tough last year you know we think you know a bunch of that was uh down to the uh the content which wasn't as engaging for uh for consumers uh there's also you know obviously some execution issue from our perspective around generosity but we're we're planning um you know some great campaigns this year we're hoping for some you know very compelling matchups and content and i think We'll see what happens. But our forecast assumes some prudent views around market growth in the second half. And I hope we find that the market outperforms that, but we thought it was the right thing to take the grades we saw in the first half and use that for the second half.

The other point to mention on iGaming is that clearly the success of our casino business has been built on direct acquisition which remains very strong. The cross-sell piece we've been really pleased with during the World Cup where the cross-sell actives were actually slightly ahead of our expectations and if you compare Q4 this year versus Q4 last year the cross-sell was actually slightly lower than we'd anticipated last year because of some of the execution issues being talked about Q4 which means we're quite optimistic about how the cross-sell will performance we moved to Q4 this year as well.

Thanks. And Peter, thanks for help all over the years.

Thank you, Jordan. All right. Thank you, Jordan. All right, ladies and gentlemen, just one more reminder. If you'd like to ask a question, once again, star one on your telephone keypad, once again, star one. And we do have a lot of callers in the queue and limited time. So from this point forward, we do ask that you please limit yourself to one question. Thanks for understanding. And our next question comes from the line of Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo. Trey, please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. I guess just if we could, on a pure modeling sense for the U.S. business, could we get a sense of the breakdown of the EBITDA for the balance of the year for Q3 and Q4 and just how, you know, potentially Q4 loaded the outlook is from here.

Thank you. Yeah, let me pick that one up, Trey. So for Q3, we are assuming a roughly break-even EBITDA with 500 million of EBITDA Q4, which is down from circa $700 million in our previous guidance. So if you roll through the factors there, the generosity phasing in terms of the increased investment that we're making you've got the nfl scheduled effects which is in u3 only there's also some state launch costs playing into that where we've got the continued arkansas investment this year we obviously had missouri launching um last year which was previously in the guidance the other thing to call out is we've got some operating cost savings coming through as part of the overall plan in the U.S., we've got about $45 million of operating costs savings in the second half. So those are the key moving parts for Q3 and Q4. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Trey. And our next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer. Jed, please go ahead.

Hey, great. Thanks for taking my question. Just going back to the investment in generosity. Should we just think of the U.S. sports book, given all the sports, the engaging nature, that this is just a lower net win margin market versus some of your other international markets that just might not have the sports steps that we have in the U.S.? Thanks.

Yeah, we've seen some improvements as we come into Q2 around our structural margin. I know there have been some questions around that. I think we would expect to continue to see growth in structural margin. I think we are seeing strong momentum in the business at the moment. I think we're feeling confident that the sportsbook improvement plan is working. We'll have the loyalty scheme rolled out to the entire customer base when we go into the football season. I think we've started making better customer focused and customer first decisions in the business. And I think as we've done in the past, it's time to invest behind that and make sure that as we move into 27, we have a bigger business and a better trajectory for the business. A bigger business means we can invest in having better products from a customer perspective and you know look I think we can also you know make sure that we're sort of growing ARPU as well as AMS and that's something that's really important for us as we as we look to grow and expand the business.

And medium to long term we see a very clear path to that margin expansion as we've talked about previously Trace so we've consistently demonstrated across all of our international businesses our ability to grow parlay penetration, also improve the product mix over time, and we think there's meaningful opportunity to do that in the U.S. Thank you, and good luck, Peter.

Thank you. Thanks, Jed. And our next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig Hallam Capital Group. Ryan, please go ahead.

Hey, good day, guys. Curious with the transition to Crypto.com for Sports from CME, how your JV will work from a contract volume standpoint through non-CME exchanges. Specifically, I believe it was a 50-50 economic split with CME. How does that work now with other exchanges?

Brian, look, we are excited about extending the Sports and Novelties catalog that we'll have available for our customers as a result of switching to this new venue for those products. And we will keep our existing financial markets with CME. So the economics for the financial markets with CME stay broadly as they were. I think there's probably a slight positive for us in moving towards crypto.com. It's a modest economic benefit. but the really important thing here is the step change we're going to see in the catalog for customers and together with the enhanced sports book proposition look and feel of the of the one app i think we're going to have a very compelling proposition available for consumers nationwide best of luck peter thank you thanks ryan and our next question comes from the line of Clark Lampin with BTIG.

Clark, please go ahead.

Thanks very much. Peter, I'll echo what some of my peers have said up front and say thanks and sort of best of luck. I'm glad we're doing this at sort of 9 a.m. now as opposed to 3 or 4 a.m. in the past also. My question is on the US iGaming business. In prior quarters, you guys sort of had a soft target for high teams growth. I'm curious if that was adjusted as part of the U.S. outlook. And maybe a sort of, you know, second component of this is if we're thinking about revenue margins and cost reduction opportunities for the U.S. business, how would you think about, you know, slots versus table game mix, opportunities for improving revenue margins, and then first-party content moving forward? Thanks very much.

Hi, Clark. So let me pick up the iGaming question. So we've always said in our guidance that we expect the iGaming business to grow at high teams for the year. And we expect that it to be slightly lower in H1 and H2, given the base of the sportsbook numbers coming into the year. As Peter said earlier, we're really pleased with the momentum that we've got in the iGaming business, you know, in the World Cup, the cross-sale actives were higher than we'd anticipated. I think from a content perspective, we were actually going through the plan with the team last week, but we've got exclusive content launches every month from now until the end of the year, and there's some popular franchise stuff in there and some repeats of some of franchise titles that worked really well for us in the past like Huff and Puff and the Willy Wonka titles so we're really pleased with where iGaming is and we've reiterated our guidance since the second half of the year as I said with the cross-sell piece earlier as well in Q4 anticipating a slightly better cross-sell performance in Q4 than with last year.

And look we can see that Clark in as you say the difference between the table games and slots we can see a very clear um you know distinction there um you know the the you know direct casino so the you know slots growing very strongly and yeah look as we said a few times on the call we're then coming into the year with a smaller sports base you know impacted uh table games but you know look i think as we've gone through the world cup seeing that big step up in performance the nba finals and all the plans we've got for the football season. I think we'll be excited to see what we can do in the second half.

All right. Thank you, Clark. And our next question comes from the line of Joe Stauf with Susquehanna. Joe, please go ahead.

Thanks. I just wanted to clarify a few things on your prediction market strategy at this point. You answered a couple, but do you expect to own your own exchange at some point? Can you give us any 2Q volume or user metrics? And the new one app that you're going to launch before the new sports season, will that include a traveling wallet?

Thank you, Joe. Yeah, this is a very fast moving space. And I mean, there's been news in the last few days around some of the complexities of market making if you own some of the exchange components so we've just got to be thoughtful that we position ourselves as well as we can and i think you know we're uh we're we're happy with um with the with the strategy that we have you know the as i said you know the one app is going to deliver a real step change in performance from a customer perspective and in terms of the travelling app if you have opened a contract up when you're in California and you're here in New York, you will be able to close that contract down that is something that will be available if that's what you mean by yes we will have it available for customers Rob do you want to talk about the volumes?

Yeah so the volumes are significantly up but on quite a small base so we're making really good progress as the prediction numbers are consolidated within our reported financial results but we're not separately disclosing the volumes at this point in time. I think the catalyst for higher volumes we anticipate will be the launch of the one app. Peter and I were with the team a couple of weeks ago. It looks really slick. I think we're quite excited about the impact that that will have, and it will be relatively seamless if you're, say, traveling from New York to California. The wallets are separate, but it's very easy to switch between. So I think that the product experience is going to be significantly enhanced from where it was. And the key for us is that we're going to have much more liquidity than we previously had. It's going to be a much fuller catalogue.

I think that's going to be a real benefit to us as we go into the new football and basketball season. thank you thanks joe and our next question comes from the line of dan politzer with jp morgan dan please go ahead hey good morning everyone and thanks for thanks for the question um just a clarification on the prediction market and how you think about the guidance there i think your guidance now reflects 50 million of incremental easter from market making and if i recall your guidance for the full year was 200 to 300 million of expected investment so i guess you know given that you have this incremental piece, where does that kind of put you in terms of the total investment you expect here for this year?

Yes, you're right on the market making, Dan, as I said earlier, we're quite excited about that opportunity and that's definitely increased quite a bit from where we were previously. With regards to the investment on Predicts, what we've done as a business in the last couple of quarters is really integrate Predicts with the sportsbook propositions. So we're no longer breaking out the investments separately. If you think about the cadence over the course of this year, our focus, as we said, at Q1 was leaning more into making sure that we've got the right product experience, which we really feel like we're doing with the one up and some of the changes that we've made with crypto.com being plugged in. From a cost perspective, then this gives us this synergistic benefit that we've been looking for across the sports book and predicts where we feel that we could really get national scale and leverage on our on our marketing spend which is is very uh very helpful for us in terms of the economics of how that then pains back over time that that remains relatively consistent we think with how we've we've previously described them we We need to see how the new product lands in the second half of the year and the traction that we get on the one act before we determine what the investment profile will be into the next year, but certainly the synergistic benefits that we will get from having a broader sports book proposition we think will stand us in very good stead. Got it.

Thanks so much, and Titor, best of luck. Thanks, Dan.

Thank you, Dan. and our next question comes from the line of monique pollard with city monique please go ahead hi everybody thank you for taking the question um it was just if i could come back to the investment that you're putting in in the second half to accelerate um the fan jewel sportsbook momentum so if i understood correctly rob that investment is all centered around generosity so i think that's an additional sort of 1.4 percent of last year's 2h handle that you're putting into promos um and promos last year in the second half were already 5.6 percent of handles so i guess we're going to go i'm just trying to make sure i'm saying this correctly we're going to go to like seven percent promos as a proportion of handle in the second half so sort of what what kind of customer paybacks etc are you expecting on that and is that do you see that as a sort of one-off in the second half or might that continue as we go into the first half 27 yeah so let me start on the on the numbers but we won't get seven percent of um and we'd sense of generosity in the second half of the year um we are we are increasing in terms of our overall position um so be closer to six percent that's a that's an increase on where we were last

year we previously anticipated that the profile would be slightly lower as we've got traction around the rewards club etc but as we've said you know this is a deliberate investment decision based on sportsbook momentum that we're we've currently got in business a lot of that has been generated by this approach that we've taken in q2 where we've been leaning in a bit more you know we We could have delivered higher EBITDA this year by investing less, but we don't think that's the right thing to maximize the long-term shareholder value. We're seeing great opportunity to invest behind the customer proposition, and that's coming through in current momentum. Even if you look at the last couple of weeks' trading across MLB, I think last week we had our record week ever in MLB. We've got a huge number of reactivated customers on the platform. We're really happy with the apps that we've got, the ecosystem as we head towards NFL. So the investment is a proactive one. It puts us slightly ahead of where we were last year in terms of customer generosity as a percentage of handle. And we will review the spending as we always do as we go into next year.

We're constantly looking at paybacks and the ROI that we're getting. but if you look at the those returns that we're getting at the moment they are you know looking very attractive and we'll continue to lead in money the one the one thing i decided you know we know we didn't execute on our generosity strategy as well as we could have done last year and you know i think we're in a much better place now i think you know with this investment with a better execution with the loyalty plan yeah we are seeing improvements around our ability to to drive and grow ARPU, and, you know, that is an important focus for us alongside the Amgro as well.

That's very clear. Thank you, and thanks for everything over the years, Peter.

Thanks, Monique. Thanks, Monique. And our next question comes from the line of Charlie Muir-Sands with B&P Paribas. Charlie, please go ahead.

Yeah, morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. um firstly just with respect to the incremental cost savings program you you've updated the restructuring cost charges you anticipate to incur in 2026 but is it fair to assume that there will be ongoing cash restructuring charges through 27 and perhaps 28 to deliver that 2029 saving and to link more broadly to that has the board given mr taylor a kind of wider remit to review the corporate structure and strategy of the business or should we see this as uh the evolution of the strategy from here and no likely further major changes to come so thank you

sorry let me start with the cost investment and how we're thinking about it and maybe peter can pick up on the second part of your question so a couple of things to mention firstly from our initial cost transformation program that we launched in in 2024 it's important to know that we're actually tracking ahead of that so we've delivered all of the key component parts largely in terms of the activities we've got the new UKI operating model in place the SkyBet migration's complete the PokerStars transformation's going really well and it's in its final stages and And the SNI migration went really well earlier this year. So really close with that. With regards to the incremental $500 million that we're talking about today, this really builds on that progress that we've made and reflects the next phase of how we intend to operate. This is about simplifying the organization. It's about leveraging our global scale more. it's about accelerating the use of technology and AI and continuing to remove duplication across the group. If you look at our SDI guidance for this year, we've got 100 million of costs badged against this, which is in conjunction with the US and the start of this program more broadly across the group. Of course, there'll be some additional one-off costs into 27 and 28. Typically, when we look at big restructuring programs, So you look at a dollar of cost for a dollar of run rate savings, we actually think it will be lower on this because of the nature of the savings and the fact that a lot of them will be tech and AI driven. So we think the cost will be lower.

But yes, there will be some incremental costs into 27 and 28. and charlie in terms of your question around dan and and strategy look you know dan has been you know very involved in you know all of the strategy you know work that we've done as a group you know over the years and execution of the plans of the business um is clearly very supportive of all the stuff that we're announcing uh today as well so um yeah i think you'd expect to see a continuation of the drastic and the execution against it as he picks up the reins on the 1st of October. Thanks, Charlie.

And our next question comes from the line of Ian Moore with Bernstein.

Ian, please go ahead. Thanks for taking my question. I guess just harping on kind of what Monique was asking about earlier, I guess the incremental investment that you're, you know, putting into the generosity in the second half. Obviously, you know, given, I guess, Dan mentioned this a little bit earlier, but given the kind of missteps with managing generosity last NFL season, as you look into this NFL season with this incremental investment, what would success kind of look like 12 months out as you're reengaging customers going into the next NFL season or said it differently, like what specifically is different about the setup into this NFL season versus last year?

Thanks, Ian. Look, I think you've answered the question to some extent yourself, right? So the missteps last year, we didn't apply and approach the generosity strategy as well as we should have done, particularly in a very high margin sort of environment. We weren't there consistently for our customers. That is something we are addressing through the loyalty program, and I'm excited about the traction we're getting from that, the improvements in average player days, which of course translates into ARPU, and what customers are telling us about their perception of our generosities as a consequence. We are investing more as we go into the second half. I think it's the right thing to do to take advantage of the momentum we have in the business. The test for us will be, as we come into 2027, do we have a bigger business with a better trajectory than we had anticipated? That's what we're planning for. And we know that if we've got better momentum, higher revenues in the business, it enables us to invest more behind delivering great product experiences for customers, and we'll be able to really take advantage of the loyalty program and other features and offerings for Appreciate that.

Best of luck.

Thanks, Ian. And our next question comes from the line of Chad Bainan with Macquarie Group. Chad, please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. And Peter, thanks for everything up to this point. Just with respect to U.S. iGaming and sports betting regulation, I know the main iGaming law, I think, just took effect for 2027. launch partnerships with the tribes is the way that that that was written. How are you looking, I know it's early, and a lot of this will come in the beginning of 27. But how are you looking at prospects for iGaming or sports betting legalization in 27? Thank you.

Chad, when we talked at the Capitalist Markets Day, we said we would hope to have one new iGaming state by by uh 27 um you know by the end of 27 and look i think we're optimistic i think you know um you know virginia has probably got furthest of any of our uh target um states um you know i think there's some interesting opportunities around dc but then like you know you know there's a bunch of them uh where we're you know hoping to build traction whether it's um you know ohio or other places we can mention. So we think it's going to happen and there's a little pent up demand for us to be able to deliver the income and public experience to customers in those states.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Chad. Thanks. And our next question comes from the line of Paul Reddy with Davey. Paul, please go ahead.

Hi, Peter and Rob. Quick question on international, if that's okay. Just firstly on the UK and I, just how has the market progressed since the introduction of the iGaming tax? Have you seen any evidence of kind of changing competitor behavior and general thoughts on And maybe just secondly then on Brazil, just Brazil still seems to be rather bumpy, you know, thoughts on continuing to invest there and, you know, when that market might start to improve you. Thank you.

Thank you, Paul. I think the important point that we flag is the sequential improvement we're seeing in Sky Gaming. I think customers have adapted to the new interface post-migration and we've had a very strong World Cup for all of our brands in the UK. I think we've obviously guided to our first order mitigants in the market and i think you know we're adapting um you know our approach around that probably taking a little bit more um focus on headcount savings rather than um marketing because we want to maintain our uh posture in the market we do think we're beginning to see some of our competitors pulling back as we anticipated and so look i think the second order mitigants are going to be significant and will be well positioned to to capitalize on this yeah in brazil paul was still really excited about our potential in this market i think there's there's a number of improvements that we've implemented across

the first half of the year we've got our products and pricing capabilities now including that builder in brazil and the uptake on that has been very strong we've improved the i-gaming proposition and that improved the generosity metrics around that. So we're feeling quite confident about our product and how we set up into 27. You know, there is quite a moving face with regards to the regulatory backdrop in Brazil and that's somewhat stifling the overall market growth. But within the context of that market, I think we're happy with our performance and we're still encouraged about the medium to long-term opportunity there. Okay, thanks for both of you. And best of luck, Peter.

Thank you, Paul.

And our next question comes from the line of John Decree with CBRE. John, please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. And Peter, I'll pile on the congratulations. You've got quite a career at Flutter. Maybe kind of looking ahead, this is probably a prediction markets TAM question. But when you kind of look at the comparable, the Betfair exchange in the U.K. and the U.S., and in states where predictions in sports coexist under a less vague regulatory environment. Do you see anything in the U.S. or U.S. consumer where predictions could be a much bigger piece of the overall sports pool than you see in the U.K.?

Well, John, if we look at the UK or other markets like Italy or Brazil, where the Betfair exchange co-exists with other sports books, we find that the exchange has a pretty small market share. And that's primarily because of the inability to offer generosity through an exchange platform. Of course, the person that needs to provide the generosity is effectively the market maker and they can't be confident they'll get the next bet from a customer if they've offered them some generosity back. I don't see that structure being any significantly different here in America. So I think the extent to which you have critics coexisting with regulated OSB, I'd expect to see the regulated OSB continue to take the vast majority of the business. Clearly, there are some niche areas, shops, and stuff like that where they would be more likely to take their volumes to the predict-type platforms. But as we know, they're not things which the traditional bookmakers can make money from anyway.

Very helpful.

Thanks, Peter. Good luck.

Thanks, John. Thank you, John. And ladies and gentlemen, we are running long. So we will conclude the Q&A session today. I would now like to turn the call back over to Peter Jackson for closing comments.

Okay. Thank you very much, Greg. And look, you know, I'm sorry we've overrun. You just thought that having done this 35 times, we would have got the hang of it by now. So with apologies to those of you who didn't get to. The IR team are around and here to take any of your questions. Thank you very much, everybody. And I appreciate your support over the years.

Thanks, Peter. And ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining, and you may now disconnect. Have a great day, everyone.