Earnings Call
Motorsport Games Inc. (MSGM)
Earnings Call Transcript - MSGM Q2 2021
Operator, Operator
Thank you for joining us for the Motorsport Games Inc. Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. We will have a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. I will now hand over to Ashley DeSimone with Integrated Corporate Relations. Please proceed.
Ashley DeSimone, Integrated Corporate Relations
Thank you, operator and welcome everyone to Motorsport Games second quarter 2021 conference call and webcast. On today's call are Dmitry Kozko, Motorsport Games' Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Stephen Hood, President; and Jon New, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company's second quarter earnings press release filed today after market closed. This is available on the Investor Relations section of Motorsport Games' website. During the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement made on this call, or to alter its forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please refer to today's press release and the company's filings with the SEC, including the company's most recent annual report and quarterly report for detailed discussions of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. In today's conference call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA as we discuss the second quarter 2021 financial results. You will find a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to our actual GAAP results, as well as two other related disclosures in the press release issued earlier today. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Dmitry Kozko, Chief Executive Officer of Motorsport Games. Dmitry?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
Thank you and hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you as we report another successful quarter of making meaningful progress towards our set forth vision, as well as some exciting updates for Motorsport Games. Please check out our investor video posted on the landing page of our website, which contains some very appealing visuals from our new highly anticipated NASCAR 21: Ignition game. We hope these quarterly videos continue to give you the sense of Motorsport Games' progress towards our vision of being the household brand name for racing games and Esports. Before I dive into details, I want to say a quick thank you to our shareholders and racing fans who have been patiently waiting for the release of our upcoming NASCAR 21 title. Thank you for taking the time to learn our story and be part of this amazing journey. For all our new shareholders, let me quickly reiterate who we are and what drives us. We're an award-winning, global leading racing game developer, publisher and an Esport ecosystem provider of official motorsport racing series throughout the world. Our mission in Motorsport Games is to create and spread the joy through racing games, starting with our unique access to our parent companies' approximately 16 million monthly active users and beyond. We set out to achieve this mission by developing and publishing racing games and immersive Esport experiences for the world's most iconic races and brands who trust us with their valuable IP, often in long-term partnerships like the one we have with NASCAR and recently, IndyCar. These are just examples of several iconic brands we work with today, with others including ACO, representing 24 Hours Le Mans, and the British Touring Car Championship. As we acquire more IP, we plan to leverage these iconic brands to build out our core business. We're now operating on a global scale across six offices, with more than 147 team members as of quarter-end in the US, UK, Russia, Australia, and the Netherlands. Our talented team of developers and artists are relentlessly collaborating to bring innovative experiences to our racing games and Esports. Our global studio presence is one of many differentiating factors. As we continue to seek additional IP opportunities to expand our fan base and continue to grow as leaders across the virtual racing space around the world. We continue to assemble strategic assets that we believe we need to elevate us from being a single franchise company to a multi-franchise game publisher, developer and an Esport ecosystem provider. With that being said, we're so excited that earlier today we made an official announcement that our newly built NASCAR franchise video game, NASCAR 21: Ignition, will be released on October 28. This date nicely coincides with the exciting finale of the NASCAR season, while also allowing us some added time to make additional improvements to the game. It is extremely important to us that we bring the best possible product to our racing fans, and we're confident our fans will enjoy this gaming experience. Digital pre-sales for the game are launching as early as tomorrow, which will provide insight into pent-up demand expressed by our fan base on multiple social channels. From where we stand today, we believe market demand for this game is very strong. We of course communicate regularly with our distributors. Recently, our largest distributor provided an estimate, which is projected to put the day one order of NASCAR 21 physical discs as the largest order ever received by Motorsport Games for its published games. NASCAR 21: Ignition is also a perfect example of Motorsport Games' primary growth strategy, which is to create racing games that we can scale by expanding our portfolio brands into multiple franchises with multiple games each paired with a dedicated Esport offering. Starting with our NASCAR partnership, we have a chance to launch games across more platforms, including Nintendo Switch. This is the first time we're expanding to the Switch platform, and the upcoming NASCAR Switch games has just been submitted for the last check. We're incredibly excited for you to see the results once the game is released in Q4 of this year, shortly after we release NASCAR 21: Ignition. In the same vein, in July 2021, we successfully signed a long-term partnership to release official IndyCar Series games and Esport events, introducing a brand new community of passionate racing fans to our Motorsport Games family of products. With this partnership, we are able to add an open-wheel racing series to our portfolio, thus expanding the racing disciplines to create additional motorsport video games for all fans alike. Our plan is to deliver a high quality, realistic, and exciting IndyCar racing experience that fans have long been waiting for across a variety of platforms, devices, and formats. The debuted IndyCar title is expected to launch in 2023 on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as PC. We expect that the IndyCar Series Esport events to kick off as early as the fourth quarter of this year to start generating demand for the upcoming IndyCar title. We're also evolving the KartKraft brand into a fully developed racing game. Right now, the game sits as an early release. Every month, starting September, we will be updating it and adding new features to the game that we hope will, in time, result in a go-to kart racing game. KartKraft is a perfect stepping stone into the world of virtual motorsport, much like in the real world where recognizable racing stars started their careers in karting. Moving on to the topic of previous acquisitions and their integrations, since completing the acquisition of Studio 397 and acquiring their hyper-realistic technology platform rFactor 2, we have been able to accelerate the integration of this technology into the new NASCAR 21: Ignition game and our upcoming Le Mans and BTCC titles. Furthermore, this technology has provided us the ability to launch Esport offerings prior to the release of any game titles, and even generate game sales revenue from the sale of such content using the rFactor 2 platform. We cannot understate the growing importance of Esports to our business, which has funneled new users across our product base and driven higher fan engagement and new potential revenue streams from sponsorships. We continue to dedicate ourselves to being the leading player in the racing Esports scene, and we believe that our combination of World Class events around unmatched iconic IP and indeed user engagement with our fans will help us get there. A few weeks ago, we saw the finale of NASCAR Ultimate Summer Showdown Esports series, where we saw tremendous turnout from racers from all over the world participating. We also launched the Formula Pro Series on rFactor 2 with world-class Esports team participation from the likes of Red Bull Racing, Mercedes AMG Petronas, Williams, Team Redline, Wolves, Team Fordzilla, and many more. We're looking forward to future Esport events later this year, including official events for BTCC, Le Mans, and now IndyCar. With the rFactor 2 technology, we intend to release an IndyCar game pack that will allow our fans not only to participate in an upcoming official IndyCar Esport event but also to test drive the IndyCar experience while we work on the official dedicated game. Now, Stephen is going to say a few words about our product development.
Stephen Hood, President
Thank you, Dmitry and hello everyone. My name is Stephen Hood, and I am the President of Motorsport Games. As we approached this release milestone, a significant step in the life of our young company, I would like to give an update on the continued expansion of our capabilities and how our development teams are scaling to handle multiple franchises. Whilst efforts to close down and release our new NASCAR projects are front and center of daily operations, we have established work streams, processes, and added headcount specific to new projects from BTCC to Le Mans or more recently, IndyCar. These franchises represent the next phase in the lifecycle of our business, each benefiting from recent acquisitions, leveraging technology and skills, now owned entirely by Motorsport Games. The acquisition of rFactor and KartKraft technologies, not to mention the impending release of our first full product in NASCAR 21: Ignition, provides confidence in the realization of our MSGM games platform. This is an evolving platform to be leveraged by all our franchises, which brings significant efficiencies to our development operation. A developer in our Moscow studio will be as familiar with our tool chain and processes as any other, whether they are based in Australia, the Netherlands, the UK, or the US. This distributed workforce has proven essential over the last 18 months, and we continue to refine our lines of communication to ensure we get the very best from our teams. As we have looked towards recruiting additional talent to spearhead the management of these new titles, this has resulted in us adding noteworthy personnel from companies such as Splash Damage, Outplay Entertainment, and EA Criterion, not to mention many others we're expected to announce in due course. Technology is important to us; if used right, it provides the foundation to differentiate through the application of our great talent. Our people are at the heart of our capability, and it gives me enormous pride to see the caliber of people we continue to recruit. These hires share the same passion we hold for making great racing games and have made clear and positive contributions to the business, and we consider them integral to our continued growth. For example, our mobile development business is one area that has benefited from the key hire of an executive producer role. I'm pleased to say that our NASCAR match three mobile game title past new turn on green light is now expected to soft launch in Q4 of this year, ahead of a global rollout in early '22. We believe our mobile leadership team is now well positioned to execute on forthcoming mobile and Switch projects with any future mobile acquisitions, trying to integrate into the structure, which will aid future integrations as we look to drive significant IP through our mobile and handheld business unit. Ultimately, we believe that our unmatched IP, in-house talent, and past strategic acquisitions will create a household brand name for dedicated racing experiences, each of the long-term world-class licenses we hold: NASCAR, IndyCar, Le Mans, and the British Touring Car Championship. Let me hand it over to Jon New to give a review of our second quarter financial results.
Jon New, CFO
Thank you, Stephen. We're pleased to welcome everyone to our second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Our second quarter highlights include the acquisition, closing of Studio 397 and the buyout of the remaining minority interest in 704Games during the quarter. Revenues were 2.2 million and 3.9 million for the quarters ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 respectively, a decrease of 1.7 million or 42%. For the three months ended June 30, 2021, revenues from our gaming segment decreased 1.6 million or 41% to 2.2 million from 3.8 million in the prior year period. The decrease in our gaming segment revenues compared to the 2020 period was primarily due to lower sales of our NASCAR console and PC games, and to a lesser extent, a reduction in mobile revenues. Our Esport revenues were zero and 100,000 for the quarters ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 respectively, a decrease of 100,000 from sponsorship revenues received. While we held seven Esport events during the second quarter of 2021, we did not earn any sponsorship revenues from these events as they were primarily marketing. Gross profit was 1.3 million or 60% of revenues and 2.6 million or 67% of revenues for the quarters ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 respectively, a decrease of 1.3 million or 49%. The decrease in gross profit was primarily due to a reduction of 1.6 million in games revenue and an increase of 0.3 million in amortization expense, partially offset by the increased percentage of digital sales which have a higher gross margin percentage than the sale of physical units. With lower revenues and higher amortization expense during 2021, our gaming segment gross profit was 1.3 million and 2.6 million for the quarters ended June 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively. Costs relating to prizes and staffing at Esport events resulted in a gross loss of $3,500 and $4,400 in our Esports segment for the quarters ended June 30, 2021, and 2020, respectively. Operating expenses were 7.3 million and 2.5 million for the quarters ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 respectively, an increase of 4.8 million, primarily attributable to a 4.1 million increase in general and administrative expenses incurred in connection with acquisitions and expanding our headcount for planned growth, and 600,000 for increases in our development costs as we expand our portfolio of game offerings. The 4.1 million increase in general and administrative expenses includes 1.6 million of expenses relating to acquisitions, 900,000 increase in salaries and benefits, 700,000 increase in office and insurance costs, 600,000 increase in professional fees, and a 100,000 increase in non-cash stock-based compensation expenses. Net loss attributable to Motorsport Games was 5.8 million or $0.50 per share of Class A common stock for the quarter ended June 30, 2021 compared to $78,315 for the second quarter of 2020. Negative adjusted EBITDA was 3.7 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2021 as compared to 400,000 in positive adjusted EBITDA for the quarter ended June 30, 2020. Revenues were 4.7 million and 7.1 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively, a decrease of 2.4 million or 34%. For the six months ended June 30, 2021, revenues from our gaming segment decreased 2.3 million or 33% to 4.7 million from 7 million for the six months ended June 30 2020. The decrease in our gaming segment revenues compared to the 2020 period was primarily due to lower sales of our NASCAR console games and PC games and, to a lesser extent, a reduction in mobile revenues. Esports segment revenues were $23,919 and $93,165 for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020, respectively. So that's a decrease of $69,000 due to lower sponsorship revenues. We held 11 events during the first six months of 2021. And again, they were primarily marketing efforts. Gross profit was $3 million or 64% of revenue and $4.8 million or 67% of revenues for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 respectively, a decrease of 1.8 million or 37%. The decrease in gross profit was primarily due to the reduction in gaming revenues and an increase in amortization expense. This was partially offset by the increased percentage of digital sales, which have a higher gross margin than the sale of physical units. Our gaming segment gross profit was $3.1 million and $4.9 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021 and 2020 respectively, primarily due to lower gaming revenues, costs relating to prizes, and staffing at Esport events resulting in a gross loss of $46,325 and $149,456 in our Esports segment for the six months ended June 30, 2021, and 2020 respectively. We held 11 events so far this year. Operating expenses were $24.4 million and $4.8 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021, and 2020, respectively. That's an increase of 19.6 million, primarily attributable to an increase of 18.2 million in general and administrative expenses, 900,000 increase in development expenses as we expand our game portfolio, and a 400,000 increase in sales and marketing to support a larger product offering. The general and administrative expenses increase of 18.2 million was comprised primarily of $9 million increase in non-cash stock-based compensation, a $2.9 million increase for IPO related expenses, a $1.9 million increase in costs related to acquisitions, a $1.6 million increase in salaries and benefits to sustain the larger game portfolio, a $1.2 million increase in office and insurance expenses, and a $1.1 million increase in professional fees. Our net loss attributable to Motorsport Games Inc. was $19.6 million or $1.88 per share of Class A common stock for the six months ended June 30, 2021 versus a net loss attributable to Motorsport Games Inc. of $0.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020. Negative adjusted EBITDA was $3.7 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2021 versus positive adjusted EBITDA of $300,000 for the six months ended June 30, 2020. Let's touch on our financial expectations for the balance of the year; given the fourth quarter release of NASCAR 21: Ignition, we expect full year revenues to be approximately $20.5 million and adjusted EBITDA to be approximately negative $10 million. Thank you for joining us today.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Your first question comes from Michael Graham from Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Michael Graham, Analyst
Thank you. Hey, guys, thanks for all the info and congrats on getting the launch of the game set. The video looks cool. So thanks for that as well. I have a few questions. And I just wanted to start with just the timing of the launch. It was about a month later than you'd indicated in the last earnings call. And so one question was just to the extent that there were development delays, can you just talk about maybe what you learned from those if anything? And then one thing that seems like a positive is that it puts the launch a little bit closer to the holiday season and I'm just wondering if that was a factor in your decision making?
Stephen Hood, President
Hi, Michael. I can probably take that one; it's Stephen. I think it's fair to say there's a lot we learned from the scenario that we're going through at the moment. I mean, we've talked at length about the pandemic. And it's quite clear that it impacted us to a certain extent when it comes to testing and tweaking a game towards the end of a project more so than we would have liked. And that's one of the reasons why we've extended the timeline because our different studios around the world, including the test teams, are dotted all over this planet. At times, local restrictions have meant that people have had to relocate to work from home and contribute from home, which causes particular challenges for us. If we've learned one thing from this process, it's probably how to work effectively in a very fast-changing and dynamic environment. We can't predict rules that occur around the world. Moving specific hardware from the office to home has been a technical challenge not only for us, but also our partners in Sony and Microsoft. We've learned a lot from those relationships. So I think it's important to understand the ever-changing dynamic that we have to address, and also this kind of period of extension, if I can just address this, has given us the opportunity to leverage the input of recent superstars that have been joining Motorsport Games. Their input into the product, I think, has been quite significant in improving the quality of the end game and also rolls into subsequent products from multiple games. So there's a lot to learn, and there are positives to take from this as well.
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
If I may add, it's Dmitry, Michael. Thank you for the question. On the holiday part, as you heard from Stephen, the two contributing factors do provide us a little added benefit with the holiday schedule being closer. You could envision us, especially at the physical stores, being closer to the locations that demonstrate the new release titles more so than in our normal cycles. We'll be going into the discounted Black Friday's type participation. So as being newer, being closer to the holiday cycle, we believe will be beneficial to us.
Michael Graham, Analyst
Okay, that makes sense. And then the other question I wanted to ask is just on the guidance. First of all, I think it's tremendous that you're issuing guidance for the first time; I think that's great. I'm just wondering when you think about some of your other revenue streams outside of the console games, like Esports and mobile, did those factor significantly into your guidance? Or was your guidance built primarily around some of the console game revenue?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
The guidance was primarily around the console and PC release of our NASCAR 21: Ignition. Go ahead, Jon.
Jon New, CFO
And we also have revenues... yeah, we also have revenues kicking in from Studio 397, so that's starting to ramp up. So there's a little bit coming from there too.
Michael Graham, Analyst
Got it, okay. And then last one for me, and I'll go back in the queue. I just - one of the things that jumped out at me in the release about the game launch was just the DLC component seemed to be a big point of emphasis, and also the career mode seem to be a big positive point of emphasis. And maybe you can just touch on sort of how much of an addition are those two features from your prior versions of NASCAR Heat, I guess, and how excited are you about those?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
We're definitely excited about bringing additional content, especially champions type of content. Billy Elliot is going to be a playable character with paint schemes. There are benefits to this whole champions edition and the ability to participate in the pre-orders that we're rolling out, more so than we've done before. But I think more importantly, what we're really excited about since we had an opportunity to build this title from scratch is that we really had good insight from our community regarding what they have been missing in previous versions and what was not possible to deliver previously, such as a very robust paint booth to give the personalization that fans desire. So we're more excited about those fan-desired features rather than just the downloadable content and NASCAR content. We're more excited about the personalizations that the users will have in this game. Of course, since it's built from scratch, brand new physics, and brand new graphics, we just know that the look and feel of this product is something that will wow the user, and that's the emotion we're going for. I think some of the early tracking of commentary around the game trailer that was just released earlier today is starting to validate that.
Michael Graham, Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks so much. I'll go back in the queue.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Your next question is from Mike Hickey from Benchmark. Please go ahead.
Mike Hickey, Analyst
Hey, Dmitry, Stephen, Jon, great quarter guys, thanks for taking my questions. I guess the first one to meet you. I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks that gave an indication of physical selling, sounded like it was pretty substantial. Could you sort of double click on that piece? I wasn't quite clear there, but it sounded like it was some sort of record compared to prior iterations.
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
Sure. Thanks, Mike, for the question. Yes, you're correct. Normally, what happens in that cycle is before the release, we go through a series of meetings with large retailers paired with our distributors. This is the primary distributor that supplies the majority of the stores for us. During these meetings, the information that the distributor collects provides pretty accurate statements, sorry, estimates. The reason I say pretty accurate is that historically, what we have seen is their estimates translate almost one for one into orders. It is very rare that when our distributor estimates a certain amount, they either back down or increase on day one; they do increase afterwards, but they're pretty accurate on their day one order. So where we are today is that we received those estimates from our largest distributor, which indicates clearly when we compare our historical data to other games that Motorsport Games has published, this is our largest order. I cannot say it's significantly larger than before, but it is definitely a record-breaking order for us. We want to create momentum and a large demand, so we want those orders to continue to come in instead of just taking one initial one that might last throughout a period.
Mike Hickey, Analyst
Nice. Thank you. I think you mentioned you're going to start to open up digital pre-orders tomorrow. That's exciting. Are you providing incentives there for pre-orders on digital? Or what are your expectations?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
Absolutely, and that's what we're very excited about. Yes, the incentives will give folks early access to play the game, with a two-day early access if somebody pre-orders, alongside additional unique paint schemes for those who pre-order. These have historically proven to be large enough incentives for our early adopters to hop in. Those pre-orders give us a good indication of additional ramp-ups that we might have to do for our selling orders for the stores. We continue to pass this data back and forth with our distributor. Even though their day one order is essentially ready, we still have the opportunity to provide them with pre-order insights on the quantities of how we're doing to discuss potential day two type of orders.
Mike Hickey, Analyst
Nice, is NASCAR helping create awareness for the game or are they planning to?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
They absolutely are, and I'm proud to say that as we unveiled our trailer earlier today, within minutes, it appeared on nascar.com’s homepage, their social channels, and more. There's definitely pent-up demand within drivers and teams. We are looking forward to NASCAR's contributions toward promoting this title.
Mike Hickey, Analyst
Thanks, Dmitry. Last question I think for me here, you obviously had tough comparisons last year when shuffling and home was an issue, or reality, I guess, what are you seeing sort of from player engagement on the core audience as you sort of reopen the economy?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
We do still see an increase if we compare towards pre-pandemic time and now. Of course, during the pandemic, there was an additional increase, and it did go down a little bit, but not to the pre-pandemic stage. Of course, our users are also experiencing an older title than usual. So we cannot wait to see what this interaction looks like as soon as they get their hands on this new title.
Mike Hickey, Analyst
Awesome, thanks guys. Best of luck with your launch coming up in October.
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
Thank you, Mike.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Your next question is from Franco Granda from D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.
Franco Granda, Analyst
Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions this afternoon. First of all, congrats on the launch of the trailer. It seems timely as everybody's excited. I've been browsing social media, all of the social media channels, and people are cautiously optimistic, and some are very excited to see the attraction there. One of the things that I noticed as I can look through what people are talking about was the damage models. So I guess the question for me to you is how do you feel about how your damage model in the car looks like today? And how's it shaping up ahead of launch?
Stephen Hood, President
Hi, Franco, it's Stephen. A very good question; everybody seems to gravitate towards the damage model in the NASCAR game, and I wonder why. It's something we've put a fair bit of effort into because for us, one of the important things is not only the visual damage that you get to see on the cars in a big accident or smash; the really important thing for us is to try and convey the fact that you're driving a machine. The bodywork is the shell; you have an engine within the car, and tires made of rubber—the contact point on the ground—these elements make the whole experience feel more believable. So I think even in the trailer, I saw it go live; you can see, for example, an engine starting to smoke and overheat in the garage as the team starts to repair it. Some people pick up on things like this in the trailer, but in the final game, it will feel more believable to be driving a machine rather than a toy as you do in most racing games. It goes hand in hand for us in terms of showcasing the damage visually and also making the whole experience more believable. You're driving a car. I think for the initial installment, people will be suitably impressed, but we know that we are going to do a lot more to this over time, and it will add to the experience and please fans new and old alike.
Franco Granda, Analyst
Yeah, thanks for the color. And I can assure you that they will notice this after a few hours. You obviously had no Esports revenues in the quarter, so I guess what is your outlook in the segment for the rest of the year? Obviously, you have Le Mans coming up here in about 10 days. Any color on whether you're making any changes to how you're monetizing this event compared to last year?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
Hi, Franco, it's Dmitry. Thanks for the question. We are definitely, as mentioned on the call, getting ready to launch quite a few marquee Esport events. If you look at our Q2, we did not have such revenues. You could expect to have quite a difference in terms of the results that we could derive, both in audience growth and revenues. Le Mans virtual is something we'll be talking about very soon here, together with an official BTCC type of Esport. Additionally, with the recent addition of IndyCar, we are targeting to launch an official Esport for IndyCar in Q4 of this year or towards the end of the year, so multiple official events will attract sponsorship contributions towards our revenue lines. We haven't given guidance separately on it, so we're sticking to our $20.5 million target for the year, which includes that.
Franco Granda, Analyst
Thank you. And then, last one from me. Do you have any update on the Esports integration onto traction later this year?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
If you're referencing Franco, maybe towards some of the points we discussed in our previous call, where we said towards the end of the year, we are looking to include functionality where folks will be able to sort of conduct their own events. Yes, we are in development of such. We haven't made announcements along with a couple of other features that we are looking to bring to traction. It is still in development and remains on our roadmap.
Franco Granda, Analyst
All right, thank you very much for the color.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Kupinski from Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Michael Kupinski, Analyst
Thank you for taking my questions. I greatly appreciate that. Just a couple; first of all, maybe I may have missed this, but did you go over the cash on hand - your current cash on hand?
Jon New, CFO
No, we didn't. It's between 25 million and 26 million today.
Michael Kupinski, Analyst
Okay, thank you. And then you talked a little bit about this, but I was just wondering in terms of the impact from COVID related to sales of video games, particularly the curve that we normally see in terms of sales. Has it been elevated? Have prices been different, unit sales been different as we went through 2020 and into 2021? Anything that you've seen differently than the normal bell curve you might have seen for the games?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
Hey, thanks, Michael, for the question. There is definitely some uplift from COVID that we experienced, and we are kind of seeing a reduction of that. We also had a new title since July of last year, so last year, the new title helped elevate the bell curve throughout the year, but this year, we haven't had a new title as we did in the middle of last year. Therefore, it does look different. If we were to align the release schedules, we would see a pretty small impact in terms of COVID contribution, but there is one.
Michael Kupinski, Analyst
And that was both on unit sales and pricing as well, or on both?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
Mostly on unit sales, our pricing has been pretty consistent against our historical information.
Michael Kupinski, Analyst
Got you, and just to follow up the question in terms of the launch window for NASCAR Ignite, are there any other titles that might compete with your launch around October 28 that might be a little bit of what I would call tent pole type launches and things like that? And then how close to the season finale on November 7 of NASCAR do you feel would be ideal launch for NASCAR Ignite? Just in case the launch slips for any reason, what would be the window? What would you hope to - I mean, would you expect that there would be a lift from the season finale, that sort of thing?
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
We chose a season finale towards the end of the season as a launch date. That allowed us a little more time to take in the contributions from the superstars that joined our team recently, as Stephen referenced. We do see this as another optimal window for us. Historical data shows that September is a good window for us to launch. We tried a July launch last year that was less successful than September would be, but that's only one attempt during that month compared to three years of trying it in September. October is a new one for us, but we do usually see a demand towards the end of the season, just like there is at the beginning. We hope to rise with that demand. As far as additional titles, Forza Horizon is coming out in November, and as we're the only motorsport IP, that does shine a light on us differently. There have been positive comments around our game's quality, even from Microsoft representatives, making jokes about it being up to par.
Michael Kupinski, Analyst
Got you, great, that's all I had. Thank you. And good luck.
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
Thank you.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand it back to Dmitry Kozko for any closing remarks.
Dmitry Kozko, CEO
I want to thank again everyone for participating in our earnings call. I would like to urge those that participated to take a look at something we're really proud of. Today has been a very special day, not just to deliver the results to you all, but to showcase for the first time ever the game trailer of something we've been working on for a few years already. It is our marquee event for us. It's super important to be able to gather feedback, and we're super excited to showcase our work. I urge you all to take a look if you haven't yet and dig deeper into the comments to see what the fans are saying. Thank you very much for joining again.
Operator, Operator
Thank you. That does conclude our conference call today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.