Playtika - Q3 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and welcome to Playtika Holding Corp Q3 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Tae Lee, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Tae Lee (SVP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations)

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the third quarter 2024 earnings call for Playtika Holding Corp. Joining me on the call today are Robert Antokol, Co-founder and CEO of Playtika, and Craig Abrams, Playtika's President and Chief Financial Officer. I would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the company's anticipated future revenue and operating performance. These statements and other comments are not a guarantee of future performance, but rather are subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control. These forward-looking statements apply as of today, and you should not rely on them as representing our views in the future. We undertake no obligation to update these statements after this call. We have posted an accompanying slide deck to our Investor Relations website, which contains information on forward-looking statements and Non-GAAP measures.

And we will also post our prepared remarks immediately following this call. For a more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties, please see our filings with the SEC. With that, I will now turn the call over to Robert.

Robert Antokol (Co-founder and CEO)

Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. We're excited to share updates on our recent progress, especially about our proposed acquisition of Superplay. For those who have not seen our earlier communication, this deal is a key milestone for us and fits with our growth strategy. While the acquisition is still pending customary closing conditions, we see it as an important step in changing our growth momentum. M&A has always been a cornerstone in our strategy here in Playtika. Over the years, we have found, acquired, and most importantly, scaled top-tier gaming studios, which has allowed us to build a robust portfolio. Nine of our top 11 existing titles have come via M&A. Superplay, with its success in high-growth categories through Dice Dreams and Domino Dreams, brings us an incredible opportunity to enhance our portfolio.

These titles already have a strong market presence, and Superplay's two new games in development also bring further momentum to our business. By empowering Superplay to continue their innovation work while leveraging our scale and resources, we aim to maximize the potential of their games and enhance our market leadership. This acquisition, when finalized, will demonstrate our continued commitment to building a diverse and successful portfolio of market-leading franchises. We're excited about the future game pipeline at Superplay and what this can mean for our players and the shareholders. Thank you for the continued support. I will hand over to Craig for a more detailed review of our performance this past quarter.

Craig Abrahams (President and CFO)

Thank you, Robert, and good morning, everyone. Following on Robert's comments, I want to take a moment to emphasize how the Superplay acquisition aligns with our broader financial strategy. Our focus on generating sustainable free cash flows allows us to support our capital allocation strategy, including M&A and returning capital to shareholders. The proposed acquisition of Superplay is a perfect example of our disciplined approach. We have structured this transaction with a balanced mix of upfront payment, as well as revenue and EBITDA performance-based earnouts, which helps align incentives and ensures we maintain financial flexibility. This structure not only enables us to limit downside risk, but also aligns our goal to reignite revenue and credit-adjusted EBITDA growth while driving long-term value creation.

Superplay continued its impressive performance in the third quarter as consolidated revenues grew double-digits sequentially, and the studio had another record month in September, posting all-time highs of gross revenue per day. While the robust performance of Superplay highlights the strength and importance of our M&A strategy, it is equally important to recognize the continued contributions of the assets we acquired last year. Governor of Poker 3 continues to show growth potential, and I'm pleased to report that the studio has grown sequentially every quarter since our acquisition. Animals & Coins delivered record-breaking performance in Q3, marking a significant turnaround after the economy challenges we faced in Q2. The game economy adjustments, combined with our strategic decision to restructure the earnout by lowering the maximum cap and spending incremental marketing dollars, have driven the studio's success.

As a result, Animals & Coins achieved all-time high revenues with strong month-over-month growth throughout the quarter. This momentum underscores the strength of the studio and validates the changes we made to position Animals & Coins for sustained long-term success. While executing on sustainable and value-enhancing M&A remains a priority, we are equally focused on managing liquidity, leverage, and our capital structure. We will continue to proactively manage our capital allocation to support growth opportunities while maintaining a strong and stable financial foundation. Our approach is built to ensure that we can execute our strategy without compromising our commitment to financial health. We believe this disciplined approach will allow us to successfully support both organic growth and potential future acquisitions.

In summary, we are excited about the potential the Superplay acquisition brings and confident in our ability to enhance our growth profile, all while maintaining a firm focus on financial discipline. With that, let us dive into our Q3 financial performance. For the quarter, we generated $620.8 million of revenue, down 1% sequentially, and down 1.5% year over year. Credit-adjusted EBITDA margins improved over Q2 as we generated credit-adjusted EBITDA of $197.2 million, up 3.2% sequentially and down 4.1% year over year. Net income was $39.3 million, down 54.6% sequentially and up 3.7% year over year. Our direct-to-consumer business continues to outperform the overall business as we generated $174.4 million, which was up 0.4% sequentially and up 8.3% year over year. Turning now to our business results from the quarter, revenue across our top three games was up 1.1% sequentially and down 0.8% year over year.

Bingo Blitz revenue was $159.9 million, up 2.7% sequentially, and up 6.8% year over year. Bingo continued its strong execution of its direct-to-consumer business in the quarter, helping drive DTC revenue to a record high. In addition, Bingo achieved its highest revenue month in history in July. Solitaire Grand Harvest revenue was $79 million, up 6.5% sequentially and down 0.2% year over year. We are optimistic about the roadmap going into next year as Solitaire continues to regain its footing and drive incremental success. Slotomania revenue was $128.7 million, down 3.8% sequentially and down 9.3% year over year. While we increased our user acquisition spend for Slotomania this year, Q3 results did not meet our expectations. Moving forward, we are realigning our strategic focus in the studio, placing a greater emphasis on the product and feature roadmap to drive a meaningful increase in paying users.

This shift includes the introduction of historic IP, such as Cleopatra II, launching in Q4 as the first in a series of leading titles under our licensing agreement with IGT. Additionally, we are implementing key product changes, such as modifying the in-game experience for albums and Slotomania Club, which are designed to enhance engagement and monetization opportunities. Turning now to specific line items in our P&L for the quarter. Cost of revenue decreased by 3.3% year over year, driven by a change in revenue mix between direct-to-consumer platforms' revenue and third-party platforms' revenue, as well as the decline in overall revenue. R&D expenses declined by 2.9% year over year. The decline in R&D was due to extensive cost management implemented consistently throughout the year. Sales and marketing expenses increased by 5% year over year. The increase in sales and marketing expenses was primarily due to the increase in performance marketing.

As discussed in our Q1 earnings call, we anticipated that sales and marketing spend would be the highest in Q1, with year-over-year growth tapering in subsequent quarters. Accordingly, sales and marketing expenses declined by 11.5% sequentially. G&A expenses declined by 3.5% year over year. The decline in G&A expenses was driven by a one-time favorable adjustment of payable contingent considerations and reduced compensation expenses from lower headcount. As of September 30th, we had approximately $1.2 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. This does not incorporate the contemplated upfront payment of $700 million for the Superplay acquisition. Looking at our operating metrics, average DPU increased 1% sequentially and 0.7% year over year to 301,000. Average DAU decreased 6.2% sequentially and 9.5% year over year to 7.6 million.

The decline in average DAU year over year was primarily due to the strategic decision to reallocate marketing dollars and R&D resources away from some of our smaller casual titles, such as JustPlay 1v1. ARPDA increased 4.7% sequentially and up 9.9% year over year to $0.89. We are adjusting our guidance for the year as follows. Revenue is now expected to range from $2.505 billion-$2.52 billion, reflecting our revised outlook. Meanwhile, we are raising our credit-adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $755 million-$765 million. Finally, we are lowering our capital expenditure guidance to $90 million as we remain focused on maximizing free cash flow. Our guidance does not incorporate the impact of the Superplay acquisition, as the acquisition is still pending, and we expect to close later this quarter. With that, we'd be happy to take your questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star 11 again. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster, and our first question will come from the line of Chris Schoell with UBS. Your line is open.

Chris Schoell (Communications and Media Equity Research Analyst)

Craig, thank you. Craig, just taking the midpoint of your full-year guidance, I believe implies a higher revenue decline but improvement on EBITDA in Q4. Can you help us think through the drivers there? And when you announced the Superplay deal, you mentioned coming back to the market with capital allocation and future M&A plans. Any updated thoughts you can provide at this stage? Thank you.

Craig Abrahams (President and CFO)

Sure. Thank you for the question. So I'll start with the second part first. After our Q4 earnings post the closing of the Superplay transaction, we will update both on guidance for 2025 as well as discuss our capital allocation framework as it relates to M&A as well. In terms of this year, obviously overperforming in terms of raising the guidance for EBITDA based on cost management and being selective on marketing investments to the highest ROI opportunities. When you look at top line, Slotomania and some of the casino-themed titles underperformed relative to expectations as we started the quarter, and so that helped dictate lower guidance for the quarter.

Chris Schoell (Communications and Media Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you. If I can just fit in one more, I believe you mentioned a new product and feature roadmap for Slotomania. Just how are you thinking about the timeline for stabilization here and any shifts in competitive dynamics you would call out?

Robert Antokol (Co-founder and CEO)

Hi. How are you, Robert? So regarding Slotomania, as we spoke last quarter, we have very strong plans regarding content, especially with the deal that we did with IGT. We're going to start launching the new content in the end of this year already. And together with the product changing, we believe that next year is going to be a very interesting and promising year for Slotomania.

Chris Schoell (Communications and Media Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Drew Crum with Stifel. Your line is open.

Drew Crum (Analyst)

Okay. Thanks. Hey, guys. Good morning. As it relates to your revenue mix, the DTC piece has continued to increase sequentially as a percentage of the total. I know you haven't updated that 30% target, but is there anything forthcoming that would cause a material change in the mix? And then I have a quick follow-up.

Craig Abrahams (President and CFO)

No, I think we have continued execution as it relates to new title launches. So in terms of the execution we have in June's Journey, the execution that we have in Solitaire Grand Harvest continues to help there, but nothing outside of the performance that you've seen the last few quarters. It's pretty consistent and steady. Post-Superplay acquisition, we'll have to reassess the roadmap and opportunities to integrate DTC there as well.

Drew Crum (Analyst)

Got it. Okay. And then just on the casual side of your portfolio, you mentioned the record performance for Animals & Coins and the strong performance for Bingo and stabilization for Solitaire. If you isolate those, it looks like the revenue was weaker. Anything to call out or flag in terms of what drove that decline? Thanks.

Craig Abrahams (President and CFO)

So I think what you're seeing is that as we continue to focus investments on our biggest titles that are number one in their respective categories, we see better performance there. And some of these smaller titles where we've taken away R&D and marketing resources from them, those titles will continue to stagnate or decline. So we're managing the portfolio for growth from the biggest titles and more so on profitability from some of the smaller titles.

Robert Antokol (Co-founder and CEO)

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Eric Handler with Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Eric Handler (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Good morning and thanks for the question. You guys have always done a very good job of driving higher average revenue per, or sorry, with daily paying users and your player conversion. But as you sort of look at your portfolio of growth titles versus sort of like your smaller titles, ultimately you want those larger titles to keep expanding the funnel in terms of DAUs. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the dynamic that's going on? Are you seeing growth in DAUs with your focus titles?

Craig Abrahams (President and CFO)

Sure. So as we look at further diversification of the portfolio, both through future acquisitions and the acquisitions we've done over the last few years, we see growth in those titles in terms of growing the user base. I think as we look at more of the legacy titles, it's more consistent with what you've seen over kind of the last eight quarters of a more consistent decline in the DAU base as we focus on higher quality customers in tier one markets. I think what you see is DPU this quarter was up both year over year and sequentially. And so that is the metric that we're most focused on. But I think some of the smaller titles like 1v1 and Redecor both had bigger declines as we pulled back on marketing dollars from a DAU perspective.

Robert Antokol (Co-founder and CEO)

Great. Thank you.

Craig Abrahams (President and CFO)

Those were low revenue producing titles to begin with, so it's not the same user base in terms of quality.

Robert Antokol (Co-founder and CEO)

Great. Thanks, Craig.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Matthew Cost with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Matthew Cost (Executive Director of Equity Research)

Great. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I guess on the marketing side, Craig, you're very clear and you messaged pretty clearly throughout the year that there would be this step up in marketing in one Q and then kind of this decline or kind of mean reversion over the rest of the year. But as we look at kind of the four Q guide where revenue and EBITDA are moving in opposite directions, it seems like you're being a little more selective on the marketing side, I think you said. So I guess what are you seeing there? I mean, would you look back on the marketing that you did in the first half and say it didn't pan out as well as you had hoped, and so you're just really paring down as you move into the second half? What is changing in that UA environment?

Nir Korczak (CMO)

Hey, it's Nir, Playtika CMO. Thanks for the question. So basically, as we have a variety of different games, so obviously the story is different for each one of them. In H1, we tried different approaches. Some of the things that we did around the offline activity didn't meet our expectations, and we did the shift towards performance. I think that overall in the marketing arena, we see lots of things that can be beneficial for us in the future. An example for that, what we are seeing with the policy change of Google, that they announced that Google Ads will start rolling out personalized ads for social casino. This is great news for us and an opportunity basically to put slots, poker, and bingo under the same roof, I would say, as casual games.

So this can be beneficial for us from just as an example for marketing, retargeting, and also for improving the algorithm that we are using with Google. So we are seeing things that can help us in the future, and we're going to focus more on the performance side moving forward.

Matthew Cost (Executive Director of Equity Research)

Great. Thank you. And then just on the revenue guide, should we think of Slotomania as the main driver of the lower revenue guide, or are there other big movers that you would call out?

Craig Abrahams (President and CFO)

No, I think it's a mix of Slotomania and the smaller titles.

Matthew Cost (Executive Director of Equity Research)

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question will come from the line of Aaron Lee with Macquarie. Your line is open.

Robert Antokol (Co-founder and CEO)

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to start with Superplay. Are there any opportunities for synergies or just cross-pollination of best practices or monetization between this acquisition and some of your existing titles like maybe Board Kings or Animals and Coins?

Nir Korczak (CMO)

So of course, when you look at the founders of Superplay, the guys are Playtika, and they came from Playtika, and there is a lot of look and feel in Superplay like Playtika. We are not at this point of the deal, and we are not speaking about synergy right now. This is not the focus of synergy. Superplay has their own roadmap, and they're going to work independently and get to their targets. Always in the future, things can happen, but right now, there's no even conversation regarding this.

Robert Antokol (Co-founder and CEO)

Okay. Fair enough. That makes sense. As a quick follow-up, last quarter, you mentioned a new game being developed by Wooga, Claire's Chronicles. Is that game still on track for second quarter 2025 launch? And how are you thinking about growing that and also growing June's Journey? Is there going to be any cross-sell there, or is it really just trying to focus on growing both at the same time?

Nir Korczak (CMO)

So yes, we mentioned a new game of Wooga. It's going to be launched next year. We're already doing beta tests. We're already doing some small launches in some small places. There's no connection between this game and the roadmap of June's Journey. It's a different team. It's different targets. June's Journey had an amazing roadmap for next year. June's Journey was growing incredibly in the last six years, one of our leading titles, and it's going to stay one of our leading titles.

Robert Antokol (Co-founder and CEO)

Okay. Thanks, Robert. Appreciate the call.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Omar Dessouky with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Omar Dessouky (Analyst)

Hi. Thanks a lot. We've been noticing a trend towards hybrid monetization. I just wanted to get your updated thoughts on whether you think that's a growth vertical and if your thoughts on advertising have changed at all since the last couple of calls we've talked to you?

Craig Abrahams (President and CFO)

No, I think for the most part, our portfolio is in our purchase focus. We have titles like Animals and Coins, which has advertising natively built into the game as part of it from the design from the beginning, some of our other titles as well, but no anticipation of shifting strategy there strategically.

Omar Dessouky (Analyst)

Okay. Got it. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. So thank you all for your participation. This concludes today's program. You may now disconnect.