Betmakers Technology Group Ltd

ASX:BET

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Jane Morgan, executive]

Okay. So good morning, and thank you for joining the BetMakers Technology Group Ltd Q3 FY 2023 Results Briefing. I'm Jane Morgan, the Investor Media Relations Manager.

The company released its 4C results on Friday as well as an investor presentation, which was lodged with the ASX this morning.

Today, I'm joined by President and Executive Chairman, Matt Davey; and our CEO, Jake Henson. I'll now hand you over to Matt Davey.

[Matthew Davey, executive]

Thanks, Jane, and thanks, everyone, for showing up today. We appreciate your time and the [ cap ] you put into the company.

Today's update is really a short update on our Q3 numbers. We anticipate providing a much more detailed and broader update on the back of our Q4 and full year results at the end of July into August of this year.

So as I joined as Executive Chairman at the end of January this year, we delivered on our Q2 numbers. Jane, if you want to go to the next slide. Next slide.

During our Q2, we enjoyed the largest ever quarterly receipts from customers at $26.9 million, but we also made significant investments in both our intellectual property and our operating costs around the world to the tune a loss of $5.9 million in cash from operations.

Clearly, that is not acceptable, and we stepped into the market to say that we anticipate focusing on optimizing our cost base, proving the efficiencies in the business, dialing down the noise around the business and focusing on our core growth drivers.

During Q3, we've announced significant management and Board restructuring.

I'm happy to say that costs are down 13% on the previous quarter. Cash receipts are up 9% year-on-year for Q3. That has delivered a negative burn -- cash burn of $4.9 million, down 17% quarter-on-quarter. This is clearly good but not good enough. And we anticipate delivering increased results around this optimizing of our cost base over Q4 and feel very comfortable at where we have delivered the business to date and the planning that management and the team have put around optimizing our cost base, such that we have a truly international position that's set to scale as our company grows the top line.

Next slide. So I want to reiterate what we've got management focused on. First, and the most immediate priority is to reduce and normalize the cost base. This is not just a slash-and-burn approach. This is about rethinking how we have set the company up such that as we do drive top line revenue growth, we get the benefits of operating leverage, and we anticipate showing that through over the next 3 or 4 quarters as the company continues to deliver against that.

In addition to that, we need to simplify the operating model. The company expanded rapidly over the last couple of years, and the business has achieved a significant position in the worldwide racing and sports betting industry, but it's done so with a large number of products. We think we can simplify that, and we can also simplify our message to market both to our customers as well as to our investors.

We need to deliver on the current opportunities, which are clear and present in front of us, and Jake will talk to those as we go through the Q3 numbers.

But finally, and most importantly, we need to deliver on this operating scale through consolidating our technology platform and delivering a consistent 1 single approach to our product set, both domestically and internationally.

With that, let me hand over to Jake to walk you through some of the more details around Q3, and then he'll hand back to me. Jake, over to you.

[Jake Henson, executive]

Thanks, Matt, and thank you to any shareholders or interested shareholders for tuning in today.

I think what is beneficiary to start things just with a recap of the core segments of our business, what we sell and how we make money.

So on the left of the screen, as you're looking at it now as sales global betting services. These are predominantly products with fixed odds and digital online bookmakers. Anything from pricing, trading, data and platforms, customers within this segment for BetMakers include a lot of sports bet, William Hill, [ Betradar ] and Caesars Entertainment.

In the middle of the screen, we have our Global Tote business. This is a really core steady base of revenues centered around tote Hosting, tote Pooling, racetrack and venue services as well as commingling. Customers within this segment include the UK Tote Group, The Hong Kong Jockey Club and the Turkish Jockey Club. And on the right screen, our Global Racing Network.

This is where we form partnerships and products to help racetracks and racing bodies around the world, get their product on to digital bookmakers and obviously monetize that business. So current customers in this segment include SIS as well as Penn Entertainment and the likes of Monmouth Park and other tracks in the U.S. that we're working with at the moment.

So if we just roll to the next slide, Matt. We'll go through some of the key takeaways from the 4C.

So as noted off the top, there were certainly some Board management changes that occurred within the quarter. And with that, came really clear directly from the incoming Chairman Matt to get the business back into a position of positive operational cash flow. This progress has started, and the implementation of that can be witnessed through some of these key callouts. Staff costs down 8% versus Q2, including contracting costs. Admin and corporate costs within the business, down 25% versus Q2 and a reduction in our cash outflow for the quarter as well as Matt noted at the top.

Another important callout here is at the conclusion of the quarter, the departure of our North American CEO, Christian Stewart. And the business wishes Christian all the best for his next challenge. And also, the promotion internally of Chelsey Abbott into the Chief People Officer role on the executive team.

We might go to the revenue slide, Matt. I'll go into those in a little bit more detail. Thank you.

So for the quarter, revenues were up 9% versus the year-on-year corresponding quarter. There is an element of seasonality within the business. It's quite small, but it's down to the amount of racing that occurs in the Northern Hemisphere and the products that are tied to that. So throughout our ongoing reporting, you'll see that we do corresponding year-on-year quarter on the revenue side.

We expect continued growth from our revenues to be really derived from 3 key areas. There's fixed odds opportunities globally, namely in the U.S. and in the Americas through places like Caymanas Park, and we monetize that by our platforms as well as our managed trading services. And we've also got some initiatives within the Global Tote business around commingling and ways to attract digital bookmakers back into the tote products.

If you go to the slide on cost, Matt. And I think the key thing that Matt touched on here is just around cost within the business. They're down 13% from the previous quarter. This remains a really primary focus for management to continue to drive down further throughout ongoing quarters. The directive from the Board and Matt is extremely clear on this, and management are solely focused on driving this initiative forward.

I'd also want to call out the fact from the strategic review of the cost base means that we have to be quite delicate through that process because as Matt touched on, we're not trying to rip cost out and disrupt ongoing contracts. So we've taken a holistic approach and looking at the cost base from a sustainable path going forward. And we're quite confident we've got a clear path to that operational cash flow position.

So with that, I'll pass back to Matt, who will touch a little bit on our capital allocation as well as the management of that going forward.

[Matthew Davey, executive]

Thanks, Jake. So as you can see, we are making progress in the right direction. Costs are coming down. We are still maintaining from revenue. We anticipate to deliver significant revenue growth over the next 12 to 24 months.

The key here is not just to lower cost but to do so in a way that allows us to strategically drive the business forward and allow us to show real operating leverage as a technology business should.

We are comfortable we'll exit Q4 with a positive cash flow from operations.

And that leads me to a quick discussion on the capital management. I have a number of investors reach out in regards to the share buyback. We are still approved to do that.

But when it comes to capital allocation and capital management, a couple of thoughts from the Board. A, we believe that the value of cash flow will only increase as we go through this volatile time of rising interest rates and increased cost of capital. B, we think our optionality improves as we improve the way we run the business and reduce the amount of cash being burned from operations. We think that only increases value for us over time.

So we exited Q3 with $56 million in cash on the balance sheet and 0 debt. We think that's a great place to be.

And as we think about capital allocation, we think through whether we want to invest in driving organic growth opportunities as and when we see them.

We also look at M&A, bolt-on transactions as well as transformational ones and also share buybacks. We will continue to do that.

Over time, we feel no pressure to do anything in the short term unless it's a compelling opportunity. And we like the fact that we have a strong surplus of cash and 0 debt. And I think that, that position only improves over time as we deliver at an operating cost base, better aligned with our revenues and allows us to grow moving forward.

With that said, I know there have been a large number of inbound questions. We will continue to answer those as we go through, but we will provide a much deeper and broad-based webinar and presentation post our Q4 and full year results.

Q3 is really just a snapshot to show our investors that we are heading in the right direction with the reduction in costs but also a focus on driving our top line revenue growth.

With that, I want to thank everybody for the time this morning. I hand back to you, Jane.

[Jane Morgan, executive]

Yes. Thank you all for joining us today for the BetMakers Q3 FY '23 results briefing.

As Matt mentioned, if we've missed any of your questions via this briefing, please feel free to reach out by the contact details, which can be found at the bottom of our ASX releases. I'll also note a copy of today's webinar will be available online later today, but we thank you all joining us. And Matt and Jake, thanks for your time.

[Jake Henson, executive]

Appreciate your time, everyone.