Modern Times Group MTG AB
STO:MTG B
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2023 Analysis
Modern Times Group MTG AB
The company is seeing a promising growth with an increase in daily active users, driven by the recent addition of Forza Customs to their Racing portfolio. Alongside user growth, they reported an uptick in average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU), thanks to contributions from Snowprint's high ARPDAU levels and InnoGames' effective LiveOps that fuel high customer engagement and spending. This blend of user growth and enhanced revenue per user signals a robust business strategy focusing on both acquisition and monetization.
Strategic investments in user acquisition (UA) were heightened to SEK 600 million, making up 38% of revenue, which reflects a disciplined yet responsive marketing approach. This strategy involves a significant UA spend for scaling games like Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus and adjusting marketing investments for PlaySimple based on seasonal trends and product lifecycle. The company maintains a meticulous balance between investing in marketing for good returns and restraining spend in challenging marketing environments.
The company has exhibited financial strength with an all-time high adjusted EBITDA of nearly SEK 1.5 billion for the full year and a remarkable 50% year-on-year growth in Q4. They achieved a top-notch margin of 28% in Q4, sustained by the robust performance of PlaySimple, InnoGames' successful restructuring and strategic initiatives, and Ninja Kiwi's lean operations. Such robust margin performance emphasizes the company's ability to leverage its assets efficiently to deliver profitability.
A strong cash flow was reported, with a cash conversion rate hitting the upper end of their long-term outlook range between 50% and 60%. Moreover, they effectively managed working capital and kept capital expenditures low, aligning with their guidance and reflecting astute fiscal management. The company's anticipation of reduced CapEx levels following the Kongregate and Monumental merger underscores their commitment to prudent capital investment practices.
The company is excited about their new game pipeline for 2024, including scaling successful games like Word Search and launching new titles such as NASCAR Manager and Bloons Card Storm. The diversification efforts in varying gaming franchises like Racing and Tower Defense demonstrate a strategic vision to expand their portfolio and harness new revenue streams. Their forward-looking narrative suggests a focus on growing existing franchises while innovating with new content.
The Board actively deliberates the balance between M&A activities and direct shareholder returns, having returned SEK 500 million last year through share buybacks. This approach indicates conscious capital allocation with a readiness to execute buybacks when deemed strategic by the company's leadership.
The company maintains an upbeat outlook for the market with a particular focus on the strong momentum of their strategy and simulation games. Executives have communicated anticipated revenue growth for these games, aiming between SEK 2.2 billion. Their optimistic stance highlights confidence in their operational strategy, product lineup, and the market demand for their offerings.
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Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining MTG's live stream and teleconference for our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results. The event is hosted by our Group President and CEO, Maria Redin; and our CFO, Nils Mosko. [Operator Instructions] So I now hand over to our CEO, Maria.
Thank you, Anton, and hello, everybody. I'm really happy to deliver on our full year outlook, which is something we also raised in Q3. And we reported now an all-time high adjusted EBITDA with a strong cash conversion. As you may also recall, as we begin this year, the markets were actually quite challenging. We were quite muted on the outlook because we had low visibility. But throughout the year, we have focused on our execution and we have now demonstrated 2 consecutive quarters of organic growth, which is something we're very proud of.
The results we present today stem from our strong operational momentum in our companies, engaging content in our games that we relentlessly work on and a disciplined and a conscious approach to our marketing investments. Focusing then in on the Q4, I'm really happy to deliver a strong underlying growth with a very good profitability, which equally has enabled us to kick off 2024 with a very good momentum in the business. We delivered 3% organic growth in Q4, driven by our casual studio, PlaySimple, and 7% growth on a comparable basis when we include Snowprint in the like-for-like calculations. Our adjusted EBITDA grew by 47% year-over-year in the quarter with a very strong margin of 28%. Q4 and the beginning of 2024 has also been an important part for our evolution of us as a group. In the beginning of the quarter, we acquired Snowprint at the start of October, and we have now fully onboarded the business into our day-to-day operations. We have now also signed a deal which enables our U.S. studio, Kongregate, to merge with Monumental, which is an American game-based developer in Austin, Texas. And I want to just give you some of the highlights of the Kongregate deal with Monumental. As you may know, which we talked about before, is that Kongregate has been investing both in the blockchain and the traditional game development during the last 2 years. And we all probably follow the web 3 development and the market has become more challenging. And therefore, we also, together with the management team in Kongregate started to look for a solution where we could enable Kongregate to continue to pursue their vision and ambitions. And we're really happy there for it to found the solution together with Monumental. To give you also some background on Monumental, that is an experience studio with a strong vision for the future of gaming, which they share together with the Kongregate team. The merger, we believe, is creating a powerful gaming company that will help the new and combined team to drive the business portfolio.
Our stake in the new business is 30% on a fully diluted basis, and the deal has now been signed and closed now in Q1, and we will report this as a financial asset on our balance sheet, to also put the transaction and get in contact with the rest of our group. If you look at Kongregate's revenues, they are reported in other smaller franchises, where we also have some of our mature and legacy games.
In that bucket, all in all, I would say Kongregate represents roughly less than half of the revenues within smaller revenues and also as an EBITDA contribution, they have been overall margin dilutive to us as a group. So if you then exclude Kongregate's revenues, our organic sales would have been approximately 1 percentage point higher for 2023. While on an adjusted EBITDA, they actually would have had a limited impact. They do, however, if we look at the CapEx level, given the share size of the company, have a proportionately bigger part of our CapEx. So therefore, going forward, in 2024, you should expect that to go down. As Kongregate and Monumental move forward with the merger, I would like to thank both our North and South American colleagues for their passion, their hard work and their dedication. I wish them all the best of luck going forward. And of course, we will look forward to follow the next part of the journey as an investor. Moving then into our sales for the quarter. We report overall 13% sales growth in Q4, with revenues of nearly SEK 1.6 billion, and the revenues were driven by the strong performance of Snowprint and PlaySimple. Our year-over-year growth was 7% on a comparable basis if Snowprint would have been included in each of the periods, and it was 3% on an organic basis.
Our sales performance in the quarter ensure that we deliver within our full range of guidance. We delivered 2% negative growth, which was within the range of minus 3% to plus 2% for the full year. And if you look at the sequential performance, we said in the beginning of the year that we would come back to organic growth in the second half of the year, and we also sequentially improved our performance whereas we reported minus 6% growth in the first half of the year, and we're really happy to report plus 2% for the second half of the year. Going then one level down and looking into our different franchises. Our organic growth was driven by the Word Games franchise, which was up 27% from Q4 2022, and it was up 6% on a sequential basis in constant currency. We're really excited to see PlaySimple having continued to drive the performance of established casual titles through the content updates and features that have been doing and the overall rigorous execution. The new game Word Search continued to deliver strong growth in the quarter, and I will discuss that in more detail later. Sales then for the strategy and the simulation franchise was up 30% year-over-year in Q4, and it was up 24% from the third quarter due to the consolidation and the strong growth of Snowprint and the inclusion of 40k Tacticus. When we look at the franchise on an organic basis, sales were down slightly both year-over-year and from Q3. Forge of Empires did have a weaker start of the quarter. But as the October event where we tried some new game mechanics didn't deliver in line with our expectations. On a good note, however, the team did a very strong December event, which for us is a very important section that is what's running up to the Christmas event. And that also enables Forge of Empires entering 2024 with a good momentum. InnoGames is further working on new games development. And in particular, they are focused on making rework of Rise of Cultures into a new type of games, which we hope that we'll be able to share more news with you later this year. Our Tower Defense franchise sales were down in the quarter and also year-over-year. This decline was mainly a result of Bloons TD 6 not included in the December steam sale. As a timing of update to the game resulted in the sale being moved to January instead of December. The early increased level of engagement we also saw from the update in the end of last quarter with a Map Editor feature. We were really excited to see the uplift when it comes to the consumer engagement. However, that did not translate into the same monetization as we would have expected. Another exciting part, we did mention in Q3 that Ninja Kiwi had been working with the Chinese development to bring Bloons TD 6 to the Chinese market. And we now during the second -- or the last quarter of the year, actually launched it. Still too early to see progression, but that is something we will follow throughout this year. Last but not least, our Racing franchise revenues that were down 20% year-over-year and 8% from Q3. And this is a result from nor Top Drives or Formula One Clash this year growing in the quarter. The team at Hutch is working very hard on both titles. We have the upcoming season reset of Formula One Clash coming up now in Q2. And that is something the team is focused on, every season is a new opportunity, but also on Top Drives, making sure we make the games even better for the customers. On a good note, we launched Forza Customs, and we are seeing very healthy growth of this title, still in the beginning of the scaling. However, the team is working very strong on adding more engaging content and live off to the game, and we've added marketing gradually throughout Q4, and we will continue to ramp it up during this year. Looking then into the [indiscernible] details of the KPIs. If you look at some of the performance of KPIs, we continue to evolve our revenue base and we can see that we're actually shifting not a lot, but a few percentage points on how we mix the revenues. We had roughly 36% of the revenues coming from in-app purchasing in the quarter, which is up 1 percentage point from Q3 and is up 4 percentage points from Q4 last year. This development reflects the strength and the scaling in our casual portfolio during the last year. Our daily active users were up slightly in the quarter from Q3 and this is primarily because of the consolidation of Snowprint and the strong growth of PlaySimple, but also due to the growing number of daily active users in the Racing portfolio driven by the new game, Forza Customs, which I just mentioned.
Looking then into our average revenue per daily active user, that was up, both from Q3 this year, but also Q4 last year. And this was driven by 2 main factors. The first one was the consolidation of Snowprint, as Tacticus report higher ARPDAU levels than what we have in the rest of the games in the quarter, but also the fact that InnoGames, which we have discussed with you before, continues to perform very strong on the LiveOps, which also makes sure that we see higher engagement level from our customers and good spending levels, which means, again, that we are making a great game for our customers. With this, I will now hand over to Nils and we'll look more into details of the financial performance.
Thank you, Maria. Let's have a look at the UA spend. Our total user acquisition investments were up from quarter 4 last year and sequentially from Q3 up to SEK 600 million. This represents roughly 38% of revenue in the quarter, which was down from 40% in quarter 4 2022 and slightly higher than the 37% we reported in Q3.
Our new studio, Snowprint, is focused on scaling their main game, Warhammer 40,000 Tacticus and invested significantly in UA during the key period leading up to Christmas. And it's also good to keep in mind that PlaySimple had a very high UA spend in quarter 4 2022, but has now evened out their marketing investments across the year. It's also worth noting that our UA investments are not evenly distributed across the portfolio. Ninja Kiwi, for example, spends almost nothing at all in marketing, while PlaySimple in the casualty segment invests the most. We also have -- also continued to have a strict discipline around return and at spending levels. This means that we will invest more when we see good returns, but hold off a bit when the marketing environment is more challenging, which was the situation for strategy and simulation in this quarter. Let's have a look at the profitability. We reported an all-time high adjusted EBITDA of nearly SEK 1.5 billion for the full year with a margin of 27%. This was at the very top range of our full year profitability outlook, which, as you remember, we also raised in the quarter 3 report last year. Our adjusted EBITDA grew by nearly 50% in Q4 year-on-year, and we delivered a very strong 28% margin in the quarter. The increased profit had mainly 3 drivers. The first one was the strong growth from PlaySimple combined with good operational leverage across the business. The second one was related to the strong margins at InnoGames. And there are 2 drivers mainly: one, of course, the lower cost base following the restructuring in April last year, but also the strong delivery on the year-end event in Forge of Empires, which engaged established players, who also have a higher tendency to play the game on browser, which is a positive sales channel mix impact. The third driver are the contributions from Ninja Kiwi, which continues to deliver high margins with a very lean organization. We continue to have a strong cash flow in the quarter with a cash conversion rate of 58% in the quarter, 59% for the last 12 months. The good operational result flows through, and we delivered a cash conversion at the higher end of our long-term outlook range between 50% and 60%. Working capital is flat. And as I said before, we are not binding capital. These changes are timing driven, whether the payables receivables are on one side of the month or on the other. CapEx was lower in Q4 and the full year with 2.7%, respectively, 3.6% of revenues. They are at the lower end of our guidance. This was mainly driven by lower CapEx at Kongregate in the second half of the year, but also the timing of development projects at our studios. It's also important to note, as Maria mentioned that as a result of Kongregate merging with Monumental, our CapEx levels will be reduced going forward. So overall, a good free cash flow generation we had in this quarter.
Perfect. Thank you, Nils. And let's get them back to the business. If we look forward then into 2024, it's something that makes us very excited is the pipeline of new games. We've ended 2024 with a very ambitious agenda, which includes both new game launches and exciting other engagement throughout the studios. So let's first look at the games that we are currently scaling. And I think it's fair to say that the biggest success story in the new game portfolio is our Word Search, which is included within our word game franchise.
PlaySimple continued to grow the Word Search during Q4. And in December, the game will reach a milestone of having over $100,000 in revenues during a single day. In addition to Word Search, PlaySimple is also getting ready to launch 2 new casual games that are in [indiscernible], which is 2248 and Tile Match. If you are in an Android phone, you can already now actually download it through the store. And hopefully, we are actually getting the iOS out shortly. And in addition to these 2 games, they are also working on several new titles that will be relieved in due time. In the Racing franchise, Hutch has continued to scale the new game Forza Customs and we're very happy to see how it performed in Q4. The team has a very ambitious road map for the year ahead for the game. And in addition to Forza, Hutch also announced that the next game will be coming up now in Q1 is NASCAR Manager. Already today, players can actually preregister to download it at launch. In our Tower Defense franchise, Ninja Kiwi is getting closer to launch their Bloons Card Storm game, which is back on the Bloons IP, and that is the upcoming digital collectible card game set within them the Bloons Tower Defense franchise, which we expect to be launched later this year. And they are, in addition to that, working on 2 other titles, of which one title we expect to be launched before the end of the year and then also one in the next year about that. In addition to the existing BTD 6, Ninja Kiwi also have an active pipeline of continued platform extensions. That includes the launch of the game on PlayStation and Switch. We launched Xbox in H2 2023. And we just recently also announced that Bloons TD 6 will be launched on the Apple Vision Pro that was released just the other week. In our strategy and simulation franchise, Warhammer 40K Tacticus was added during the fourth quarter and Snowprint grew the game successfully in Q4. InnoGames on their hand, continue to work on the evolution of the new games and they're currently working very good progress on the upcoming rework of Rise of Culture, which is something that we hope to be able to speak to you as well when the time is ready. To wrap it all up, and if we look at 2023, this has really been a year where we've been focused on our execution, and we're really happy to be able to deliver on our outlook. We reported 7% growth on a comparable basis when included in the newly acquired Snowprint and we reported all-time high revenues and adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2023. Our operations has a healthy momentum as we go into 2024, and we have a strong and diversified portfolio of games that will enable us to have a good mix of revenue streams across different platforms. M&A continues to be an important part of our overall strategy, and we will continue to explore opportunities when they appear. At the same time, it is important for us to strike the right balance between M&A and shareholder returns. And if we look back at 2023, we returned nearly SEK 500 million to our shareholders through share buybacks, which is also something that we're very proud of. Just like last year, we will provide a full year outlook at the time of our Q1 results in April. But at the same time, we also want to just reiterate that we remain committed to our long-term outlook of an organic revenue growth of 7% to 10% CAGR and also an estimated average adjusted EBITDA margin of 23% to 25%, with a 12-month rolling cash conversion between the 50% and 60%, which Nils just talked about. So with that, I want to thank you for following our progress and for tuning into our video call. And operator, we are now ready for questions.
[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Rasmus Engberg from Handelsbanken.
How do you think about the seasonal pattern for MTG. It is a little bit different with the Formula One exposure, et cetera. So how do you think sort of in terms of quarter-on-quarter trends in this year, which is the biggest quarter, which is a smaller one. And how -- is it fair to say that your -- on the margin side, Q4 and Q1 will have lower margin because of higher UA spend? Or can you give us some sort of feeling for those things?
It's a good question. And normally, to be honest, I would say Q4 is the strongest quarter of the year. But clearly, this year, we actually had exceptionally strong July within InnoGames, which shifted our balance a little bit. But I think when we look at totality, I mean we had a really strong month in December and the latter part of November. So I would say from a normality point of view, Q4 should still be the strongest sort of month of the year. That follows bar from an ad cycle point of view where the CPMs goes up, but also where we see a lot of engagement activities in the way how we run our games. And also Snowprint is a good example of that. They had a really engaging month of December, but also a very successful month of December. Then we do have, compared to some others with the Formula One seasonality, a little bit different mix over time. I'm hoping they also launching our NASCAR, which starts the season earlier, I'm hoping that we can actually balance that out because those seasons runs a little bit different. So hopefully, we can actually balance out the seasonality a little bit.
And margins, how should you -- how do you think about UA spend?
I think the one thing you should think about is normally actually, Q4 is quite expensive, especially after you come up sort of end of November, December is actually a rather expensive month to do. And last year, we did spend and we had a lot of good opportunities with them. PlaySimple, this year, they actually changed their approach a little bit to market and even it out this year, had more reasons to it as well.
So I would say, in general, we are -- probably you should expect sort of a little bit like '23, '24 being more balanced. But at the same time, I just spoke about the exciting pipeline of new games that we're having. And we are hoping to be able to also deploy more marketing behind those games, and that will also determine the level of marketing that you see. Remember that last year, really the only new game we had scaling was Word Search. Otherwise, we didn't really have any new games coming in, and that's also why we saw a quite leveled marketing spend between the quarters.
And just on [ integrity, ] I'm really trying to understand what happened to your administrative costs in the fourth quarter compared to all the other quarters, they seem to be significantly down despite you having added business, what's behind this?
I mean, in total, I would look at the admin cost. We always have a couple of swings during the quarter. So I would look at it at a full year base. And the full year base, if you look at it, it is a bit down year-on-year from '22, and that is due to a couple of one-timers we had in the '22 results. The ESL divestment cost was there and also an impairment. And then the -- I guess, the '23 figures more representative on the trend for the cost base. What we also have done this year, as you know '23, have worked actively with the cost. We streamlined the cost where necessary, Kongregate restructuring and also did InnoGames in April last year. And that, of course, you see as well. But for the full year, I would -- on the admin cost line, I would always look at the full year and take that as a proxy.
The next question comes from Simon Jönsson from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
First, just a follow-up on Rasmus' question there on admin expenses. You said we should look at the full year for guidance. But I'm just wondering, is there anything explaining the sequential decline Q-over-Q?
There's a onetime where we did a rebooking in the quarter between the line items between admin and [indiscernible].
All right. Moving on to InnoGames. It has struggled for a pretty long time now with releasing successful new games. And I mean, now it has one more in pipeline for '24. Let's assume this -- let's say, this doesn't meet expectations. Could we then see more cost savings there, you think? Or how should we think about that?
I think they do have actually more than one title, but the other ones are earlier in development. But I think that is a conversation that we're having with the company on how to best set the strategy for the company going forward. I think focus right now is to make sure that we put all our efforts and focus in making these games successful. In the scenario that they are not successful, then that is a conversation that we will have with InnoGames, and then we will discuss it with you.
All right. Makes sense. Then a question on the gross margin. It was a bit lower in the quarter. Is all of that explained by higher IP royalty costs, Warhammer, Forza, Formula One, et cetera? Or was there something else burdening the gross margin in Q4?
I mean there are always some different parts affecting the gross margin. I mean we are having a different shift in revenue mix between the quarters, how much it [indiscernible] versus how much is in the app stores, but also are we making some distribution deals, whether that is on Apple Arcade or Netflix, that usually comes with a one-off upfront and then a running fee afterwards.
And that does shift the gross margin a little bit between the quarters. But I don't think there is anything that stands out. I mean we like the fact that we are getting into more distribution platforms. We like that we are growing our browser revenues because that does improve sort of the gross margin and therefore, also our EBITDA underlying.
All right. And one last for me. Could you say anything about what the expected earnout payments are for 2024?
Yes. So if you look at the note on Page 16, for 2024, we have liabilities of SEK 432 million on the balance sheet.
[Operator Instructions] There are no more phone questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for written questions and closing comments.
Thank you, operator. So we have 2 questions coming from the chat. The first one is that looking at the results at Hutch and the performance, will the team now go back to a 5-day work week?
I think, again, this is something a little bit similar to the conversation about InnoGames. I think we are discussing with each company on how to make sure we optimize the company's performance, whether that is a 4-day or 5-day work week, it is a discussion what actually gives the best outcome. They have 2 exciting games in the pipeline. We want them to focus on and do as good as they possibly can because we are big believers in both.
The next question is looking at the current valuation and the net cash position, when will you start a new buyback?
We paid back -- actually returned SEK 500 million last year through share buyback, and we still have the mandate. If and when we will use that again, I mean that is a conversation that we have with the Board. With the Board, we always have discussions on how do we balance our ideas and thoughts on M&A versus direct returns through share buyback. And I think that is a healthy conversation that we have. And we have the mandate to execute when we feel that the time is ready.
Then following on the same topic, and I'm paraphrasing the question a little bit. So you've been conducting buybacks now for 2 years, and the share price has not improved. So I wonder how you and the Board want to make a return for the shareholders and how that would work, especially when looking at the private market valuation. So should you -- would you consider selling the company?
We are for sale every day at the end of the day of the stock market. So I think that's -- that is the only thing I can comment on. If the company would be sold, I think that is the topic for the Board and someone in that case, approaching the Board. Our job is to drive the strategy. I would simply like the share price to go up and that's a job that we focus on delivering execution to enable that result.
Coming now back to the Kongregate merger that you announced. So can you give any comments around the valuation of Kongregate in relation to the Monumental merger? So the Kongregate was acquired for USD 55 million in 2017. So I guess, arise the question, I guess this must be put in relation to the transaction value of MTG's 30% stake in the new joint venture. Would that possibly lead to gain or loss in Q1?
That is still to be reviewed, and we haven't come that far in sort of the closing of that transaction. But as of now, we don't foresee any bigger sort of adjustment one way or another. We believe in the joint new company, we will treat that as an investment and also then we'll take it from there.
Then actually, we have one more question from Rasmus Engberg on the phone. So operator, can you please put Rasmus back on the line.
Yes. I was just coming back to the issue with Monumental. What can you say about -- is that kind of run as a profitable entity? Is it fully financed? How does this work really that business?
I think it is a similar company in a similar shape as Kongregate to be fair, but it is secured funding. So I think it is a well-founded start, which means that we don't envisage to actually put in any capital into the new entity. And I think that is something that was important for us. We wanted to achieve 2 things. We wanted to help Kongregate to continue to work on their mission. But also, we felt that we were not the owner to continue to deploy more capital into that venture. And I think that's why we found a good home with Monumental, and Monumental have in their part also secured the funding to make sure they can take that accelerate step on their next phase of the journey.
All right. So we have no further questions. So with that, I want to thank Maria and Nils. Thank you for your time. Thank you, everyone joining us today, and we will speak to you again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.