East Side Games Group Inc
TSX:EAGR
Earnings Call Analysis
Summary
Q4-2023
Despite a tough year for technology and mobile games, East Side Games Group (ESGG) maintained revenue at $20.6 million in Q4, with an impressive 22% margin in adjusted EBITDA, up 75% from the previous year. Player engagement and monetization improved, seen in a 4% bump in average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) and a cash reserve increase of 47%. Strategic acquisitions, aggressive scaling of hit games like RuPaul's Drag Race Superstar, and the expansion of the season pass feature bolster profitability. ESGG is well-positioned for the future, with a talent-focused culture and a pipeline set to launch new games in 2024 and 2025. With industry-wide opportunities emerging due to potential reductions in platform fees, ESGG is poised to capitalize and enhance its financial position further.
You don't have any saved screeners yet
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the East Side Games Group Fourth Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jason Bailey, Board Chair, CEO and Founder of East Side Games Group. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone, to the East Side Games Group Q4 2023 results call. On the call with me today is Mr. Jason Chan, our Interim Chief Financial Officer. We are also joined by our Chief Operating Officer, Ms. Lisa Shek; and our Chief Product Officer, Mr. Jim Wagner. I'm very excited to share highlights from the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2023, and I will also be giving an update on our business strategy and key events that have taken place since we last reported in November. Mr. Chan will go into greater detail on our financial results before turning it over to Ms. Shek and Mr. Wagner for some final remarks before we open it up to analyst questions. I'd like to remind you that certain statements made on this call are forward-looking within the meaning of applicable securities law, and this call includes references to non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our fourth quarter press release and MD&A for cautionary statements relating to the forward-looking information and reconciliations of non-GAAP and measures to GAAP results. References to all figures are in Canadian dollars on an IFRS basis unless otherwise noted. Additional materials can be found in the Investors section of our website at www.eastsidegamesgroup.com under the Financial Information section, and an audio replay of this call will soon be available on our website. 2023 was a difficult year for mobile games and for the tech industry as a whole. It was a year that saw more than 200,000 jobs eliminated, hundreds of companies failing completely and billions in market cap evaporating. Despite these headwinds and through the resilience of our incredible leadership team, East Side Games Group has been able to keep revenues relatively flat at $20.6 million, while incrementally increasing adjusted EBITDA to a record $4.5 million and growing our cash reserves to $5.2 million. No small feat and something I'm very proud of. Moving forward to 2024, we are seeing the markets recover, opportunities present themselves again and the industry is quickly recovering. Great things lie ahead for this team and the technological foundation that we have built. Q4 was a quarter of continued transition and reaction to the ongoing changes in the global mobile games market. In Q3, we aggressively restructured our business to ensure ongoing profitability, independents and long-term positive cash flow. Many of the changes made have been fully reflected in Q4. We have talked about this refocus extensively on the past few earnings calls. Q4 clearly shows the fruits of our labor. We have a business that is profitable, stable and lean. A business with a strong pipeline of new products to layer on top of our existing strong foundation and a long-term focus on profitability. We have a company with no debt, sufficient cash, a sustainable run rate and a pipeline of exciting new releases with massive potential. We remain more committed than ever to our goal of providing creators tools to successfully deliver mobile gaming experiences that engage players every day. I'll now pass it to Mr. Jason Chan, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, for some comments.
Thank you, Jason. As mentioned, we continued our push towards profitability and positive cash flows following our restructure last quarter. We've realized these efficiencies in Q4 and posted the most profitable quarter in our company's history. Q4 had us end at $20.6 million in revenue, essentially flat from Q3 and adjusted EBITDA of $4.5 million, roughly a 22% margin and 75% up from quarter 4 of 2022. In addition to being our most profitable quarter, it's also our fifth straight quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA over $2.5 million. One of the key drivers in our quest towards profitability is maximizing a return from user acquisition or UA spend to sustainably grow our top line revenue. In 2023, we've seen this positively impact our bottom line as our UA cost as a percentage of our top line revenue has decreased from 31% to 23%, highlighting the efficiencies we've realized. For 2024, we will be focused on 3 main areas to maximize performance and scale against our payback targets for our UA spend. First, increasing the quality and quantity of creative assets through hiring and optimizing creative outsourcing. Second, increasing the diversity of ad networks and audiences to acquire more efficiently priced users; and finally, increasing collaboration with analytics and products to maximize our game launch opportunities. Our average daily users for Q4 was $248,000 with a $0.90 ARPDAU, roughly 4% up from Q3. We are slowly seeing the user base settle into an equilibrium following our realignment of UA spend from last year. This number reflects our success in keeping the user base and studios revenue stable, while significantly increasing our margins. As Jason mentioned, we have experienced strong positive cash flows since our restructure. Our cash on hand at December 31st ended at $5.2 million, which is 47% up from last quarter. We will continue to build on these healthy cash inflows while still investing in new strategic opportunities and upcoming titles to keep in line with our goal of sustainable growth. We've also purchased 951,979 shares under our renewed NCIB through December 31, 2023. This was at the cost of $785,000 from a cash balance, but management and the board strongly believe that the company is currently undervalued and the best investment we can make is in ourselves. We currently look to acquire as much as we can as aggressively as we can with what the exchange restrictions allow. These shares are currently being held in treasury and have not yet been canceled. So overall, despite the industry headwinds, ESGG has come out of the year-end in a much stronger position, both from a cash flow and profitability standpoint, and we will continue to build on momentum heading into 2024. Thank you for your continued support. And with that, I will now pass it over to our Chief Product Officer, Mr. Wagner.
Thank you, Mr. Chan. On the product side, for Q4, we continued to follow our North Star of guaranteed incremental revenue, taking the successes from one game in our portfolio and applying them across the others. We introduced the season pass feature into Bud Farm Idle Tycoon and saw the expected 10% lift to monthly in-app purchase revenue that we saw on Trailer Park Boys: Greasy Money. As of today, we have season pass in 5 of our top games across the portfolio with plans to expand to 2 more in the next quarter. For our idle games, Q4 was especially strong as we capitalize on the holiday season with a coordinated event schedule across all the games, combined with new event types and new event prices. RuPaul's Drag Race Superstar and Bud Farm, Cheech and Chong saw their highest 30-day average revenue of the year in December, and The Office: Somehow We Manage and Trailer Park Boys: Greasy Money saw their highest ARPDAU of the year in Q4. Our idle games are not slowing down, and we continue to get better and better at leveraging towards our business goals while entertaining and delighting players. On the match-three side, Bud Farm: Munchie Match showed a strong quarter, doubling our peak revenue from Q3 to Q4, and it reached record ARPDAUs and daily conversion rates for the year, while we've been aggressively scaling. We took the next big step to kick off 3 additional match-three games staggered for launch across 2024 and 2025 that capitalize on our deep knowledge and relationships with major IPs and that bring our winning match-three formula to much bigger and more passionate audiences. Overall, we have a strong pipeline of idle and match-three games slated for release in 2024, and we continue to grow our existing games revenue incrementally and consistently. Over to Ms. Shek, our Chief Operating Officer, for additional comments.
As Mr. Chan mentioned, we've achieved record-breaking profitability in Q4. Our relentless focus on operational efficiency has paid off, and we transformed ESGG into a leaner, more talent-dense and focused company. By investing in our people and creating a culture that fosters innovation and collaboration, we've attracted top talent and strategically sold critical roles with industry veterans, who bring invaluable expertise and experience to our team. By doing so, we've not only strengthened our leadership bench, but also positions ourselves for sustained growth and innovation in the ever-evolving landscape of our industry. We've also made significant strides in investing in our current teams, providing them with the resources, training and support they need to thrive in their roles. Through targeted development programs and opportunities for growth, we've empowered our employees to take on new challenges and expand their skill sets. This has not only boosted morale and engagement, but has also enabled us to promote from within, recognizing and rewarding the hard work and dedication of our team members. Our recent engagement surveys shown that the productivity of the company has increased by 60% year-over-year and our internal Employee Promoter Score 3x. Great people love to be surrounded by great people and are proud to be members of an efficient and effective team that consistently delivers results. With more effective processes, increased productivity, we have not only improved our bottom line, but also enhance our ability to deliver high-quality titles at record speed. We kicked off Q1 with a worldwide launch of All Elite Wrestling and 3 exciting soft launches with both new and existing IP partners. We remain committed to pushing the boundaries of idle gaming with new features and engaging content for our loyal fan bases, while also furthering our achievements with match-three. We have already soft launched our second match title and have several more unannounced IP titles in development slated for immediate launches later in the year as well as into 2025. With a strong pipeline of new titles, our leadership in the idle gaming space and our success in exploring new genres like match, we are well positioned for continued growth and success. Back to you, Jason.
Thanks, team. In 2022, we made a promise to investors to focus on adjusted EBITDA over top line growth. We have very much delivered on that promise, with 5 consecutive quarters over $2.5 million, we have grown this margin to 22% and plan to continue that focus and maintain that margin. We are seeing a few key positive indicators that we feel could fundamentally change the outcome of the games industry and to our business in particular. The largest single expense that we have as a company is our ongoing payments to Google and Apple. This is a 30% fee that we are forced to pay in order to be playable on their devices. This duopoly is widely seen as anticompetitive and as an unfair tax on application developers. Google and Apple have always fought hard against making any changes or being at all flexible on this taxation until now. For the first time in almost 15 years, we have seen Apple reduce their tax as a result of the pressure from the EU and their Digital Markets Act, that pressure being lawsuits and hefty fines. Apple is also being forced to allow competitive app stores on to their platform, often referred to as stores within a store. The most exciting one to us is the Epic Game Store, which will be launching late in 2024. Another new anti-trust suit in the U.S. was also just launched against Google and Apple, specifically around their App Store fees. These are the first of many dominos to fall. We have now seen reduced fees, additional distribution opportunities as well as the ability to process our own payments off platform for the first time being legislated into opportunities for the mobile game companies. It is early days but we believe we will see these fees drop dramatically over the next 12 to 24 months, and we realized directly to our bottom line and therefore, open opportunities across the entire industry. We would also like to highlight the incredible achievements of our friends at Scopely. They recently launched their IP-driven game MONOPOLY GO! in partnership with Hasbro. This game has gone from worldwide launch to $2 billion in revenue in just 10 short months. It is currently on a $1 billion quarter run rate. This impressive achievement is an app demonstration of what can happen when great game developers align with great IPs within our total addressable market. This sets a new high bar of what we, as a company, are swinging for every time we steps the plate. Thank you for your time today, and we will now open it up to questions from analysts.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Adhir Kadve from Eight Capital.
Just as we think about your model moving forward, I know last year was largely dependent -- or largely focused on getting operating efficiencies with EBITDA trending higher. As we look to fiscal 2024, how should we be thinking about revenue versus EBITDA should we be seeing slightly more focused efforts on the top line, or would -- should you -- or would we be looking at the kind of the same thing, operational efficiencies and more focused on EBITDA line?
Yes, more of a thing. We're focused on profitability. We're focused on building up our war chest. We're focused on prime opportunities. We want to continue to grow, of course, and plan to do so and have many things in the pipeline that will help us in that process, but above all profitability sustainable growth and building up that war chest. But as we launch these new games, if one of them hits metrics that allow us to have opportunities, like I was just speaking about Scopely, we will absolutely go heavy and deep on those ones. So we reserve the right to shift those focus as it's the right business plan to do. But as of today, we're focused on profitability.
Okay. Awesome. And then just maybe on some of the more structural changes that you're seeing with Google and Apple. I know hard to say like in terms of a timeline, but let's say we see something really favorable start to happen, how quickly would you act, and how quickly could we see that kind of hit the P&L as these things are enacted?
Look beyond my control. It's when Google, Apple and more specifically, the regulators force them to do so. So the small incremental changes right now, like the new -- what's just been enacted in Europe as of March 1st, will be minimally incremental to our bottom line as those fees didn't go down too much, but they did come down. I think our math said it would be something like $300,000 additional to our bottom line for the year, which isn't massive. But keep in mind, that's only for a handful of European countries and a small amount and Google as being -- or sorry, Apple is being very crafty about how they're going about it, and the EU has specifically said, this is horse hockey, you can't do this. This is a bad faith and is levying something like a $75 million fine on them for being crafty. And so we will see these changes come. And hopefully, they are forced to be enacted immediately. But it will take time. And as -- and this will grow to other markets, and this will grow -- have to do the same thing. So like you said, it's hard to know exactly when these things are going to come together, but the dominos are falling. The process has officially begun.
Okay. Understood. Maybe last and then I'll pass the line. Just the MAUs and the DAUs this quarter, both kind of ticked up after a couple of quarters kind of trending downward. Obviously, great to see. Is that largely just a function of your increased user acquisition spending sequentially into Q4, or how should we be thinking about that?
Jim, you want to take that one?
Yes, sure. Just finding my mute button. I believe that's a result of our earlier pivot in 2023, where we reduced UA budgets, and we focused on stable, profitable, higher retaining campaigns. So we're -- essentially yes, we're stacking players. We're finding the little wins and creeping our UA budgets up over time. And that's resulting in players sticking around, retaining and [ moved out ] as the balance is slowly picking up. And also as a result of when we lowered our UA budgets, we put more effort into organic initiatives, working with more closely on the featuring the discoverability, all the things that bring in those free players and that...
Okay. Awesome. Sorry, guys. I'll sneak 1 last one in. And Jason, I know you can't really provide all that much color into the pipeline or the IP in the pipeline. But if we have to kind of compare the IP to some of the -- from of the past IP that you've launched, would you say what you have in the pipeline is comparable? Is it larger? Is it smaller? Just any additional color on like the recognizability of the IP that you have in your pipeline right now?
So the 3 games that are launching pretty much immediately are IPs that we've already been working with, so additional titles using existing IP. And then some are -- I would say they're similar to our existing IPs. They're not our biggest swings ever, but they're good solid on bases. And they're -- ones that we choose typically we know that they have passionate loyal fan bases. So that's always our target. It's not necessarily about the biggest widest known IPs, but IPs with a really strong [ colt-like pulling. ]
Your next question comes from the line of Scott Buck from H.C. Wainwright.
Jason, I'm curious, with the focus on EBITDA and cash generation, how are you thinking about capital allocation here as you start to kind of build up that dry powder?
So a couple of things. We want to be prepared that so that if the opportunity does come to spend heavily and grow again quickly that we have the dry powder available to do that. We're also building up that dry powder as we look at additional IP and partnership opportunities. We're looking at a handful of opportunities, a couple of which we think are incredibly exciting, but won't be cheap and will be heavy investments. So my short-term goal is to get to $10 million cash on hand, and that opens up some incredible new opportunities for us. So that's how we're thinking about that.
Great. And can you remind us what cash level you need to just kind of run the day-to-day of the business? Just trying to get a sense of what that kind of excess cash level is?
J.C., do you want to answer that one?
Yes. So we collect revenue pretty regularly from Apple and Google. So I would feel comfortable running the business with approximately $1 million, $2 million cash on hand. We've been pretty -- we have pretty reliable ARs in terms of collecting on all the revenues. So that would be a comfortable level of dry powder, I would say.
And then we have access to debt if we wanted to use that.
Right. That's right. And Jason, last one, the turbulence, you kind of highlighted the first part of your prepared remarks. Does that open up potential acquisition opportunities, or do you guys have enough going on organically where that's not really a focus at the moment?
The M&A market is a weird place right now because -- especially for us because there's a couple of things. One is, we don't have a massive amount of cash on hand and so using that cash for M&A would be a relatively small acquisition and not necessarily move the needle as much as using that same cash to make a bigger bet on a game. So I don't think somebody else can make a bet game better than us. So I think cash on hand wise, we'd be better to do it ourselves. And then using our Magical Internet Money called stock that we could use -- issue stock to buy another company, I think we're so incredibly undervalued right now that we would be giving too much of a discount like it doesn't make any sense to raise money or to use that money for acquisition at this current level. So honestly, M&A doesn't make a whole lot of sense at this level. That being said, there are lots of interesting opportunities out there. And should the -- as we continue to have those conversations with various people, should the right opportunity come along and the right structure be available to us, we would definitely take advantage of it. But at these levels, it would be silly. We need -- this is the best thing we can invest in, the best company that we could acquire shares of is ourselves.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Colin George from Haywood Securities.
Maybe just reorganizing my questions here to build on the discussion around cash a little bit more. It looks like there was some sort of rebalancing to working capital throughout the year in 2023. Could we see working capital becoming more of a source of cash as we look forward here, it looks like your payables are below your receivables? Just trying to get a cadence on maybe some of those moving items.
Yes. No, exactly. As we continue to build our war chest, those receivables are coming in are payable are becoming less. We did a lot of restructuring back in August, September, October to streamline and kill off software projects and such that we weren't getting good value for a lot of those are coming together. And so we will absolutely see our cash position to continue to grow throughout the year.
Okay. Great. So yes, safe to say that working capital should be a source moving forward...
I think our actual -- like our necessary working capital, like J.C. was saying, is kind of that 1, 1.5, 2 for a really great buffer anything over to in our -- sitting in our bank account should be put to work.
Okay. And then maybe just on gross margins, take a look at the quarter specifically, are quite impressive. Is that part of some of the restructuring efforts, or is the match game profile? Are they better gross margins or a season pass. I'm sure it's a combination of all those effects. But if you could just provide any color on sort of the main drivers to the impressive gross margin reported for the quarter.
Yes. The main driver is the reduction in costs that we went through in Q3 and focusing on fewer but higher likely to succeed projects. Two years ago, kind of 2021, 2020 especially and even most of the 2022, the target was to make as many best as possible, to make a lot of games, throw them out it in the market and see what works. But as that market continue to shift and the discoverability and the cost of UA and the cost of development continue to climb, that wasn't the right bet anymore. So we shifted away from kind of having 10 to 15 games in development to having 3 or 4 games in development, and that's where we are now. So we have a few games that are in that soft launch phase. And then we have 3 or 4 games that are targeted for later in the year and into next year as well as some games that are longer time line. So it's that focus. The margins are actually relatively the same. It's just we're not spending as much on wild bets as we were.
Okay. Understood. And of course, there's going to be ebbs and flows on a quarter-to-quarter basis. And then the pipeline changes, but from what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing, it shouldn't be quite -- it shouldn't be impossible just sort of pain levels in and around or above 60% based on the current trajectory. Is that fair to say?
Yes, that's fair to say. But again, if the right opportunity comes along at the right time, absolutely, we're going to spend on that, and that will change the profile. With -- if things continue the way they are today and looking at how things are performing today versus Q3, then yes, we expect much of the same.
Okay. Great. And then maybe just 1 last one for me, I don't know, if you guys will be able to provide additional color, but just anything on the next 3 games that are scheduled for Q2 on the cadence? Is that early Q2, late Q2? Just trying to -- or spread out throughout the quarter, just trying to get an idea on how much that may be able to offset some of the seasonality through the summer?
Yes, Lisa or Jim, do you guys want to talk to the specifics. We can't say exact dates and our exact titles. Those announcements will be coming on their own and individually, but we can talk more broadly about our general targets. Lisa or Jim?
Yes. So we are already in soft-launch with those games in various territories. Typically, we go in Australia or we launch in Canada, and we look at self-launch numbers as we continue developing the product. So that's where all 3 games are at right now. And so they will land some spread throughout the quarter, mid to late Q2.
Congrats on the quarter. Looking forward to seeing when it rolls out over the next, I guess, few months, yes.
We'll talk again soon as they're only 6 weeks away from our next report when we report for Q1.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call over to Jason Bailey for any closing remarks.
Yes. Thanks, everybody. I think we put together a good quarter that we can be proud of and a good year overall. Like I was saying, it was a tough year for the tech industry as a whole and a tough year for the mobile games industry. But I think we made the right choices. We express to the market our focus on sustainable growth and EBITDA and having that war chest and being default alive. And we're in better shape than 90% of other games companies out there, and that we have diverse set of games that allow us to keep making money quarter after quarter after quarter. Some of our titles like Trailer Park Boys: Greasy Money games that have been out for 7, 8 years and continue to perform very well, and we expect the same out of our existing titles. We have a great pipeline of new titles coming out that you never know until you know. And like I was mentioning with our friends at Scopely, you know, I am not saying we're going to launch a game next week that's going to do $2 billion in revenue in 10 months because that would be delusional, but it was great to see that, that can still happen. It's a great kind of moment of hope. It's one game only. But it's something that we're shooting for. And with our new move into match-three especially, I think the opportunity is there. I think we're seeing the retention metrics. We're getting better at monetizing. We're getting better understanding the nuances and the audience around those games, and we've already begun to work on new partnerships with -- and new titles using existing partnerships, new partnerships where, if done right, could be the game that puts us on that scale. So we're going to do everything we can to focus on a small handful of titles with the highest probability of success, continue to level up our team, continue to build up that war chest and continue to work on the diversity of titles we have in our portfolio and build this company. We've been at this for 12, 13 years now, and we'll continue to do so. And this company is going to be around for a long, long time and has tremendous opportunities. So thanks, everybody, for coming out and listening to us blab, I'd say. As always, you can reach out to me directly at jason@eastsidegames to ask me any questions directly, and hopefully, I'll be able to find some time to shoot you some answers back or even hop on a call. All right. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for your time. Thanks for coming out.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.