East Side Games Group Inc
TSX:EAGR
East Side Games Group Inc
Leaf Mobile, Inc. develops counter culture mobile games. The company is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company went IPO on 2019-07-15. The firm is focused on developing and publishing intellectual property (IP) games, licensing its Game Kits, and technology platforms. The company specializes in free-to-play mobile game groups and creating engaging games that produce player loyalty. The company offers a portfolio of IP lead games, developed and published inhouse or through Game Kit partnerships and acquisitions. The Company’s games include Archer: Danger Phone, Bud Farm Idle Tycoon, Cheech & Chong Bud Farm, The Goldbergs: Back to the 80s, It’s Always Sunny: The Gang Goes Mobile and Trailer Park Boys Grea$y Money, RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar and the soon to be released, The Office: Somehow We Manage. The firm's products are offered on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Earnings Calls
In Q4 2024, East Side Games Group achieved an adjusted EBITDA of $11.6 million with total revenues reaching $83 million, reflecting a 14% margin. Daily active users reached 221,000, with an increase in average revenue per user to $1.01. The company diversified revenue streams through subscriptions and innovative advertising strategies, leading to significant revenue boosts. With plans for 2025, including launching RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen, early metrics indicate promising engagement. The cash position rose by 42% year-over-year, bolstered by ongoing share buybacks and a focus on enhancing game quality and profitability.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the East Side Games Group Q4 2024 Results Call. I'm Jason Bailey, Board Chair and CEO of East Side Games Group. I would like to share with you today the highlights from the fourth quarter ended December 30, 2024, as well as some highlights of what we expect to happen in 2025.
I'd like to remind you that certain statements made in this video are forward-looking within the meaning of the applicable securities laws. This call includes references to non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our fourth quarter press release and MD&A for cautionary statements related to the forward-looking information.
I'm going to pass it over to Jason Chan, our Interim CFO, for some financial highlights.
Hi, everyone. My name is Jason Chan, CFO of East Side Games. Let's take a moment to go over some of the highlights from 2024.
We finished off the year strong with adjusted EBITDA of $11.6 million on a total revenue of $83 million, a margin of 14%. We ended off the year as well with a daily active user count of 221,000 players and an average ARPDAU, so average revenue per daily active user, of $1.01. This is an 11% increase over 2023. And I think it further highlights the strength of the core portfolio we have as a business in terms of consistently delivering positive cash flows and profitability, which allows us to then invest in future growth.
Our cash position ended the year stronger as well at $7.5 million. It's a $2.2 billion increase or 42% year-over-year. In addition, we continue to believe that the best investment we can make is ourselves. So to that effect, we are continuing our NCIB program. In 2024, we bought back $1.9 million worth of shares, and we will continue to do so within the restrictions allowed in the exchange. If we normalize this year and last year for the NCIB effect, our cash position actually increased by $3.6 million or 67%.
Hello, everyone. I'm Jim Wagner, Chief Product Officer, East Side Games Group.
2024 was a year of both diversification and consolidation for East Side Games. We diversified our revenue sources by introducing new revenue streams through subscriptions, season passes and new advertising placements like interstitial ads and offer walls. To put these initiatives into perspective, on Bud Farm: Munchie Match, interstitial ads introduced in 2024 now make up 25% of all ad revenue. And on Trailer Park Boys: Greasy Money, season pass revenue now makes up 14% of all revenue and subscriptions make up 3% of all revenue with no content requirements and are also subject to a lower platform fee at 15% rather than 30% for all other in-app purchases.
We've built more new features than ever before across the studio and have been diligently running A/B test to definitively prove their value. We've constantly worked to optimize pricing, especially in an increasingly price-sensitive market, resulting in increases to conversion rates and revenue. In parallel, through this meticulous A/B testing and experimentation, we've consolidated the best features and practices across our portfolio, allowing all games to benefit from breakthroughs on a single title, thereby maximizing revenue.
We've diversified into a whole new genre, opening up Match-3 as a viable business model to apply our expertise adapting the biggest brands in the world into engaging mobile game experiences. And we've consolidated the learnings from that first generation of Match-3 games and improved on them as we get ready to launch our next generation of Match-3 games with huge beloved IPs: RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen and Squishmallows Match. RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen entered into limited soft launch and is already showing the best monetization, retention and engagement metrics of any of our other Match games in the same territories.
Hey, everyone. I'm Lisa Shek, COO of East Side Games, and I'm excited to share a look back at 2024 and what's ahead of us. Last year, we doubled down on profitability, streamlining operations, optimizing costs and ensuring every decision we made drove sustainable growth. A huge part of that success has been strengthening our leadership team. We brought in industry veterans and subject matter experts across key functions, boosting productivity while significantly improving retention and engagement company-wide.
We kept our core team lean at around 120 people. But with all our global development partners, our extended team is over 300 strong, collaborating across all our games to bring amazing player experiences to all of you worldwide. One of the biggest strategic shifts in 2024 was focusing on quality over quantity. Instead of prioritizing the number of releases, we're doubling down on the titles with the highest potential and biggest reach.
That's why we're incredibly excited about our next 2 game launches. RuPaul's Match Queen and Squishmallows Match. Both these games come with massive fan bases and outstanding engagement and the early metrics are already proving they have what it takes to be hits this year. With these launches, we're setting ourselves up for an exciting and successful 2025. Big things are ahead, and we can't wait to share more soon.
Hey, everyone. I'm Dave Walls, Founder and President of Funkitron, and I just want to take a minute to talk about how great it's been working with East Side Games on RuPaul's Match Queen. From day 1, ESG has been an incredible publishing partner. With decades of experience working with major IPs like RuPaul's Drag Race, they know exactly how to translate a beloved brand into a game that feels authentic, engaging and super fun for players.
And that's one of the best things about working with ESG, their deep understanding of players. They know what keeps people coming back and their expertise in monetization has helped us hit Match' metrics I didn't even think were possible. Their insights and support let us focus on what we do best, developing great games. We couldn't ask for a better partner, and we're so excited to bring RuPaul's Match Queen to life with ESG. It's been an amazing collaboration and we can't wait for the players to experience what we built together.
Hi. I'm Danielle Bailey, East Side Games Director of Product. I've been with the company for over 5 years, and I'm so excited to talk about RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen and some of the amazing features we've built. We've taken the best that we've learned from fashion, idol and match gameplay to create a brand new hybrid experience, one that's incredibly easy to pick up and impossible to put down.
Launching with over 1,000 highly polished levels and thousands of fashion items, the game will introduce fresh new seasons every week along with some amazing new features such as season collections, which feature fashion from our future queens. Players can complete their collection via purchase with season tokens through season chests or IAP purchase. The featured looks are showcased through digital merchandising and show off the best drag fashion from the show. Players can use their collections and fashion prowess in toot or boot, entering themed contests to compete against others for the best look.
Hello. My name is Hakeem Harrison, and I’ve been the head of growth at East Side Games for just over a year. Three games that we launched in 2024 gave us three distinct opportunities. First, we were able to revamp our creative processes. We’re producing far more net new creative concepts than ever before, and we saw the best performance against creative KPIs in studio history during the Power Rangers: Mighty Force launch in last Q3.
Second, we built stronger relationships with our ad network and measurement partners. Third, we learned the nuances of a new genre as we now look to capitalize on one of the strongest IPs in our portfolio by bringing RuPaul's’ Drag Race to Match in 2025. Through the first few stages of tech and soft launch for RuPaul Match, we are seeing the kind of retention metrics that would make anyone on the ad network side lean in, and they’'re already doing so.
I'm Wally Nguyen, Chief Revenue Officer for East Side Games. Looking ahead to 2025, we continue to look for opportunities to diversify our offerings. With that in mind, I’'m excited to talk about the launch of Trailer Park Boys’: Greasy Money onto the Epic Mobile store. As only a handful of developers on the platform, we have benefited from the high visibility since launch. 21% of our installs have come from the Epic Mobile Store, all of which has been organic, non paid traffic.
The success of this new platform also has meaningful benefits for our business beyond driving players. The Epic Mobile Store only takes a 12% percent platform fee compared to other platforms, which can significantly improve our project margins.
Hi, everyone. I'm Elin Jonsson, Chief Business Officer at East Side Games. Last quarter, we focused on our second major crossover event, this time featuring Trailer Park Boys and Cheech & Chong. This collaboration resulted in one of our highest ARPDAU events for Trailer Park Boys last year. This success reinforces the idea that crossover events add a significant value and boost player engagement.
Looking ahead to Q1, we will continue our focus on crossover events. Our next one will be with Trailer Park Boys and All Elite Wrestling set to launch at the end of Q1. Additionally, we are planning another event for Q2, which will serve as a key boost for RuPaul's Drag Race Superstar. We’re also gearing up for the release of RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen. Beyond our user acquisition efforts, we are exploring other ways to reach our audience through additional product marketing initiatives.
Lastly, we are excited to share that we are finally ready to showcase some gameplay from Squishmallows Match. This footage was first revealed during Squishmallows Day on March 7, and it generated a lot of buzz and excitement.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us for this Q4 2024 earnings call and a wrap-up of 2024 as a whole. I hope you're as excited as I am about the incredible initiatives and the incredible team that we put together and the great things that we're going to see happen in 2025. Thank you for joining us. This video will be available on our website for you to review there. Thank you so much.