DoubleDown Interactive Co Ltd (DDI) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, and welcome to DoubleDown Interactive's earnings conference call for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2025. My name is Cherie, and I will be your operator this afternoon.

Prior to this call, DoubleDown issued its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2025 in a press release, a copy of which is available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.doubledowninteractive.com. You can find the link to the Investor Relations section at the top of the home page.

Joining us on today's call are DoubleDown's CEO, Mr. In Keuk Kim; and its CFO, Mr. Joe Sigrist. Following their remarks, we will open the call for questions. Before we begin, Joe Jaffoni, the company's Investor Relations advisers will make a brief introductory statement.

Thank you, Cherie. Before management begins their formal remarks, we need to remind everyone that some of management's comments today will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 as amended and we hereby claim the protection of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Forward-looking statements are statements about future events and include expectations and projections not present or historical facts and can be identified by the use of words such as may, might, will, expect, assume, believe, intend, estimate, continue, should, anticipate, or other similar terms. Forward-looking statements include, and are not limited to, those regarding the company's future plans, merger and acquisition strategy, strategic and financial objectives, expected performance, and financial outlook.

Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from what the company expects. Therefore, you should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on them. We refer you to DoubleDown's annual report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 21, 2025, and other SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact future operating results and financial condition.

These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of today's call. The company does not undertake and expressly claims any obligation to update or alter the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

During today's call, management will discuss non-IFRS financial measures, which believed by management to be useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. These measures should not be considered superior to in isolation or as a substitute for the financial results prepared in accordance with IFRS. A full reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measure is available in the earnings release issued this afternoon. I'd like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and will be made available for replay via link in the Investor Relations section of DoubleDown's website.

Thank you for your patience with that. And it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to DoubleDown's CEO, In Keuk Kim. Go ahead, please.

Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone. We are delighted to be with you today to discuss our fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results. Key highlights include: continued year-over-year growth of SuprNation, the first fourth quarter contribution from WHOW Games, the significant growth of our direct-to-consumer revenue stream, and continued strong profitability from our business model.

We continue to demonstrate our ability to deliver strong adjusted EBITDA and drive high levels of cash flow, flow, fundamental factors that we believe will contribute to increased shareholder value.

Let's start with the quarterly results. This afternoon, we -- we reported first quarter consolidated revenue of $95.8 million, up 17% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA of $40.6 million, up 16% year over year. In Q4, we again delivered on our operating priority to drive a high conversion of revenue to profit and cash flow.

Net cash flow from operations was $42.6 million in the quarter, bringing the total for full year 2025 to $136.8 million, and we continue to deliver this profit and cash flow results as we invested in new player acquisition activities at SuprNation.

Our social casino business continues to be the engine of profit and cash flow generation for the company. In the first quarter, social casino revenue grew 9% year over year to $79.7 million, driven by our first full quarter of contribution from WHOW Games. WHOW Games benefits from broad payer engagement, which, as you can see, is reflected in our strong Q4 total social casino payer conversion rate of 9.6%. This is up from a conversion rate of 6.9% in Q4 2024. Conversely, WHOW Games players on average spend less than those from the traditional DoubleDown social casino business, resulting in lower total social casino monthly average revenue per payer of $198 as compared to $282 in Q4 2025.

We've spent the last few months working closely with WHOW Games and see operational and product synergies between it and our traditional DoubleDown social casino business. In addition, while the overall social casino market has growth challenges, we see growth potential outside the United States and look to further leverage the WHOW Games acquisition, particularly in Europe.

As discussed in the past, we have been working hard to increase the direct-to-consumer, or DTC element, of our social casino revenue. WHOW Games benefits from a relatively large DTC component due to its strong web-based history. And mostly, importantly, we significantly ramped DTC purchases made in DoubleDown Casino in Q4.

During the quarter, we launched product features and introduced purchase offers, which focused on DTC. As a result, DTC revenue exceeded 30% of our total social casino revenue in the first quarter. We plan to continue to optimize our social casino business to benefit from the DTC transition and are focused on driving further growth of DTC revenue as a percentage of our overall social casino revenue in 2026.

Turning to our iGaming business. SuprNation's Q4 2025 revenue was $16.1 million, up 78% year over year. For perspective, SuprNation's quarterly revenue run rate has more than doubled since DoubleDown closed this acquisition a little more than two years ago, as we continue to make positive progress on acquiring new players, while implementing product and operations improvements.

From an innovation perspective, we fully launched our first iGaming casino title called, [Las Vegas], in the UK market and are now working to optimize its marketing strategy and operations as we look to ramp its player base and bring the brand to other markets. You can see from our results that our prudent investments are continuing to provide growth opportunities and enhanced player engagement, resulting in strong profits and cash flow. We continue to demonstrate the ability to successfully integrate acquisitions while we innovate in our core business.

Now I will turn it over to our CFO, Joe Sigrist, to walk us through our financials before providing my closing remarks. Joe?

Thank you, IK, and good afternoon, everyone. To review, revenues for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $95.8 million and were comprised of $79.7 million in revenues from our social casino business and $16.1 million of revenues from SuprNation. This compares to total company revenues of $82.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Our Social Casino segment grew 9% from the fourth quarter of 2024 to the $79.7 million level as we realized our full first quarter of WHOW game revenue. iGaming revenues grew 78% year over year to $16.1 million and were essentially flat from Q3 2025, as we began moderating previously increases in spending to acquire new players.

As we have done since acquiring the business, we closely monitor the projected ROI of the marketing investment in SuprNation and make adjustments as appropriate based on these projections. I discussed the influence of WHOW Games on our overall social casino KPIs, which have helped increase the payer conversion rate, while reducing the average monthly revenue per payer in the fourth quarter of 2025, as compared to Q4 2024.

One reason for this dynamic is the greater proportional use of Android mobile devices versus Apple devices in Europe as compared to the Us. Specifically, the payer conversion rate, which is the percentage of players who pay within the social casino apps, increased to 9.6% in Q4 2025, compared to 6.9% in Q4 2024. Average revenue per daily at of user or ARPDAU of $1.35 was up from $1.30 in Q4 of 2025. And average monthly revenue per payer was $198 in Q4 2025, down from $282 the prior year period.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, operating expenses were $65.9 million compared to $47.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The increase is primarily due to impairment loss recognized for SuprNation's goodwill and increased operating expenses from the addition of WHOW Games, compared to the prior year period partially offset by lower R&D expenses.

Sales and marketing expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $16.5 million compared to $10.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. In Q4, we optimize spending to acquire new players for DoubleDown Casino, invested in advertising spending for SuprNation to focus on new player acquisition and absorb the full quarter of marketing expenses at WHOW Games for the first time.

Profit, excluding noncontrolling interest for the fourth quarter of 2025 decreased 31% to $24.7 million or earnings per fully diluted common share of $9.72, $0.49 per ADS in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to profit from the interim period of $35.7 million or earnings per fully diluted common share of $14.40, $0.72 per ADS, in Q4 of 2024. The decrease primarily reflects the impairment loss on SuprNation goodwill.

Looking beyond the impairment charge, adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2025 rose to $40.5 million (sic - see press release, "$40.6 million") compared to $35.3 million (sic - see press release, "$35.1 million") for the fourth quarter of 2024, and $37.5 million for Q3 2025.

Adjusted EBITDA margin was 42.3% (sic - see press release, "42.4%") for Q4 2025, as compared to 42.8% (sic - see press release, "42.9%") in Q4 2024 and 39.1% in Q3 2025.

Net cash flows provided by operating activities in Q4 2025 were $42.6 million compared to $45.9 million in Q4 2024. And for all of 2025, despite a number of changes to our operations, we again generated significant free cash flow, as net cash flows provided by operating activities were $136.8 million. With this meaningful generation of cash in 2025, we had $490 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments with a net cash position at December 31, 2025, of approximately $455 million or approximately $9.19 per ADS.

Now I'll turn the call back to IK for closing remarks.

Thank you, Joe. DoubleDown Interactive is delivering strong profit and cash flow from our two meaningful and exciting businesses.

Social Casino and iGaming. In 2026, we are continuing to innovate and enhance these businesses through product, live operations, and marketing improvements. For example, we recently launched new meta features in DoubleDown Casino, increasing the SuprNation, which gamifies the player opportunities to increase their purchase motivation. And we are continuing to generate ways for failures to further take advantage of DTC purchase options, thereby allowing us to further expand social casino margins.

Our strong balance sheet and cash position allow us to make disciplined investments in each of our businesses while continually evaluating new opportunities to enhance the growth of each. This includes investments through both organic means, as we leverage the strength of our talented teams and through our evaluation of potential future acquisitions.

We are now happy to take your questions. Cherie?

(Operator Instructions) David Bain, Texas Capital Bank.

Great. Thank you. Joe, nice quarterly execution again. Maybe if you could help us bifurcate DoubleDown Casino and WHOW revenue contribution and growth. And I assume, just based on the DTC mix, WHOW has a pretty high mix. Could you bifurcate do you see gains in mix for both WHOW and DoubleDown as well?

Yeah. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate that. Yeah, going forward, we're going to -- as we started in Q3, continue to formally report our KPIs and our revenue in the social casino sector, and not specifically quantify WHOW Games versus the traditional DoubleDown Social Casino business. But I can say that in both cases, the businesses held their own during the quarter.

Certainly, as we continue to look at, for instance, the industry reports, we know that the Social Casino sector was down slightly in the year in 2025. And so from a growth perspective, both companies are both entities of ours are working hard to grow in what is obviously a very mature category.

Relative to DTC, yes. I mean, I definitely want to highlight that -- well, two things: one, as you mentioned, the DTC element, if you will, in WHOW Games has always been quite high, because many of their players actually still play through a website, whether it be on the phone -- their phone or on their computer. And they historically have had a large kind of non-app store contribution from from their purchasers.

But at the same time, I don't want that to mask the really significant increase we saw on the double -- on the traditional DoubleDown Casino side in ramping DTC, and obviously from a just a pure size perspective, that is the largest contributor to our overall revenue, and certainly, was the largest contributor to the increase in our DTC results.

Awesome. Very helpful. And then I guess my follow-up would be, just the leader of the Social Casino group announced some employee reductions recently, and they're going to rely more on AI and automation. One, can we get an update as to what DoubleDown a while the combined company is doing from that standpoint?

And then again, if we look at the industry just from a bigger picture and you see Aristocrat's recent divestiture of non-social casino assets, I don't know if they lean more into marketing. I guess the question is, are you seeing the broader promotional landscape is rational elevated or even benign as just revenue for the sector continues to be on the current growth trajectory. So kind of two questions, one on AI and automation, and the other on just promotions out there.

Yeah. No, I'll take the second one and then I can talk about AI.

Relative to the business. I mean, obviously, as the industry has matured, we've all had to deal with making our businesses more and more profitable. And in fact, one of the things that, I think, we've been recognized for is early on, not going crazy as it relates to overspending, frankly, to acquire new players. We moderated our player acquisition spend back two, three years ago. And we've been staying very disciplined to our measuring systems and how we predict LTV, et cetera, et cetera.

And I think that as we look forward, social casino and the social casino business is all about efficiency. Yes, it's about innovation. Yes, it's about doing everything we can to continue to acquire new players and get our players to be excited about playing and ultimately purchasing. And at the same time, just becoming more and more efficient in in all aspects of that business.

And to that end, AI is an important element. So I'll turn it over to IK, he can talk a bit about AI I think in that context.

Hi, David, yeah. AI is everywhere nowadays and already driving meaningful change across the broader technology and gaming industry and DDI is no exception.

First, in content production, AI is helping us accelerate asset creation, localization, and early-stage post piping. So this shortens development cycles, levy, and improves our ability to test concepts and meta features more efficiently.

Second, in live operations. AI-driven analytics enable us to better penalize player experience, including offers, challenges and engagement mechanics based on behavior patents and real-time data.

And third, in marketing optimization, as Joe mentioned, AI enhances our audience targeting preseason, greater iteration speed and performance monitoring supporting stronger otherwise discipline. So we are building these capabilities shortly and responsibly, integrating AI into our workflows while maintaining strong creative and operational oversight. Overall, AI is not just about cost efficiency for us. It is about increasing speed, improving disease quality, and ultimately, enhancing returns across the business. Thank you.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Aaron Lee, Macquarie.

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I guess, on SuprNation, I believe you mentioned moderating the previous increases in customer acquisition spend. Is that just kind of temporary? Or is that signaling a shift more towards driving profitability? And how should investors be thinking about the long-term margin structure of that business? Thanks.

Yeah. No. It's definitely, I guess, a reaction, if I could use that term to what I mentioned earlier, which is staying true to our spin relative to measuring the ROI of acquiring new players. And what we've seen -- I think, as we've discussed for the past several quarters, we were able to really lean into marketing and acquiring new players in SuprNation without reaching that threshold of payback and ROI. But more recently, we have started to kind of bump up against the threshold where we've decided at least on a sequential basis to moderate the spend, or in the sense, to moderate the increase because we spent essentially the same amount from Q3 to Q4.

We just didn't increase it again. And in 2026, it will be interesting to see. I mean, there are a number of changes going on many people, I think, understand that there are gaming tax changes, specifically in the UK for online games. And so we're going to have to deal with that, and we're going to have to deal with what is, I think, an exciting opportunity as we further invest and lean into this fourth brand for SuprNation that we launched. And so we're going to have to continue just to be mindful of our disciplined approach to spending marketing dollars.

Got you. Okay. That's helpful. And then on direct-to-consumer, you have really impressive results there. Net growth with WHOW games, but you also mentioned on the traditional DoubleDown Casino side as well. I guess, any updated thoughts on where this can go over the next few quarters? Thank you.

Yeah. I mean, I think I'll definitely speak for IK, and saying that our ability to take advantage of DTC -- again, WHOW Games aside, just on our traditional business, has even been faster than we would have thought.

And I'm not going to say that there's -- a limit of that is what the plateau level will be, but we're not there yet for sure, and we're going to continue to ramp DTC revenue as a percentage of our overall Social Casino revenue.

And so that's what we're continuing to work on from a product and a messaging standpoint, in-app communications, and all of the rest. And as I think IK mentioned, we even have new things that we've already launched this quarter to take advantage of that.

That's great. Thank you so much.

(Operator Instructions) Eric Handler, ROTH Capital.

Good afternoon. Thanks for the question. So I know you guys get asked this question a lot, but I understand you're looking for acquisitions to grow the business. But when you think about how much free cash flow you generate a year -- I mean, if you allocated 20% to capital returns, you still have over $100 million, or $2 per share, to grow your existing cash base.

You're definitely overcapitalized at this point. So is there any gating factor that's preventing you from either thinking about a buyback or a dividend? Or what do you, wait-- is there something that would signal that you're ready to return capital?

Yeah. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for the question. I would definitely just reinforce the fact that long-term shareholder value and return to shareholders are topics that are top of mind for the company have been and continue to be -- the management and the Board and our controlling shareholder continue to discuss ways to create shareholder value. And as you said, the results so far, at least up until now, has been a strong consensus, that the way to create long-term shareholder value is through our M&A strategy, dealing with kind of the biggest challenge we have in the company, which is the very mature nature of the social casino business.

That being said, there isn't any particular trigger or any particular event that would say, we can do more than that with our cash balance, other than the fact that it gets bigger and bigger. And we certainly are mindful of that and we certainly want to be sensitive to having such a large balance sheet. And so, not only do we continue to talk about long-term shareholder value and return to shareholder, we also continue to discuss ways that we can do more than one thing at a time with our strong balance sheet. And as I said, those are very -- always very present and in very much the minds of everybody who's associated with this company.

Okay. And then as a follow-up, curious just from a counter standpoint. Has something changed at all with SuprNation that caused you to take an impairment charge?

Well, we do do valuations of our goodwill and whether that be for the original purchase of DoubleDown Casino or the DoubleDown business, or the two acquisitions we've done, we do those at the end of the year or in the fourth quarter. And so you may recall or may remember that we did a very large goodwill write-down for the original DoubleDown acquisition two or three years ago. And so this is the time that we do it. And based on the various third parties analysis that was the result, obviously, it's non-cash. It doesn't affect EBITDA, and that was the outcome.

Okay, thanks.

Josh Nichols, B. Riley Securities.

Yeah, thanks for taking the quesiton. Yeah, I probably would echo the previous caller's notes about the company being overcapitalized. EV is negative at this point, despite doing $160 million-plus of annualized free cash flow and I appreciate the focus, as you describe it for shareholder value. But I think, by most people's definition, that would mean getting stock price and the EV to positive and ideally with the multiple to digress.

Looking at the iGaming piece of the business, it was essentially flat quarter over quarter. Clearly, I know you mentioned you've been optimizing the spending there. But how should we think, as we model like 2026, the dynamics between sequential growth versus profitability for that space? Is it clear to you what direction you're leaning? Or are you going to be focusing more on growth or profitability going forward from here?

I'm sorry, Josh. You said on the Social Casino business, right?

No, on the iGaming piece.

Oh, I'm sorry, I understand. Yeah. I mean, like I said, it's really based on what we're seeing almost in real time. The biggest -- other than gambling tax, the biggest expense in the business is marketing. It is acquiring new players. And we have this disciplined approach to marketing and to spending to acquire players.

So I definitely believe that we're going to continue to spend and to spend to acquire players. I think the question is only going to be kind of what level of increase will we make? I mean, we're not going to pull back on our spend. It's just a question of how much more quarter to quarter will we spend. And again, that goes back to blame the algorithm, say, algorithms on the LTV and payback period and the like.

And then just one follow-up for me. I mean, I think a lot of the stuff has already been hit on AI, WHOW, DTC. One thing I was curious about on the social casino side, given some of the legislative changes we're seeing in places like California, sweepstake bans, and whatnot. Are you seeing any easing of pressure in terms of like marketing or customer acquisition cost on that front? Or what's your expectation, as we look forward to 2026, now that there's been some significant actions taken by a number of states on that front?

Yeah. No, that's a really good question, Josh. I mean, the really rapid rise of legislation in sweepstakes is really interesting. As I think we mentioned in past quarters, and some of our peers have as well, the pressure that the growth of sweeps had on marketing costs were significant.

I'd like to say that it's reverted back to some kind of lower level. But I think one of the things that we learn over time is that the costs to acquire players, regardless of what sector of gaming don't ever seem to go down. But I think the increases that we saw, especially during the period where sweeps were kind of taken the country by storm almost, I think that pressure has lessened to a certain extent.

Appreciate it. Thanks.

Eric Gregg, FTIA.

Thank you. I have two questions. First one, and comment seems like a pretty strong quarter, so congratulations on that. Joe, just going back on the impairment, you didn't do the SuprNation deal that long ago. I think the business is roughly double what it was when you bought it. What was the magnitude of the Goodwill write down? And again, it seems surprising that any kind of Goodwill write down would need to happen when you've had such robust growth to the business. So if you just could help me understand that a little bit better?

Yeah. Yeah, it was around $8 million. And we paid -- the upfront was $35 million or so. So that kind of gives you the relative size of it. To a great extent, we're driven in these cases by what the third-party evaluation experts conclude. And that's where it ended up this year to address the Goodwill balance.

That includes comparables or something or weighted average cost of capital and -- what was your --?

I'm not an expert, but I have obviously reviewed their report. I mean, they have a number of different ways they look at, you know, valuation -- you know, the valuations of this and that includes comparables and -- customer rated capitals and peers in both public and private markets and a bunch of things.

Okay. And then the next question is really directed at IK. You know, Joe, some feedback on the capital allocation front. You know, at this point, the company is trading at a negative enterprise value. And one could argue that's a referendum on the concern over the lack of savvy capital allocation policy or maybe about its focus on current focus on its growth policy over taking advantage of this.

You know, it's hard to see how the company can buy any other business at a negative enterprise value, how it could do any other acquisition at a negative enterprise value. And so buying in its own shares at a negative enterprise is incredibly compelling. So, I think, can you just help us understand what's taking so long to -- for the management to come around to that thinking, or is this just a cultural issue that it's just hard to get around, especially giving us more context given that WHOW Games has been buying back stock? And so just help us understand all that.

So if you don't mind, I'll ask IK to answer as well. But I'll just kind of a preview here and just say that one of the things that has been really positive relative to buybacks is the activity that occurred last year through the sale of [sticks], the private equity firm that helped buy DoubleDown in Korea, the sale of those shares and the expansion of the public float.

So I think that, you know, just before I take makes his comment, I'll say that that definitely is something that was important relative to a buyback because it does increase the float. And so it makes us less concerned about basically us buying back and then making what was, at least, already a very small amount of float even smaller.

But IK, do you want to say anything about W and W strategy for buybacks?

Can you hear me?

Oh, now we can, sorry.

Ah, sorry. Yes. I cannot speak for W Games, but as long as I understood, W Games also pursue growth, leveraging DDI's growth as well. So they will take care of DDI's growth as well.

And we're not just -- okay so it's growth at all -- at all costs regardless of whether it leads to negative enterprise value in the business, is that what we should see that as?

I certainly wouldn't interpret that from what IK said. I think what IK's saying is that, and let me just try to fill in the blanks here, and this has come up in the past where people point to W having done buybacks themselves. I do know for a fact that that's not their primary strategy for their cash or their primary desire in order to kind of deal with their fairly low enterprise value relative to the size of their company.

So I think it is similar to us in the sense of they are, again not speaking for them, that the focus of the company is on -- their company is on growth as well. And obviously since we roll up to them, that there's a desire for us to grow as well.

Okay, thank you.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. Thank you for joining us today for DoubleDown's earnings call. You may now disconnect.