Inspired Entertainment Inc (INSE) 2019 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Inspired Entertainment Third Quarter 2019 Conference Call.

(Operator Instructions) Please note that today's event is being recorded.

I'll begin today's conference call by referring you to the company's safe harbor statement that appears in the third quarter 2019 earnings press release, which is available in the Investors section of the company's website at www.inseinc.com.

This safe harbor statement also applies to today's conference call as the company's management will be making certain statements that could be considered forward-looking under securities laws and rules of the CEC (sic) [SEC].

These statements are based on management's current expectations or beliefs and are subject to risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances.

In addition, please note that the company will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.

A reconciliation is included in the earnings press release.

With that completed, I would now like to turn the conference call over to Lorne Weil, the company's Executive Chairman.

Mr. Weil, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our third quarter earnings conference call.

Here with me today are Brooks Pierce, Stewart Baker and Dan Silvers, all of whom you're by now quite familiar with.

In the press release this morning, we referred to a three-pronged strategy that we had been in the process of implementing for quite some time: mitigating the impact of the changes in the U.K. regulations that came from the Triennial Review to between $10 million and $11 million a year or possibly less; generation of new business in our worldwide VLT, Virtual Sports and Interactive businesses with a goal to fully offset the impact of the Triennial; and at the same time, as these things are going on, we are integrating the Novomatic U.K. acquisition that we've talked quite a bit about, including realizing the synergies that we had projected at the time, but as we talk more this morning, we're increasingly confident in.

In my remarks, I'd like to touch on each of these, and then hand it off to Brooks to talk in more detail about the business development initiatives and the integration efforts that are underway.

Lastly, Stewart will cover the financials and any refinancing-related matters at the end of our prepared remarks before we open it up to questions.

Our third quarter results were, obviously, negatively impacted by the reduction in the maximum stake to GBP 2 in the U.K. LBO market, which was implemented on April 1. As we report that a number of times, it was originally intended to be implemented in October of this year and was accelerated back to April, which created a range of logistical issues, again, that we have discussed a number of times and we won't bother to go into in any more detail today.

But as we've discussed previously, we think it will take until we're in the first quarter of 2020 for the full mitigation plan to be executed.

As expected, we've borne the full impact of the revenue reduction in the second and third quarters, while having only partially mitigated the impact through cost-focused operational initiatives.

Part of the reason that we've only mitigated part of the impact is, as I've mentioned a moment ago, because the change in the regulation itself came 6 months quicker than we had been planning.

And some of the things that we can do to very significantly mitigate the impact can't take place until shop closures and other activities have run their course.

I think right now, most importantly, we're seeing a very steady improvement in the sequential year-over-year trend in the gross win per day.

Immediately after the implementation of the Triennial on April 1, this measure of revenue performance was down 44%.

By May, the decline had improved to 40%.

Throughout the third quarter, it was, on average, 37%.

It improved again to 25% in the month of October.

And so far, in November month-to-date, it's about 20%.

So as you can see, there's been a tremendous improvement on the revenue side.

And as we'll get to in a moment, we are in the process of implementing concomitant changes on the cost side.

Along the way, we've seen the closures of, so far, of approximately 850 shops.

And the aftermath supports our previously outlined thesis that a substantial portion of the revenue lost to the shop closures would be recovered through our remaining estate, and that the shops closed would, on average, be at the lower end of the cashbox distribution.

I should also mention here that at least as of the present time, there have been very limited shop closures on the part of the major operators in the U.K. who are not our customers.

Most of the shop closures have been our customers.

So as and when we begin to see some closures on the part of operators who are not our customers, logic would say that we will capture at least some parts of that recirculated revenue, and we would expect that to be one of the drivers of continued improvement in the revenue per terminal per day that I mentioned a moment ago.

Whereas our revenues are driven by a direct linear relationship to the cash going into the machines, obviously, many -- actually most of our costs are unrelated to revenues, but in fact, driven simply by the physical numbers of machines.

We pointed this out before, cost such as field maintenance, transportation logistics, spare parts, et cetera.

So as the overall industry goes through this period of restructuring and soft consolidation, our cost mitigation efforts are going to be driven by a smaller, more profitable estate, as well as being able to either redeploy the terminals that we have removed in the field into other geographies in the world or cannibalize them for service spares, which is the significant component of our ongoing operating cost.

For some time, we've been forecasting that the fully mitigated adjusted EBITDA impact of the Triennial would be between $10 million and $11 million a year.

Based upon what we're seeing so far in the fourth quarter, combined with comprehensive updated modeling, we're confident we will reach this level by the first quarter of 2020.

Indeed, given both recent positive sequential revenue trends and a deeper analysis of costs, we think there is a decent opportunity that we can do even better than that.

We've been saying some time that we expect that by the end of the year or early next year, our overall adjusted EBITDA run rate would be back to where it was going as we went into the Triennial, a number around, let's say, $12.5 million to $13.5 million of EBITDA per quarter.

So in other words, in that time frame, our other business initiatives, which Brooks will talk about in considerably more detail in a moment such as the launch of our gaming machine business in North America, new machines in Greece, new Virtual Sports contracts and new Virtual Sports products, and very importantly, additional Interactive customers, which we have been adding at a very accelerating rate, altogether will be generating, I would say, at least $2.5 million a quarter.

Enough to offset the impact of the Triennial, and again, take us back to a more normalized level of EBITDA, which, as I said a moment ago, is, shall we say, between $12.5 million and $13 million of EBITDA per quarter.

Finally, and right now, I guess in a way, most importantly, we completed the acquisition of Novomatic U.K. Gaming Technology Group.

These businesses are experiencing very positive trends, both in terms of the standalone revenue and profitability, but also the integration in the synergy work that we have been doing.

The trends have actually been stronger than what we anticipated when we agreed to acquire these businesses.

Our thesis on the business, going through its conversion from what was at one time an entirely analog business to what is now more than 60% through the process of conversion to digital, is proving correct.

And it's very clear that the pub's cashbox is increasing almost in lockstep with the trend from analog to digital.

This, in turn, again, as we have discussed before, has a very positive impact on the EBITDA margins of the business, and we're seeing this happen in parallel.

There are quite a few other positives we're seeing in the NTG business that Brooks will discuss in more detail.

Based on this evidence, we expect that the 2020 adjusted EBITDA coming from the Novomatic businesses will growing nicely over what it was in 2019.

On top of this, the work we're doing now seems to suggest that the synergy potential could be greater than what we originally expected, making us incrementally more comfortable with the existing synergy guidance and working towards a higher number.

I have said this before, but I should mention that the management team that is dealing with this has had a very considerable experience in the past at integrating acquisitions like this.

And so we're pretty confident that the estimates and projections that we're making are going to be comfortably achieved.

Quantitatively, as we've mentioned before, NTG's 2018 adjusted EBITDA added to our original estimate of synergies would yield approximately $35 million of incremental adjusted EBITDA, with only modest growth in revenue and our margins in 2019 and 2020, and quite possibly, a greater-than-expected synergies.

We could reasonably expect to reach an adjusted EBITDA run rate in these businesses somewhat higher than the $35 million that we have been talking about.

I should mention here that the Novomatic businesses are somewhat more seasonal than the legacy Inspired businesses, with about half -- more than half of the EBITDA coming in the second and the third quarters because of the importance of the summer holiday season.

So to summarize then, as we look ahead and think about where we'll be, let's say, when we're exiting the first quarter of 2020, so about 2 quarters from now, less than 2 quarters from now, we would expect to have mitigated Triennial impact to around $2.5 million a quarter; to have comfortably added adjusted EBITDA from a range of initiatives in North America, Greece, Virtual Sports, Interactive and so forth; and finally, to have largely integrated NTG, realizing both its stand-alone profitability and the attendant synergies that we're seeing that it has with our legacy Inspired business.

So with that, I'd like now to hand it over to Brooks to further discuss our new business developments, and in particular, our most recent initiatives in North America.

Thanks, Lorne.

And I'd like to add just a little bit of color to some of the points you touched on, in particular, the benefits and the integration plans for the NTG acquisition, as well as the pace of the business developments that we have been working on in the North American market.

The teams have been working hard, as Lorne mentioned, on the integration plans, and we see a number of opportunities both in cost savings and also in revenue growth and synergies.

In terms of the acquired businesses, I think it's important to emphasize the addition of the design studios and capabilities of Astra, Bell-Fruit and Innov8.

We strongly believe that the combination of these 3 groups with our existing Inspired content development team will position us well to execute on our omnichannel strategy across multiple geographies.

Both Bell-Fruit and Astra, for example, are producing content for the U.K. pub sector that is growing that business significantly and is a leader in the space by a large margin.

This content is driving the digitization of the pub sector, as Lorne mentioned, from analog, and the shift to digital has historically increased the cashbox for our customer, and thereby, our revenue, and importantly, our margins.

So we believe that this content, combined with the leading

Prismatic cabinet, is the key to success in that segment of the business.

We also expect to leverage this new content plus the 6 key Novomatic titles we acquired, including Book of Ra, in the transaction within our U.K. LBO business, both to drive increased cashbox there as well as to reduce our reliance on third-party content to increase both our margins and our revenue.

Moving on to some other areas.

As we've discussed on previous calls, our Inspired content is leading the way in performance in Greece, and we're excited to be placing our Valor cabinets.

In fact, just this week, the first Valor cabinets were installed in Greece.

We use Greece as a proof point from what we thought it would take to succeed in Illinois because the markets are similar in that they are distributed with a large number of locations and a relatively small number of machines per location.

We created bespoke content for the Illinois market after doing extensive study and analysis, and are encouraged by the results we are seeing thus far, albeit on only relatively small sample set.

So we expect to be in trials with a number of operators this quarter, and we'll report on the conversion of these to both sales and to follow-on sales in the upcoming quarters with the addition of the 6th machine in Illinois.

The combination and addition of all this content creation will drive not only our Server Based Gaming business, but again, as Lorne mentioned, it will likely also serve as a catalyst for our interactive RGS business as we develop content for the multiple territories that we serve.

We're seeing significant growth in that space and expect that to continue beyond the U.K. where we're expanding in Sweden, Spain, Italy, and, importantly, North America.

So our growth strategy in North America really is across the entire business.

We talked about the Virtual Sports business, the launch of our games in Illinois.

In fact, on Virtual Sports side, we are looking forward to, actually next week, the launch of a new game with the Pennsylvania Lottery of Derby Cash that I think I've mentioned on previous calls.

It has different mechanics with a larger payout structures, multipliers, et cetera, et cetera.

So we're looking forward to launching that product and getting the results on the Virtual Sports side.

Also on the online side of our Virtual Sports business, which is showing nice growth throughout, we'll be going live with customers in New Jersey coming up shortly like bet365, the worldwide leader in Virtual Sports who will have 17 streams of Virtual Sports launching in New Jersey shortly.

So our pipeline of Virtual Sports offerings in the North American market has picked up, and we're looking forward to rolling out some of the new products we've developed that we've talked about in the past.

Our Virtual Basketball product that we've launched in the U.K. and is doing some amazing business, and then some of the new content that we've mentioned before, our NFL Alumni Virtual Football game and also, our hockey game with NHL Legend, Jaromir Jágr.

So with that, I'll pass it to Stewart for the financials.

Thank you, Brooks.

Good morning, all.

So overall, in U.S. dollar terms, revenue compared to the same quarter last year was down around 25% and adjusted EBITDA around 47%.

As has been the case in recent quarters, there was a drag from FX rates where we saw some very low sterling rates in the quarter.

So in pound rates, these growth rates are improved by around 4%.

And these negative variances were caused by 3 main factors.

Firstly, as expected, these were impacted by the change in the maximum stakes in the U.K. B2 market.

As Lorne mentioned, we saw some pickup during the quarter, but more importantly, it's the trading in October and November to date, that gives real encouragement.

Despite the store closures at the very end of the quarter, our revenue for October was in line with September, and we expect November to be higher.

On top of this, the store closures allow us to unlock more of the cost benefits and these are progressing well.

Secondly, we had high comparables in hardware and software license sales in the prior year quarter.

If you remember, on the last quarterly call, Lorne talked about the fact that given the majority of our revenue is recurring, the nonrecurring piece appeared lumpier than we would like and can cause some large swings quarter-to-quarter.

And that's certainly the case here.

And incidentally, this is another benefit the acquisition brings in diluting this.

There were also headwinds in the recurring business, including in Italy VLT, where tax increases and other regulation caused a decrease year-over-year of $1.1 million.

In Virtual Sports, we were impacted by reduction in license amortization, as we talked about many times before, a contract rephasing and the lack of an international soccer tournament this summer.

However, we are confident that Virtual Sports will get back into growth mode in Q4.

So there are quite a few reasons the year-on-year position is challenging to look at.

And for that reason, I do think it's worth commenting briefly on the quarter-to-quarter growth, Q2 to Q3.

So in taking out the impact of the currency fluctuations, and looking in pound terms, adjusted EBITDA increased from GBP 6.9 million to GBP 7.1 million.

This growth is even more pronounced when considering that we had an Italian license sale in Q2 and in Q3 of approximately $250,000.

The virtual seasonality impact of about GBP 300,000, and saving and cost, such as exhibitions, in Q3 that we didn't have in Q2 of about GBP 300,000.

In terms of cash flow, for the first 9 months of the year, if we look at free cash flow, which we define as cash provided by operating activities, less net cash used in investing activities, then we see an increase of $7.6 million from a $1.7 million outflow last year compared to an inflow of $5.9 million this year, despite the reductions in adjusted EBITDA.

Free cash flow in the quarter was negative $4 million.

And whilst having a full quarter impact on cash flows from the Triennial was a factor, as was a Greek VLT CapEx spend, actually the biggest factor was the amount of transaction fees and restructuring costs in the quarter.

In terms of the balance sheet, and specifically the new debt, we now have GBP 140 million of borrowings at LIBOR plus 7 2 5 and EUR 90 million at LIBOR plus 6 7 5 with a 0 floor.

This means the average blended coupon rate is around 7.7%.

This is down from about 10.9% previously and about 17%, 15 months or so ago.

And on top of this term loan, we have a GBP 20 million revolving credit facility.

So finally, briefly on the acquisition.

To reiterate what Lorne and Brooks have both said, we're pleased with the state of the business which is firmly back into growth mode, with very positive incomes in both the pub sector, but also the leisure sector.

In talking of the leisure sector, as Lorne touched on, this is a seasonal business with a number of venues closing during the fall and winter months.

As such, approximately 70% to 80% of adjusted EBITDA of the acquired business has historically come from the second and third quarters.

So hopefully that gives a bit of an overview of the quarter trading and the current debt position.

So with that, I'll hand back to Lorne for any additional comments before we open up for Q&A.

Thanks, Stewart.

That was an excellent review.

I don't have any further comments.

So operator, you can open the program to Q&A, please.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question is from David Bain with Roth Capital.

Great.

I just have 3 questions if I could.

The first on Illinois.

Can we get a sense or a little bit more granularity of performance data to date?

I mean, generally, are we in line with the market geography you shipped to?

Are you making an interim adjustments to units?

Any thoughts on the initial base performance in general?

And then trying to get a sense as to the potential rollout in the market as you look to next year.

Sure.

So in Illinois, as I mentioned in my remarks, it's obviously a very small sample size.

We have 17 machines installed at the moment, which, again, is pretty small to measure.

But we are happy with the numbers that we've seen thus far.

We'll be rolling out additional trials throughout this quarter.

But as I'm sure you know, the impact of the addition of the 6th machine, they are now talking about that could be possibly in the first quarter next year.

So what we're getting is either somebody will put one of our games on trial as a replacement or I think they issued something like 160 new licenses last quarter.

So some of that will come this quarter and will install there.

So probably early days to say, but I can tell you that both the early performance numbers and certainly the feedback that we've gotten from customers and players has been very positive.

Okay.

And then on the U.K., it just looks like the Prime Minister may be sympathetic to calls for stricter regulation for online, potentially like the GBP 2 limit on online slots and in credit cards, et cetera.

If that ends as a -- like a 2021 event, can you give us an idea of any benefits or potential negatives for Inspired?

Well, I think we've talked about a number of times that our Interactive business is -- although it's probably the fastest-growing segment, it's also the smallest segment.

So we would be impacted far less than many others.

And certainly nothing in the magnitude whatsoever in relation to Triennial.

Stewart's here and probably is a better expert on U.K. politics, although that might be a bit of an oxymoron with everything that's going on in the U.K. But right now, this is just a ministerial group that is pushing this, so it still will take time to play out.

And I'm sure the gaming industry and the remote gaming industry, particularly, probably having learned from some of the mistakes that may have been made on the Triennial, I'm sure will be very aggressive in promoting their responsible gaming activities and obviously we'll support them in that regard.

But should not -- if this were to occur by 2021, I wouldn't consider it a huge issue for us.

Okay.

Okay.

And just last one would be on the NTG acquisition.

It's part of the uplift that you all kind of spoke to in 3Q, in particular.

Was there a benefit from the Triennial?

And to kind of sum up the performance of NTG, because you did give a lot of data points, but can we just quantify the trailing 12 since 3Q?

I mean, with synergy, is it closer to 37 or around there?

So I mean in terms of trailing 12 months EBITDA from the acquired business, that's in the GBP 19 million range in sterling.

(inaudible)

Yes.

Pre any synergies.

Yes, absolutely.

Sorry.

And David, let me just add one thing about your comment.

I think that's one of the big questions that people are asking us is, has the impact of the Triennial and the LBO shifted game play to the pub market?

Kind of hard to quantify because it's not carded play over there as you know.

But the reality is, one of the rationales behind this acquisition of NTG is, frankly, whether a player goes from an LBO to a pub sector, we expect to be the leader of both of those segments.

So we hope to capture that revenue.

But certainly, the pub cashbox performance both in terms of the digital stuff that I talked about before, the content.

But, frankly, we believe there is some crossover play.

The next question is from Chad Beynon with Macquarie.

Wanted to tie back on that last question, just kind of focusing on NTG.

Stewart, you mentioned the seasonality, about 70% to 80% in the second and third quarter.

So as we think about the synergies, I guess, more importantly, the cost synergies, should we expect that those really don't start to come in until that similar time frame?

Or can some of the potential revenue and cost synergies start to show up in the income statement prior to 2Q?

Yes.

Thanks, Chad.

So, I mean, in terms of the timing of the synergies and I think in terms of the impact to revenue and the seasonality, that's -- there's not a significant correlation there.

We're starting to enact those synergies and we said that we'll start to see the benefit of those come through the income statement after around 6 months, a little bit before, and then really ramping up to that level that we talked about previously.

Yes.

And, Chad, this is Dan.

Just one additional thing to consider is, we were pretty disciplined in terms of, as we thought about synergies, really focusing on the cost side in terms of what we've spoken about because, obviously, cost synergies are a whole lot easier to be predictive on than revenue synergies.

And so I think, when Stewart talks about there not being a high degree of correlation between the seasonality in the underlying business and the synergy realization, I think that's instructive because the revenue synergies that we expect to achieve at some point would be over and above what we've already communicated to the market.

And so I don't think, as Stewart said, you should look at the seasonality as predictive of when the synergies are realized.

Okay.

Perfect.

Brooks, on Illinois, understanding that it's a small sample size, we're still trying to frame out your opportunity.

When you did your due diligence and when you continue to speak to operators in the market, are there opportunities to have multiple games next to each other in these venues?

Kind of echoing the cluster effect that we see in casinos.

Or should we expect that your success is more one machine per venue?

Meaning if your Valor game is successful, could there be another one, two or three next to each other in a venue?

Or do they really care about variability?

Well, I think it's a little of both.

Clearly, it will depend on the operator.

I would say that the operator that we have the most trials with now has said if the game continues to perform in that -- in the way that it is, thus far, that they could see doing the clustering that you're talking about.

Clearly, it's all going to be performance driven.

And probably the best scenario is when the 6th machine gets rolled out.

If we can get those out as quickly as possible, and as you know, everybody is going to be going for the landgrab at that point.

But my sense is that it will be a blend.

Some operators will want to do clustering, as you were talking about, some will just want to take one at a time, but it's really going to be performance-driven.

And as you know, but I mean, the market from a competitive standpoint, it's really ourselves, IGT, Sci Games, even Sci Games with different brands.

So it's not the whole gang of slot suppliers, so there's a little bit less competition in the space.

So, but it will, as you would know, it ultimately will come down to performance.

Okay.

And then last one for me, just on Greece.

You noted that you anticipate the remaining 1,200 units in the next 6 months, which will be positive for EBITDA and free cash flow.

Beyond that, is there still an expectation that there could be another phase of new games?

Or has OPAP essentially kind of closed out the market at this total size that we're kind of seeing right now?

Yes, I think -- well, certainly our view is that the 25,000, once they are installed, that's going to be it.

There is, certainly for us, there is an opportunity going forward.

If they decide based on performance, and I think as you know, we're the leading performer in the market, if they decide to do some reallocations, we could certainly get -- you would expect as the high-performer, that we would get some of that.

But I think what you'll really see, Chad, is that the Greek market is going to morph into really yield management both from OPAP's perspective and our perspective, because they've been racing like crazy to get all these machines installed by the end of the year, which is what they have to do.

But I think what you'll start to see next year is their focus, and obviously our involvement in that, on trying to grow as opposed to spending all their time trying to get machines installed.

(Operator Instructions) This is the end of the question-and-answer session.

I would like to turn the conference back over to Lorne Weil for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much, operator, and again, thanks, everybody, for listening in.

This is, in many ways, I think a pivotal quarter in the evolution of Inspired.

We have all these work streams going on with mitigating the Triennial and launching a bunch of new products in our other businesses, helping to grow the core Novomatic revenue and EBITDA and doing the integration to generate the synergies.

So it's a huge amount of effort happening in a very compressed period of time.

But if you take the time to add up all the things that we've discussed in the course of the call, I think you'll agree with us that as we move into, let's say, mid-2020, we should be reaching performance levels far, far beyond anything we've ever done before and certainly something worth all the effort that's going into driving these actions now.

So thanks again, and we look forward to talking to you in another few months.

Thanks.

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